Hello there it's Thursday at noon. I know it is Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind This year the Victoria literary arts festival Celebrated its 10th anniversary With three times the number of authors and nearly twice the number of events as last year the lineup of 28 authors presented a variety of novelists poets and nonfiction writers from Canada the United Kingdom Ireland France Australia the US and Japan Audiences could attend readings themed discussions on-stage interviews and conversations In venues throughout downtown Victoria including art galleries heritage sites Gardens and major theaters our interest in culture and cultural production Let us to look into the festival in an age when books are beginning to appear passe and low-tech We have found that literature continues to influence culture even in high-tech cyberspace book clubs Quotations from favorite authors and lists of best reads prevail reading is still popular and still a part of what constructs culture In a way one could view the worldwide web as both reproducing literature and creating more varied forms of literature after all much of the web is text-based and Requires both good reading and writing abilities to make the experience worthwhile festivals such as the annual event here in Victoria Provide an opportunity for readers to meet their favorite authors and to become a prize of the latest good reads We were not disappointed among the wonderful writers in this year's lineup was pico ire Ironically it was surfing the net that first introduced us to pico's work Several quotes by him are popular among bloggers. That is people who write online journals The first quote we read by him remains our favorite Quote may we remember as we log on that half the world's people have never used a telephone and Recall as we chatter that most of those around us have no chance to speak or move as they choose Close quote seeing his name on the literary arts festival list prompted us to investigate his writings further We were excited by what we found Like us mr. Iyer has spent a great deal of time Completing culture power and the global community His work has a personal flavor and his insights into the nature of culture within a global community are sensitive and even hopeful at times He sees commonality even among difference Unlike us he has traveled quite a bit his writings are most often categorized as travel writing Born in Oxford England to Indian parents Moving to Southern California at the age of seven and crisscrossing the world as an adult Mr.. Iyer has called himself a no where in Someone who does not quite fit into the preconceived cultural categories This makes him a different kind of travel writer His writing like his travels in his cultural background is hard to contain in just one genre This year he came to Victoria to highlight his latest book Abandoned which is his second novel after we investigated his work. We knew we wanted to talk to him We inquired and were excited to have our request for an interview granted When we met with mr. Iyer we were delighted to find a gentle soul whose one-to-one persona did not differ at all from the sensitivity of his words in print He generously sat and discussed the ins and outs of the future of the global village in troubled times The place of literature and culture and the ways in which writing interacting and traveling can make the world a better place to be These contemplations seem important in a time when wars conflicts and disputes seem to be rooted in cultural differences and misunderstandings In addition traveling the globe is easier than ever, but it is also more fraught with problems than ever attacks on tourists Global health threats such as the recent SARS crisis and environmental concerns regarding fossil fuel usage Provide layers of complexity to the idea of travel reminiscent of the archetype of the stranger or the concept of the other The traveler occupies a position that is both outside and inside social discourse More than a voyeur the traveler changes the destination by visiting it Today on first person plural we consider the place of the traveler in an episode recall He's a real no warrior Noted traveler someone who has moved and spoken freely in many venues and someone who has reflected upon other places in other cultures Your words suggest that there is great variation among people and that these variations create classes of haves and have nots The events of the last year or two seem to be rooted in culture clashes especially among cultures with varying degrees of power and with horrifying results Is there a common ground where people from different and unequal backgrounds can meet? How do we celebrate our differences without the celebration leading to deadly conflicts? Well, I very much think there is a common ground and uh, I think all of us who travel have had the experience of certainly finding yourself in Mongolia or Vancouver or San Francisco or whatever Surrounded by people with whom we don't share a common language and instantly finding we can communicate through a smile through body language Who just something fundamental human and I think travel always reassures me in my faith in humanity Both in my sense that in the poorest parts of the world people are amazingly kind the people who seem to have nothing Lavish everything on those of us from very affluent places But also affirms my sense in humanity in the sense of Being reminded of that we have as much in common as we have a part and in fact in the new novel that I just brought out called abandoned A few years ago as I was living in California while Washington was ostensibly at war with radical or political Islam I read as many people have read that the single most popular poet in America Them and now is an Islamic poet Rumi the great Sufi mystic from the 13th century And so I thought that even as we were concentrating so much on all that Washington and the Islamic world didn't share Here were Americans turning in their time of need to an Islamic poet and that suggested exactly to go back to your question This place of commonness and in so far as there might be any Resolution between these two forces it seemed to exist maybe in the cultural plane I feel that politically governments and institutions are always defined by Interest in our ideologies and always thinking about us versus them But culturally and on an individual level I think we're much more fascinated by the other and I've tried to stress What what brings us together rather than what pulls us apart? Do you think I like that kind of I don't want to call it a dichotomy but kind of contrasting the political to the cultural And that's one thing that we've thought about a lot in our work is that there is that working in politics or working Towards political solutions often don't work out because they're about you against me They they're kind of us them mentality in it So in your travels when you're talking about connecting with people from different cultures. Do you sometimes Feel that otherness. I mean are you aware of Ways other than fighting or conflicting that you can respect that otherness without destroying it or Mocking it into you know, like blurring it to where it doesn't exist anymore Yes, yes, because I think when I try to travel is to be drawn towards otherness The act of traveling is to be fascinated by the other something different from what you have at home And to be pulled into it and pulled into the mystery and and and romance of something you don't understand And what you also find and what I find constantly when I travel is that most of the people I meet Are fascinated by the otherness of me to to them I'm this exotic coming from this land of plenty And the closest they can Get to this country that often they dream about so more specifically when I've been in the middle east for example Or almost anywhere I find that the people I meet and not are often quite suspicious of or hostile to America the Washington government and yet the same people of course fascinated by American culture long to see American movies Long to make American friends some of them actually long to become Americans themselves And so while they think of America as their formal enemy Inside their hearts and especially in their imaginations They're devouring everything of America that they can get and then when I come back from those trips to california I find my friends there aren't very interested in the Assad government in Damascus or whatever But long to hear about sufi concerts ghazals The Moorish after texture in its origin that's so much a part of california and again have that same Attraction really towards the other as you are saying and so I suppose My my journeys have really been voyages into the other and into trying to understand the other And through that into seeing how much the other has in common with us I'm for example, I read this book just now abandoned about The Islamic world and I think one reason I did that was that I'm of Hindu origin And so I felt for all my years I've heard a lot about the hindi perspective and the single most important thing for hindi is to travel to the other side of the street And see the world who thinks he knows as it would look to The person he regards as his enemy and and in those ways To try to dissolve a sense of enemy and ally because I think the imagination is the one faculty whereby we can Work through and around our differences and actually come to that common ground Are you optimistic that these kinds of things can translate into more material wealth for people or More equality and material Well, and can translate into less war less conflict those kind of things That's a good question and because I think that is a serious problem that in in some ways at a time when Our magazines and our commercials tell us that we're living in a smaller world And we're all part of a global village it seems to me that the distances and differences between us are actually greater than ever before I remember reading a few years ago that three american individuals have the same net worth as 48 whole nations of the world And even in america, which is a relatively democratic and prosperous place One individual mr. Gates has the same net worth as 100 million people So I suppose my travels have in some ways been about affirming and asserting that commonness we're talking about But they've also told me that beneath that surface in some ways the differences As you were saying between the house and the have nots are increasing Many people worry about the effect of tourism and feel that we're spoiling destroying the cultures that we visit And that's partially true, but I've always been um a great Believer in tourism partly because I think we actually do bring revenue to the rest of the world and more than that We bring information and whenever I've been to a very closed or oppressed country Whether it's cuba or bummer or north korea My sense is that what those people are crying out for more than anything is some contact with the rest of the world They're living in a vacuum even just to know that they have a friend in canada or america opens a small imaginative window for them So I'm a great believer in in trying to take what we can to those places But you're right in suggesting that I don't think those inequalities are going to go away quickly And I remember a few years ago When the movie the sixth sense was so popular and it seemed to me to speak in a small way for what's going on Around the world because everywhere I went in the world people were watching the same movie But it was almost as if they were they were seeing a completely different film and story When I went when I was saw it in japan where I lived part of the time People were not at all Unsettled by the ghosts in the sixth sense, but they're very startled by the psychologist because they don't have psychologists in japan They have ghosts everywhere, but they're not when they were psychologists In I think parts of the islamic world Just the notion of a single mother would be more unsettling to them than anything else in that film It doesn't translate to that cultural context then when I saw the movie in california The big shock was just the bruce willis could act And so it's as if with titanic or jenna filo pezzo, whichever of these cultural forms you take This you see them all around the world But really each culture is translating it into their own language in a way and so they're not seeing the same thing As that's and it gives the illusion of sameness But deep down it only accentuates the difference in some ways A good example of that would be clear. Jebron's the prophet which remains a perennial bestseller in the states