So the next section is admittedly experimental. I haven't really tried to do this in a workshop before. But it is the time we've heard a lot of great ideas, very expansive. But now we have to try to start making sense of it. By we, I mean we program folk at NHGRI. And I want to bring you into our world a little bit. We, these are, these set of discussions is designed to bring out some of the issues that I'm anticipating will come up as we internally discuss how to follow up from this workshop, how to take it and take the results and the recommendations and make them into programs. So at the beginning of the workshop, I de-mapped our programs from the topics. And now we have topics with some changes and nuance and recommendations. We're going to try to remap them. But we're not asking you here to converge on specific programs. I'm trying here to tease out some important elements of programs, some decision points for each of the main topics that we've discussed today. And to try to get some pros and cons. Because as I said at the beginning, the pros and cons are many instances more useful to us than you should do it this way, kind of recommendations. Because at the end of the day, we're going to hear lots of conflicting stuff about you should do it this way versus this way, or if you go this way, then you won't be able to do this. With the rationales, then we can try to plot a path of what we need to encourage and what we should try to avoid. And that's going to ultimately be more helpful. And again, I don't know what's going to work if it's going to work. So here is the idealized scheme for this. You sort of start with roughly for each of these topics, roughly what would be the right organization. You could start with the current organization as a default. You can start with a generality based on what you heard earlier this morning. And then list a set of topics or features that could be alternative. So centralized versus dispersed. Or as Bill brought up, siloed versus unified. And there actually are reasons we silo things, organizationally. Sometimes we have to do that. And again, these things are maybe a lot of them are false dichotomies, as was raised a number of times during this. But it's the features that we want to keep from each of those that we should focus on here. And I'm going to do the first one with Len. So maybe you get a better idea. They won't be exactly the same for each of these, for each of the major headings. And at the end of this, we'll try to wrap it up. Rex and I will be up here trying to wrap up across all the different topics. And by the end of that discussion, I hope we have a good feeling of what people want and don't want to see in programs. And more importantly, why? And again, I hope the first example that Len and I will go through will give people enough information to suggest some of these instead of us just coming up with them on the fly. Because these are coming up on the fly. I haven't given my colleagues any more briefing than I just gave you. So, Len, do you want to come on up, or would you rather circulate in the audience? And if I could ask Lou to keep time and let us know when it's time to wrap up after about 20 minutes or something like that. So, yeah, for the whole thing, how much time did I give on the agenda for each element? Half hour. So let me know after about 20 minutes of discussion. So element one is the general architecture of disease topic. It has to encompass Common and Mendelian and all the other things that we're talked about. And I think what we heard this morning, vastly oversimplifying it from the breakout run report, was there's still a need for discovery at scale. We're just figuring out how to do this. Keep going with paradigmatic examples. That's a two sentence summary, three sentence summary. And here are some, just launch right into the topics. You said, Eric, that we need to consider everything across the spectrum. But I heard David Altshuler say last night that the current organization we have. We actually have a current organization. We have big centers for common disease and other stuff. And then we have very pretty focused Mendelian centers. And I heard David say, well, don't do it that way, because it doesn't go with the way the science is going. And on the other side, I'm worried. I'm very worried that if there isn't some way to focus on them, some organizational way to focus on the Mendelians, that we'll actually lose focus on those. So I'd like to hear some. So that's one potential pro and con. And I'm going to ask David to start off with why did you make that remark? And how would you suggest addressing it? Well, the main point, the only comment I want to make about what you said is I wasn't making an organizational point as much as a scientific point. So I wasn't necessarily saying what the form should be of grants or centers not specializing as much as making the point that scientifically in terms of integrating data, in terms of having the thought process, we don't want to make a fetish out of what the prior assumption was about the architecture. So I haven't been deeply involved enough in the Mendelian centers or there might be groups of particular expertise who choose to focus on that, and that might be a very good thing. As long as we don't end up promoting that they should be held separate, as long as we don't silo the data, as long as we don't make arguments on the assumption that they're different as opposed to the data drive it. So I don't mean to undermine your provocative statement, but. No, it's okay. That's right, Bob. Just to follow up on that, it seems to me that for the Mendelian in particular, that involves a set of particular, I don't know, expertise and links reaching out to the community and so forth, and so to pile that in with everything else might be a mistake. You need some of that particular expertise. Yeah, I also want to support that. I was maybe dubious about the idea of creating large scale centers, Mendelian centers, clinical projects when that first started. I've come to think this is a really good idea. The thing that supports, the thing that NHGRI does very well is it invests in creating the infrastructure that's really excellent around the problem. And sometimes that's the infrastructure about large scale data production or analytical design or project design or analysis. Seeing the Mendelian centers really focus on a problem, it's very clear that's a different problem in certain respects and the technical under the hood respects about how to manage that. I agree with David Altru, there's got to be a lot of free flow of data. There are going to be Mendelian things cropping up in common and the Mendelians will be focusing on common traits in overlapping ways. But actually developing deep excellence is the one thing that doesn't get done either in the commercial sector or gets done in lots of little grants. Critical mass has benefits and I think we're seeing it in the Mendelian centers, we're seeing it in the clinical and so I think what distinguishes NHGRI is the ability to get critical mass and excellence at things that most other people, most other institutes, most other companies kind of ignore as requiring of excellence. So I kind of think that that's actually an important element. Evan. I mean I guess one comment regarding this Mendelian versus common, I would suggest or like to argue that maybe the definition of Mendelian should be expanded a little bit. I mean there's a lot of success being achieved in things like autism and autism doesn't necessarily fit nicely into one of these bins in terms of Mendelian or common. And we've talked to people that run Mendelian centers and they have a lot of very strict rules in terms of what types of families can be put into them. And I think there's a lot of bang for the buck that could be leveraged if focused efforts in specific diseases where rare variants as well as common variants are playing an important role. I was curious, is there a need for better integration between the common architecture and Mendelian or right now it's pretty siloed. So is there? I think integration would be a really good thing and there is this overlap around things but just munging the distinction wouldn't be a good thing. So one way to follow up on Eric's comment and Bob and I were just talking here is I think the essence of Eric's comment which I do agree with is specialization, expertise, critical mass, form following function are very good things. Whether an HGRI should dictate that the one such split and I'm not saying it was the wrong decision past is Mendelian not Mendelian. It could be there are other forms, there's some groups, the kind of stuff Evan and Jim talk about so passionately about structural variants. Maybe there's some specialized thing around genome assembly and structural variants doesn't matter whether it's a common or rare disease. There could be multiple types of specializations. So the idea that you want to integrate and not silo or predetermine that specialization doesn't mean everybody should be a generalist. Yeah. With that coming on the specific organizational structure I want to say that over the last three or four years one of the most satisfying and productive things I've witnessed is the contact between genomics expertise and the clinical expertise and bridging the full span there has been enormously productive. So my hope is that whatever the organizational structure is that that is a central focus. Thanks. I want to add to that which is our comment on that which is that's actually the area within the current program that seems to be seems to have the most separate needs and administratively tends to be more and more separate. And I'm I always worry about how to get the best cross-fertilization. So if you if people have ideas yeah. Just to comment specifically on that I think you know one of the goals in the current iteration was to try to get more disseminated activity around the country in hopes that that would nucleate additional activities. In our case certainly the Mendelian Center has catalyzed clinical sequencing. We did 500 clinical cases last year based on the scale that was achieved through the Mendelian Center without NHGRI putting in any additional funds for development of the clinical work. That's the kind of leveraging that I think you can achieve by getting some level of dissemination of high quality work being done. Yes, Ewan. I mean I'm just wondering whether you shouldn't let this be a bottom up process with some framework for how for the criteria but you just let people try and choose the area the kind of scope that they want to fit into and then think more about the criteria about how to judge and rank them. I think there's something incredibly I mean everybody's commented on this but there's something incredibly artificial about trying to draw the boundary lines here and I just feel that investigators will know better where they want to draw the boundary lines and it will fit better to their local context. I know that puts that kind of puns this problem onto the review committee but at least the review committee there will see concrete proposals in front of them. So I think we've been seniorly challenged by the idea of sending vague things to review committees. I like, you know, in theory I like it in practice. For example, we've sent up centers without any work plans. We've been unclear whether the center is responsible for coming up with the work plan or whether it's gonna be given a work plan. I think actually the heart of this is if we're looking for centers that are defining the work plans and we're coming with these ideas, these samples, whatever, that's one thing. If we're saying they're a central resource and NHGRI is defining the projects and allocating and some of that is coming up along here and some of the questions, that's another but I think punting everything to a review committee that meets for an afternoon and isn't deeply invested in constructing a program that hasn't even spent as much time