It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a presentation of the Lawn Jean Wettner Watch Company, maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wettner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Edward P. Morgan and Bill Downs, both from the CBS television news staff. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable Val Peterson, administrator of the Federal Civil Defense Agency. Governor Peterson, on Chronoscope, as a matter of fact, a few months ago, you yourself made a very alarming statement. You said, as I remember it, that Russia was capable now of mounting an atomic attack, which could cripple the all the important industrial centers of the United States in one blow. Since then, Mr. Malenkov says that the Russians have the H bomb. Now, it would be helpful, I think, if you could sort of tell us what has transpired in your shop since then. Is the situation better or worse? Well, I think we're making progress in civil defense across the United States all of the time. So far as the announcement made by Mr. Malenkov, I personally have assumed, as have the people in my agency, that anything that we could do, the Russians eventually would be able to do. You would not dare to make any other assumption in a matter that involves the safety of the United States. I used to coach football years ago as a young fellow, and I found that whenever you underestimated the fellow, the opponent you were playing, you were in trouble. And of course, that's one of the first rules in military activity, too. So I would say that nothing has changed. There is no positive evidence that the Russians have an H bomb. You would not have positive evidence until they explode an H bomb. On the other hand, there's every reason to believe that their scientists would be able to create some type of a thermonuclear device as time goes on. Well, Governor Peterson, isn't it true that if they do have an H bomb, which is, they say, 20 times more powerful than an A bomb, that our problem is much more acute? In other words, it would take 20 less airplanes, for example, to do the job you say that they are capable of doing. Well, if it were only 20 times, any bomb of that type that they had, were only 20 times more destructive than an H bomb, our problem wouldn't be quite so bad as it probably is. The fact of the matter is that if and when the Russians have devices of that type and have enough of them to mount an attack against the United States, certainly it makes our problem much more difficult. It's a matter of degree, however.  But the A bomb is bad enough. Governor, is it correct to assume that one of your biggest problems is a sort of a psychological one? I mean this. It's the problem of awakening people to the danger without crying wolf. Assuming that is true, how do you do it? Well, I think the only way in the world to arouse the American people is to give the American people the facts just as closely as it's possible to do so. Now no one would propose that you give military secrets away. Certainly I wouldn't do that. But the people must know all that there is to be, that they can know about enemy capabilities, about enemy weapons, and the effects of those weapons. And knowing that truth, I think you can believe that the people will take the action that's necessary to protect themselves. Well, Governor, you said that between 8 and 20 million people would be killed in the event of an all-out attack, atomic or nuclear attack on our country. Now don't you believe that this concept is hard for the people to grasp? Overawesome, I mean myself for example, I have no feeling, what could I do about it? Maybe I'm one of those. There are many things that the individual can do and of course there are many things that we can do as a nation to protect, to minimize the effects of an atomic attack upon the United States. Now the fact of the matter is we are dealing with a new problem because the atomic weapon is only 8 years old and the idea of intercontinental bombers that can fly from country to country dropping bombs has completely revolutionized military strategy. And the figures that are involved are stupendous. However, the fact that the problem is tough does not mean that we do not have to meet it. And as far as I'm able to figure in my own mind, as I understand Americans, we will be equal to the occasion when it arises. Governor, I want to go back if I may to something you said just a moment ago, which was that you thought that the American people could arise to the situation given the information. President Eisenhower said not so very long ago rather urgently that he thought that the people by all means should have more information about the atomic situation. And I want to interrupt myself just a little to dig into my notes if you'll permit me and read something that I jotted down from the New York Herald Tribune which says, this was printed a few weeks ago, it is actually impossible to plan proper shelters against atomic attack in this country because the relevant information has not been released to the Civil Defense Administration by the Atomic Energy Commission or the military. Now the question is, after that rather cumbersome buildup, has anything perceptibly been loosened up? Well, now as a matter of fact, with due respect for that great newspaper for which I have a personal liking, the fact of the matter is that my agency is well briefed by the Atomic Energy Commission all of the time and by the Department of Defense. We do have the information. However, we haven't done as much research as we should do. As a matter of fact, we've done very little research with respect to the effects of bombing upon civilian type of structures. The research that we have done has been largely in connection with the effects of atomic explosions upon military installations and military instruments upon battleships and upon airplanes. And we need to do a great deal more research as that editorial or article suggests. Well, who's fallen on their face then, Governor, because this is not a strictly military weapon. This is a weapon that strikes at the civilian population. That is the chief value. Why aren't you getting this information? That's simply a shift in military strategy. The attacks now are made upon civilians and upon instruments of productivity rather than upon armies. We are getting that information. We have not done as much research as we should have done, primarily because we have not had the funds. Some of the information that the military has is valuable to us and we're in the process of transcribing it. But bear in mind that that becomes a very detailed and intricate engineering and technical procedure and we haven't done as much of it as we should do. However, I want to say this about shelters. It's entirely possible to build shelters that will protect people against any kind of an explosion, atomic or any other type of an explosion. If we wanted to take America into the ground, we could protect ourselves against these attacks. However, we would do it at a cost of billions of dollars, a fantastic amount of money. And so far there's been no dispensating upon the part of the American people or upon its representatives in the American Congress to take Americans under the ground. Well, don't you feel, Governor, that since we happen to be the major targets of this new weapon, H and A bomb, that we should have more information about it and the reason some of the apathy is that we don't realize what's going on? Well, I think generally I believe that whatever is the public's business is best handled by the public and by the public directly based upon sound information. And my agency has attempted to give the public all of the information it possibly could. And I know that the prevailing sentiment in Washington is to give the people all of the information that is possible, short always, of course, of giving the enemy information which nobody would want to do. Governor, that brings up another point, the actual organization of civil defense on the part of volunteer workers. I've had the impression in talking to some friends of mine who have done some volunteer work in civil defense here in New York City and other cities that an awful lot of people, if you will pardon the expression, go into it out of boredom. They're tired of bridge or scrabble or whatever and they go into it just to see what can be done. Now what about this public apathy? Well, I think that there is a failure on the part of the public to realize the danger in which America lives. And I think there are several reasons for that and if you permit me, I would try to outline them very rapidly. First, most of us do not like to do today what we should do in order to prepare for tomorrow. We procrastinate. We're a little bit lazy. That's true in our private lives. Secondly, any one of intelligence and information is hoping and praying that we won't have a third world war because in this age of the atomic weapon war would be a catastrophe for all mankind. And some people in that connection, and I offer this as another reason, are wishing that there will not be a third world war and they're wishing so hard that they've wished it into a reality. And then in addition to that, there are two other things that are quite important. Some people say, well, the destructiveness of modern atomic bombs and of these thermonuclear devices that may come into play will be so great that there isn't anything you can do about it. And then finally, and this is quite significant, about 60% of the American people revealed in the study which we made through the University of Michigan a year ago that they believed that the military could stop the atomic bombs from falling upon the United States. I'm sorry to have to tell you that the military will tell you that as of today, they cannot stop a successful Russian attack. That can be corroborated rather dramatically and we didn't plan it this way, Governor, but the floor manager has just handed me a bulletin saying, quoting Pravda, as saying that the Russians have just exploded a hydrogen bomb. Now as a final question, and this we might say a loaded one, very quickly with that information, could you tell us in about three words what we should do with that in mind? I should say that we should step up our civil defense program and we should of course step up our military defense program. Thank you very much indeed, Governor Bal Peterson. The opinions that you've heard our speakers express tonight have been entirely their own. The editorial board for this edition of the Lawn Sheen Chronoscope was Edward P. Morgan and Bill Downs, both of the CBS television news staff. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable Val Peterson, Administrator of the Federal Civil Defense Agency. 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I want to thank my wife, who challenged me to give this talk and start doing something about this idea. It's about my hometown, Washington, D.C., where our graduation rate is 64 percent, which is a high for the city, but is low compared to the counties that are immediately around the city. It's something that I really feel as a lifelong resident, D.C. teens deserve better. You'll hear this frustration in the voice of D.C. students heading on to these high schools like 10th grader Jerome Pettichlis, who confronted with an old school that needs updated textbooks and science equipment said, this makes us feel unwanted or unwelcome. Jerome deserves better. You'll hear it in the voice of D.C. students heading already in high school like senior Diamond Gooding, who said, we achievers are in a stone age learning environment. Diamond deserves better. And you'll hear the desire for a new kind of high school in D.C. students like Destiny T. Ray, who said, people think we're bad kids. I'm only 16. I didn't drop out. I just wanted to go to school in a different way. Destiny deserves better. And she's right that there is a different way and a different kind of high school in Washington is needed now. We're the home of problem solvers. The wonks, the science, the research and public policy nerds who aspire to tackle the world's biggest challenges, like disease, global warming, space exploration, the environment, and so on. But we need a different kind of high school curriculum. Harvard's Tony Wagner has said, today knowledge is available on every internet connected device. So what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. And that's the kind of school we need. He also said, the capacity to innovate, the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life. And skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than solely academic knowledge. Fortunately, we don't need to spend billions of dollars creating the kind of public research and cultural institutions to address the world's biggest challenges, like tackling poverty, hunger, education, saving the environment, and so on. Billions have already been invested here in Washington, D.C. Over many years to tackle these huge problems with breakthrough technologies and radical solutions, we are standing at the center of that X factor that our teams need to thrive in the 21st century. Billions have already been invested here in Washington, D.C. Over and these public institutions, we have the highest concentration of them anywhere in the world. Free, accessible, that's something we should think about. And what are we doing with it? They're in fields of study that high school students need most, like science, technology, engineering and math, NIH, NASA, Smithsonian research programs, air and space and natural history museums, the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and also arts and culture, the Smithsonian Art and History Museums, the U.S. Capitol where I work, the White House, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, the National Archives, where many of you all are representing here today. And all of these free public institutions have individual mandates to make their research, your research, your collections accessible and freed and open to the public. However, local D.C. high school students are currently really only using them for one-off projects or the occasional field trip. That's not only a wasted opportunity, I think it's a waste of our public investment. All of these public institutions also have digital repositories, collections, research databases, social media and other forms to share their groundbreaking research and projects, and many have already created curriculum plans for students to learn from their work. So the building blocks for a project-based learning already exist. We just need a new high school to put this research at the core of the curriculum, at the center of an innovative new school for public high school students that can build on that public, that project-based learning platform. It can't exist in a vacuum. We have dual enrollment partners scattered all over the city. We can help teens get the opportunities now to build a pathway for success, a pathway to get college credit. These institutions that you see are dying to improve their own graduation rates and completion rates. They would love to partner with a new kind of high school to help achieve their own mission. And new high schools need to include a new way of measuring achievement and accomplishment of students. Thomas Friedman and others have talked about the importance of having digital portfolios. Let's give students something that will and merit badges that let's reinvent the way that high schools recognize achievement of their students. Finally, we've got to do something for Jerome and these kids who are aspiring to be high schoolers in DC. This is a way that we can leverage our resources and help them achieve their dreams. So what I'm calling this, the working title, is Smithsonian High. And I love any of your ideas or feedback for how to make it happen. Thank you.