Yeah, no, that's right And I think one reason that I wanted to investigate roomy and sufiism in this book Was very much my sense that he's become almost a successor to calio jebron And that a lot of people around me I too maybe would devour roomy poems and if we like them We'll forget conveniently that he's of islamic origin or that we'll Misunderstand them that his poems. I think which we'd like love poems are really about his relation to his god But we take them as just love poems and use them to woo the girl across the table from us at the pizza joint Your your writing is quite personal And uh, even you know the writing that you've done. I've read a couple of essays of what Just about your travels. You do it kind of from your own point of view Um, and you call yourself a know where you which is a which is something that I relate to Having traveled all over north america in the last few years We spent Uh 15 months wasn't nine months out of 15 months in a hotel. So oh my god Being vagabonds across north america Uh, so I I related to that I wonder if you could kind of Talk about what the pitfalls are to that kind of of life where you're always sort of moving and And going somewhere and being mobile And I mean I have a sense that you're having a lot more fun at it than I did So, um, you might also could talk about you know, what whether the rewards are Yes, I mean, I think the main pitfall to use a variation of your word is vagabondage I mean being caught up in in that sense of perpetual motion where you're moving and moving and moving But you don't necessarily have a sense of direction or um an investment in where you're going and you're right I think one thing that I've been interested in a lot and I've been writing about a lot Uh, but I think of as the new people of the 21st century almost who are living in the cracks between cultures in the passageways between places Starting with my own example because I was born in england to indian parents and we moved to california when I was seven So from the time I was eight years old I was not really indian and not really indian not really american And really regarded that as a rare and very fortunate position to be in that I had access to many cultures But I wasn't imprisoned in any of them Um, and I think that makes me a sort of honoree spiritual canadian because so many people in canada are really in this situation Much more than I they have so many cultures inside them. You're listening to first person plural on cfu v 101.9 fm victoria So I've I've looked a lot at the possibilities of these um new kind of people who can in some ways Look beyond the divisions and conflicts of their parents Let's say if you if an indian grows up in india He thinks of pakistan as the enemy that when he comes to toronto or vancouver He has more in common with the pakistani that he meets them apart and they've brought together actually by their somewhat common background And so I've been interested in the way that For example when cabinet attendant comes down the aisle passing out the disembarkation forms and they ask for very simple answers to questions Where do you come from? Where are you going? What's your citizenship? What's your home address? More and more of us can only give essay length answers to those uh questions So that in some ways is is to me the good thing that when my grandparents were born and all of them were born in india Not very long ago all four of them had this very precise sense They knew what their region was what their caste was what their tribe was who their enemies were And now many of us like me are free from that but the drawback as you were I think suggesting in your question is that if you're living in the cracks between cultures You wouldn't fall between the cracks almost like falling between the gratings and the sidewalk You can end up neither here nor there you end up I think in the spiritual equivalent of one of those airline Airport passageways long gray impersonal places and you don't feel the sense of belonging And I think the good thing about the modern world is that more and more of us get Construct our sense of identity from scratch. It's not given to us the way it was to our grandparents But the drawback is if you don't very consciously answer the question Who are you and where do you belong? You end up totally lost and you crave some sense of affiliation or solid ground Beneath your feet which you don't have and so I think for me my sense has been that since I didn't have Physical sense of home when I grew up Anytime in my life that there's a great importance in constructing some inner sense of home That I take with me everywhere I go the way a snail does And that can be either a person or a set of beliefs or a place you always go to for example A few years ago. I noticed that I had 1.5 million miles on united airlines alone And I don't even like united airlines I mean if you can fly a system is one of those strange things where you spend six days in l and you get the seventh day free So at that point I realized well what I probably need most in my life is stillness And so I began going to a catholic monastery several times a year I'm not catholic But just to have this sense of sense of nurse and changeless nurse and have an ankle really and so for now 12 years I've been going four times a year to a catholic monastery just to make sure that I have some strong sense of Of well I'm going to say family but community and home and something that never moves even while I'm moving around the world Yeah, I used to admire our cat because we took our cat on all of these travels And the cat the cat every hotel room has a bed, right? And so the cat always attached herself to the bed and it was like if she walked into the room and knew there was a bed She was home. Yes And and it just amazed me of course it drove the maids crazy because she got very upset when they came in and tried to Make up her bed but But I always I thought I was learning kind of a lesson from her because she picked up on In ways that I didn't really the kind of commonality to all of those places That we went that no matter what we stayed in whether it was a suite or You know a little shack on the whole, you know Hole in the wall place somewhere on the road There was always a bed Yes And because she was working out of instinct and following that instinct that we have too But we sometimes forget about or argue or something that she needs that that homing instinct Yes, and she's a pretty amazing cat because of that because Cats generally don't travel well and she's that's right. She's gotten good at travel My cat gets sick every time she's in the car. So you're well ahead of me.  That's why you didn't enjoy traveling as much as I do You've mentioned your new novel and I was curious because I look back Over you know, I'm anticipating talking to you We kind of look back And look to the works that you've done and you've kind of divided your works up between fiction And non-fiction and I wondered if you could kind of put the writer's hat on for a little bit and talk to us About what fiction accomplishes that non-fiction doesn't advice versa And why you choose, you know, most writers kind of pick a genre and stay in it But you seem to be Comfortable Yes Talking and much like you're traveling that's right comfortable in different genres It is and it is much like my traveling because I think it speaks to a kind of restlessness And interest in adventure and challenge and not wanting to stick down Even to the rootedness of one genre and wanting to try something different every time But I think Fiction is a way of getting at the same issues that I'm thinking about in travel, but through a different part of me And I think the way I do it non-fiction I've done a lot of writing about places about travel And what I tend to do is go to a place for two weeks Take hundreds of pages of notes go back to my desk and bring the notes into a kind of order So that I think non-fiction for me is almost a journey towards knowledge and clarity and making sense of the world And fiction for me is a way um It's it's almost a journey into mystery and into a sense of what I don't know and in this new novel I begin in california, which is a place that I know somewhat because I've lived there on enough since i'm seven And I move towards iran, which is a place. I've never been to and in fact in this novel I have 30 pages of vivid fairly detailed description of iran and I deliberately didn't go there Before writing those pages. I've never been there to this day because I wanted to apprehend it through the imagination I thought if I went there I'd instantly be in my sort of travel writers non-fiction mode And I take lots of notes and I'd squeeze them in whether they belonged or not So you're right to suggest that the excitement of fiction for me is that it's a new territory. It's terra incognita It's a form I haven't done very much of and I don't know exactly how to do and that's part of the appeal. It's a way of Looking around the corner So each time I finish a book I want the next book to be as different as possible from the one just concluded So in fact, I've just brought out this novel abandon, but my next book. I know is I've already finished as non-fiction into series of travels and the book after that will be Fiction and I think it's a way to try to keep myself fresh I don't if I feel myself falling into my habits or rats I think that the reader is going to feel that sense of weariness and miss the sense of discovery that I think is where the energy comes from So I'm always trying to shake myself up Is there a buzziness between the line between non-fiction and fiction? I mean you were talking about Not going to do the research in iran Um, I wonder if if that isn't one more thing in the post-modern world That's becoming a little hard to say that's That's a and that's b and never in between shall mean absolutely. There's a great fuzziness. You're right It's one of the book boundaries. It's really collapsed in recent years. I remember pull through wrote a whole series of Stories about travels a few years ago and when they appeared in the new yorker, they were described as fact and fiction Uh, a vs nipal wrote a book a few years ago called away in the world And when it came out in england it came out as a work of non-fiction Secrets, I think they called them the same book came out in america and they called it the novel Bruce chatman's books You know and I now remain mentioning the three major travelers of recent years. Bruce chatman pulled through in vs nipal Bruce chatman's books too. You really can't tell how much he's made up and how much he's reported and that's part of the fascination So you're right and it is a fuzzy line though I find for myself the clearer I make that line The better and I tell myself at least that because I've written a lot of non-fiction about real people in real places When um, I do fiction. I want to take a holiday from that. I want to make Make everything up. But having said that I once wrote a book about a year I spent in japan and the woman I fell in love with and the friends that I made real people and real events And as soon as the book came out I found us in the fiction section And then a couple of years later I wrote a novel about cuba and I had this horrible protagonist He's always drunk and a terrible attitude towards women as far from my experience I hoped as I could make it and as soon as it came out everyone put took it to be a memoir And so it's a little different travel section Exactly, yes. People were saying, yeah, how could you be a drunk all the time? I'm actually a teetotaler, but still Yeah, so even for the reader it's unclear often. Yeah, we've often thought that The business section is always interesting to go through When you go into a bookstore because there are like hundreds of different variations of what makes a business book And so we thought if we ever wrote a book that we would tag it as business Let it show up there and make it more legitimate It's simply a question of putting the genre label on the back of the jacket That's instilligidimation as far as we could tell with the term business And with travel too actually As long as it's another well any place is a place you travel to so When you think about it You've come to victoria to be part of the arts festival the literary arts festival here Is this something that you do often go to different festivals? Not so often. The the actual reason I'm here right now is that I came to this festival last year It's such a wonderful time that I was really excited and pleased when they invited me back and I knew I wanted to come spend more time in victoria But uh, not a