as we've spent in two days has its problems also. So it might be a good thing for NHGRI. Now, that's not to say it's gotta fit in fixed boxes. Those boxes can be more flexible but I think leaving all degrees of freedom to the randomness of a review committee has challenges too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that. And I think this is the art of crafting good RFAs and doing this right. Which bits do you constrain and which bits do you leave open? And the thing that I think is a mistake to constrain here is this place in this spectrum between Mendelian through to Common. Just from the conversation, it seems like that's a mistake. Now, I might be wrong. I mean, I'm not saying I've got incredible insight into this thing. But from the conversation so far, that seems to be like a place where the investigators understand better than trying to set it out ahead of time. But of course, a challenge then is you toss it to review committee and the review committee likes all grants of type B and doesn't like the grants of type A and NHGRI doesn't end up with, say, Mendelian's covered. So there is some art to figuring out how you get the portfolio you'd like to get out also. I think that can be constructed in my understanding. We're just putting the design criteria out there. The portfolio is rounded. I mean, that's the criteria is that you have a rounded portfolio. Good. Fair enough. And I think that leads naturally, as Eric said, to this project selection question, which I have to say is an area that I don't think we've got completely right. I don't think I worry about, I worry about how to bring the community more into some of these decisions about doing this. I worry about fairness and rigor and review issues. All these comments are comments that have been brought to my attention. So I just put this as a sort of three kinds of elements. There's investigator initiated versus NHGRI initiated versus community initiated. How do we balance that? What's the right thing to do? Or even those of you who are familiar with the current way we bring things on, where have your, especially outside the centers, where have you noticed things that you didn't think were right and what kind of things would you consider to do them better? David? Well, one thing that I think has been very productive just to share the example in type two diabetes that I think is a good model. We talked in Eric Green talked about funding partnerships is NIDDK started a type two diabetes genetics initiative and put up money. But in the end, then there was a partnership with NHGRI and actually not only two different centers if I understand correctly, different work went on. In fact, some of the work was outsourced to complete genomics. But it ended up being that coming together, there was a project that had funding from multiple sources and was a better project. And now there's also a lot of energy that's gone into aggregating the data and making it useful. And now pharma has come in through the accelerated medicines partnership. That's an example where NHGRI's funding was leveraged but clearly played a catalytic role in important moments. I'd like personally to see not that NHGRI do this alone which is a failure, I think will be a failure, nor that all the institutes go off and do it and companies go off and do it in a silent way but somehow that kind of model where there's also diversity of designs and many people looking at the data as opposed to monolithic sort of coordinated or not even coordinated but there's this idea that I learned about David Housler taught me this phrase define the interface compete on implementation is a sort of software thing. We want to do is make sure we have multiple people contributing data and resources but we make sure it will come together in some way or be useful in some way together as opposed to being siloed. I think the trick of that is something that NHGRI has done well, maybe in cancer, maybe in diabetes, maybe there's four or five others I don't know about but this should be modeled. Dave. What's the rough breakdown right now in these categories in terms of projects funded by NHGRI? Yeah, I would say that about, well between 70, I don't know exactly, I would have to guess between 70 and 90% of the funds are actually going to big projects that are partnerships of the kind that David just mentioned over the last four years that includes TCGA and more recently ADSP, type 2D genes and a couple of others. Yeah, you win. So I appreciate the headache and the problem here and just to make sure there's a lot of practicalities of sample flow, sample quality, consents, if you add recall as being a desirable thing as well that complicates it even more and therefore the practical business and then if you want to add in this scale that it's got to be done at high scale, I think you probably come down to quite a small list already, I may be wrong and I think the experience has been again and again that the system that's going to consume those samples need to have a very good engagement process with the system that has those samples and it has to be a two-way process and one can't dictate kind of forced marriages in this, it's not a productive process. So that I think leads to the idea that there has to be quite a managed process that involves the investigators that are working at scale that work with the people that have the samples and one has to probably give those investigators who work at scale quite a lot of freedom to make sure that they will deliver on that whilst also holding their feet to the far to deliver on that scale but I think this is a very, very complicated area to execute and there's quite a lot of experience about how to handle this, so I think I would be interested in other people's views about this because I just don't think this is an easy thing to get balance on compared to say those model organism white papers which were once you decided scientifically that this was a good thing to do you just had to find one person with one animal but sometimes a few animals. It was a completely different problem in that era to this sample scale out era. So I really think we should explore this because this is going to be a big problem at working at scale, keeping the communities alongside, keeping the other ICs involved but also delivering on it. I mean that matrix is what it feels like and one of those things has got to go. You'd like all of them but I feel like one of them's got to go. Eric. But I guess maybe I'm naive but I think it's a place that we've done well the last several years of integrating ourselves very well into these disease oriented communities. It's no longer, it's the clinical community and the sequencing community and we send emails back and forth. In the case of diabetes that was already mentioned heart disease, the Mendelian centers, I think the genomics community is very much integrated inside that biomedical slash clinical domain and I think if we're going to achieve the goals that you and talked about we need to continue that. At the end in order to make sure that the large numbers of appropriately consented high quality samples are available and that information will be made available largely in a very broad context. I think having that complete integration and not just keeping the community alongside but actually that full integration I think is the way to go and I think we're achieving that one step at a time. Lou, how much time do I have left? Okay, we've got time. No, I just didn't, I didn't know. Okay. I wanna spend a little bit of time on the last two because they've come up directly and this is almost a prioritization or a timing or a staging. And we heard both about the merits of discovery sort of bottom up and we heard about the virtuous cycle and the miracle database that's gonna capture all the variant information from all the clinical efforts all over the world and feed into discovery. What's the, we're gonna have to make some choices. We don't have infinite resources. Even though we may have really great partners in this what's kind of the right allocation? Is there any way to talk about the right allocation or is it only, can we only say yes we have to do both of these? Is there some way to get a better refinement on where and sort of staging how we need to invest more and especially in the second one of these? Cause I'm... Well if we have a finite amount of funds and we can invest it in the discovery in the mode that we've been doing now or we can invest it in trying to recapture clinical data so that we can get enough to make discoveries or have a resource for discovery 10 years from now how do we decide between those? Or should we decide between those? I think the point was made well before that we shouldn't be paying for clinical service and the act of integrating into clinical practice and completing the virtuous cycle and having prepaid research subjects is really what we're trying to achieve. So maybe it's not such a dichotomous choice and that the integration into the clinical activity is not going to drain the budget. Okay. I think if we don't make discoveries we're gonna lose the support of the public and the rest of the NIH community. If we make discoveries, past year there's been a number of interesting discoveries of loss of function variants that are protective and the drug companies are all excited and they're on them. If there's a steady flow of discoveries the rest will follow including funding and other people following us. If we say sit tight, we're gonna assemble resources that over time will let us discover. The argument I fear will wear thin. So that doesn't say the portfolio involves none of that but I think we better deliver on discoveries. And if the next three or four or five years have a lot of the architecture and pathways of common diseases and hundreds of more Mendelian diseases coming out will be fine. And then the whole clinical world that's doing sequencing will help shape that and that will drive the generation after. But we're gonna be held as I think we've been held in every period of genomic work to having fruitful products in the here and now. Howard. So I think they're not split. So I think we still need for discovery we have to have large scale. If we're gonna be looking at these disease issues we're gonna need to have large scale activities still in place. That's for sure. I mean just the sample sizes alone are gonna require some large scale activities. But if we're gonna grow the clinical side as was discussed before I think there's a limited number of things that really have to be done to help drive value into this. As values driven more into it other people are gonna pay for this. The hospital systems, the insurers are gonna pay around that. So what we have to do is build the base that helps that happen but not at the expense of discovery. I think if we go away from discovery we're in trouble but if we completely ignore and hope somebody else is gonna figure out how to do this clinically we will also slow down the process of developing large sample sets in the clinical environment. So I think CSER and these other programs are at the beginning but I think what the clinical group was talking about although I share Eric's concern our job isn't to implement across the board but I think we are in a position to help establish baselines of how you do it and then that enables others to then get on board in the clinical arena. Yes. Yeah, along the lines of public support I think a relatively small investment in education and in making the public aware of such discoveries which I agree do need to happen might go a long ways for sustainability and for further investment. So I just don't see that in the bullets there but I think it's an important portion. Yeah and there the contrast would be with building the foundational part the community resource part versus making the discoveries. I think that's another kind of balance we've got a strike. So yeah. Yes. Back to Eric's point. I can see over the next few years discovery