Those are medieval robots. On March 5, 2000, a night like any other, families across the nation tuned into their television sets, eager to catch the latest episode of the beloved animated sitcom, Family Die. Little did they know, that night would become etched in their memories for all the wrong reasons. As the clock struck the hour, the familiar theme song began to play, and viewers settled in for another round of laughter. But something was off. The animation seemed distorted, the colors muted, and a palpable sense of a sneeze hung in the air. Midway through the episode, the screen flickered, and the sound distorted into a neary static. Viewers squinted at their screens, trying to make sense of what was happening. Then, without warning, the image shifted to something altogether horrifying. The Griffin family, beloved characters of the show, were depicted in a grotesque and macabre manner. Their once jovial faces contorted into expressions of agony and despair. Blood dripped from their lifeless eyes as they stared vacantly into the void. The scene was a nightmarish tableau, a twisted mockery of the beloved sitcom. Panic erupted across the nation as viewers scrambled to turn off their televisions, but for many, it was already too late. The hijack had unleashed a torrent of terror that would haunt them for years to come. In the aftermath of the hijack, the true extent of the horror became apparent. Around 155 people took their own lives in the days following the broadcast, unable to cope with the trauma inflicted upon them. Another 130 vanished without a trace, leaving behind only empty homes and unanswered questions. Those who survived the ordeal were forever changed. 86 people refused to speak of what they had witnessed, their eyes haunted by the memories they could not erase. But for a select few, the nightmare was far from over. 45 individuals claimed to have recorded the hijack and sent tapes to paranormal investigators in a desperate bid for answers. Some hoped to find closure, while others sought vindication for their shattered sanity. But as the years passed, the tapes disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only whispers of the horrors they contained. To this day, the events of March 5, 2000, remain shrouded in mystery. Was it a sinister act of sabotage, a glitch in the broadcast, or something far more sinister? The truth may never be known, but one thing is certain. The night the Griffin family's smiles turned to screams will never be forgotten.


Hello my friends and welcome to the 53rd episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Now, I'm no mathematical genius, but last I checked 53 is one more than 52. And there are 52 weeks in a year, which means Patterson in Pursuit has been around for one year. So instead of interviewing somebody or doing a breakdown episode today, I'm gonna do something completely different and go meta here. I want to talk about my experiences, what I've learned in the past year, and Patterson in Pursuit in general. The journey started in the United States, but in the past year I think we've been to more than 10 countries. Started in New York and then went to Ireland, in Norway, Germany, the Czech Republic, England, back to the States, to the left goes to the United States, up to Canada, then to New Zealand, Australia, now we're currently in Japan, and next week, the final destination of the Asian version of Patterson in Pursuit I will be in Thailand, and then I'll be coming home. And one month after that, I will be going to Panama. So a lot has happened, it's been just an unbelievable experience, and I've tried to learn from this experience, not just in the interviews that I'm having or the conversations with people, just observations. Good philosophy starts with good observation. You have to theorize about something, and that something needs to be the contents of your observation, so I'm gonna give you some of my observations, not just from the countries we've been, but how my perspective has changed about things like academia and politics, how my own world view has changed. The first thing I want to say is that this trip did not start because I got permission from somebody. This didn't start as some sponsored project from a university. This project started for some personal and professional reasons from a lone wolf intellectual. Many years ago, I remember having a conversation with an academic that I respect and I've actually had on the show, and he said, Steve, you can't do lone wolf philosophy. You can't do lone wolf theorizing. It's got to be in the system, essentially, in the academic system. I objected to this notion several years ago that I wasn't producing what I'm producing now, and now I can confidently say, if you are an intellectual out there and you don't like academia, and you've got some good ideas, and you know you've got some good ideas. If you want to follow your passion in the pursuit of truth, in the world of ideas, you have to become an intellectual entrepreneur. You can do it. You don't need permission from anybody, you just got to be smart about it. This show is just one demonstration of the new world that has opened up because of the internet. You simply don't need the formal credentials of academia, the pseudo training that you get as a student wasting $100,000 in college. If you're serious and you're passionate and you've got a good head on your shoulders, new options are open for you, which is perfectly aligned with the product that the sponsor of this show produces. Praxis is a company that's in the business of training young people and employing them in the real world.  You don't want to waste your time learning from people in school who don't know what they're talking about. You have too much potential to waste it at a university, then go to steve-patterson.com slash praxis. That will take you to their site where you can learn more about their program, you can learn about how the real world works, and join me building a career without permission from the establishment. So the first meta thing that I want to talk about in the year that the show has been produced is, of course, academia. My beliefs have changed a little bit in the course of having all these conversations and in the following way. Prior to Patterson in pursuit, I was of the suspicion that most academics don't really understand the basics of their subject matter. And as you rise in academia, it's not because you are great intellectual, or you even understand what you're talking about. It's because you're playing a kind of career game. Those esteemed professors at prestigious universities, I thought, have the psychological dispositions, really, to excel in this very weird academic market. It really says little about their own competence. But this belief of mine has changed, or at least there's an addendum here. For the most part, I think it's correct. I really view modern academia as a kind of modern church with all the hierarchy, the incorrect theories. People don't know what they're talking about, but they think they know what they're talking about, the kind of elitist snobbery that's based in bad ideas. However, what did surprise me was a couple of sets of conversations I had at Harvard and Oxford in particular. The people that I spoke with there, I think maybe I had five or six interviews between the two universities. Maybe it was coincidental, but I was very impressed with them. Dr. Gyatso at Harvard, Timothy Williamson at Oxford. I did love the conversation I had at Tufts University with Jody Azuni. Now, I disagree with most of them, but I did get the impression that they did grasp the basics of their subject matter in a way that I could kind of intellectually respect. Now, those are just people that came to mind. I don't mean to imply that nobody else I thought understood what they were talking about, but there was a level of sophistication that I sensed that was really elite. So my expectation was there's virtually going to be no difference based on the conversations I had with tons of academics from tons of universities. You know, just over the past few years of my own life, I hadn't had that many conversations with people from the best of the best universities, the Oxford and Harvard's and Tufts of the world for philosophy. So to my surprise, I was actually really pleased and I felt like of all the places I have been, all the conversations I've had, if I were to go into something like, if I were to, you know, waste years of my life and decide to get a PhD in philosophy, I felt like I could actually learn something in Oxford or at Tufts, maybe at Harvard, I'm not sure.  But there are these little specs, maybe they're more concentrated at the super elite level.  But once you get to the very, very best universities in the entire world, maybe you do get some confidence there. Another name that just popped in my mind was the conversation I had with Dr. Simon Saunders about quantum physics. You can hear the thunder behind me. It's raining. But I was super impressed with Simon Saunders.  Like he was clear, he was a working professional who really grasped what he was talking about and he didn't have that much time for me. So he was kind of blunt and into the conversation quickly afterwards. Usually I talk for professors afterwards for a while, but he was like, sorry, but I'm just too busy to paraphrase. Now, if this is true, when I say that, you know, maybe at the, at the top three universities in the world, maybe you get some kind of quality education. Then, of course, this is still like grotesque, extreme damnation of the entire system of academia, because it just so happens that 99.99% of all universities aren't that elite and you don't get that kind of quality. So maybe if you're an intellectual and you have the finances and the personal connections to get yourself at a PhD at Oxford in philosophy, maybe that means something, but it doesn't seem like it's any guarantee if you're going anywhere else. So now that I got the nice thing to say out of the way, let me say the, the, the not so nice thing. I don't know how many professors I've spoken with in my lifetime now, but I am confident in saying almost all of them are clueless. Almost nobody goes down to the fundamentals of their own subject matter. It doesn't really matter if you're talking about economics or you're talking about religion or you're talking about science, whatever it is. Because not many people play the philosophy game, maybe they don't think it's important or something. They really don't have the basics of their own concepts sorted out. This is one of the reasons I find it so incredibly easy to have conversations with really anybody about anything is because if you know how to play the philosophy game and you know how the right questions to ask, you can get down into some really fundamental questions really quickly that these people haven't sorted out either because they haven't thought about them or they think it's too difficult or something like that. It kind of reminds me a little bit when I was in high school. Now I was homeschooled, so I had a very unique perception on this, but I still hung out with obviously a bunch of people around my own age. And there was this transparent phenomena that took place now that I look back on it in hindsight. It had to do with music. Music was this, you know, every teenager identifies himself with music. Music is this big deal. It's cool to know a lot about music, to know your bands and whatever.  