great deal There are writers who can almost make a profession of hopping from festival to festival these days because Which I think is a very positive sign And we were just talking about it at a festival event yesterday My sense at least that um, this is supposedly the age of the internet and the age of visuals and tv and mtv and those kind of things and the age of the book seems to be receding And yet in my experience there's more interest in books than ever before more good books being produced And that a festival like this, which is just about books, which is meant to be yesterday's form 400 people were sharp really interested with this very searching questions And it's a very nice affirmation sitting in my little desk in roge Writing these books. It's easy to feel that i'm just casting them out into a black hole But when you come, yeah, it's nice to me and people are reading books and thinking about them and getting changed by them Do you think literary festivals help local culture in any way? Definitely, I mean, I think you have a great advantage in victoria because I suspect there are a lot of readers and book lovers here already And the festival just confirms rather than creating that sense But I think definitely and making reminding people that Writers of books and books are as great a source of wisdom as what you'll find in the cineplex or what you find in tv Or all those the rival forms or what you find in the internet And I think something in the human spirit is cries out for the kind of stories in the kind of space that only books can provide So I don't see Books receding over the horizon at all and I think festivals are a nice way of sort of Concentrating the energy and for me as a writer one purely selfish thing that I love about festivals getting to hear all the other Writers who might never would meet and have the opportunity to listen to otherwise So when I come to a festival like this, I spend most of my time just racing from writer to writer wanting to hear them Great Anything else you want to have? No, I mean, I think we probably covered all your Grand pretty well We appreciate your time And taking time out during the festival. Oh not at all and hope you enjoy victoria in spite of the hail I will and I mean I maybe the one other thing I can say is that Because I've written a lot about globalism and this whole new sense of community and society that's taken shape across the world I mean, that's one reason why I love coming to canada because it seemed to me that Canada is more ahead in thinking about the global world than any country I know anywhere and canadian literature has done so much to try to visualize new kinds of community And so I'm in the u.s. I'm probably a little notorious among my friends There's a great champion of canada and canadian literature But as soon as I come here, I feel that I'm actually taking a little step into the future and so Um, the more that canada can influence the world better as far as I'm concerned Yeah, you may or may not realize that we're from the states No, no, no, no, I'm saying this because we agree with you. Yeah, you're with your feet. Yes the First thing because the first I guess 35 40 years of my life I was very sheltered living and you know, I mean we moved a couple times but I didn't really get outside of the united states and outside of the southeast united states very often and Coming to canada had a lot of culture shock, you know, I can imagine I sort of expected it to be Um Similar enough to the states that it would feel home life. Yes, and the very first thing that I That overwhelmed me and said wow, I'm in I'm in a different place Is that more of the world was available to me so much more. Yeah, I mean just watching television. Yeah Even corporate television Yeah, I I started hearing things and learning things about people and places in the world That just doesn't seem to get on television in the united states. There's there's um a myopic view of the world there and so You know, I haven't been a world traveler But I felt like the world opened up to me since I've been in canada. That's right I think you're a world traveler just by living in canada. I actually came I was in canada by chance the week of september 11th in ottawa And I was so impressed that the kind of voices and responses I was hearing then So far ahead of what I was hearing in america and that's comparable to what I'm now hearing in america 18 months later But it's as if it took america a long time to catch up with canada doing what I also notice as a traveler Wherever I go in the world, I'll meet disproportionately 100 times more canadiens than the americans, whether it's south america or asia Uh, you meet lots of australians and germans and english, of course, but the huge numbers of canadiens Oh, every summer they go on holiday Yeah, it's interesting places which people don't do so much south of the border Yeah, uh, that was something that took some getting used to too is that uh, people take longer times off In the states, it's a weekend here a weekend there Exactly, and I think that was dividends for the people traveling to latino cultures for the first time are shocked at the cs Everyone simply takes a nap or two hours in the afternoon Everyone in canada as far as I can tell takes august That was an enormous enormous shock at least every one of victoria. Yeah I think that's enlightened Good. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure meeting. Well, I really appreciate you coming in here and Accommodating me slightly difficult surroundings. Well, we hope that it'll turn out well on the radio You're listening to first person plural. I'm carl wilkerson We hope you enjoyed our conversation with pico ire author of abandon and the global soul in the next half hour Patty and I reflect upon our own travel experiences The stories of travel and the archetype of the traveler The interview with pico gave me A lot of food for thought One of my goals is to be a world traveler, but I've often thought about that in terms of what that means culturally because I've Been to talks before where people have presented their trips to places and have been uncomfortable with it because Seems like they don't quite get the historical perspective of Europe with the rest of the world You mean they did the restaurant tour or they did the fake authenticity tour Either way, they did the tour that said I'm consuming somebody else's culture and that bothers me a little bit, but I don't know how you can do it Without I don't know how you can travel without Doing that to a certain extent when you travel you Even if you attempt to do it authentically what you often get is the tour Well, the mere fact of transportation the circumstances under which you gain transportation contextualized somewhat If there's not consumption going on there's at least a meta level of some sort Yeah, I used to work for a tour operator. This is sort of One of the things that contextualizes my thoughts about this In the mid 1980s for a year, I was the Office manager for a tour operator For people who don't understand what a tour operator is It's somebody who puts together the ground transportation The transportation to the destination the hotel And whatever sightseeing things you want to do while you're there Into a nice neat little package that lasts three days five days Seven days two weeks, whatever but it requires a coordination of effort on the part of the tour operator and all of the people who Live and work at the destination And this nice neat little package is not sold directly to The person who will be doing the tourer It's sold directly to the travel agent Who in turn sells it to the person who is going to be doing the tourer So it has lots of layers of bureaucracy involved in it everybody wanting their cut The advantage is that it usually comes out cheaper than if you were as a single person Contacting all of these different people and asking for rates because the tour operator does You know 15 or 20 of these a month And they get rates discounted on the basis of their volume But the funny part is I used to talk to all the travel agents when they would call and I would sell The packages to travel agents to talk them into Selling it to other people and they would ask me questions about cancun or jamaica or wherever we were Selling to and I had all of the details memorized and I actually at one point in my life knew the The order that the hotels were on the strip in cancun like which hotel was next to which one I could describe the outdoor area of the property The lobby of the property and several of the rooms of the property In details that made it sound like I had been there And in fact, I was told to make it sound like I had been there and so I fooled a lot of people into believing that I actually Have been to cancun and toured these different properties I basically sold a narrative and sold it as if it were my personal experience It's a fine line. I never quite said that I had been there But I was so good at describing it that everybody just assumed I had been there and I didn't correct the assumption Well, that's a real double-edged sword invariably one does sell the narrative of one's travel If not on the level of pico ire does then On a much more mundane level. Oh, look at our photographs of our trip to south dakota last summer. It was so picturesque Hence pictures. Yes One does sell that on some level But I was not actually selling my travel. I was selling somebody else's travel I was not I never actually took these trips. I've never been to cancun I've never been to chichen itza. I've never been to jamaica and yet I could talk about these destinations as if I had toured all of them in terms that convinced travel agents all over the southeastern united states To believe that I had been there and that I was highly recommending it Well, I'm going to come down firmly on neither side of the fence On this one on one hand first hand accounts have a certain Zest to them a certain quality to them that I find indispensable on top of which if there weren't a first hand accounts How would the rest of us learn anything about the empirical world? And and certainly my accounts my second hand accounts were based upon first hand accounts And of course they were and that's The other half of it. I'm not going to say that someone who's read a book about Hawaii for example can't possibly know anything about hawaii because they've never been there I've never been to hawaii and at a minimum. I can tell you the capital city And I can tell you why the big island is called the big island. So I'm going to say that both are Useful and feasible. I'm not going to privilege one over the other But do you have the feeling that Both the selling of the tour and the taking of the tour Still misses some of the culture Yes And the extreme example would be the planned tours that the English did for quite a few years Back in the old days. I can't think of a really good pop culture reference I can well actually yes, I can If you look closely in the Early minutes of Tommy the film Oliver Reed is supposed to be a tour guide at one of these places and and Margaret is visiting with her kid And they're satirizing if that's a word used under the circumstances. I think mocking would be a better word That kind of tour but that was enormously popular in the uk for a long time And I've even heard reports that it's coming back and that seems just mindlessly Overrationalized to us But at the same time one does want A guide of sorts one doesn't just show up there having no idea what is going on Sure, so it begs the question and economically it should be pointed out that The guy who ran the ground transport the person who did the touring and the sightseeing places Were all locals who were making a good living in the local economy by doing this. I'm sure they were and therefore Some of the tourism at least.  