is gonna be still a fairly narrow channel and the NHGRI can have a leading role in figuring out how to make those discoveries but in a few years I would suspect that there's gonna be a torrent of sequence coming from a variety of places and hopefully and the NH just because of the budget of the NHGRI they're not going to be a major driver anymore. And one way to continue to be a major driver in that is this integration of the data because all of these sources are not going to talk to one another well and NHGRI can play a major role in making sure that that happens and make it a much more powerful resource for everybody and lead in the discovery in that sense. So NHGRI has to its credit and I think to a lot of productivity been a fairly top down center or institute and I think that harnessing the community maybe by shifting that just a little bit will take some of the difficulty of making these top down decisions which are at some level kind of impossible and perhaps some consideration to increased grantees, right? Increased individual investigator type driven projects not in an extreme sense because again NHGRI has been very successful with the top down approach but that might allow harnessing, things are mature enough in many ways where one could imagine effectively again harnessing that thinking of the community in ways that we haven't been able to as well. I just want to echo Bob's point because if you just think a little bit about the projections that Illumina has for the number of sequencers they expect to sell and it's somewhere on the order of dozens next year in the mid dozens maybe 40, 50, 60 of the X10s and you just sort of put that into context with what capacity we already have. It's clear that NIH is gonna get dwarfed in terms of sequencing capacity if it isn't already and so that aspect of figuring out how to get the people who've bought those machines to share the data is actually probably the single most important thing that and where the global alliance and others can come in. I think the key thing here and I think I know that Eric and others are thinking this way and Phil born at B2K but we just have to be careful. This room is an NHGRI meeting and it might be attractive to imagine that NHGRI can dictate this answer but certainly every discussion I've been in makes clear that as I said this in our breakout group I'll say it again here in the international discussions and sort of discussions with different stakeholders, clinical companies, et cetera one group that they clearly they're not sure who should do this but the one group they're clear should not do it is the United States government. Okay and so we just have to realize that like a top-down imposed and I think one of the things you hear in these discussions is many parties will say yeah yeah we're setting the standard and others will use it and I think the only way to actually do this and there are models from other fields and that's what the global alliance is modeling itself on the worldwide web consortium which has been highly successful is and I sort of threw this in out of context that was wrong time to say it but focus on the interface. You know what I'm saying don't try and determine the outcome don't tell everyone what data they should collect or how are they going to store it or implement it. This is where you get the mistake as you try and build the big database in the sky or tell everyone what technology to use figure out how the data will flow get the data flowing and we do have to think about you know there are technical aspects of that there are regulatory aspects of that and there are incentive issues and I think that when Eric Lander pointed out you know earlier we don't know what the business models are I do think that that not that any sure I are going to set them but everyone in this room or people in this room are all leaders like if there's no incentive the reason things happen often in the world and certainly in medicine is because someone reimburses them or somebody profits from them and we can be very idealistic and say the data should flow because flow is good maybe we need to create a social pressure to do that that's another incentive but we can't be naive that if we you know we have to build the pipes and we have to think about why will people actually send things through them because otherwise they'll sit idle right and the reason people share okay yeah yeah Mark Mark I I yeah I think we we've David you made that point strongly and I think a couple of others have we've yeah it's a good point Mark I just want to amplify what Bob and Carlos were saying and that I I really do think that with so much sequencing in the future you know any sure I really needs to think about things beyond sequencing and things that are going to enable the use of all that genomic sequencing better you know sort of foundational resources that you know can make all the genomic sequencing quite useful whether it's you know characterizing all the variants or interpreting them so so I want to ask in the in the last 30 seconds a specific question about especially coming from this point of view this this first breakout's point of view the bottom up balance of bottom up versus top down sort of functional analysis and for example if you had a program much like the current program now and you want it to start exploring functional validation how how much would you how much would you let them do or large centers do I'm not talking about any specific people but in a large center how useful is would it be to team it with some kind of downstream functional validation exercise and is that is that too much or is that an amount that's that's just right something I'm asked I hope you have a feel for the question so Adam so what one idea there might be that there there are some assays that have been developed already a few years ago and that could now be done at scale for example for many promoters are many transcription factors some of the things that Jay illustrated but I think in parallel you do want diversity so you want people to be developing the next round of assays and maybe the balance is that you know trying to figure out bar assays that you can do at scale for you know for hundreds of KB or megabase of sequence what our ass what their new ass is that you want to develop to add that portfolio over time is that from the perspective of the Mendelian centers this has been a key issue because so many of our collaborators we make the discovery from the genomic work and they of course then want to pursue uh... prosecute the functional validation and the pursuit of that that's quite a complicated interface for NHGRI to be intimately involved in and it's anti-leveraging right you don't know at the outset what the assays are going to be uh... and how you're what's going to be necessary to solve them it seems like a very good interface for some kind of partnership with the specific institutes that are the domains in which the discoveries are made but you would like to have a more rapid uh... turnaround with the other institutes where you say we've got this new discovery of uh... you know we can name two hundred and sixty eight uh... genes per following uh... the discussion yesterday uh... where we now know that uh... this gene is implicated in this disease and we would like to do the next steps how to manage that interface i think it's a key uh... consideration but i think it'd be very complicated for NHGRI to be in the middle of actually trying to fund each of those thanks i think that's i i want to wrap it up there because i can i just quick quick comment on that i think given the diversity of genes uh... and you don't know ahead of time what you're going to get it's just impossible to know where the boundary is going to be and how much it's going to cost it's uh... it's a decision that has to be made when you find it so this is a good time to turn it over to the two


Section 7 of Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels by Stephen Lee Koch Section 7 The Blue and the Gray A Pre-War War Story The title is selected for its originality. A set of 75 maps will be supplied to any reader free for 75 cents. This offer is only open till it is closed. Chapter 1 The scene was a striking one. It was night. Never had the Mississippi presented a more remarkable appearance. Broad bayous, swollen beyond our powers of description, swirled to and fro in the darkness under trees garlanded with Spanish moss. All moss other than Spanish has been swept away by the angry flood of the river. Agilston Lee Cary Randolph, a young Virginian, captain of the Blankth Company of the Blankth Regiment of Someone's Brigade, even this is more than we ought to say and is hard to pronounce, attached to the Army of the Tennessee, struggled in vain with the swollen waters. At times he sank, at other times he went up. In the intervals he wondered whether it would ever be possible for him to rejoin the particular platoon of the particular regiment to which he belonged and of which his whereabouts, not having the volume of the Army record at hand, he was in ignorance. In the intervals also he reflected on his past life to a sufficient extent to give the reader a more or less workable idea as to who and to what he was. His father, the old gray-haired Virginian aristocrat, he could see him still. Take this sword, Agilston, he had said. Use it for the State, never for anything else. Don't cut string with it or open tin cans. Never sheath it till the soil of Virginia is free. Keep it bright, my boy. Oil it every now and then, and you'll find it an A1 sword. Did Agilston think, too, in his dire peril of another younger than his father and fairer? Necessarily he did. Go, Agilston, she had exclaimed, as they said farewell under the portico of his father's house where she was visiting. It is your duty, but mine lies elsewhere. I cannot forget that I am a northern girl. I must return it once to my people in Pennsylvania. Oh, egg, when will this cruel war end? So had the lovers parted. Meanwhile, while Agilston is going up and down for the third time, which is, of course, the last, suppose we leave him and return to consider the general position of the Confederacy. All right, suppose we do. Chapter 2 At this date the Confederate army of the Tennessee was extended in a line with its right resting on the Tennessee and its left resting on the Mississippi. Its rear rested on the rugged stone hills of the Chickasaba Range, while its front rested on the marshes and bayous of the Yazoo. Having thus, as far as we understand military matters, both its flanks covered and its rear protected, its position was one which we ourselves consider very comfortable. It was thus in an admirable situation for holding a review or for discussing the Constitution of the United States in reference to the right of secession. The following generals rode up and down in front of the army, namely Mr. A. P. Hill, Mr. Longstreet, and Mr. Joseph Johnston. All these three celebrated men are thus presented to our readers at one in the same time without extra charge. But who is this tall commanding figure who rides beside them, his head bent as if listening to what they are saying, he really isn't, while his eye alternately flashes with animation or softens to its natural melancholy. In fact we can only compare it to an electric light bulb with the power gone wrong. Who is it? It is Jefferson C. Davis, president, as our readers will be gratified to learn of the Confederate states. It being a fine day and altogether suitable for the purpose, General Longstreet reigned in his prancing black charger during this distressed period all the horses in both armies were charged. There was no other way to pay for them. And in a few terse words about three pages gave his views on the Constitution of the United States. Jefferson Davis, standing up in his stirrups, delivered a stirring harangue about six columns on the powers of the Supreme Court admirably calculated to rouse the soldiers to frenzy, after which General