Starring Joel McRae as Ranger Jase Pearson. An act of a case transcribed in the files of the Texas Rangers. Those themselves are a matter of record. Monday through Friday, there's top entertainment all day long when you set your radio dial to NBC. Listen for Double or Nothing, and you'll hear one of radio's funniest quiz shows. Yes, Walter O'Keefe consistently comes up with great comedy entertainment Monday through Friday on Double or Nothing. Listen and you'll agree. And then there's the program with a heart, Strike it Rich. The grand entertainment that Warren Hull brings you every day on Strike it Rich is just what the doctor ordered if you suffer from the housework blues. From Chicago, Tommy Bartlett brings you Welcome Travelers and interviews with the many interesting guests who each day pass through the windy city. And for more fun, listen for Bob and Ray, those two zany comics. Then there's Music and Charm with Dave Garroway. So remember every day Monday through Friday, chase your blues away with the wonderful daytime programs on this station of the NBC radio network. And now here's today's adventure with the tales of the Texas Rangers. And now from the files of the Texas Rangers, the case called Illusion. It is 3 a.m. on October 3, 1945, in the town of Eagle Rock, Texas, Sheriff Glenn Minton is awakened by an urgent knocking on the door of his house. He slips on a bathrobe and walks downstairs as the knocking... Sheriff! Who is it? Amy West! I've got to talk to you, Sheriff. Please let me come in. All right. Now whatever it is, it can't be that bad. You don't know, Sheriff. You don't know. You can't. Now you just sit down and relax. No. Please don't leave me. Sheriff, they tried it again. Tried what? They tried to kill me. Who? I don't know. Somebody. Dad. Now look here, Amy. I've known you since you were a kid and I'm going to talk to you like a father. I know what you're going to say. You think I'm imagining things. Well, it kind of looks that way.  They are. I know it. Amy, the other time we proved to you it was either accident or imagination. You've never believed me. When the brakes went out on my car. When that man came into the house to kill me. You didn't believe it. Amy, you said that prowler was still in the house when I got there and you know I didn't find nobody. He was there. I know he wasn't. And tonight he came back.  What? I woke up and smelled gas. Before I could get out of there, there was an explosion. Where? The bathroom, I think. Part of my bedroom blew up. I don't know how I wasn't killed. Well, why didn't you phone? Instead of driving all the way in here. The phone wouldn't work. Oh, it was awful. Why did they want me dead? Why? What kind of gas fixtures do you have in the bathroom? Well, there's a little stove and the hot water heater. Where's your husband, Amy? Mark the way buying calves. He'll be back in the morning. Sheriff, somebody came in and turned the gas on. I know it. Amy, think hard now. Could you have left that gas on yourself? No. No, I couldn't. Sheriff, you've got to listen to me. Somebody is trying to kill me. Somebody wants me dead. All right, Amy. All right. Now get hold of yourself. We'll go out to your house and have a look. The sheriff made a preliminary investigation at the West Ranch House. He then requested assistance from the Texas Rangers. Ranger Jase Pearson was assigned and reached the ranch at 10 that morning. Mark West, Amy's husband, had arrived home in the meantime. The two officers left Mr. West downstairs with his wife and went up to investigate the scene of the explosion. Pretty much to the mess, ain't it, Jase? Mrs. West was lucky, though. I'd seen gas heater explosions when there wasn't a thing left of the house. What do you make of it? You figure somebody could have come in here and turned the gas on like Amy says? The heater valve was open. Yeah, but Amy could have left it open herself. You know how careless people are about things like that? Uh-huh.  That's right. But, Jase, to tell the truth, I don't put much stock in what she's been saying. Why not?  You know how women are sometimes. Is she happy with her husband? Oh, Mark's always been real good to her. She seems to be crazy about Amy and her about him. Only one thing wrong I ever knew of. What's that? Well, both of them's always wanted kids and they never had any. The last five, six years, Amy's been kind of broodin' about it. What about these other times, she said attempts had been made on her life? Well, the first time it was the brakes on her car. They went out and Amy's smacked into a fence. She was lucky, just shook her up some. Mechanics said it could happen to any car. And the second time? She phoned me and said there was a prowler downstairs. When I got here, she swore she could still hear him walking around. I looked everywhere and I didn't find a sign of anybody. Where was her husband? Away. He'd gone up to Dallas early that evening. You reckon he's involved in this? Oh, I don't think so. Jase, like I say, he's pretty fond of her. Far as you know, Sheriff, did Mrs. West ever try to take her own life? Well, just between us, the way Amy's been acting lately, I wouldn't put it faster. We'd better go down and have a talk with both of them. If Amy does have ideas about suicide, Jase, how come all this talk about somebody trying to kill her? Well, human mind's a funny thing. Sometimes that's the way it works. You mean she could have done all these things herself and yet she really leaves somebody else who's been doing them? Something like that. You know that crossed my mind when I was talking with Amy. Oh, Sheriff. Living them doors open. Oh, yeah. What'd you find, Ranger? I can't say for sure, Mr. West. Might have been deliberate. Then again, it could have been an accident. It wasn't any accident. Now, honey, you're just upset. It wasn't any accident, I'll tell you.  