So I don't want to mislead here. It's a complex picture nonetheless if the I mean When tourism doesn't happen in places like this The local economy does go down So there is a certain amount of Importance placed upon this by the locals It's not a one-sided deal There is a cash 22 a lot of places that make their money on tourism Are selling the local culture in effect I can think of one right off the bat Victoria yeah That you nodded at me as if you wanted me to continue having no idea what I was going to say No, I knew what you were going to say. I was just going to get you to say it very well And so I have but the thing is the packaging of the culture alters it somewhat Yeah, like I don't think of victoria is mary old england But certainly it gets sold as A taste of mary old england And I say that having lived in the queen's neighborhood. So Just right up the hill from where we live is the lieutenant governor's House which is where the queen stays when she's in town every 25 years or so continuing my Use of authoritative references from british pop culture There's an exchange in one of the black adder series Where one character claims to be as british as queen victoria and black adder responds So your mother's german. You're half german and you married a german I don't think anybody comes here expecting to see us running around on the streets and leader helsen But the packaging of the culture alters it somewhat And that's inevitable one presents one's culture and this is the proof that the presentation of the culture Can be distinct at least in one definition thereof from the culture Yeah, I think a real good indicator of how the power dynamics work Is a very simple one when you look back at my tour operating years The people who lived in cancun who worked with us On a regular basis spoke and wrote english I never had to learn spanish in order to do my job And yet I spent a great deal of time on the okay, this will show my age telex machine Communicating with a number of people. I would say that I probably Had communication with 30 or 40 people in cancun If you count all of the hotel Operators all of the tour operators all of the ground transport We had an airplane that flew back and forth between cancun and chichen itza And I talked to them So there was probably about 30 people that I communicated with in cancun on a regular basis And I never had to learn how to communicate with them in spanish And for them to do what they needed to have done They knew probably more than two languages. They knew english My guess is that they also knew french and possibly even japanese Because it was a very popular destination with all of those countries Montreal strikes me as a place that is faced with this dilemma as well My impression has been that the covet qua speak english better than everyone else speaks french And as much as they dislike having to do so That's something that would come up in the tourist industry straight away If they want people to come there from other parts of canada, they're going to have to put up with a certain number of them speaking english That's not a political reality, but it is a business reality at least in the short term Sure, and there are places in canada that I find Really interesting vis-a-vis the um language issue One is prince edward island, which I went to on business last year But took a day to do some touring And of course, uh, if you're not familiar peis biggest tourist destination is Green gables What a surprise Yes, I can't remember the name of the town where the house of green gables is This is actually fiction But they've converted a house to look like the house in the book that you can go to And actually visit You also can find the author's home on the map and go by and see it And there is a gift shop On every other piece of property in which you can buy all of the red-headed pig tailed little girl dolls That you would ever want to buy You can find out about this in english and in french according to the bilingual law in canada But if you're so inclined you can also learn everything you ever wanted to know about ann of green gables in japanese Why because every summer huge tour buses full of japanese tourists show up and Learn everything they can about ann of green gables. It apparently is one of the most popular children's books in japan the translation of it and most of the people in pei Learn how to speak japanese if they are in the tourism business You're listening to first person plural on cfu v victoria's public radio 101.9 fm 104.3 cable And on the internet cfu v dot u vang dot ca Giving sociology an edge And one never knows and something like that is just going to happen out of the blue I've heard it expressed that jerry louis is considered a genius in france Yeah, it's amazing to me what crosses over in cultures I have no idea why ann of green gables is popular in japan And I have no idea why jerry louis is popular in france But it's interesting to me that once that thing happens. However, it happens. It does affect the local culture. I mean The people in cancun learn how to speak more than one language in order to accommodate The people in pei have learned japanese in order to accommodate the influx Of japanese tourists or at least they've hired a translator And this reminds me of zimmel's work about the stranger I mean most of the people who have talked about zimmel And talk about the archetype of the stranger talk about it in terms of immigration And in xenophobic kinds of attitudes But people running around the world Visiting other places certainly qualifies as strangers showing up in the local culture And certainly in the same way that zimmel asserts that the stranger is in fact Not outside the social realm But rather is a part of what makes the social realm social Certainly the tourist does that. I mean, I'm not sure that You can I mean, maybe you need a second archetype called the tourist. I'm not sure But I think a lot of the same things apply The locals know who they are In comparison to who the tourists are I certainly experienced this growing up in florida In florida, we made jokes all of the time about tourists We made jokes about the snowbirds. We made jokes about the europeans who came to the beach You know, you could tell who the tourists were because of 55 degrees fahrenheit Locals were running around with a sweater on And people from canada were running around in shorts There was a sense of who us was And us being people who lived and worked in florida And the in the sense of who they were and that was people who came as tourists to florida I'm sure that's true every place that has a significant amount of tourism at least the understanding that There are the locals and there are the tourists and that there's a certain front stage back stage split in the behavior. Definitely I want to ask two questions. One is that inevitable and two If a metropolis Decides to accept or pursue the tourism angle as a matter of public policy implicit or explicit Is it not limiting It's ambition to being exactly that if it is inevitable too wet is the metropolis not Determining at that point that his culture in the future is going to consist of that front stage backstage behavior That the limit of their ambition is going to be saying nice things to the tourists and complaining about them Enthusiastically behind their backs but always taking their money There's a sort of headiness glass ceiling. Yeah manifests itself Gee, is it inevitable? Well, I guess not because at some point or another Decisions can always be made Both in the front stage in the backstage That changed the dynamics Certainly to take an example In new orleans for a very long time Tourism was the major industry and then they discovered offshore oil And that changed the dynamics quite a bit In 1984 after the big oil boom Of the 1970s When the world's fair came to town They had to spend a lot of time teaching Locals on how to deal with tourists and that seems very odd I imagine but the tourism industry sort of got set aside during the 1970s in new orleans Is everybody got rich off of oil And so the next thing you know in the early 1980s in anticipation of this big influx of tourists There were charm schools held for The new orleans taxi drivers because they were considered so rude That everybody was afraid that it would turn people off from new orleans So they actually gave them protocol training. Yeah in order to renew your hacker's license in 1982 In 1983 you had to go To a class that taught you how to be polite To tourists when they came and to represent the city in the best light And I mean let's face it tourism was an old industry by that time But it was obvious that the front stage dynamics had changed Sometimes that lack of protocol is inadvertent And sometimes it's anything but one of the things that I noticed living in florida was There were two kinds of people there According to one taxonomy those making money off tourism and those not making money off tourism I saw more than one bumper sticker that said welcome to florida now go home. Yes and there was a kind of Especially with the snow birds especially in the winter When the population got much much larger. There was a feeling that Something from the outside was taking over Rather than being invited in and there were certainly a number of people who felt like okay, we have enough That's it. We only want so many people to come visit We've got enough now now the rest of you go away and that heterogeneity is probably the norm We've been talking about the locals Here and I want to point out the possibility That not all localized cultures are homogenous Yes, and I want to in addition to that Once you invite tourists in Something has to change in the local culture. It can't remain the same. I mean that's basically what zimmel is suggesting Is that once the stranger enters the picture it changes the social dynamics So an answer to your question before about once the municipality decides to make tourism part of The local economy and pursues tourism It changes the local Culture it changes the local economy So if you're going on a trip and you're wondering about how to Take part in the local culture You don't have to worry about it. The mere fact of your arrival will ensure that you have done so You have been listening to first person plural because how people get along with each other still matters First person plural Is a show created for community radio by carl wilkerson and dr. Patty thomas to examine social and organizational issues Music for first person plural is performed Composed and produced by carl wilkerson Except where noted For more information about first person plural dr. Patty thomas or carl wilkerson Visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com Or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com


going to do just give you a brief explanation before we get into actually doing the project we're gonna actually disconnect this fascia and you know this is a difficult decision to make because essentially this is a finished scene so you never want to break it. After we've created the back wall aquarii the fog process here is to actually take these cut them up and to attach them to the back wall to create the look of rock granite that's being blasted. Okay let's pour the sterling models mold and hopefully we've got enough plaster of Paris here to around between gluings the better the glue is hotter flows nicer maybe my glue gun's okay after all just little patience. Another method for slowing the plaster down the curing process apparently it's vinegar I did try that a while back and I didn't find it so to have it intense at one area and then dissipate flood the area with less and less intensity as you go down so you can see just play a couple of spots of color here. Nice pieces to work with and we'll also put a couple of pieces here in the foreground get those glued on then we'll take our our knife and our tools here we'll do a little bit of carving and keep the vacuum at the ready to be at very very stiff we've got an entire bucket of this stuff if you don't use it all you can store it just put a lid on it seal it up and it'll stay like this. Now if it gets too tacky on the surface and you're finding it your fingers are getting messy and it's hard to position the material simply dunk your fingers into some water and just kind of you know the side going the way here which is not towards the quarry so most of the growth of it you know the remaining the trees that we're gonna put in here for the most part gonna be from about. We can go ahead and sift this down later with a larger strainer to remove some of this real big stuff this medium course medium grade materials really what we want but it's like nice to have a variety of sizes of I think that's probably all I want to do for now. I also like to take the edge of the chisel and just create some blasting marks some straight up and down


How does it feel to win the most iconic race in motor sports? Boilermaker Angela Ashmore just won the Indy 500 with IndyCar driver Marcus Erickson and her Chip Ganassi racing team. Okay sure, that's cool, but want to know what makes this even more special? Angela, a Purdue Mechanical Engineering alum, made history as the first woman IndyCar crew member to win the Indy 500. You can hear more about Angela's experience on This Is Purdue, our official university podcast. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to follow the pod and be sure to tune in to this history-making Boilermaker.