A. P. Hill offered a short address, soldier like unto the point, on the fundamental principles of international law which inflamed the army to the highest pitch. At this moment an officer approached the president, saluted and stood rigidly at attention. Davis, with that nice punctilio which marked the southern army, returned to the salute. Do you speak first, he said, or did I? Let me, said the officer. Your Excellency, he continued, a young Virginian officer has just been fished out of the Mississippi. Davis's eye flashed. Good, he said, look and see if there are any more. And then he added with a touch of melancholy, the south needs them, fish them all out, bring this one here. Eggleston Lee Kerry Randolph, still dripping from the waters of the bayou, was led by the faithful Negroes who had rescued him before the generals. Davis, who had kept every thread of the vast panorama of the war in his intricate brain, eyed him keenly and directed a few searching questions to him such as, Who are you? Where are you? What day of the week is it? How much is nine times twelve? and so forth. Satisfied with Eggleston's answers, Davis sat in thought a moment and then continued, I am anxious to send someone through the entire line of the Confederate armies in such a way that he will be present at all the great battles and end up at the battle of Gettysburg. Can you do it? Randolph looked at his chief with a flush of pride. I can. Good, resumed Davis, to accomplish this task you must carry dispatches. What they will be about I have not yet decided, but it is customary in such cases to write them so that they are calculated, if lost, to endanger the entire Confederate cause. The main thing is, can you carry them? Sir, said Eggleston, rising his hand in a military salute, I am a Randolph. Davis with soldierly dignity removed his hat. I am proud to hear it, Captain Randolph, he said. And a carry, continued our hero. Davis, with the graciousness all his own, took off his gloves. I trust you, Major Randolph, he said. And I am a Lee, added Eggleston quickly. Davis with a courtly bow unbuttoned his jacket. It is enough, he said, I trust you. You shall carry the dispatches. You are to carry them on your person, and, as of course you understand, you are to keep on losing them. You are to drop them into rivers, hide them in old trees, bury them under moss, talk about them in your sleep. In fact, sir, said Davis, with a slight gesture of impatience, it was his one fault, you must act towards them as any bearer of Confederate dispatches is expected to act. The point is, can you do it or can't you? Sir, said Randolph, saluting again with simple dignity, I come from Virginia. Pardon me, said the President, saluting with both hands, I had forgotten it. CHAPTER III. Randolph set out that night, mounted upon the fastest horse, in fact the fleetest, that the Confederate army could supply.  Riding over the Tennessee mountains, by paths known absolutely to no one and never advertised, he crossed the Tom Bigby, the Tahoochee, and the Tallahassee, all frightfully swollen, and arrived at the headquarters of General Braxton Bragg. At this moment Bragg was extended over some seven miles of bush and dense swamp. His front rested on the marshes of the Tahoochee River, while his rear was doubled sharply back and rested on a dense growth of cactus plants. Our readers can thus form a fairly accurate idea of Bragg's position. Over against him, not more than fifty miles to the north, his indomitable opponent, Grant, lay in a frog swamp. The space between them was filled with Union and Confederate pickets, fraternizing, joking, roasting corn, and firing an occasional shot at one another. One glance at Randolph's dispatches was enough. Take them at once to General Hood, said Bragg. Where is he? asked Dagelston with military precision. Bragg waved his sword towards the east. It was characteristic of the man that even on active service he carried a short sword, while a pistol, probably loaded, protruded from his belt. But such was Bragg. Anyway, he waved his sword. Over there, beyond the Tahoochee Kaba range, he said. Do you know it? No, said Randolph, but I can find it. Do, said Bragg, and added, one thing more. On your present mission, let nothing stop you. Go forward at all costs. If you come to a river, swim it. If you come to a tree, cut it down. If you strike a fence, climb over it. But don't stop. If you are killed, never mind.  Almost, said Eggelston. Two days later, Eggelston reached the headquarters of General Hood, and flung himself, rather than dismounted, from his jaded horse. Take me to the general, he gasped. They pointed to the log cabin in which General Hood was quartered. Eggelston flung himself, rather than stepped, through the door. Hood looked up from the table. Who was that flung himself in, he asked. Randolph reached out his hand. Dispatches, he gasped. Food, whiskey. Poor lad, said the general. You are exhausted. When did you last have food? Yesterday morning, gasped Eggelston. You're lucky, said Hood bitterly. And when did you last have a drink? Two weeks ago, answered Randolph. Great Heaven, said Hood, starting up. Is it possible? Here, quick, drink it. He reached out a bottle of whiskey. Randolph drained it to the last drop. Now, general, he said, I am at your service. Meanwhile, Hood had cast his eye over the dispatches. Major Randolph, he said, have you seen General Bragg? I have. And Generals Johnston and Smith? Yes. You have been through Mississippi and Tennessee and seen all the battles there? I have, said Randolph. Then, said Hood, there is nothing left except to send you at once to the army in Virginia under General Lee. Remount your horse at once and ride to Gettysburg. Lose no time. Chapter 4 It was at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania that Randolph found General Lee. The famous field is too well known to need description. The armies of the North and the South lay in and around the peaceful village of Gettysburg. About it the yellow cornfields basked in the summer sun. The voices of the teachers and the laughter of merry children rose in the harvest fields. But already the shadow of war was falling over the landscape. As soon as the armies arrived, the shrewder of the farmers suspected that there would be trouble. General Lee was seated gravely on his horse, looking gravely over the ground before him.  We are about to go into action. I need your advice. Randolph bowed.  Do you like the way I have the army placed? asked Lee. Our hero directed a searching look over the field. Frankly I don't, he said. What is the matter with it? questioned Lee eagerly. I have felt there was something wrong myself. What is it? Your left, said Randolph, is too far advanced. It sticks out. By heaven, said Lee, turning to General Longstreet, The boy is right. Is there anything else? Yes, said Randolph, your right is crooked. It is all sideways. It is, it is, said Lee, striking his forehead. I had never noticed it. I'll have it straightened at once. Major Randolph, if the Confederate cause is saved, you and you alone have saved it. One thing more, said Randolph, is your artillery loaded? Major Randolph, said Lee, speaking very gravely, You have saved us again. I never thought of it. At this moment a bullet sang past Eggleston's ear. He smiled. The battle has begun, he murmured. Another bullet buzzed past his other ear. He laughed softly to himself. A shell burst close to his feet. He broke into uncontrolled laughter. This kind of thing always amused him. Then, turning grave in a moment, Put General Lee under cover, he said to those about him, spread something over him. In a few moments the battle was raging in all directions. The Confederate army was nominally controlled by General Lee, but in reality by our hero. Eggleston was everywhere. Horses were shot under him. Mules were shot around him and behind him. Shells exploded all over him. But with undaunted courage he continued to wave his sword in all directions, riding wherever the fight was hottest. The battle raged for three days. On the third day of the conflict, Randolph, his coat shot to rags, his hat pierced, his trousers practically useless, still stood at Lee's side, urging and encouraging him. Mounted on his charger, he flew to and fro in all parts of the field, moving the artillery, leading the cavalry, animating and directing the infantry. In fact, he was the whole battle. But his efforts were in vain. He turned sadly to General Lee. It is bootless, he said. What is, asks Lee. The army, said Randolph, we must withdraw it. Major Randolph, said the Confederate Chief, I yield to your superior knowledge. We must retreat. A few hours later the Confederate forces, checked but not beaten, were retiring southward towards Virginia. Eggleston, his head sunk in thought, rode in the rear. As he thus slowly neared a farmhouse, a woman, a girl, flew from it towards him with outstretched arms. Eggleston, she cried. Randolph flung himself from his horse. Leonora, he gasped, you're here in all this danger. How comes it? What brings you here? We live here, she said. This is Pa's house. This is our farm. Gettysburg is our home. Oh, Egg, it has been dreadful, the noise of the battle. We couldn't sleep for it. Pa's all upset about it. But come in, do come in, dinner's nearly ready. Eggleston gazed a moment at the retreating army. Duty and affection struggled in his heart. I will, he said. CHAPTER V CONCLUSION The strife is done, the conflict has ceased, the wounds are healed, north and south are won, east and west are even less. The civil war is over, Lee is dead, Grant is buried in New York. The Union Pacific runs from Omaha to San Francisco. There is total prohibition in the United States. The output of dressed beef last year broke all records. And Eggleston Lee Kerry Randolph survives, hail and hearty, bright and cheery, free and easy, and so forth. There is gray hair upon his temples, some not much, and his step has lost something of its elasticity, not a great deal, and his form is somewhat bowed, though not really crooked. But he still lives there in the farmstead at Gettysburg, and Leonora, now like himself, an old woman, is still at his side. You may see him any day. In fact, he is the old man who shows you over the battlefield for fifty cents, and explains how he himself fought and won the great battle. End of Section 7, Recording by Trisha G. Section 8 of Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock. Section 8, Bugham Grange A Good Old Ghost Story The evening was already falling, as the vehicle in which I was contained entered upon the long and gloomy avenue that leads to Bugham Grange. A resounding shriek echoed through the wood as I entered the avenue. I paid no attention to it at the moment, judging it to be merely one of those resounding shrieks which one might expect to hear in such a place at such a time. As my drive continued, however, I found myself wondering in spite of myself why such a shriek should have been uttered at the very moment of my approach. I am not by temperament in any degree a nervous man, and yet there was much in my surroundings to justify a certain feeling of apprehension. The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh country of the Fens, to which civilization has still hardly penetrated. The inhabitants, of whom there are only one-and-a-half to the square mile, live here and there among the Fens and eke out a miserable existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect so broken as to be practically unintelligible while the perpetual rain which falls upon them renders speech itself almost superfluous. Here and there, where the ground rises slightly above the level of the Fens, there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filled with owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground is charged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while in the woods it is heavy with the dank odors of deadly nightshade and poison ivy. It had been raining in the afternoon, and as