Those people would impress others. Those would be the really cool people. They would know what they're talking about because they had this little sliver of information. But in reality, they didn't understand anything about anything. They didn't understand the history. They didn't understand the people. It was just to get that veneer, that nice glossy veneer of acting like, you know, what you're talking about as a high school student. That, I think, is exactly what's going on with 99% of academics is they have, they do have a sliver of information. And they think because they have that sliver of information, they are experts and they know what they're talking about. But when you just scratch, scratch the patina, I think you'll discover that they have not justified their beliefs. And they're just repeating the stuff that they learned in grad school. They're just repeating what they think are in textbooks, which they assume have some tight connection with the truth. So I don't buy it. I don't buy the expertise of the academics and don't tell me it's because I haven't spoken to enough of them. I certainly have spoken to many. There's this other interesting observation I've noticed, not just from the conversations, but also from interactions with people online, is that one of the sinister kind of systematic problems with academicians. Is a matter of who judges the competence of other people. So it's like if I were to criticize a priest, you know, Christian priest, many, many, many people in the orthodoxy would say, well, you don't have the credentials to criticize a priest. You haven't gone through seminary. You don't know what you're talking about. We are the ones that understand, you know, Christian theology and will be the ones deciding who's competent and incompetent. So there's this kind of exclusion of criticism from people who are outside the system. You see it explicitly and pronounced in religion, but the exact same thing again happens in academia. Somebody like myself who's been coming around for years criticizing the fundamentals of mathematics, at least for the last hundred years.  You don't know what you're talking about. You don't have the formal training. You know, you don't understand the basic concept. But now that there's conversations recorded with the PhDs, those who have the credentials in mathematics, now it's much more acceptable, of course, to question the fundamentals of mathematics. It's not just some crank on the internet talking about how the theory of infinite sets has not well justified and there's plenty of room for skepticism. Now it's people like Gary McGuire and Dr. Norman Weilberger and the other people that I've spoken with where it's very clear that you can have reasonable, rational skepticism about these fundamental troubles. So that kind of insularity, I think, is totally pernicious and totally shot throughout academia, where they just stick their fingers in their ears when it comes to any external criticism. They're more concerned with the speaker of the criticism than they are the nature of the criticisms. This is, of course, one of the reasons why I'm not in academia. I'm not going to be in academia. I don't believe in that kind of game and I think it leads towards dogmatism. Okay, so here's another observation I've learned about academics, which actually, this is another pleasant thing. Most of them have been very polite and very supportive, even when what's really interesting is though these people, I don't necessarily respect most of their ideas or I don't think they've gone down to the fundamentals of their subject matter. I do respect that they're down for talking and they have been very supportive of my project and they understand a lot of my criticisms of academia and are very sympathetic. It's like, oh yes, I see the problems with academia. Yes, I think you're right. And that's all the other people that are the problems. It's never those academics who are going to say of themselves, oh yeah, you know, I don't know what I'm talking about or oh yeah, the system is flawed or oh yeah, you know, I'm too much of a bureaucrat. They of course always point to everybody else is saying, oh yeah, the system is flawed because of them. But that being said, I mean, most, most people have really been very polite and I've had some of these awesome, really nice experiences where people go out of their way. Like Dr. Gerard in New Zealand, where I went down to his beautiful place in the New Zealand countryside, or I had a couple of conversations when I was in England with academics in their house. They invited me in their house. They've just been really polite. And of course, I tried to return the politeness. I think most of these people are really nice people. I just don't necessarily respect their ideas. Final observation about academia is I now really am totally, totally convinced that what I'm doing is going to be the template for the future. The system of academia has lost so much credibility. People respect, just in the past year it seems like the general public's respect for academics has justifiably gone down to incredibly low levels. And I don't think they're ever going to recover. The egos in academia I think are just far too great to too many people to rescue the system. You know, it's filled with Jason Brennan types that are absolutely convinced of their intellectual superiority and are not going to adjust to the new world that exists online. So they're going to go, they're going to sink like the Titanic. And I'm looking forward to when that happens. There's going to be, there is a radical decentralization of knowledge and expertise that's taking place online right now. And I think in just a few more years you're going to see just this explosion of independent intellectuals who say, look, I'm too good for the university. I don't have time to deal with the small minded bureaucracy. I don't have time to put up with classes that are boring or students that are not interested. I want to learn about the ideas and I have all the resources available I need online to educate myself. And we're going to see, as they say, weeping and gnashing of teeth. As these academics lose their prestige, they lose their general public respect. I mean, most people don't read academic writing anyway, of course, and they shouldn't, because most of it's terribly written and the theories are all wrong. But I think their salaries are going to go down and it's going to be more of a social club, where people are in the system for kind of social hierarchical reasons and not for intellectual reasons, if we're not already at that point now. In the conversations that I've had so far, if you've been able to follow along, then you at least have the potential to be a professional intellectual. All it takes is time, grit, and open mind and some desire to be able to communicate effectively. That doesn't mean you could make it in academia. You might be like me and not have the psychological traits for it, but you can contribute meaningfully to the world of ideas. It ain't easy, but if you've got the passion for it, it's possible. I don't think it's a correct conception of academia to think it's this kind of a path. It's this group of high IQ, brilliant people who understand more clearly how the world works than the general population. The general population can't understand them because they're just not smart enough. I don't think that's what's going on at all. I think it's people who may and in strict sense have higher IQs, though I have much to say about why IQ isn't what people think it is. But it's people who probably know less about how the world works because they're sheltered from it. Their only feedback they accept is feedback from their little insular group. And their theories which they think are impressive and profound. When you actually talk to them, I don't think they're as well founded as they'd like to believe. Okay, but enough about academia. Let me tell you about what I've also learned in my travels. So it seems like as we've been traveling, we've been following drama in the world. We were in England when the Brexit vote happened. We stayed with Syrian refugees in Germany. We were in Queensland when the hurricane hit Queensland. And now we're in Japan as there's the whole North Korea drama going on. This has been kind of a weird time on several occasions. I thought to myself, hmm, I hope the borders don't close. Like I might be stuck in this country if the borders closed down for some reason. But in traveling so far, I feel like finally this Japan journey has scratched my travel itch. All the places we've been so far, it's not felt very foreign. It's not felt very different. It hasn't really satisfied my desire to do serious traveling as weird as that sounds. But here, Japan, I feel like that hunger has finally been satiated. Interestingly enough, I think it's because on one hand Japan is very foreign compared to all the other places we've been. There's a very pronounced language barrier. But on the other hand, it's also been coupled with a kind of perception about life that even in this very exotic place where I'm in Kyoto right now, human life fundamentally isn't that different. There are these fundamental principles of human life, which I feel like I can confidently say I've bumped into here. And we'll see what happens when I'm in Thailand. I think the same thing will happen in Thailand.  One constant is that culture is massively important for how people live their life. It's the thing I've been talking about on my YouTube channel for the past few weeks, that how society is structured, not politically but socially, is going to be arguably the most important thing in terms of how satisfied your life is going to be. If you live in what Americans might call poverty, let's say, you make less than $10,000 a year, but you live in a healthy, accepting community where you feel free, you're valued, you're contributing in a meaningful way to the world, I think you're doing life better than if you are making a million, $10 million a year, but you're stuck in a culture that is toxic. I saw this a little bit when we were in Prague. The culture in Prague I really, really liked, even though the standard of living was lower. Versus you go to the United States and that standard of living is higher, which is more convenient, but there's so much toxic culture in the States. And now we're in Japan and it feels like the culture is great, at least for an outsider. Whenever my wife and I decide to settle down, culture is going to be this huge factor in where we choose to lay down roots. The other thing I've learned, I feel like such an old person for saying this, but oh my goodness, weather is so important. Maybe I've got those genetics, you know, seasonal affective disorder or whatever, where I'm just really sensitive to gray and rain and cold, but it seems like the experience of life is so much better when you have good weather and so much worse when you have shitty weather. When we were in Norway, this is a place that is bitterly cold most of the year, and gray, gray, gray, it would drive me nuts. I think they got a pretty high ratio of people with mental problems from Norway and I think it's probably because they just don't see enough sun.  