So, we're talking about combustion chemical reactions and we're looking at that as being a large source of energy for today's economy. We saw 83% of energy that we use comes from fossil fuel based energy and consequently it would involve combustion. So to begin with let's review combustion or take a look at what combustion is. So when we have combustion what is happening it's a rapid oxidation reaction so it takes place very quickly and in the process it generates heat or both light and heat and that's why when we look at a flame we can actually physically see it although as the temperature drops down higher up in the flame you no longer are able to see it however it is still very very hot and it's still a buoyancy driven flow. The other thing that goes on is we have a chemical reaction whereby the chemical bonds within the fuel are being converted into heat and so it's what we would call an exothermic reaction. Now in order to understand combustion which is what we will be looking at here in order to understand combustion it requires a combined knowledge first of all of this course thermodynamics. It also involves heat transfer because as you have the heat release heat is being transferred through the fluid and the fuel itself and mass transfer. Mass transfer is the process by which the reactants are allowed to come into contact with one another so it can either be just straight diffusion or it can be turbulent diffusion laminar diffusion turbulent diffusion where the fluid flow actually provides a bit of the mixing drive for the mass transfer to take place and so we could refer to this as being diffusion of species and if it's just simple diffusion then that would be you could call it laminar mixing and we can also have turbulent flow mixing and when we looked at the combustion taking place within the engine that I showed you in the previous clip or segment that was definitely turbulent combustion going on there we had very very large vertical structures they're causing the oil once it had been vaporized to mix and react with the oxygen that would be present within the air and the final thing that we would need to understand is what they sometimes refer to as being chemical kinetics and that enables us to figure out how quickly the reactions are going to take place and the reactions can get rather complex so essentially what we're looking at is mixed between thermodynamics which will cover here heat transfer and mass transfer which could extend into fluid mechanics and then chemical kinetics so those are the three areas we will primarily focus on the thermodynamic aspects but in order to develop a full and comprehensive understanding of combustion you really need to study all three of those simultaneously in order to make proper gains so what we will be doing we will be simplifying the reactions and by that what I mean is that we usually will consider the reaction as being a single step process so let's take one of the simplest oxidation reactions that exists which is the oxidation of hydrogen with oxygen and when that occurs we get two moles of water and let's assume it's water vapor doesn't really matter but in reality this is what we would study if we were taking a class in chemistry actually it's what we're going to be doing here in thermodynamics because it simplifies things but in reality this is actually more complex in reality what happens is we have the H2 they're actually a number of reactions so you start to get the picture that it gets more and more complex we have intermediate reactions going on and an actual fact for a complete picture of what's going on here of the oxidation reaction of hydrogen we would require 20 or more separate reactions so you can see it does start to get complex and that gets into the chemical kinetic side what we are going to do we're going to stay back here with just a single step reaction it is a simplification however it enables us to do our analysis and and then look at the thermodynamic aspects of the heat release that is occurring with this type of reaction that's primarily what we'll be doing in this chapter


Ready to go, Jim? Yes, sir. OK. Well, we got a false alarm that Chairman McCall found his way so I came back a second time. But given the uncertainty surrounding the scheduling here, I think I should probably just go ahead, although I would like to say that I would prefer to have been here with Chairman McCall together because I think it's important that this is both a bicameral and a bipartisan effort in leadership of the CSIS report. I want to say first how much I appreciate Chairman McCall agreeing to participate as co-chairman. He has significant responsibilities on the House side as chairman of Homeland Security, and he has demonstrated a very strong commitment on cyber issues. I have it on good authority that he is a good man on cyber issues, that good authority being my Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, Jim Langevin, who knows Chairman McCall well, and who serves with him both in Congress and on the committee. So I think we're off to a promising start in that sense. Having mentioned Jim Langevin, I also want to mention my appreciation for Congressman Langevin's leadership of this same report eight years ago. Jim takes an extremely sincere and determined interest in cyber. He is viewed, I think, in many quarters as one of the House's strongest experts on cyber, and he threw himself into this effort with real diligence and created a terrific result. So I want to take some of my time today to commend my fellow Republican congressman Langevin. The work that he led in the CSIS performed eight years ago, I went back and reread the report once it was clear that I was taking on the co-chairmanship. And I have to say, after eight years, in an area of expertise where both policy and technology are changing very rapidly, that report still holds up very well. And a considerable number of its recommendations were put into action. So that report sets a very high bar for our efforts with this report. And I pledge to Chairman McCall and to Jim and the terrific CSIS staff that my staff and I will work as hard as we can to meet or exceed that standard. This is a very promising opportunity to bring House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, together on an issue that is vital to our national security, that is vital to our economy, and that has very few implications for our law enforcement. So we have considerable work to do. This is a beginning and not an end. But I accept the co-chairmanship with gratitude and with a strong sense of both the duty and expectation. And I'm glad to take any questions that anybody may have as we await Chairman McCall's arrival so we can just transpire. Yes? Tom Grimman from Let It Go For A Cyber. It seems like inside your legislation through Congress has always been difficult. It may even be getting more difficult this year seeing a couple of false starts on information sharing with the Senate. It's unclear if it'll actually manage to get over the finish line. Are you guys going to be taking a look at whether the difficulty of passing the legislation is an impediment to real progress in this area? If there's anything you can do with your colleagues to spur more substantive change in that regard? With respect to the CSIS report, it is designed as a policy recommendation to the incoming president of the United States. So I expect that it will recommend legislative action for the new president to support. But I expect it will be heavily dedicated to actions that the executive branch can accomplish on its own. With respect to the first part of your question about the difficulties of moving forward with a cyber bill, I think actually we have a very good chance of moving forward with a cyber bill right now. We were very close to a comprehensive cyber bill not long ago until the minority leader went to the floor and announced that he was going to attach a repeal of the Obamacare Amendment to any cyber bill that came up. That was in his role as a minority leader when he wanted to make sure no legislation passed the Senate. Now as a majority leader, there's a very different attitude and we have not responded in kind as a minority and we are looking forward to working constructively on a cyber bill. We have a bipartisan vehicle to go forward with on the information sharing legislation that has come out of the Intelligence Committee and been commented on by other committees. We have a significant bipartisan piece of legislation that Senator Gray and I have just held a hearing on in the law enforcement area. We have a significant bipartisan piece of legislation that Senator Blunt did with me in the awareness and notice area of cybersecurity. So I think we have a terrific opportunity in the Senate to get to a core bill on the floor and then through the process of amendment add significant thoughtful bipartisan amendments that are truly directed to cybersecurity and get on and off the bill in a timeframe that can give the majority of your confidence that you should dedicate the effort. So are you saying you're going to seek to add that draft UN Senator Graham are working on as an amendment when CISA comes to the floor? Very much a version of it, it's a draft right now. We've just had the hearing we're looking for input we're hoping to helpful suggestions but we very much hope that a version of that can be made a part of the bill or voted to do it on the floor by amendment. I think the same is true for the Blunt White House legislation. Yes, sir. Senator, we discussed cybersecurity 800 plus pounds of real life is the Department of Defense and it's associated with intelligence and the same is typically part of defense. What, how does A, the legislation of the floor now and B, the people looking at this issue for the report square the circle of making use of all those resources over in DOD