I drove up the avenue the mournful dripping of the rain from the dark trees accentuated the cheerlessness of the gloom. The vehicle in which I rode was a fly on three wheels, the fourth having apparently been broken and taken off, causing the fly to sag on one side and drag on its axle over the muddy ground. The fly thus moving only at a foot's pace in a way calculated to enhance the dreariness of the occasion. The driver on the box in front of me was so thickly muffled up as to be indistinguishable while the horse which drew us was so thickly coated with mist as to be practically invisible. Seldom I may say have I had a drive of so mournful a character. The avenue presently opened out upon a lawn with overgrown shrubberies and in the half-darkness I could see the outline of the Grange itself, a rambling, dilapidated building. A dim light struggled through the casement of a window in a tower room. Save for the melancholy cry of a row of owls sitting on the roof and croaking of the frogs in the moat which ran around the grounds, the place was soundless. My driver halted his horse at the hither side of the moat. I tried in vain to urge him by signs to go further. I could see by the fellow's face that he was in a paroxym of fear that nothing but the extra sixpence which I had added to his fare would have made him undertake the drive up the avenue. I had no sooner alighted than he wheeled his cababout and made off. Laughing heartily at the fellow's trepidation I have a way of laughing heartily in the dark I made my way to the door and pulled the bell handle. I could hear the muffled reverberations of the bell far within the building. Then all was silent. I bent my ear to listen but could hear nothing except, perhaps, the sound of a low moaning as of a person in pain or in great mental distress. Convinced, however, from what my friend Sir Jeremy Bugham had told me that the grange was not empty, I raised the ponderous knocker and beat with it loudly against the door. But perhaps at this point I may do well to explain to my readers before they are too frightened to listen to me how I came to be beating on the door of Bugham Grange at nightfall on a gloomy November evening. A year before I had been sitting with Sir Jeremy Bugham the present baronet on the veranda of his ranch in California. So you don't believe in the supernatural? he was saying. Not in the slightest, I answered lighting a cigar as I spoke. When I want to speak very positively I generally light a cigar as I speak. Well, at any rate Digby, said Sir Jeremy, Bugham Grange is haunted. If you want to be assured of it go down there any time and spend the night and you'll see for yourself. My dear fellow, I replied, nothing will give me greater pleasure. I shall be back in England in six weeks and I shall be delighted to put your ideas to the test. Now tell me, I added somewhat cynically, is there any particular season or day when your Grange is supposed to be specially terrible? Sir Jeremy looked at me strangely. Why do you ask that? he said. Have you heard the story of the Grange? Never heard of the place in my life, I answered cheerily. Till you mentioned it tonight, my dear fellow, I hadn't the remotest idea that you still owned property in England. The Granges shut up, said Sir Jeremy and has been for twenty years. But I keep a man there, horrid. He was Butler in my father's time and before. If you care to go, I'll write him that you're coming. And since you are taking your own fate in your hands, the fifteenth of November is the day. At that moment, Lady Bugham and Clara and the other girls came trooping out on the veranda and the whole thing passed clean out of my mind. Nor did I think of it again until I was back in London. Then by one of those strange coincidences or premonitions, call it what you will, it suddenly occurred to me one morning that it was the fifteenth of November. Whether Sir Jeremy had written to horrid or not, I do not know. But nonetheless, Nightfall found me, as I have described, knocking at the door of Bugham Grange. The sound of the knocker had scarcely ceased to echo when I heard the shuffling of feet within and the sound of chains and bolts being withdrawn. The door opened.  His faded black clothes, once apparently a butler's dress, his white hair and advanced age, left me in no doubt that he was horrid of whom Sir Jeremy had spoken. Without a word he motioned me to come in, and without speech he helped me to remove my wet outer garments and then beckoned me into a great room, evidently the dining room of the Grange. I am not in any degree a nervous man by temperament as I think I remarked before, and yet there was something in the vastness of the wainscotted room lighted only by a single candle and in the silence of the empty house and still more in the appearance of my speechless attendant which gave me a feeling of distinct uneasiness. As horrid moved to and fro, I took occasion to scrutinize his face more narrowly. I have seldom seen features more calculated to inspire a nervous dread. The pallor of his face and the whiteness of his hair, the man was at least 70, and still more the peculiar furtiveness of his eyes seemed to mark him as one who lived under a great terror. He moved with a noiseless step and at times he turned his head to glance in the dark corners of the room. Sir Jeremy told me I said, speaking as loudly and as heartily as I could that he would apprise you of my coming. I was looking into his face as I spoke.  I am not nervous I think I said that the realization that my sole companion in the empty house was a deaf mute struck a cold chill to my heart. Horrid laid in front of me a cold meat pie, a cold goose, a cheese, and a tall flagon of cider, but my appetite was gone. I ate the goose but found that after I had finished the pie I had but little zest for the cheese which I finished without enjoyment. The cider had a sour taste and after having permitted Horrid to fill the flagon twice I found that it induced a sense of melancholy and decided to drink no more. My meal finished the butler picked up the candle and beckoned me to follow him. We passed through the empty corridors of the house a long line of pictured buggums looking down upon us as we passed their portraits in the flickering light of the taper assuming a strange and lifelike appearance mirrored from their frames to gaze upon the intruder. Horrid led me upstairs and I realized that he was taking me to the tower in the east wing in which I had observed a light. The rooms to which the butler conducted me consisted of a sitting room with an adjoining bedroom both of them fitted with antique wainscotting against which a faded tapestry fluttered. There was a candle burning on the table in the sitting room and the insufficient light only rendered the surroundings the more dismal.  The butler left me and in the stillness of the house I could hear his shuffling step echo down the corridor. It may have been fancy but it seemed to me that his departure was the signal for a low moan to find the wainscot. There was a narrow cupboard door at one side of the room and for the moment I wondered whether the moaning came from within. I am not as a rule lacking in courage I am sure my reader will be decent enough to believe this yet I found myself entirely unwilling to open the cupboard door and look within. In place of doing so I seated myself in a great chair in front of the feeble fire. I sat there for some time when I happened to lift my eyes to the mantle above and saw standing upon it a letter addressed to myself. I knew the handwriting at once to be that of Sir Jeremy Bugham. I opened it and spreading it out within reach of the feeble candlelight I read as follows My dear Digby in our talk that you will remember I had no time to finish telling you about the mystery of Bugham Grange I take for granted however that you will go there and that Horrid will put you in the tower rooms which are the only ones that make any pretense of being habitable. I have therefore sent him this letter to deliver at the Grange itself. The story is this On the night of the 15th of November 50 years ago my grandfather was murdered in the room in which you are sitting by his cousin Sir Dougham Bugham He was stabbed from behind while seated at the little table at which you are probably reading this letter The two had been playing cards at the table and my grandfather's body was found lying in a litter of cards and gold sovereigns on the floor Sir Dougham Bugham insensible from drink lay beside him the fatal knife at his hand his fingers smeared with blood My grandfather though of the younger branch possessed a part of the estates that were hurt to Sir Dougham on his death Sir Dougham Bugham was tried at the assizes and was hanged On the day of his execution he was permitted by the authorities out of respect for his rank to wear a mask to the scaffold The clothes in which he was executed are hanging at full length in the little cupboard to your right and the mask is above them It is said that on every 15th of November at midnight the servants and Sir Dougham Bugham walks out into the room It has been found impossible to get servants to remain at the Grange and the place except for the presence of Horrid has been unoccupied for a generation At the time of the murder Horrid was a young man of 22 newly entered into the service of the family It is he who entered the room and discovered the crime On the day of the execution he was stricken with paralysis and has never spoken since From that time to this he has never consented to leave the Grange where he lives in isolation Wishing you a pleasant night after your tiring journey I remain very faithfully Jeremy Bugham I leave my reader to imagine my state of mind when I completed the perusal of the letter I have as little belief in the supernatural as anyone yet I must confess that there was something in the surroundings in which I now found myself which rendered me at least uncomfortable My reader may smile if he will but I assure him that it was with a very distinct feeling of uneasiness that I at length managed to rise to my feet and grasping my candle in my hand to move backward into the bedroom As I backed into it something so like a moan seemed to proceed from the closed cupboard that I accelerated my backward movement to a considerable degree I hastily blew out the candle threw myself upon the bed and drew the bed clothes over my head keeping however one eye and one ear still out and available How long I lay thus listening to every sound I cannot tell the stillness had become absolute From time to time I could dimly hear the distant cry of an owl and once far away in the building below a sound as of someone dragging a chain along a floor More than once I was certain I heard the sound of moaning behind the wainscot Meantime I realized that the hour must now be drying close upon the fatal moment of midnight My watch I could not see in the darkness but by reckoning the time that must have elapsed I knew that midnight could not be far away Then presently my ear alert to every sound could just distinguish far away across the fence the striking of a church bell in the clock tower of Bugham Village Church no doubt tolling the hour of twelve On the last stroke of twelve the cupboard door in the next room opened There is no need to ask me how I knew it I couldn't of course see it but I could hear or sense in some way the sound of it I could feel my hair all of it rising upon my head I was aware that there was a presence in the adjoining room I will not say a person, a living soul but a presence Anyone who has been in the next room to a presence will know just how I felt I could hear a sound as of someone groping on the floor and the faint rattle as of coins My hair was now perpendicular My reader can blame it or not but it was Then at this very moment from somewhere below in the building there came the sound of a prolonged and piercing cry a cry as of a soul passing in agony My reader may censure me or not but right at this