On the topic of culture, this is an area where my beliefs are still in the process of changing. There's this top word, multiculturalism that people talk about, which is supposed to be one of those areas that separates the enlightened from the bigots. In other words, those who love and embrace all aspects of multiculturalism versus those who are a little skeptical of multiculturalism. Now, I would consider myself very much a liberal in the sense that I like the idea of multiculturalism. I really don't like genuine xenophobia or dogmatic patriotism. I think that's pretty ignorant. However, I've also discovered this in London with my wife. Multiculturalism has a limit. There is a framework in which multiculturalism is practical, acceptable, exciting, wonderful, and it might be a very broad framework, but there's still a framework. And that is, all cultures are great and let's learn from one another and accept one another as long as we agree on some fundamental basics about the respect for human life, the respect for private property, the respect for the values and what we call rights of an individual, and the agreement not to force your personal or social religious beliefs down the throats of other people, especially by force of law. Now, I think most of the world, really, I think most of the world probably agrees on the same fundamental tenets. Very, very, very broad tenets that I've just spoken about. And so I think multiculturalism works for most of the world, but I do think there are exceptions. I just hadn't bumped into them before London. My wife and I were staying in a Muslim Turkish district outside of London and the experiences that we had made me realize, hang on a second, this might actually genuinely be a belief system that is not compatible with the values of nearly everybody else that I've interacted with. I spoke a little bit about this in my recent YouTube video if you guys want to check that out. Now, obviously, Islam is a belief system with more than a billion adherents so there's going to be a lot of variation to what people believe, but the versions that we bumped into in London did not seem to respect women, did not seem to respect a kind of legal system that we're used to, did not seem to have worries about the use of violence to achieve religious ends. That belief system, I don't like. I'm not afraid to say it. I don't like it. I don't think it's compatible with the values that I hold and I think most other people hold. So that's true. Two things to say on the topic. First of all, a kind of genuine universal multiculturalism. I don't think it's a good thing because you're going to have a few crappy cultures out there that are going to throw a wrench into a peaceful and prosperous society. Number two, I think it also reveals that those people who are most aggressive multiculturalists, one of two things is going on, probably both. One, it's virtue signaling. Of course, they want to say how tolerant they are and how they're accepting of everyone to score social brownie points with other people. I think that's clearly mostly what's going on. Two, I think there's also a group of people, I would have fallen into this category, that simply have not experienced radically different belief systems in person. So there's this underlying belief that, oh really, everybody in the world, all humans hold the same fundamental values about peace and prosperity and respect and love, but you only hold those beliefs because you haven't encountered anything otherwise. Well now I have, and I imagine the farther outside of western culture you get, the more you're going to bump into some of those ideas, especially if you're talking about some radical religious beliefs. So that has really changed my perception about human beings and society, and it changes a little bit my understanding of politics and immigration. I won't go into now because I'm still working through the ideas, but issues with multiculturalism and integration are very easy to solve, I think, in the anarchist society, the society without government, which is my ideal society, I think the one which makes the most philosophic economic sense, but in the real world right now where you have governments and you have country borders, I don't think it's so clear just to say open borders all the time for everybody, no questions asked. Sort of related to this topic, especially if you're listening to this as an American, I'm sure you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about. Growing up in America, if you come from any kind of more right-wing background, there's this notion of American superiority that you just by virtue of the fact of being born on US soil have been endowed with this unfathomable gift and necessarily have a better life than everybody else in the world because of you being American. I don't think this is true. I think there's a little bit of truth to it, but the kind of extreme nationalistic pride and kind of pity for everybody else that isn't born American, I think, is kind of silly. People have a very high quality of life, standard of living, and plenty of other places in the world. I think Japanese culture is very different than American culture, and I think in many ways is superior. I think Japanese technology in many ways is superior. I would not pity the young Japanese man born outside of Tokyo just because he's not with a US citizenship. And also I know from my experiences the American lifestyle is totally completely different based on where you're born. Somebody who's lucky to be born around a city is going to have a million more opportunities in life than somebody that's born out in the rural countryside. I've seen it a million times. I've lived in both the country and the city. And people that are living in rural upstate New York or living in rural Mississippi, they got a pretty damn tough life even though they're Americans. And there's lots of other people all around the globe who have it better off in many ways. I also thought prior to my travels that really the most important thing in the world for human beings is ideas. And I definitely stand by that. I really think that in terms of how people are living their life, they're completely unaware of how outrageously important their ideas, world view, and philosophy is that most of the time they're just unaware of. I think there's this deadening effect of living in a community, living in a culture where some fundamental ideas you just assume are true or self-evident or not worth investigating and as a result you live your life kind of as an automaton because you've not investigated foundational questions like what is the meaning of life? How important is financial success? How much time should I be spending with my family? Should I be giving more of my income away? How important is love in my everyday life? These kind of things, most people just absorb the values of the environment that they're raised in and because of that I think you really do see a huge, huge, huge variation of the human experience based on different cultures and different environments that are going to profoundly affect how your life has lived. The human mind seems like it's kind of a sponge that gets squished and then put into a bucket of water where it just absorbs its surroundings and it can be really hard to take that sponge and ring it out so that you can try to get outside of all of those default assumptions that your culture holds and really examine some of those fundamental beliefs which is of course what I've been trying to do in my own life and with Patterson in Pursuit. Next topic I want to ramble about is the internet and the changes taking place in the world. I really think that you and I are living in remarkable, remarkable times. The fact that right now I have been able to undertake this project and go to 10 countries while I'm still in my mid-20s and do it for fairly cheaply, especially because I'm doing almost all of my travel with airline points, this is utterly absurd and ridiculous from a historical context. I've seen more of the world than 99% of all the royalty and most elite of the elite for all of human existence and I come from a pretty humble background. So the fact that technology has progressed so rapidly that allows, that has allowed this project to happen and these experiences for me to happen is totally unprecedented and we are going to get to a point, I don't know when, but in the next few decades where what I'm doing will seem like nothing, it will be like venturing outside of your hometown to the town next door where it's like okay that's nothing to report, there's no big deal. International travel is going to be so easy and so cheap and virtual reality experiences are going to be so ubiquitous where you're going to be able to see and engage with the entire planet in a way that has never happened before. That has gigantic implications for the world of ideas. That has gigantic implications for your life, for your belief system, for your career, for your relationships, for politics, for economics. It's just such a crazy thing that's happening, the emergence of this genuine international culture that's arising because of the internet. I think this is going to be one of those examples of creative destruction where there's going to be lots of establishments and lots of reputation and lots of old traditions and beliefs that are going to be totally destroyed and replaced by something I think new and superior. Academia of course is one of those institutions but governments in general I think you're going to be facing enormous pressures that they didn't used to face. I used to look back at that period of late 19th century to early 20th century as this period of amazing technological upheaval. The world was becoming electrified. You were having planes and cars be developed. I used to kind of romanticize that and think wow that must have been really exciting to live in that time. The era we're in right now is way more dynamic than I think it was then. Everything's being digitized, everything's going online and the world 15 years from now is going to be a totally different place. I suggest we embrace it. Let the old established conservative fogies sink with the Titanic. Let's all hop on the life raft and ride the waves. I definitely use that ocean analogy too much. The last thing I want to talk about briefly is my literal philosophic beliefs how they've changed over the course of this last year. There were a few conversations that I've had, not all of them recorded, that have really been influential for my belief system. One of them is when I was in California I met up with a philosopher there that I really respect and I think very, very advanced philosopher and we after the course of a long conversation talking about the philosophy