without militarizing the problem because DOD itself is very important about this. Yeah, well Barbara Mikulski, who is a great leader in this area and takes the issue very seriously not only as a matter of policy and national security but also as a matter of constituent service as NSA is in her state is fond of saying that the National Security Agency is the mother ship. Upon which defense and other agencies depend for a lot of the substantive technical work that takes place in the areas that we are legislating. The question of the militarization of the internet is not really an issue. It is important that the independent service providers and the government be able to exchange threat information and then be clear where the liability should lie when. That I think will be worked out in the bill that should be the core going forward and whatever amendments to it are made. The notice bill is just really a question of making sure that the public is aware of what is happening out there. Putting the government agencies on notice that they are obliged to report more to the public on what's happening in cybersecurity and the law enforcement component addresses primarily the difficulties of dealing with overseas bad actors that law enforcement within the United States faces but also correcting some penalties and some over prescription of certain conduct. So I don't see any of that as contributing to the militarization of the internet. Yes sir. So what role are you personally in your office going to have in the creation of this report and what are some of the specific things you'd like to see it? I am told that Chairman McCall's and my role will be to make sure that in the scoping of the questions that are asked, we are satisfied that the important questions that we think need to be answered are in fact in there. That we're in a position to provide advice as to what some of the answers might be although we're not in a position to dictate on that and that where there are policy disagreements or log jams that arise during the staff process that we will use our efforts to try to propose solutions to those log jams so that they can be clear and we can move on to other issues. So I think those are important roles. I have some very expert people and my staff who I think can provide very considerable substantive good advice to me and to the process and I know Chairman McCall has the same. So I hope to be a very helpful and active force in a very robust and useful process. And then what specific policies would you like to see in that panel? There are a number but I think that to the extent that we can find ways to regularize a more secure internet in areas where the public understands that it needs to be more secure around our electric grid, around people's financial records, around bank records, things like that. I think making recommendations to regularize the way we reinforce those parts of the internet without having to fight over what websites people wanna visit in their free time or how do you leave the wild west of the internet, the wild west while also making a fourth cyber in which critical infrastructure can reside securely. I think it's a good general question to ask. I also think that it's a good general question to ask that given the speed of change and given the national security, economic, and law enforcement importance of this issue, are we presently structured to write in government to address the cyber threat? And if we are not, what mechanisms need to be put into place to see to it that we turn our headlights on, look to the future and are ready to deal with this with an administrative structure that is suitable for the tasks that we foresee. So those would be two areas right off the top of my head. Yeah, just a point, Paul. Are you talking about within government itself, or abroad? Within government itself. Yes, sir. Sean, let me ask you something. To what extent will the task force assess offensive measures or punitive measures for cyber intrusion, since there's been a lot of talk after the OPM Act about not having enough punitive measures in place, will you tackle that issue? I suspect that we will end up looking at it in three ways.  The second would be what we need to construct internationally by way of a regime of sanctions, agreements, and understandings, so that it's clear where the lines are and how deterrence can be organized and all of that. And the third is addressing the question of private active defense, so-called, and the limits upon a private organization's ability to defend its own networks by putting systems and mechanisms in operation that might affect other users. Hacking that. Hacking that. Hacking back would be the sort of far-extreme, but between sitting there and doing nothing and complaining about it, and actually hacking back and counterattacking who you think isn't the source, there's a wide array of activities that could take place, and at the moment that's one big rather sloppy gray area, and I think we could, conductively provide some analysis and support for ways to begin to chop up that space in different analytic quadrants. I just said analytic quadrants. Clearly, we're at a wildly technical and somewhat tedious topic. But nevertheless, very important, and I'm happy to do the work, so thank you all for coming, and I expect Chairman McCall will be along shortly, and I hope you'll be worth your wait, I'm sure you will. Very much look forward to working with him. I appreciate Jim and Karen and Mason, whole team, we really do look forward to working with you, they've pulled together a terrific array of private sector and other advisors to help do this work. I'm really optimistic about this process, I think it's one of the best policy development processes that I've seen in Washington, and it's something done from a very good-hearted, not-partisan, let's get this right point of view. So, very pleased to be a part of it, look forward to doing a lot of work on it, and hope we can match the length of the report for merit and lasting value. Thanks very much. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for doing this. I'm going to build a market, and so I've got to cheer it up, so I know I'll be sort of... Oh, you're going to be there soon. Yeah, I don't want to be in the next one. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. We appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. It's going to be fun. Yeah, it'll be great. And they're all looking forward to your remarks.  It's a great experience. That's awesome. I'm not going to be reading this. Just make a whole lot of news really quickly, and then we'll get to it. What do you want me to... What's the format? Stand up. That's a great question. Okay. No. You don't want to hear remarks? Yeah. No. Well, let me just thank Jim, Lewis, and CSIS, and Senator Whitehouse for reconvening what I think was perhaps one of the most downloaded reports that ever came out on cybersecurity that we introduced last and go around and where they feared leadership on this issue. I think 10 years ago, and I've been talking to Jim before, some campaign for some, people didn't know what cyber was, and members of Congress certainly didn't know what cybersecurity was. And I think we've come a long ways in terms of education on the issue, which is so important. Unfortunately, I think the events have produced interest, and I think the vulnerabilities and the attacks have never been greater than they are today. All you have to do is look at the breach on OPM from when I believe it's the Chinese, Anthem, Blue Cross, and it takes all different forms, whether it's Target Home Depot, which is more credit card criminal enterprise to what happened at OPM, Anthem and Blue Cross, which looks like more big data theft done for espionage purposes. So our federal government's under attack on a daily basis on a lot of levels, but also our private citizens are under attack with their personal private information and their credit card information. So it's a theft, espionage, and Jim and I talked a great deal about an event that we would never want to see happen, and that's an event to bring things down, which would be a cycle of warfare. We know the capabilities there. We certainly have it. Other countries have it. They've chosen not to exercise it well, I shouldn't say completely. Some instances have been. Estonia's a good example, of course, it's stuck so I can't get into the detail. But we don't want to see that kind of attack in the United States. On any critical infrastructure, there are power grids, water systems, transportation, and everything connected to the internet's vulnerable to that kind of attack. And so the key, I think there are several issues, I think what we're looking at, I would be great if the Senate would pass my cyber security bill, and you can write that down. Because I think that bill goes a long ways with the Department of Homeland Security sharing private information with the private sector, private sharing with the federal government, which could have helped prevent the breach on OPM, but also private to private words, not taking place right now. We're not sharing the Moses codes as much as we should to protect our infrastructure. And a lot of it's because of liability protection reasons. And the bill provides a liability protection. It provides a civilian interface. It's not a spy agency or a prosecuting agency. It's a civilian agency that we believe is designed solely for cyber security purposes, and that is the sharing of the information. So we, I do know that the Senate is going to start taking in cyber in the next month. And I think it will support to do both House and Senate. And of course, I'll allow your good judgment advice as I proceed on that as well. But just let me conclude because I do have to return it, unfortunately. I'm really looking forward to this. I think the last time we did this.