moment I decided to beat it Whether I should have remained to see what was happening is a question that I will not discuss My one idea was to get out and to get out quickly The window of the tower room was some twenty five feet above the ground I sprang out through the casement in one leap and landed on the grass below I jumped over the shrubbery in one bound and cleared the moat in one jump I went down the avenue in about six strides and ran five miles along the road through the fence in three minutes This at least is an accurate transcription of my sensations It may have taken longer I never stopped until I found myself on the threshold of the bugam arms in little bugam feeding on the door for the landlord I returned to Bugam Grange on the next day in the bright sunlight of a frosty November morning in a seven cylinder motor car with six local constables and a physician It makes all the difference We carried revolvers, spades, pickaxes shotguns and a Ouija board What we found cleared up forever the mystery of the Grange We discovered Horrid the Butler on the dining room floor quite dead The physician said that he had died from heart failure There was evidence from the marks of his shoes in the dust that he had come in the night to the tower room On the table he had placed a paper which contained a full confession of his having murdered Jeremy Bugam 50 years before The circumstances of the murder had rendered it easy for him to fasten the crime upon Sir Dougam already insensible from drink A few minutes with the Ouija board enabled us to get a full corroboration from Sir Dougam He promised, moreover now that his name was cleared to go away from the premises forever My friend, the present Sir Jeremy has rehabilitated Bugam Grange The place is rebuilt The moat is drained The whole house is lit with electricity There are beautiful motor drives in all directions in the woods He has had the bats shot and the owls stuffed His daughter, Clara Bugam became my wife She is looking over my shoulder as I write What more do you want? End of section 8 Recording by Tricia G End of Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels by Stephen Lee Cock


What is going on everybody Astos here welcome back to another video so in today's video we're going to be doing an overall market update taking a look at the Dow Jones the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq we're also going to be doing a trading update talking about what I did today on the 10th of July in terms of my trades as well as taking a look at some other stocks and ETFs that I personally see potential in and that I want to trade here in the month of July in 2019 so without further ado guys let's just hop right into the topic of today's video if you do enjoy this video find value in it go down below hit that like button subscribe if you do want to see further content for me and let's just get right into it guys so today the S&P 500 hit an all-time high at $3,002.98 at the close of the market it was up $13.44 up 0.45 percent the Dow Jones industrial average was up $76 today $76.71 at the close up 0.29 percent and this also hit an all-time high today at $26,983.45 the Nasdaq today guys up 81 points up 1.04 percent and an all-time high was hit nearly at $8,000 at $79.49.5 on the dot so today guys I'm sure a lot of you already know about this but there was a Fed meeting this morning where Powell Drone Powell the Federal Reserve Chairman he pretty much hinted to a rate cut you know increasing chances of a rate cut in the meeting here towards the end of the of July through the 30th and the 31st of July and obviously right now guys you know the markets like I've been saying in these videos they've been pricing in the rate cut like absolute crazy right if we go on the S&P 500 here you guys remember we sold off in the whole month of May you guys can clearly see it here and then once we got that news of a potential rate cut it was literally you know I forget how the news came about but it wasn't even confirmed from Powell the markets you know the markets went like crazy the markets took this as a sign of optimism in a time when the markets needed that optimism and then boom the markets exploded in the month of June as you guys can see you know from 2736 the S&P you know the you know the rally hasn't even stopped yet right from 2730 all the way up to three thousand and two dollars which is absolutely crazy guys the S&P has hit a milestone you know hitting these three thousand dollar you know ranges here so that's pretty much why the markets you know gapped up this morning hit all time highs because we just got further you know further um um what's the word you know further validation that we are most likely going to be getting a 25 basis point rate cut here towards the end of July and if we take a look at technicals here guys on the SPX very good technicals for a bull run here for the continuation of a bull run and for the continuation of this uptrend and let me explain why so we talked about yesterday you know and all of these videos honestly these market update videos on the one year one day for the S&P you know we're holding over an old resistance as a new support right now pretty much with the pop that we saw today guys very good sign here because we pulled back we retested this old resistance as a new support and we popped up and we also broke out of the of the wedge that we were trading in and that I talked about in yesterday's video right you guys remember this wedge that we were in I bet you can see it better on um this 10 day chart we were trading in this wedge and I said you know if we break out of it that's going to be a very bullish run or move rather that's going to be a sign that S&P could continue its run and what happened guys we broke out and we hit an all-time high yet again and if we were to break to the downside that would be a pretty bearish move that would be a break of pattern and we could see more red at that point that obviously didn't happen right so that's a pretty good sign the fact that we broke out of that wedge to the upside on the 20 day one hour here notice how the 50 SMA is still acting as a support we pretty much bounced on it this morning as we popped out of that wedge that is looking good the uptrend is still intact this is honestly a textbook beautiful uptrend here nothing is really you know pointing to us selling off here and honestly the next spot that I'm seeing the S&P and want the S&P to hold is above this level here at about 2990 to about 2995 and that just happens to be you know a resistance spot from a couple of days ago so ideally here maybe we pull back we retest that 50 SMA but ideally you know if we continue this uptrend which I think at this point we will continue this uptrend up until you know July when we get that rate cut I think the markets are going to continue to rally what happens after that guys I'm not too sure quite yet no one really knows but speculation here I think we'll run up until that rate cut and from there the markets I don't know we'll see what happens after that but at least the rest of July I expect that run and hey we might pull back we retest this level pop break above 3000 again and at that point I would like to see the S&P hold 2950 29 or rather 2995 2990 and 3000 I would like that level to be held as a new support so that's kind of the breakdown there on the S&P 500 the Dow Jones you guys can clearly see here we broke out of the wedge again just like the S&P rather not again because there wasn't a wedge before but the wedge that we drew in yesterday's video and the previous video you know we were able to break out of that to the upside right very very bullish move there we're trending above the 50 SMA here on the 10 day 30 minute chart holding that level as a support that is looking pretty good the 20 day one hour here you guys can see again we broke out of that wedge may again hit that high or high and now we're holding that 50 SMA as a support which has been a support over these past couple of weeks that's a very good sign as well and everything that I'm seeing here you know is pointing to further upwards momentum for the Dow Jones and like the S&P we talked about 2995 that old resistance needs to be held as a support in the next couple of days and that level on the Dow is going to be around 26850 right around here you guys can see that was a resistance back on the 21st of June back on the 1st of July we broke above it a little bit we failed to hold it as a support making it a resistance again and now you guys can see if I extend the trend line a bit you know we're literally right on top of that level right now so ideally here guys tomorrow I would love to see a hold above this level which would honestly hold us above the 50 SMA as well and from there we could continue the uptrend and who knows guys we may be getting into the 27,000 territory 27,200 27,250 that would be nice on the Dow if we hold those levels and overall you guys can clearly see we are holding old resistances now as new supports on the Dow we just need to see obviously if this upswing is going to continue and I do expect the markets to continue to run here at least in the short term up until we get that 25 basis point rate cut which Jerome Powell really hinted to today you know earlier on in the day so the NASDAQ today guys did very well up 1% like we said in the beginning of the video I don't know if you guys can see this because my face is down here but tech stocks green throughout the board are at least the main ones that I personally follow including Netflix, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple they were up all good today and Apple is actually the stock that I profited on today and I'll talk about that in a couple of minutes here and for those of you guys that remember I bought Apple yesterday and it was an overnight swing trade but I don't want to get there quite yet give me a couple minutes guys I will get to that but the NASDAQ here very similar to the Dow and the S&P we're at all time highs now and we're looking to hold those old resistance levels from the past year as you guys can see here on the one year one day we're looking to hold those levels as new support levels right this level here we clearly broke above it we broke above 7850, 7900 now we're in the 7950 range now we need to pull back guys retest this level for the uptrend to continue in my personal opinion so hopping here to the 20 day one hour you guys can see we completely popped above the 50 estimate today we're out of that wedge very bullish move here on the NQ we hit that high or high everything is looking like the uptrend is still intact so guys markets right now they're extremely extremely extremely bullish right VIX is down a dollar and six that's the volatility index and the VIX right now guys has been getting clobbered here over the past couple of weeks as is expected because when the markets are rallying hitting highs you know the VIX tends to do pretty poorly as you guys can see you know the VIX went from 36 all the way down to 11 you know from the beginning of 2019 to the month of April when that market when the markets in general were on this big rally and now that the rally is really just continuing we're hitting all-time highs again the VIX is continuing to get clobbered here so let me know down below in the comment section what do you guys think about the markets right now I would love to know your opinion as always and without further ado let's just talk about what I did today in terms of my trades and my trading today guys was very quick very easy because all I did was sell a swing trade that I bought yesterday and that swing trade that I bought yesterday was in ticker symbol AAPL so the whole you know basis of this swing trade the whole idea behind it was entering roughly at $200 as we broke above this resistance the whole idea was to enter as we confirmed that as a new support and for those of you guys that watched my video yesterday I talked about exactly when I entered you know we popped