of mind you know, if you guys have heard my interview breakdowns you know I like to call myself a reluctant dualist. I'm a dualist meaning I believe mind and matter are two fundamentally different types of things but I'm reluctant about it because I don't like some of the implications that follow from dualism. Well after that conversation I, to be honest I am less reluctant. I'm a little bit more comfortable with dualism than I would have been where I really just am convinced that mental phenomena are not themselves physical phenomena or they're not spatiotemporal things that my conscious experience is not identical to a particular arrangement of atoms. So if we want to preserve the existence of an independent physical world then really the reasonable position I think is dualism. I've really enjoyed the conversations I've had about this topic on the show. I remember the conversation I had with Professor Brahm at RPI. I found that one especially interesting because he had these insights about why the mental kind of is more fundamental than the physical and seeing all these things I was agreeing with and then he refused to go to the dualistic perspective and he even recognized what I considered to be a fairly deep insight that what we conceive of as the physical world is really fundamentally a theory that's designed to explain the experiences we're having which of course puts the mental as more fundamental that wow that's a really deep insight and he wanted to preserve the existence of the physical world which seems like the dualistic position but people really don't like that title of dualism. My suspicion is it's just the religious connotations that people have with dualism. Another conversation that really has changed my way of thinking was a conversation I had with T.K. Coleman about race relations part one and two which are both the most popular podcasts that I've released. The way that he was talking about why intentions don't really matter most of the time that was really powerful and I'm still actually working through a lot of it my own ethical theories my political theories my social theories I can't wait to have them back on the show I want to in maybe the next couple of months but that conversation really did challenge me in a more fundamental way than almost any of the other conversations I've had because the ideas were so unique I've not really encountered totally, totally radically different ideas that I've never thought of before but some of those ideas I really had never bumped into and I found them persuasive too. My position has also become clearer in regards to philosophy of mathematics and I'm of two minds of this where I'm very passionate about the philosophy of math I think it's an area that needs a great deal of work to re-found mathematics on sound foundations I'm excited about it I think there are metaphysical and logical insights which I think I'm pretty clearly conceiving of that I have not found a school of thought that is making, that seems to see mathematics the way I see it which makes me think this is an opportunity to really positively impact the world of ideas but I'm also a little bit overwhelmed by the philosophy of mathematics just because I think so much work needs to be done it's analogous in my mind to religious topics where I think there is truth to be found profound truth, explanatory truth about how the world works and yet it's surrounded by 99% fundamental error and to try to extract correct foundations from religion I think is really difficult I feel the same way about mathematics the past hundred years have not been impressive for the philosophy of mathematics and so to go into it from the basics of the metaphysics of what are numbers all the way up to girdles and completeness theorems what do they mean, what do they imply to infinities, Cantor's diagonal argument and the foundations of geometry and topology and calculus there's just every area I think is plagued by errors now that means wow there's a lot of work and revision and positive impact that can be made but it also means holy crap it takes a long time to do so I think it's inevitable at this point I don't think there's any way I can turn down the project I think it's just too important it's got so many big implications but on the other hand I feel like I'm going to be doing this for the next 20 years alright final thing on the intellectual side that I want to talk about that is religion there are interviews that I've had that I have not released and I don't know if I will release them but I have realized in a rather blunt way that I am so wanting to be open minded and listen to what people have to say and learn from them and find the truth in what they have to say that I think I have been a little bit disconnected about religion in practice not religion in theory not talking about trying to treat the Bible as metaphorical and what is it really saying and there's truth to be found but religion in practice what are the religious beliefs that people hold what are the systems that they follow what's the justification for their beliefs in practice oh my gosh I'm about as anti-religious as conceivably possible religion in practice I think is just dogmatism in practice and silliness and so in my pursuit of truth and in my desire to not dismiss true ideas like I obsessively really don't want to dismiss true ideas I think I have maybe given a little bit too much plausibility or respectability to a lot of religion in practice I am scathing about modern academia and I genuinely think it's populated by a bunch of anti-intellectuals and who aren't on the pursuit of truth and who believe a bunch of ridiculous things for stupid reasons and I think I've thought that religion got kind of a bad rap and maybe you know there's plenty of people that are shitting on religion so I don't want to necessarily partake in that but now I'm realizing ooh man I have these beliefs about you know the importance of love the importance of the person of Jesus Christ in history like wow I think it was under truth I think life has meaning I've got these spiritual beliefs but I'm realizing what most people mean by Christian is not what I am what most people mean by capitalist is not what I am most people believe by any of the popular terms that are out there I feel like they've all been bastardized and so I would have liked to say I would consider myself a Christian because of the rational beliefs the philosophic beliefs that I hold that are in accordance with the philosophy of Jesus yes but now I realize calling myself a Christian communicates ideas that are incorrect about my own belief system so I'm not exactly sure what to do about this I don't want to just participate in religion bashing and yet I recognize it's just filled with dogmatism I don't really know what to call myself other than you know a philosopher with theistic or something conclusions even that gosh I think about it I can't even call myself a theist because that means oh omnipotent dominant president dominant benevolent god that's up there and blah blah blah I don't believe any of that either but again this is an area of opportunity for growth and an opportunity to positively impact the world of ideas which is what I'm going to be trying to do so that is my year in review I have learned a lot I have loved the travels they've certainly not been all roses maybe some other point or if you guys want to talk about it or maybe in a Q&A session I'll talk about some of the crap that's happened you know traveling is not all fun experiences but I hope you guys have enjoyed it this has been you know part of my own personal socratic journey and I'm glad you guys have been following along I really hope you've gotten value from it if you'd like to support the show if you think what I'm doing is valuable you think my ideas if you think I'm on to something then go to patreon.com slash Steve Patterson and join the more than 80 other people who also think the same way who have chosen to contribute a dollar or two whenever I release a podcast or an article or a YouTube video you'll also get access to a community of other independent intellectuals who are trying to pursue truth together even if that means they're doing it outside of academia in about a month this phase of Patterson to Pursuit in my own international travels will be winding down after Panama I don't think I'm going to be doing a ton more international travel so we're going to be doing more domestic conversations more Skype conversations be releasing other new content thanks everybody for listening tell your friends about the show if they're interested in big ideas leave a rating and a review on iTunes if you want to help out the show and get these ideas out to more people next week's interview is about religion and science and attention between the two and then this Monday interestingly enough I have an appointment with a Zen Buddhist here in Japan where I'm going to go meet him and we'll talk about Zen Buddhism and maybe I might even get a meditation experience with him no promises about the quality of the English translation we might have a bit of a language barrier but it's going to be a hell of an experience thanks everybody for listening and have a fantastic week


Well, my street candy counter after this film was present. Did all the work on it? Thank you for yesterday. Good to see you. How are you? Good to see you. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. My chair is for us. Well, HR 2672, marks an important achievement for the federal government as an employer. I know that many individuals have been involved in this effort, and I particularly like to salute Senators Roth, Stevens, Eagleton, who's been with us today, but representatives Ford, Taylor, Ocar, and Myers to them missing. But for their tireless efforts during the last several years, I'm designing a new retirement plan that is fair to both federal employees and the taxpayers. Designing a retirement system from scratch that will eventually cover as many as 2 million people was a difficult and a complex task. The bill that I'm signing today represents the completion of a bipartisan task that was begun three years ago and diligently pursued by the administration and the members of the Congress here with us today. From the best examples from the private sector on how to design a retirement plan, the bill creates a three-tiered system of benefits for employees. Social security provides the base, a defined benefit plan provides additional retirement income, and a tax-deferred savings plan allows employees, with matching money from the government, to save toward their own retirees. This bill is a sound outcome to a difficult undertaking, and it's fair to both taxpayers and employees. This legislation gives federal workers a retirement system when they come to their neighbors who work in the private sector. We can all be proud of it. I look forward to having this group here again to mark the successful completion of the next major task, simplifying the personnel system. And now I will sign the legislation. This bill is only right one word. There it is. It is. Back here. See you, sir. Thank you all.