want to share with you something that is not new maybe for those of you who are here with us for the first time or those of you who are coming again this may sound new but for those of us who've been here at the church this is nothing particularly new but I want to refresh and remind our mind today of what really Christian life is all about the first thing that we see in this verse is the Holy Spirit Jesus said the Holy Spirit will come on you the Holy Spirit will come upon you and then you will get power but first comes the Holy Spirit I think last year was a year where a lot of us it was a fresh like a revelation fresh inside that the Holy Spirit is not a dove a wind fire or oil but the Holy Spirit first of all is a person when that reality begins to fall inside of our heart that he is a person it creates a possibility for a relationship until there is an understanding that he is a person you cannot have a relationship with someone you keep referring to as it you cannot have a relationship with someone you keep calling it we were we were at the camp in Minnesota and at the last day and I have the clip I just don't feel like playing right now where at the end all of the youth got up and they started to share of what they learned from the camp almost half of one thing that they were mentioning is that what they've learned is how Holy Spirit is a person and most of these youths speak in tongues most of these youth grew up and they know how the moment prayer hits to pray very loud and to pray very loud in tongues and even when most of them would share this is what they would say and I've learned that the Holy Spirit and they would keep calling him it until few times I would stop by I say you didn't learn anything bro I'm looking to change the way you refer to the Holy Spirit because Jesus went to heaven and he said instead of Jesus he sent the Holy Spirit to be with us and the Jesus never referred to Holy Spirit as it that means until our mind gets an upgrade and a renewal that he is not it our relationship with him is not possible and when it's not possible something happens the Bible says in Galatians walk in the Holy Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh that means as I have relationship not just with someone in heaven but with someone here on earth the Holy Spirit this gives me a power to not fulfill the lusts of the flesh now a side note the Bible doesn't say if you walk in the Holy Spirit you will not have lusts of the flesh many people think if I develop relationship with Holy Spirit I will never want to do anything bad I will never be tempted I will never be in compromising situations nothing bad will ever happen to me my lust of the flesh will be gone with but it's not what the Bible says the Bible says when I walk in the Holy Spirit means when I develop a relationship with Holy Spirit when the lust comes and knocks on the door the Holy Spirit gives me courage not to answer it I'm tempted but not sinned if somebody say you man but how can I walk with someone I keep calling it how can I walk with someone that I treat no differently and I treat my vehicle and I treat the vending machine or the way I treat every other object at my disposal when the Holy Spirit is not a person in your mind you will treat him as it either you will seek to control him or you will be completely distant from him and I think last year was very clear and I want us to remind us of that again that the Holy Spirit is God the Holy Spirit came on this earth to us and the Holy Spirit is a person you and I can have relationship with it's not the presence of the Holy Spirit that guarantees your success it's your relationship with him inside of you you have two kind of things first one is your flesh your flesh is what Satan gave you when you got born it's his birthday gift it's his sign of appreciation for showing up on this earth and he's not getting thanks for it right no because flesh is the reason why you do stupid flesh if you thought flesh is some fancy word for for being smart no it's a fancy word for being no good it's a fancy word for being and all of us have it flesh it's the carnal nature it's the things the in us that wants to do bad but it's interesting there is people who have flesh you know Hitler had the same flesh as you did he did a lot of damage with the flesh Mother Teresa had the same flesh as Hitler did what was the difference did Mother Teresa's flesh was better Christian flesh when you get saved the Bible never says God gives an upgrade for your flesh your flesh still is flesh that's why Christians can do some unbelievable things because Bible says all things are possible to those who believe your flesh is still flesh have you noticed that even when after you gave your life to Jesus you've not recognized that the flesh is still there and it did not get Christian but when you get become a Christian God gives you a gift and this gift is he gives you the Holy Spirit so within you you have to the flesh or the Holy Spirit a life of victory does not depend on having the Holy Spirit it depends on yielding to the Holy Spirit and life of sin does not come from having flesh it comes from yielding to your flesh and I want us to understand this on the level of our subconscious having the Holy Spirit does not guarantee you will have a powerful life having the Holy Spirit does not guarantee you will see miracles in your life you have a chance for it just like having a wife does not mean you have a happy marriage just because you have a wife that does not guarantee happiness for some trouble the presence of a person does not guarantee a relationship you all have parents in your house that does not mean you have a relationship with them that is good same thing with the Holy Spirit a people can have the Holy Spirit but if we don't understand first of all that he is a person we don't even have a chance to know him as a person for many people the Holy Spirit has been reduced to speaking in other tongues those of you who are coming new and maybe you get saved in our church and this is completely maybe new phenomenon or manifestation to you and you're you know watching when people pray in tongues and you're like this is this is interesting different doesn't sound like Russian just definitely not Spanish something else and these people just keep going at it keep going at it and you're like awesome let me tell you what this is the Bible talks about the gift of tongues where God gives it to us it's our prayer language the Holy Spirit fills us we yield to him he takes over our our mouth and not we don't become manipulated we don't become he doesn't drive us it's still we still conscious and we still control it and those words they mean whole lot to God they worship God and they connect with God many times there were stories when somebody would speak in other tongues that the other person in the church will understand that in some other language like French Spanish or something else it's like it happened in the Bible and for many people this has become a catalyst experience with the Holy Spirit if I get the tongues that's it that means I have the Holy Spirit and some people even begin to refer to Holy Spirit as tongues I remember hearing one testimony actually right here when the young lady returned from Mexico trip and she said my Holy Spirit learned few new words and I was like which spirit do you talking about because the Holy Spirit does not learn new words you mean that the gift of tongues you now have few other word syllables that you didn't have before that is completely different from actually the Holy Spirit as a person a gift is something he gives but God didn't just give us the gift he gave us the giver because somebody say man you know a few weeks ago I has become my tradition I overcome my prejudice against people with signs help me you know I used to drive by and seeing somebody with a sign you know I'm a veteran or something and I just always kind of like they're making it up and and lately I've been just kind of realizing it's up to them I just salute them for having the boldness of having a sign in the cold even if I would be in need I probably would never have the audacity to stand with a sign and I remember I would have you know a few few dollars if I would have few dollars I would always just kind of find somebody and just give it to them just bless them even if they're making it up God bless them maybe those few dollars would change the life I don't know but imagine you standing with the sign and some like me drives by and I give you money I give you a gift with that gift you received something very precious it might last for a day a year or two but that gift did not give you a relationship with me amen I'm very fortunate to have a young man who sit who sits in the first row today who's a Marine Nuffo his daughter is here today actually also don't know what I'm not gonna call you up you're all good when I was gone Nuffo actually bought a very big TV 65 inch TV for my house was because so all of you can watch common we can watch videos YouTube videos and Prophet to be Joshua and it's a very very very big very very big TV and it's a very expensive TV now the difference between me giving something to someone on the street and Nuffo is this is that when I receive the gift from Nuffo I have a relationship with Nuffo and this gift will only strengthen that relationship because now Nuffo has another reason to come to my house I'm giving some of your hands how to get more welcomes I'm just kidding and so and now Nuffo has it's a different because there is a relationship and this fosters a deeper relationship a closer relationship where he feels that home is almost almost kind of like hey I can drive by and say hi because that my gift is there the speaking of tongues doesn't create a relationship with Holy Spirit but it gives us an opportunity to have a deeper relationship if we choose to amen and I want us to understand that today that even spiritual gifts other gifts that don't necessarily mean that a person has a relationship some people have gifts of speaking some people have gifts of this and that but it does not necessarily mean they have a relationship with the Holy Spirit and it's most important for us this year to get to know God who's here all of us fantasize to get to know God who left not God who came we read about we write movies about God who and police understand when I say left I don't necessarily mean his presence is everywhere but when Jesus said that I am leaving the earth but someone else is coming every revival where miracles happened every revival Holy Spirit was recognized there's there's meetings church religious meetings where a lot of people but supernatural aspect is completely gone and if you will track it down it has a lot of morals it has talented leaders and speakers supernatural things don't happen without one being the Holy Spirit Jesus didn't do one miracle without the Holy Spirit nor will you nor will I Jesus everything he did was because of the Holy Spirit and if we are to live similar life it has to be the person of the Holy Spirit has to be at least acknowledged respected and honored when you recognize he is a person you begin to recognize another person for example if you are driving in the car let's say you're going to a Seattle I remember last Wednesday we were driving after the service and wonderful young man Bogdan took me to Seattle and I was very tired and I was actually sleeping half and on but because a person who was driving me was a person even when I would wake up and I am tired and I needed to catch my sleep I would still try to have some kind of a conversation letting him know I recognize he is behind the wheel now imagine that's fine if you don't talk to someone for three hours but imagine not talking to someone for three years for years someone who is behind the wheel in our world today holds the galaxies in his own hands he is the reason you can take a next breath he is the reason both of your knees will hold your weight when you get up he is behind the wheel and many times we fantasize about a spare tire in the trunk instead of at least recognizing and sometimes saying Holy Spirit I need you Holy Spirit I love you Holy Spirit help me many people talk about him but not to him directly many people pray to God father send the Holy Spirit now realizing he is right here beside you and the Bible doesn't say to pray to Holy Spirit though he is God and we can pray to him but the Bible says to fellowship means like you talk to someone in the car you can fellowship with him you can talk to


Argentina's debt crisis was the product of a decade of intense neoliberal economic policies that produced a series of pretty severe imbalances in the economy that were covered mostly through external borrowing. This external borrowing became unsustainable, and towards the end of the decade, in 2001, really the beginning of the following decade, Argentina defaulted on its debt. This was the largest sovereign default in history, and not only did Argentina default or stop payments on its debt, but Argentina also abandoned the fixed exchange rate monetary policy that it had held during the entire 1990s. Argentina recovered its ability to conduct independent monetary policy, recovered its monetary sovereignty, and stopped making payments on its debt. This enabled Argentina to have seven consecutive years after these events of very high growth levels and being able to solve many of the problems, although by all means not all, that had been generated in the previous decade. So one could say then that defaulting and recovering monetary sovereignty was the right way to go for Argentina given its situation. The countries in the periphery of the European Union that are currently under severe external debt stress, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, I think can look at the Argentine case and maybe find alternatives in the way Argentina dealt with its debt for their own experiences. Clearly the Euro situation is different because you have a common currency area. And so the costs or the difficulties involved are probably larger than in the Argentine case, which had a fixed exchange rate regime, but it was still the country's own decision. Still I think that there is no obligation to pay for a debt that is unsustainable and there is no obligation to pay for a debt that is unsustainable, especially when that means high levels of unemployment, poverty, hunger, and very widespread problems for the population. So I think popular and the population's well-being should be the priority, not satisfying the financial sector or the Troika or the IMF and the ECB. Vulture funds are a problem, but they are a problem of how financial markets work. So one can try to regulate the ability of these funds to intervene in financial markets. One can also regulate how much they can demand when they intervene, etc. One can try to put limits on Vulture funds, but I think the essential basic problem is how financial markets work and how our economies, through all of these neoliberal transformations, have been structured around the operations of financial markets and not vice versa. Financial markets should be at the service of the economy. So until that happens, one can have sort of remedial restrictions imposed. I'm not sure how effective they will be until financial markets are subdued in a way to serve the people and not vice versa.