up briefly above 200 we pulled back right and we retested this level as a new support roughly at about $200 and we saw the big pop up to about 201 and I was already entered somewhere around here the 220 to 230 level and from there guys you know we saw the pretty big optimism pre-market today the futures were doing quite well and this really spiked up Apple very aggressively and when I saw pre-market guys the massive run was at 202 right before the market was about to open and then when we got that big green candle this morning you know I was like okay and especially once we started to get into 203 I was up like 1.2% on my position at that point I was like okay this was a very quick move it was overnight right I'm taking my profits and that's what I ended up doing guys so from about 230 let's say 200.30 ended up getting out at about 203 ish 203.1 you can see that's about a 1.3 to 1.4% profit on an overnight swing trade which makes me really happy I'm ecstatic with that I'm content with that and that's all I ended up doing guys you know there were other stocks there were other ETFs that did quite well today but I missed out on those I didn't really take any positions on those I was just simply watching the markets you know after I ended up selling out of my Apple position so let me know how did you guys end up doing today what do you think about tech what do you think about Apple you know what what do you think the markets are going to do honestly I would love to know everything that you guys are thinking down below in the comment section let me know guys I love talking to you all so that's it really for today's trading update and honestly for the rest of this week I'm going to be watching how the market reacts you know are we going to continue to rally which I personally think is very very likely very very possible here and if the market continues to rally I think Apple can also be a potential trade you know to get into tomorrow right we can see there is a lot of room left to run on Apple up to 210 you may be asking yourself why don't you just hold it then right because honestly I just wanted to lock in the very quick profit that's the truth guys and there's never a bad it's never a bad idea to just lock in your profits right that's my personal belief I stick to my plan right if I'm 1.5 percent in the green and I'm very comfortable with that and it's short term why not just take the profit wait for a better entry point so at this point you know let's say we end up you know getting capped at that 205 resistance on Apple maybe we pull back a bit maybe we retest 201 maybe we retest 202 that could be another entry point on Apple or let's say we break above 205 we pull back and we hold 205 as a new support that could be a nice fill from 205 up to 210 these are a couple scenarios that I'm waiting for on Apple that could potentially play out here we saw crude oil this morning went on a ridiculous move it filled that gap completely this really just happened overnight so I wasn't really able to capitalize on it and that's the one thing that kind of sucks trading these inverse ETFs that trade on futures a lot of the time if you don't hold the future overnight or rather the ETF overnight you can miss out because a lot of the time these futures make their moves overnight so example here you know crude oil yesterday it closed I believe at like $58 towards the close of the market and let's say you were to buy UWT you would have made all of your money overnight if you were to buy UWT that goes up whenever crude oil is going up right you would have made a whopping 11% today which is absolutely crazy right and if we go to crude oil very quickly so I can show you guys that it made that move overnight take a look here one day one minute let's see guys you can clearly see it right take a look at this time period this morning 7 10 which is July 10th 2 a.m eastern standard time I was sleeping at this point right you know 5870 we ran up all the way from 5870 to about 5950 when the market opened so that move that UWT move was pretty much made overnight and again that sucks when that ends up happening it's ideal if that happens during the market so you can capitalize on it without taking that massive risk of holding an inverse ETF a leveraged ETF overnight but you win some you lose some guys and you miss out on some that's just the reality of trading right that's just the reality of things here so now at this point guys it's a bit tricky right because the RSI is overbought we're at a resistance right now at this point I would love to see it break 60 and hold 60 as a new support see that RSI get to a healthy spot and maybe fill up to 63 but that might be too big of a move and too short of a time for crude oil so I don't really know guys at this point I'm just going to be watching it I think the move has already been made there no sense of chasing it but natural gas at this point this one's looking very very good we're breaking out of the 180 SMA we're holding that 180 SMA we held it as a support we're breaking out of this downward channel that we were talking about in yesterday's video and that I have illustrated here on the chart very very bullish here guys we broke out you know everything is looking pretty good right now for natural gas and for you guys and the thing here also that's looking pretty solid guys is that we're inching above the next resistance spot which is about 248 well at this point we're still a bit under it but we were inching above it you know at this point in time kind of at this point right it's actually more towards not 248 I guess you could say it's more at like 245 literally exactly where we are right now so this is a level where you know if we pop out of it we could be filling up the next gap to about maybe 254 maybe 255 so that could be the next move on natural gas and if that does end up happening guys you know you guys which goes up whenever natural gas is going up that is going to be the play that I'm personally watching and at this point guys you guys is actually at a pretty healthy dip buy so hopefully natural gas doesn't make the move overnight so we can capitalize on this tomorrow maybe pre-market hours heading into the open of the market because if we're dipped we're dipped now down to about 19 bucks high at about 20 that's about a six percent margin of profit there if you guys is able to bounce and fill up to about 20 bucks so I'm watching that very closely here AMZM Amazon really played out exactly to how I ended up calling it out on Sunday's video but the sad thing is guys I didn't even play Amazon I played Apple but again you know you can't play all of them you miss some you lose some you you you win some that's just how it goes right but all I'm saying is that it went according to plan although I did not end up trading it remember how I was talking about if it broke 1950 it could fill the gap up to 2020 and now maybe to the next high which is at about 2050 you know these are things that ended up happening on Amazon but now it's a bit overbought we may be pulling back who knows here guys but I think the boat has sailed right now on Amazon and this if you're hopping in right now you may be suffering a case of FOMO fear of missing out guys so let's take a look very quickly at some stocks that have just been going crazy and that those stocks have been the semi stocks guys MU in particular oh my goodness guys my long-term portfolio is thanking me now because MU I've been down on this position for I don't even know how long at this point probably like a year I bought in in the 50s and you guys saw what happened it went all the way down to $28 I was down quite a bit and now we're finally starting to get some of the money back although I am still red I'm viewing this as a longer term position so it's not really bothering me but I think it's worth taking a look at for potential trades right now obviously we're a bit overbought here if we pull back that would be ideal retest that 50 SMA that is what I'm watching here on MU you know AMD very similar right we're actually killing it on AMD right now you know it's you know we bounced off that 180 SMA at 29 bucks we broke that downwards trending you know resistance here very good breakout but at this point again just like MU it's a bit overbought ideally I would like to see a pullback and a retest at the 50 SMA that could be a potential entry so those are just a couple of stocks and ETFs that I'm watching right now guys let me know down below in the comment section what do you think about them what are you watching what are your thoughts on the market again I would love to know so if you enjoy this video feel free to go down below hit that like button drop a comment subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already if you want to be further connected with our community the two links the StriveSmart discord the StriveSmart facebook are linked down below and if you want to follow me on instagram that is linked down below as well so I'll catch you all in the next video thanks again for watching peace out what is going on everybody Astos here welcome back to one of their videos


What's up, everybody? Ricky Caruth here. I hope you're doing super well today. I hope you're staying home. I hope you're staying safe. Just waiting for this thing to blow over.  This too shall pass. We're going to be fine through this. So what I want to talk about today is while you're at home, okay, while you can't go anywhere, can't do anything. I want you to be super productive. I'm going to do a couple of videos for the next couple of days about things you can do while you're at your house to stay productive. Today I want to talk to you about calling your past clients. I think this is something that should be number one, where you should do very first in these situations is reach back out to all of your past clients, see how they're doing, see what's going on, see what you can do to help them. So I'm going to go through a little script here. Before we get into that, I want to let you know that Web & Ate, the guys that made my website, my real estate website, rickiekeruthrealestate.com, is doing no setup fees during the pandemic. I'm going to put a link below or you can go to zerididiamond.com to hit the Web & Ate link and they're going to build you a website just like mine with all the links of the subdivision, junior area, the whole nine yards, a custom website with no setup fee. So you're going to get a custom website for no setup fee. Also, something else I want you to start doing since you have to stay home. I'm sure a lot of you that go to the gym and exercise can't go to the gym right now.  