Good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankara IAS Academy. The list of articles which has been chosen for today's analysis along with the page numbers of Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Tiruvananthapuram Medicines are provided here. The link for the handwritten notes in the PDF format and the time stamping for the displayed articles is given in the description box below. And for the benefit of smartphone users, the time stamping is also given in the comments section. Let us move on to our first article analysis. The first news article is about the Great Indian Bustard. The syllabus relevant to this article discussion is given here for your reference. The news article states that the National Green Tribunal has directed the Centre to prepare a time bound action plan for the protection of Great Indian Bustards. This plan has to be drafted within two months. Now the National Green Tribunal has ordered this because of high mortality rate that is high death rate of the Great Indian Bustards. Along with this, the National Green Tribunal bench has also constituted a joint committee to prepare an action plan for the implementation of suggestions given by the Wildlife Institute of India. This committee comprises of officials from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, then from Ministry of Power and then also from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Now let us see about the Great Indian Bustard, the threats faced by the bird and the suggestions given by the Wildlife Institute of India. The Great Indian Bustard is a bird. It is one of the rarest bird in the world. Its scientific name is Ardiotis nigrecepts. It is the state bird of Rajasthan. Now this map gives the distribution of this species. As you can see in this map, historically the Great Indian Bustard was distributed throughout the western half of India. It was found in 11 states from Punjab and Haryana in the north to Tamil Nadu in south and then from Gujarat and Rajasthan in west to Odisha in east. But in the last three decades, there is a drastic reduction in this species habitation. As you can see, the current distribution of the species is restricted to fragmented pockets in six states of the country. The largest global population of the species is found in Rajasthan. There are between 100 to 125 birds in the desert national park in the districts of Jaisalmer and Barmer along with the agro-pastoral landscapes of Bikaner in Rajasthan. Agro-pastoral means the practice of agriculture that includes both the growing of crops and the raising of livestock. Then some 25 to 50 birds are found in Ajmer, Pali and Tongh districts of Rajasthan. All other populations have less than 35 birds each. These populations are located within the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. According to the government data, the Rajasthan and Kutch populations are probably shared with eastern Pakistan where sporadic or occasional and seasonal occurrences of some 15 to 20 bird sightings have been recorded so far. These great Indian busters or GID generally favor flat open landscapes which have minimal visual obstruction and less disturbance. Earlier habitat studies found that great Indian buster typically use arid and semi-arid areas that are dominated by grasslands having 30 to 70 centimeter height. They choose this 30 to 70 centimeter height grasslands because they will have minimal visual obstruction. But also remember that its habitat requirements may vary with season and behavior. It is also known to nest in open barren land during summer and they tend to avoid grasses above one meter height because they obstruct the visualization and they also avoid dense scrub like prosopis julephora. This great Indian buster is a diurnal species that is it is typically active in the daytime. This species is omnivorous, it feeds on plant matter such as grass seeds, agricultural crops such as ground nuts, millet and legumes then on insects, lizards and rodents. Some researchers also say that this species is a desert adapted species that is it is adapted to the desert culture so it drinks water only if it is available. Then reproduction is slow in this species because the female buster typically lays a single egg or even rarely two eggs in a secluded open ground and she incubates without any cooperation from the male buster in the guarding of the nest. So the disturbance to nesting site is a major cause of egg and chick mortality. This is also a reason why its population is not increasing. Next let us see the threats to this species. Historically great Indian bustered have been hunted as a game bird and it continues to be hunted in neighboring Pakistan even today. Then low intensity poaching still persists within India. These poachings happen outside the protected areas. Then another threat is the collection of great Indian bustered eggs for consumption and this practice is prevalent in some parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. So this directly threatens the breeding success of this species. Moreover domestic dogs of farmers and free ranging dogs of villages have caused serious damage to the nest of bustered. In addition to this unethical photography during the breeding season of bustered often acts as a constant source of disturbance. Along with this they have faced severe habitat loss and alteration over the recent past from widespread agricultural expansion and mechanization of farming and also from infrastructural developments such as irrigation, roads, electric poles, windmills and constructions and also from mining and industrialization. Then another major threat to this species is fatal bird collisions. These birds collide with high tension electric wires, fast moving vehicles and other human structures in the industrial development zones that are near bustered areas. So what is the reason these birds collide with high tension electric wires? It is because busters have wide sideways vision. The sideways vision is to maximize predator detection but they have a narrow frontal vision. Now because of this and because of the habit of scanning the ground while flying they cannot detect power lines ahead of them. This makes them vulnerable to collision with power lines.  Now to solve this particular problem some suggestions were given by Wildlife Institute of India which the National Green Tribunal has asked the centre to implement. The suggestions include mitigation measures to reduce power line mortality. It includes undergrounding of cables and fitting overhead wires with bird diverters. A bird diverter is a device that is attached to a power line or any type of wire that is suspended in the air. It is to distract and divert birds away from these power lines. So the bird diverters are the wire markers in the form of spirals, swivels, plates or spears and the mitigation measures also include avoiding or diverting any new high tension power from the priority great Indian Buster habitat and these habitats have been mapped by Wildlife Institute of India. Now this is the reason why the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy are included in the joint committee formed by National Green Tribunal. Now let us see what are the conservation measures taken to protect this great Indian Busted. The great Indian Busted has been protected in India since independence. Currently it has got the highest protection status as it is listed in Schedule 1 of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Then it is now listed as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List. Then after this it is also listed in the CMS Convention that is the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals and then it is also listed in Appendix 1 of Sites. This great Indian Busted has been identified as one of the species for recovery program under the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats. Now know that the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats is a centrally sponsored scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the recovery program that is mentioned here is the recovery program for critically endangered species and habitats. Under this program initially 17 species have been identified and the species include Great Indian Busted, Manipur Deer Sangai, Gangetic Dolphin, Dugong, Amur Falcon etc. Now also know that there is no captive population of Great Indian Busted. This is because few unscientific attempts to breed this species in captivity have failed in the past. So, since there is no captive population of Great Indian Busted extinction of the species from wild implies total extinction of this species. That is why it is important to take appropriate conservation measures to save this species. With this we have come to the end of this article discussion. This one previously asked question is given here for your reference. The news article talks about a region in the state of Karnataka. This region is called as Hyderabad Karnataka in the state of Karnataka. This region consists of six districts. They are Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgiri, Raichur, Koppal and Bellary districts. This region was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad before the Indian Independence. That is the reason for the name of this region as Hyderabad Karnataka. Today the news is that the state cabinet in the state of Karnataka has decided to rename this region as Kalyana Karnataka. Now let us see few historical information about this territory. The territory of Karnataka became independent from the British rule with the rest of the country on August 15, 1947. But this did not happen for the territories under the control of Nizam of Hyderabad. This is because of the then Nizam of the erstwhile state of Hyderabad, Meer Osman Ali Khan Asafja 7. He was not willing to join the territories ruled by him with the Indian Union and he wanted to remain independent. And then he declared Hyderabad as an independent nation on August 15, 1947. Then in June 1948 Mountbatten proposed a deal called as Heads of Agreement Deal. This deal gave the status of an autonomous Dominion nation under India to the Nizams Hyderabad. India was ready to sign the deal and did so. But Nizam still refused. He refused on the grounds that he wanted complete independence or the status of Dominion under the British Commonwealth of Nations. Now remember that this British Commonwealth of Nations is now known as Commonwealth Grouping. The Nizam refused for negotiations and it was said that Hyderabad was arming itself with support from Portuguese administration in Goa and the government of Pakistan. This has ultimately led to communal clashes and added more tension in the region. This idea of Hyderabad arming itself with the support from Pakistan did not go well with the Indian government. Sardar Vallabai Patel described the idea of an independent Hyderabad as an ulcer in the heart of India which needed to be removed surgically. This was not the comment made on the region. But it was the comment for the independence of region claimed by Nizam as he decided not to join with India. Then by September 1948 there were reports that Nizam's army was committing atrocities on innocent civilians and there were reports of communal clashes also. After this India decided to carry out a police action to prevent communal clashes and to stop the atrocities. This police operation is called as Operation Polo. Sometimes it is also called as Operation Caterpillar. This police action began in September 13, 1948 and it lasted till September 18. During the police action the Nizam of Hyderabad surrendered and Hyderabad became an Indian territory on September 17 to 18, 1948. This is the reason why the people in this region celebrate Hyderabad Karnataka Liberation Day on 17 September every year remembering the integration with Indian Union. Some people locally call this day as their independence