What is coding of qualitative data? Well, coding is a method used to analyze data by identifying themes or codes that appear in our qualitative data and then assigning sections of data to those codes. Miles and Huberman state that codes are tags or labels for assigning units of meaning. Codes are usually attached to chunks of varying size, those might be words, phrases, sentences or even whole paragraphs. The process is to break up very long and detailed qualitative data source like interviews, focus groups and documents into common themes. We can then read across different sources to compare what people are saying on one particular issue or topic. For example, we might have a code called healthy eating and we can compare what different groups of people have said about healthy eating. So for example, we might see whether older people were more into healthy eating than younger people or what different ideas people had about what healthy eating is. And coding is like putting things into categories. Once we've created our categories and sorted things into them, it's easier to find things later and see how items in one category vary. It's partly a method for analysis but also a way of managing your data. Once you've been through and coded your data, it can be a lot easier to do the writing up later because it makes it easier to quickly find a quote to support something that you want to say. So let's do a little bit of coding here and see how that works. So we've got an example data source of someone being interviewed about what they eat for breakfast and they say I'm a single mom with an eight-year-old toddler and breakfast is mayhem. The baby has porridge, I might wave up some ready-break with whole milk for him. So I've created a couple of codes here of things I think might come up. You see we've already got one here for porridge. So I can select this text about being about porridge and drag and drop it onto the porridge theme. So we've coded that section of text now to that theme. We could have chosen the whole paragraph or larger piece of text or just this section here about porridge but we chose the whole sentence. We can also say that this whole sentence is also about milk so we can drag that onto the milk bubble here as well and we've now coded this text to be about milk and about porridge and that's the basics of coding. Going through creating codes, coding sections of text to those codes. Now the kind of coding we're doing here is very basic and descriptive. For example here, I'm a single mom with an eight-year-old and toddler and breakfast is mayhem. Well let's put this onto the children's bubble here because actually I think that's about children but you see we've got some other themes here so we can say that this is also about family structure. It's about wider issues about social breakdown. It's also about time. So these are things that might come up and we also want to do some kind of in vivo coding. Questionably about mayhem and we may want to even create a theme here which is called mayhem. So various different ways that we can code up the data. You see even this very simple sentence, these couple of sentences here, we've managed to code in a whole bunch of different ways so it can be a very long process of going through and doing coding but this is the basics of how it looks. Braun and Clark describe codes as being a pithy label identifying what's of interest in the data. While themes are an idea or concept making a common recurring pattern across a data set clustered around a central organising concept. So in our example here low-fat yoghurt might be a code and healthy eating would be something would be more like a theme. So there are many different types of coding. The two big kind of types are grounded theory or emergent coding and that's pretty much where you start with just a blank sheet so you have no preconceptions of what you're going to find in the data. You're completely open to having the data speak to you and just as you go through on the fly reading through the data, defining the codes and themes that the data is suggesting to you. The other method is called framework analysis or structured coding where you actually have a framework. So you've got your list of codes and themes beforehand and what you're trying to do is match the data to the codes that you've already identified. So the topics of interest you already want to look for in the data. Now in practice what most people do is something which is a little bit of a flexible combination between both. They have some kind of idea of the things they want to find in the data but they're also open to new things. So if there's something surprising and unexpected coming out of the data they can create new codes and themes to capture that. There are also lots of different types of coding which we can use. The most common is called descriptive coding and it's about literally coding what's being discussed in a very literal basis. So if somebody says I like yogurt you code yogurt and like. There's also thematic coding where you create themes and codes. We taught that a little bit already. You can do line by line coding and that's where you assign each line its own code. Kind of describing what's going on in that one line or sentence. There's also IPA interpretive phenomenological analysis and that's about looking to see how participants experience and make meaning of things that are happening in their world and that's often combined with a line by line coding approach. There's also in vivo coding and that's where you use actually the words and terms that participants in the data are using to develop code. So if somebody says I really love breakfast it's my favorite meal of the day. Love would be the word that you pull out there. So you're using their own words to categorize what they're saying. There's also discourse analysis where we look at how people express themselves, what types of words do people use, how do different people express themselves and there's many more different ways that we can analyze and explore data. In fact there's a whole textbook by Johnny Saldana which is really excellent to read on coding qualitative data and I think there's 34 different ways that you can code data and it can really help if you're kind of stuck you've tried a coding approach it's not quite working for you go back and try a completely different approach do it from a kind of action viewpoint or a process viewpoint. It's important to remember that coding is nearly always an iterative cyclical process you go back and do it again and again over and over so you're reading it through multiple times you're doing different levels different types of coding and also going through and coding your coding. So trying to put your codes and themes into different groups different structures different ways to to pull together the different themes which are coming out from the data. Coding is an important part of analysis but it also requires further interpretation when it's complete. You still need to say well what does my coded data say? You need to go through and read it and all these different methods are really just different ways of getting to know your data better. They're not going to do the analysis and interpretation for you but they're an important step in the process. It's also important to bear in mind that you don't have to do any coding. A lot of people don't like doing coding a lot of practitioners say that it abstracts people from the data is a very reductive process you're taking very long very detailed complex nuanced data and extracting it at a very kind of low level for kind of very base level of analysis. So some people just advocate just reading the data over and over until it makes sense in your head. Now there are lots of software tools like Quercos that will help you code qualitative data but you don't have to use any special software. A lot of people use spreadsheets we use something like Excel to go through and do line by line coding and put different themes for those or in word processors in word just use the comments feature. A lot of people also just use pen and paper so they'll print out the transcripts use different colored highlighters to identify different themes and some people even cut out the sentence cities or paragraphs put them into different envelopes or folders and group them together by the different themes. These are all ways that you can use to get to know your data better and start to sort and organize it but the dedicated software does make it a lot easier when you come through to write up to find those quotes especially compared to doing it on paper and know where they came from. So if you want to see everything you coded on healthy eating on all the qualitative software packages that's just a click away. Quercos is just one of the ways that you can use to analyze your data. It's very visual very intuitive and easy to use and you can go to our website and download a complete free trial and see how it works for you.