So a lot of us are trying to work out from our home. And what I don't want you to do is get into this situation where you get into a routine where you just stop working out. Okay, I've been working out at my house every day. I hit shoulders today and then I jogged around the block. So I want you to continue your routine just like if everything was normal. Get up early, you know, drink water, do whatever you have to do, work out right there, hit it as hard as you can, do everything you can do to be the best person you can be through this situation. Now, as far as past clients go, okay, we should call these people first, then we're going to move into people we don't know and continue building our business, building our database. This is the best time to actually build that database and to grow your sphere for when the market comes out of this, you're going to have so much business lined up. It's not even fun. Before I get into the script of what I would do right now in this situation, I want to link a video below that I did a while back about calling past clients that you haven't talked to in a while, because I know a lot of you might be scared of calling past clients you haven't talked to in a while. You don't know how to reconnect. You're worried about that they might think you forgot about them or whatever the case may be, you're just scared to call those past clients. You haven't called in a long time. I made a video a while back that you should really watch about how to handle that situation, how to ease into that conversation and make it very comfortable for all parties. So when we're calling our past clients right now, we're at home, we can't go anywhere, we're quarantined, they're probably quarantined. We're going to call them up and we're just going to say, hey, this is Ricky Kruth. They already know who we are. They're our past clients. They've done business with this or we've talked about doing business. They know who we are. It's going to be a familiar voice, they know your name, and they're going to be glad to hear from you. So we're going to tell them who we are. We're just going to say, how are you doing? What is going on? How are you doing through this? Chances are they're going to get into a story about what all's been going on with them. They're at the home, they have kids, all this and that, whatever they have going on, they're going to tell you. You want to listen. You want to listen to what they have going on. That is the purpose of this call, is to reconnect and deepen that relationship. Once we get through that part of the call, we may want to tell them what's going on with us because they want to hear. They want to know, they want to tell you what's going on with them and they want to hear what's going on with you. So it's a two-way street and we're going to get into this conversation. We're going to talk like we're family, like we're friend or family. We want to remember my FE, friend or family effect. I want to make them feel as if they are our dad, brother, cousin, mother, best friend from high school. We want them to feel through our voice, through our tone, through the flow, through the speed of our voice, through the relaxness of our voice. We want our shoulders to be relaxed. We want to talk to them exactly the way that we would talk to our close family members. At that point, we're going to ask them if there's anything that we could do for them in terms of real estate. Are they looking to maybe buy when this is all over with? Are they looking to sell when this is all over with? Where do they stand in the real estate world in terms of what they're thinking about doing? Chances are they're going to say nothing. They're just waiting for this to blow over. They're just going to sit tight and that's fine. Be ready for those type of answers and just take them as they come and just be there. We just want to ask how they're doing. Let them tell us how they're doing. Tell them how we're doing and ask if there's anything that we can do for them and let them know that we're here and that we're going to be here regardless. Another very important part of this call is to let them know that you're not going anywhere. You're not going to let this scare you out of the business. You're not getting out of the business. You're here. Your feet are planted. You're not going anywhere. That's going to tell them a lot about you and they're going to feel more and more comfortable with you as their long-term agent, their lifelong agent, the agent that they're the most loyal to. They're going to respect the fact that you're calling them. They're going to respect the fact that you're staying in real estate and that you're still out here making calls, working hard. Don't over complicate this. Don't make it harder than it is. Let's keep it simple. Let's just call our past client, see how they're doing and deepen those relationships. Let them know that we're here. We're not going anywhere and I want you to really dig into this. Definitely take this step. Stay busy through this situation. We just want to stay busy. Keep putting in the work. Don't stop. When we come out of this, I promise you that you're going to have more business than you can handle. So just hang in there. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep working hard. Don't lose faith. Believe in what we're doing. The mark is not going anywhere. It may go up or down, but it's not going anywhere. Tomorrow I want to talk about circle prospecting. I want to go deeper with circle prospecting during this time. So definitely tune in for that video. Let me know what I can do for you. Shoot me a comment. Hit the like button. Hit subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Let's go.


Hello everyone, welcome to this session on flip-flop design. In today's session we are going to design a T flip-flop or you may call it as a flip-flop conversion also using JK flip-flop. So, at the end of this session you will be able to discuss the operation of T flip-flop. T flip-flop is also called as a toggle flip-flop. Discuss the general model used for flip-flop conversion or design T flip-flop using other flip-flops. So, we already know that we are designing all the basic flip-flops using a generic latch structure. That is why you can call this process also conversion flip-flop conversion. So, let us understand what is a T flip-flop. So, T flip-flops comes with two mode store mode and toggle mode. In store mode T flip-flop stores the last state whereas in toggle mode the output of the flip-flop always toggle between 0 and 1. So, toggle flip-flop changes its state on every clock edge of the clock. So, in the toggle mode frequency of the queue is half of the input clock frequency. So, that is divided by 2. So, because of this most often this flip-flop is used in counters and frequency divider circuits. So, the function table is shown on the right side of the slide where inputs are like clock and T where outputs are the next state of flip-flop. So, on the edges of this clock if the T is 0 the next state is always the last state. So, no change will be there if T is equal to 0, but if T is equal to 1 the output is always complement of the last state ok. So, you can call this as a next state is always complement of the present state. On the left hand side two symbols are shown of T flip-flops. The first symbol is positive is triggered T flip-flop whereas second symbol is negative is triggered T flip-flop. Now, let us revisit the general model which we are going to use for flip-flop conversion. We are using JK flip-flop to design T flip-flop. So, next state is the conventional logic circuit which accepts external inputs and present state of the flip-flop provided. So, this next state logic is always used to generate excitation inputs required for the given flip-flop and this is how you can achieve the flip-flop conversion. The excitation inputs must be provided to the given flip-flop to obtain the definite next state as per the given specification. So, in this case as per the T flip-flop function table. The new flip-flop which you are going to design inherits the triggering mechanism of the given flip-flop. So, if you are using here negative is triggered flip-flop, negative is triggered JK flip-flop then you are going to design a negative is triggered T flip-flop. If you use here positive is triggered JK flip-flop then you are going to design a positive is triggered T flip-flop. Now, let us go through the steps to design or to convert the flip-flop. So, we are first going to modify our general model as per the specifications given. So, we are going to design a T flip-flop using JK flip-flop. So, we are going to modify our general model as per this specification. So, here the next state logic will accept T input and the present state of JK flip-flop to generate the excitation inputs for the JK flip-flop. We are considering here negative is triggered JK flip-flop. So, that is why we are going to design a negative is triggered T flip-flop. Now, for designing we required a conversion table you you may call it as a state synthesis table to derive the excitation inputs of the given flip-flop. So, this table is derived from the characteristic table of T flip-flop and the excitation table of JK flip-flop that is given in our case. So, this is the characteristic table of T flip-flop. You can pause the video and please write down the excitation table of JK flip-flop which is required for deriving the conversion table for this design problem. So, this is the JK flip-flop excitation table. So, we are going to design a conversion table using these two tables by combining these two tables. So, the first part of conversion table is nothing but the characteristic table of your T flip-flop. So, JK flip-flop excitation table identifies the JK input combinations for the required Q to QT plus 1 that is present state to next state transition as per the characteristic table of T flip-flop. So, the conversion table the first part is nothing but your characteristic table of T flip-flop whereas, the last two columns are the JK excitation inputs. So, 0 to 0 the excitations required for JK flip-flop is 0x, 1 to 1 that is present state 1 next state 1 excitations required for JK flip-flop is x 0, present state 0 next state 1 the excitation required is 1x, present state 1 next state 0 the excitation inputs required for JK flip-flop is x 1. So, this is how you can actually derive the conversion table required for this design. Now, let us use this conversion table to derive the J and K inputs. So, for that purpose we are going to use K map. So, with the K map we will derive the output expressions of the next state combinational logic that is J and K. So, first we will derive the J expression. So, we will map this J column on the K map. So, two variable K map is used here. So, T is used for column Q is used for rows. So, after mapping this J column on this K map you will find that a pair is possible. So, after grouping this 1 with this do not care case you will create a pair here and the expression for this pair is nothing but T. So, the expression for J we derived here is a T. Similarly, we will go for the K expression. So, let us map this K column on the K map. So, 0 x x 1. So, 0 x x 1. So, after grouping this mean term 3 with do not care case we will have here a pair again and the expression for this pair is T. So, here we have derived J and K expressions which in this case is T, J is equal to T and K is equal to T. Now, we will replace these expressions in our block diagram which we have learned in the last slides. So, here we do not require any hardware actually we can just use one wire we can short the J and K inputs and we can name it as a toggle input. So, let us draw the final logic diagram with the next state logic output expressions. So, here J and K inputs are shorted together and the name is given to this input is toggle that is T. So, here to convert JK flip flop to T flip flop no extra hardware is required only a wire is required which you can use to short J and K terminals. So, JK flip flop can be used as toggle flip flop just shorting the J and K inputs. So, this is how you can actually design a T flip flop using JK flip flop. So, you can repeat this process for designing T flip flop using any other flip flop. For example, T flip flop using SR flip flop or T flip flop using D flip flop or T flip flop using any other flip flop. So, these are the references you can go through for further reading. Thank you.


The study investigated the effect of sulfonation on polymers made up of styrene, STY, glycidyl methacrylate, GMA, and divinal benzene, DVB, to determine how the material structure affects its ability to remove ammonia from wastewater. The results showed that the sulfonation reaction had a significant impact on the polymer's performance, with the most efficient polymer being one composed of STY, DVB, and sulfonic acid groups. This polymer had a greater surface area than other polymers tested, but its ion exchange capacity was lower. This article was authored by Leilani C. Deus, Carla Michelle Frodet de Silva, Maximiliano F. Martens, and others.


Respect is social currency and living with honor is living pono or living right This isn't about following my bliss. It's about doing what gives my life meaning My mission is to create and inspire growth. I think of myself as a peaceful person But when that cage door closes