day also. Then when the new state of Mysore was reorganized in 1956, Karnataka speaking areas of Hyderabad province were added to the new state of Mysore. That part comes under the six districts we mentioned already is called as Hyderabad Karnataka. Now also remember that the name of the state of Mysore was changed to Karnataka in 1973. Now this Hyderabad Karnataka region is considered as one of the backward regions in India and within Karnataka it is the most backward region. One of the reasons for this is poor soil fertility in this region. As a result agricultural productivity in this region is less. Even after several years of independence by around 2012 it was reported that the human development indices in this region is below the HDI levels in Sub-Saharan Africa. So for the development in the region the people demanded for special status under the constitution of India. This demand was pending for a long time and finally in 2013 the region of Hyderabad Karnataka was given special status under article 371 J of Indian constitution. The article 371 J deals with special provisions with respect to state of Karnataka. This article was inserted into the constitution by the 98th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2012. This article gives constitutional power to the president of India to give any special responsibility to the governor of Karnataka for the development of Hyderabad Karnataka region. Then the article 371 J clause 1 sub clause a provides for establishing a separate development board for Hyderabad Karnataka region. The article also provides for equitable allocation of funds for developmental expenditure of this region. The article also provides for equitable opportunities and facilities for the people belonging to this region. These opportunities and facilities are given in three matters. They are public employment, education and vocational training. These opportunities are given by a way of positive discrimination that is reservation. Then based on the special provision given by this article the Hyderabad Karnataka region development board was established on 6th November 2013. The jurisdiction of this board is spread over 40 assembly constituencies of these six districts in the region that is Bidar, Bellari, Kala Buragi which is also known as Gulbarga, Koppal, Raichur and Yadgir districts. Now here note that in the constitution under article 371 J the name Hyderabad Karnataka region has not been changed because it will require a constitutional amendment through parliament which may or may not happen in future. But right now the state cabinet of Karnataka government has decided to change the name within the state as Kalyana Karnataka. With this we have come to the end of this news article discussion. The displayed practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next article discussion which is based on this editorial which is about India-Russia relations. The discussion can be linked to the syllabus that is given here for your reference. We know that recently the Prime Minister of India has participated in the fifth Eastern Economic Forum. This forum was held in Russian Far Eastern region of Vladivostok. Know that this Eastern Economic Forum was set up by the Russian president to attract investment to the farthest east Siberian and arctic pole areas of Russia. Now during this forum the Indian president unveiled the Russian edition of India's Look East Act East policy which is called as Act Far East. Our PM has also pledged to extend a line of credit or LOC of 1 billion dollars to the Russia's Far East region. Now know that this line of credit is not a grant but it is a soft loan which is provided on concessional interest rates by a government to other governments. So this has to be repaid by the borrowing government. Our PM has said that this line of credit will be the takeoff point for Act Far East. It means it is just beginning in the India's participation in the Far East region. The line of credit is expected to help finance the Indian business projects that are investing in this region and this line of credit will also strengthen the bilateral ties with Russia. Now along with this several other initiatives were taken to increase the value of economic ties between India and Russia during this forum. Currently if you see according to this author at present the value of bilateral trade between the two countries is 10 billion dollars. The author says it is far behind the potential compared to the value of our strategic partnership with Russia including the defence and security relationship. It is because in the past year itself India had defence deals worth 14.5 billion dollars with Russia. Here the defence deals which the author mentions here shall be the S 400 deal etc. Then during this forum India and Russia signed many agreements. The important agreements were on energy exploration and procurement. In that a specific memorandum of understanding that is a MOU on cooperation on liquefied natural gas supplies to India was signed. Then another agreement was based on opening a maritime route from Vladivostok to Chennai which will be used for energy trade as well. Then another agreement was a five-year roadmap which is for the cooperation on prospecting or searching for hydrocarbons and liquefied natural gas in the Far East and the Arctic regions of Russia. These decisions show that India has a specific attention to Russia's Far East. The author says that our PM's pivot or shifting attention to Russia's Far East has a far reaching strategic implication. The author is saying this because now India can access the resources from the Arctic region also. And we know that this is possible due to the global warming that has increased the accessibility and it has opened more routes to the Arctic region. It is because the increase in temperature has melted the Arctic ice and it has increased the accessibility to that region. So the emphasis on energy from this region reflects India's desire to diversify its source of energy. Currently if you see we are heavily dependent on West Asia for our energy needs but West Asia is unstable because there is a civil war going on in Yemen and we have problems of US sanctions on import of oil from Iran etc. So it is becoming difficult for India to satisfy our energy needs from West Asia and these new decisions will help us solve our energy needs for the future. Then another strategic implication of these decisions is that according to the author Russia is seen as a European power in the post Soviet era that is since the dissolution of USSR in 1991. The author says that the investment in the neglected Far East will bring Russia more close to India and the author is saying that India's move is not just to keep a traditional friend that is Russia close to India but it is also to ensure some space when Russia and China relationship is getting better. It is because Russia has said that it welcomes cooperation with other countries for investments in Far East region and already countries such as China, Japan, Australia, South Korea etc have invested in this region and according to this author out of the 33 billion dollar investment in the Far East region 71 percentage is by China that is why the author is saying that Russia-China relationship is getting better. Then the author concludes this article by saying that act Far East demonstrates and reassures India's commitment to work with Russia in a highly polarized world and India is confident of working with multiple partners or multiple alignments even if they are at crossroads. It means even if there is a bitter relationship between the US and Russia and their conflicting interests, India can work with them and this particular move reassures this part. With this we have come to the end of this article discussion. This news article is based on line of credit to Russia by India which we discussed during the last article analysis. The discussion can be linked to the syllabus that is given here for your reference. In the editorial analysis we saw that our prime minister has pledged to extend a line of credit of 1 billion dollars to Russia's Far East region or this announcement by our PM has been questioned by opposition parties of our country. Even the article notes that it is the first time India has extended a line of credit to a developing country. It is because usually such assistance is given to the least developed countries and it is also the first time line of credit has been given for the development of a particular region of a country that is to the Far East region of Russia. The opposition is saying that India is facing an economic slowdown at present. So they are questioning the rationale or basis on which financing is given for projects in a country like Russia which has ample resources. According to the opposition parties it is actually India that needs a stimulus package and not Russia. They are saying this because the GDP per capita of Russia is five times more than that of India even though the GDP of Russia might be far below India in recent years. Now to this question posed by opposition parties the external affairs ministry has given some reasons. The external affairs ministry has said that the decision to extend line of credit was based on many reasons like China, Japan and Korea have already made huge investments in the resource rich region that is the Far East region of Russia. So this prompted India to invest considering its energy needs and other needs and this line of credit will also attract more Indian businesses to this region. Then the another reason given by the external affairs ministry is that India and Russia have targets to achieve 30 billion dollars of annual bilateral trade by the year 2025. So the line of credit is expected to increase trade and it will help both the countries to reach this target and in the beginning we saw that this region is resource rich region. It is because this region has major natural resource deposits such as oil, natural gas, coal, gold, iron ore, zinc etc. So increasing the trade with this region will give Indian industries access to these resources. These are the reasons given by the external affairs ministry for extending line of credit to Russia. So now the article also provides some extra information based on line of credit given by India to other countries. The article says that from the year 2005 to 2019 India has extended 274 line of credits which are worth 26.79 billion dollars and these line of credits have been given to 63 countries. Among these 274 line of credits 189 were given to African countries and it was worth 11.36 billion dollars and 53 line of credits worth 14.47 billion dollars is given for Asian countries and the remaining line of credit which is worth 970.53 million dollars is given for Latin America, Oceania and common wealth of independent states. This common wealth of independent states is a regional intergovernmental organization. It was established in the year 1991 and it has 12 member states. They are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine etc. Now know these facts as these will be helpful in your main answer writing. With this we have come to the end of this article discussion. Moving on to the final article discussion for the day, this news article provides new information about the settlers who lived in the Indus Valley civilization. The syllabus relevant for the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. Some history books say that the settlers in the Indus Valley civilization migrated from steppes in Central Asia or they were descendants of Iranian farmers who migrated towards the Indus Valley. Historically if this is correct this means that the civilization aspect of the Indus Valley civilization was brought by them or significantly contributed by them. Now let's keep this one as one point. Then another point is in history they say that agriculture tend to have spread in Europe because of migration or influx of people with ancestry in Anatolia. When we say Anatolia it refers to the modern day Turkey. This means agriculture was spread in Europe in ancient times by the people of Anatolia origin. Now this news article talks about a research study and its result published in the journal called as CEL. This research provides some answers and additional findings with respect to the above two points and others. This article is published in CEL journal and it was titled as an ancient Harappan genome lacks ancestry from steppe pastoralists or Iranian farmers. A team of researchers attempted to generate a genome by data from skeletal remains of 61 ancient individuals. The skeletal remains of these ancient individuals were taken from the IVC site of Rakhigadi in Haryana. Only a single sample or only one individual gave the required authentic ancient DNA for the research analysis. This individual is from a population which is the largest source of ancestry for South Asians. The findings of this research study are based on the study of the genome of this individual in combination with the available archaeological information. Now this photograph shows one of the burials from where the skeletal remains were taken for this study. This study provides a fresh light on the Indus valley civilization that is it provides new information about the Indus valley civilization. The new study says that the hunter-gatherers of South Asia who then became settled people in the Indus valley civilization have an independent origin that is their origin is free from the influence of people from steppes in Central Asia or from even Iranian farmers. The authors say that this finding has negated the hypothesis that there was mass migration from outside South Asia during or before Harappan times and they only built and contributed to this civilization. Now this news article says that this study also established the genetic continuity from hunter-gatherers of South Asia in ancient times prior to Indus valley civilization to the individuals of time after the Indus valley civilization. The genetic continuity is also established with individuals of modern times. This means that the same hunter-gatherer communities who lived in northwestern region of South Asia have developed into agricultural communities and these communities have formed the Harappan civilization. Now let us see few information regarding the Indus valley civilization or IVC. The mature IVC is also known as Harappan civilization. This civilization was spread over northwestern South Asia from 2600 to 1900 BC. The Indus valley civilization or the Harappan civilization is one of the first and large scale urban societies of the ancient world. We call it civilization because it is characterized by systematic town planning, elaborate drainage systems, granaries and standardization of weights and measures and few other aspects. The inhabitants of the IVC were cosmopolitan with multiple cultural groups living together in large regional urban centers. These large regional urban centers were found in Harappa, Mohenjadaro, Rakhigaldi, Dolavira and Ganveriwala. In this image the sites denoted in red and blue fonts are archaeological sites that represent Indus valley civilization. Out of these Harappa in the present day is an archaeological site which is located in Pakistan, Punjab. Then Mohenjadaro is also an archaeological site in Sindh province of Pakistan. Then Rakhigaldi archaeological site is located in Haryana in India. Also Dolavira which is found in Kutch area of Gujarat and Ganveriwala which is located in Cholistan desert in Pakistan. Now know that Cholistan desert is in Pakistan next to Indian Thar desert. The Harappan civilization was the first major civilization in South Asia. Based on archaeological evidences it is said that it was spread across a vast area in present day India and Pakistan in the Indian subcontinent region or the South Asian region. The civilization got its name from the river Indus and its valleys as the Indus valley civilization is a Indus river based civilization. Now there is slight disagreement in time period among historians. In general IVC can be classified into three phases. They are the early Harappan phase from 3300 to 2600 BCE then the mature Harappan phase from 2600 to 1900 BCE and the late Harappan phase from 1900 to 1300 BCE. Now let us discuss about another findings of the study. The researchers said that there was a movement of people from east to west which is contrary to some theories because some theories say only people from west Asia came to the east that is they came to Indus valley civilization. Now this point is substantiated by the evidence of presence of people from Harappan civilization at sites like Gonur in Turkmenistan and Shaharai Sokta in far eastern Iran. These individuals show a mixture of ancestry related to ancient Iranians and ancient tribal southern Indians. The researchers are saying that these persons have moved from Indus valley civilization to Turkmenistan and far eastern Iran because of trade relations. It is archaeologically said that the Harappans had trade relations with Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persian Gulf and almost all across South Asia. So the movement of people was bound to occur from the east that is from the IVC to the west that is to Turkmenistan and far eastern Iran. Since the movement is from east to west the article says that this acts as a hint that settled life and domestication went from South Asia to West Asia. Now let us see what the study has to say about the people with Anatolia ancestry in spreading agriculture in three regions of the world. The three regions are Europe, Iran and southern Central Asia and South Asia. The ancient DNA studies in Europe have shown that agriculture has spread through the influx of people with ancestry in Anatolia. Anatolia as you saw earlier refers to the modern day Turkey. A similar dynamic was seen in Iran and Turan where Anatolian related ancestry and farming have arrived. Now here Turan refers to southern central Asian region that composes of parts of Turkmenistan and other southern central Asian territories. But if you see in South Asia the researchers found an absence of Anatolian related ancestry. This means the spread of agriculture and the beginning of settled life has no link with Anatolian influx meaning there is no such migration of Anatolian ancestry into Indus Valley civilization as it happened in Europe, Iran and southern Central Asia. Now let us see what the study has to say about the spread of the Indo-European languages. Languages spoken in the South Asian region belong to at least four major language families. They are Indo-European. Now here know that most of the Indo-European family belong to its sub-branch Indo-Aryan. Then comes the next family which is Dravidian and then comes Austro-Asiatic and the fourth major language family in South Asia region is Sino-Tibetian. Now some of the Indo-Aryan languages are Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Marathi, Kashmiri, Oria, Mithili and others. There is one hypothesis called as Anatolian hypothesis which says that the spread of these Indo-European languages was propelled by movements of people from Anatolia across the Iranian plateau who then came into South Asia. This hypothesis says that they were associated with the spread of farming during Harappan civilization or they were associated in the time which was shortly before it. But this hypothesis is negated by this study as we found no Anatolian link but this hypothesis is negated by this study as we found no Anatolian link in South Asian ancestry in Harappan times. In such case the study explains that the Indo-European languages have been spread through a natural route from Eastern Europe via the Central Asia in the first half of the second millennium BCE. The first half of the second millennium BCE means between the years of 2000 BC to 1500 BC. But we know that the mature Harappan phase was positioned between 2600 BC to 1900 BC. This means the Indo-European languages were spread by later migrations that happened after the mature phase of Indus Valley civilization. In this way the Indo-European languages have spread in the South Asia region. With this we have come to the end of this news article analysis. The displayed practice questions will be discussed in the next session. We have come to the last session for the day that is the practice questions discussion session. Let us see the first question. In this question two statements have been given and we have to choose the correct statement. The first statement states part 21 of Indian constitution deals with temporary transitional and special provisions. Now this statement is correct. The part 21 deals with temporary transitional and special provisions only. This part consists of articles 369 to 392. However, some articles from 379 to 391 were omitted from the constitution by the Seventh Constitutional Amendment Act of 1956. So, this statement is correct. Then the second statement states article 371 F in part 21 deals with the special provisions with respect to the states of Sikkim and Karnataka. Now this statement has two parts. First part is article 371 F is in part 21. Yes, just now we saw that part 21 consists of articles from 369 to 392 and 371 and all its subsections come under this part only. So, this first half is correct. Then the second half of the statement states provision with respect to the states of Sikkim and Karnataka. So, today we had a discussion based on the special provisions with respect to Karnataka and we saw that article 371 J deals with Karnataka. So, that means the second half statement is incorrect. Now remember that article 371 F deals only with special provisions for Sikkim and article 371 J deals with Karnataka and this article 371 J was enacted through 98th the Constitutional Amendment Act of 2012. So, this statement is wrong. Here the question asks for the correct statements. Here statement 1 is the correct statement. So, our final correct answer to this question is option A 1 only. Now look at this second question. It states Cholistan Desert is located in. Now this desert is located in Pakistan. Now this region is important because during our discussion we saw that one important large urban center of Indus Valley civilization was located in archaeological site of Ganveriwala which is located in Cholistan Desert region of Pakistan. So, this archaeological site is important. So, you should know where this site is located. Also remember that this desert is also called as Rohi Desert. Now all the other options like Mongolia, Botswana, Argentina all have deserts. Mongolia has Gobi Desert and Botswana has the Kalahari Desert and we know that Botswana is in the southern region of African continent and then Argentina has Patagonia Desert. Now in this question we have been given five sites and we have to arrange them from north to south. These five sites are Indus Valley civilization sites. Now to answer this question let us take the help of the map which we used during our discussion. Now in this map if you see let us draw one line from north to south first. Then let us map where every one of this region is located like Harappa is here then Rakhigadi is here then Mohenjadaro is here then Dholavira is here and then Lothal is here. So, now we have arranged sites from north to south in which Harappa is in first then comes Rakhigadi then comes Mohenjadaro then comes Dholavira and then comes Lothal. So, our final correct answer should contain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So, option D is the correct answer to this question. With this we have come to the end of our all of our sessions. If you like the video don't forget to like, comment and share and do subscribe to Shankara IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates on civil service examination preparation.