Honey, why would anybody want to kill you? I don't know, but he wants me dead. Amy, you've got to stop this. I don't know of a person in the world who wants you dead. Everybody loves you. That's the truth, Amy. I've never heard a soul in town speak a harsh word about you. Is no use trying to cover it up, Sheriff. Somebody wants to kill me. And when it's too late, you'll be sorry you didn't believe me. Honey, don't talk like that, please. Mrs. West, we'd like a statement from you about what happened last night. Do you mind coming in town with a sheriff and me? All right, I'll come. But I want Mark with me. I won't go unless he comes along. Sure, honey. I'll be glad to come. Sheriff, you take Mrs. West out to the car. We'll be along in a minute. Right, Jason. Come on, Amy. I don't know what to do about this, Ranger. I just don't know. Mr. West, I think your wife needs help. Would you have any objection if I took her to a psychiatrist? You know one around here? There's a doctor, Sobo, who's done some work for us in the past. Works at a private hospital about 40 miles from here. I can take Mrs. West to see him if you want. Ranger, you don't know what a loader would be off my mind. I've been thinking about something like that for weeks just haven't been able to get up enough nerve to talk about it. Probably better if the idea comes from me. I'll mention it to her on the way into town. I talked to Mrs. West. At first, she was reluctant to see the psychiatrist. But by the time we reached the sheriff's office, she'd consented. After the sheriff took her statement about the explosion, I drove Mrs. West and her husband to the hospital. While she was talking to Dr. Sobo Mark West, and I waited in the outer office. Two hours later, the doctor opened the door between the offices. Sorry I kept your waitings along, gentlemen. Mrs. West, you can go into the other room with your husband now. How are you feeling, honey? All right. I've given your wife some capsules, Mr. West. Just a mild sedative. See that she takes one every night before she goes to bed. Sure, doctor. It won't help. It will, if you make up your mind to let it. Nothing's gonna help. Somebody wants me dead. Sooner or later, he'll kill me. Well, we'll talk more about it, Mrs. West, sometime soon. Now, if you and your husband don't mind waiting, I'd like to speak to the ranger for a second. What do you think, doctor? Well, it's only a preliminary examination. I'll want to spend much more time with her. But there doesn't seem to be any clinical psychosis present. You mean there's no definite insanity? I'm almost sure of it. What about this idea she's got that she's gonna be killed? She's an extremely unstable woman ranger, and she's under some kind of severe emotional strain. What it is, I don't know yet. The sheriff and I'd like to help her any way we can. Is there anything we can do? In a case like this ranger, nothing. Nothing at all. I drove Mr. and Mrs. West home and then went back to the sheriff's office. After talking to him, I decided there was nothing further I could do. I returned to headquarters. A week later, I received an urgent message from the sheriff. Mrs. West was in his office and insisted on seeing me. I went there. Sorry to bring you back, Jace, but Mrs. West wouldn't talk to anybody but you. Said it was important. It's important, all right, ranger. Real important. What is it, Mrs. West? Maybe you won't think I'm crazy now. Maybe you'll believe me. I never did think you were crazy, ma'am. Yes, you did, but you're going to see. Everything I told you was true. Wait till I get it out of my purse. There. Look. Aren't they the capsules Dr. Sobo gave you? Yes. And now I know I wasn't green in the past few months. My life has been in danger. Now, what makes you so sure now? This. Now, you see? Inside the capsule. That's the color the powder should be. I mean, but look at this capsule. Harder than that one's green, too, Amy. Hi. Oh, I had another capsule I wanted to show you. Oh, I hadn't marked. Yes. Mrs. West. That's green, too. I don't know where. Oh, here it is. I knew I hadn't marked. See the little nick in the end? What did you want to show us, ma'am? Inside this capsule. There. The powder in this one's white. It's poison, Ranger. That's something we can't say that's been analyzed, ma'am. If you like, I'll take... You don't have to analyze it. That powder's poison. Now, look, Amy, Dr. Sobo gave you those pills. You don't think he'd try to poison you? No, not him. But now I know who wants to kill me. I saw him. He didn't know I was watching. But I saw him take the green powder out and put the poison in. Who was this, Mrs. West? My husband. My husband's trying to kill me. In just a moment, we will continue with Tales of the Texas Rangers, starring Joel McCrae as Ranger Jase Pearson. The cruel nature of cancer is well known. It strikes young and old, rich and poor alike. Men as well as women fall victim to this dread disease. And because anyone can develop cancer, everyone must join in the fight to conquer cancer. Every American shares in the hope that soon cancer will be conquered. But we cannot just hope for complete cancer control. We must take positive action. Do your part. Take positive action. Strike back against cancer by joining the American Cancer Society's 1952 Crusade. Your dollars will help support the society's three essential programs of research, education, and service to the cancer patient. It is estimated that 22 million Americans now living will die of cancer. Fortunately, however, this is not an unchangeable figure. By striking back together, we can reduce it substantially. So give generously to your unit of the American Cancer Society.  And now, back to Tales of the Texas Rangers. We continue now with Tales of the Texas Rangers and our authentic story, Illusion. We had the white powder that Mrs. West had taken out of the capsule analyzed. It was poison, a lethal dose of arsenic. We took her to the ranch and began looking around in the hope of finding the source of the poison. Her husband was out on the range and we started our search in the kitchen. Nothing in this cupboard, Jay. Try the one in the corner. Mrs. West, you're absolutely sure you saw your husband put the poison in that capsule? Yes. He was standing right there at the table. Oh, how could Mark do such a thing to me? You and Mr. West always get along well? Yes. Till about a year ago. When he said he wanted a divorce, naturally I was surprised. What did you tell him? I said I wouldn't think of it. Then a few days later he asked me to forget it. He never mentioned it again. Do you think of any reason why he wanted a divorce? I can now. Those business trips of his. Times he stayed away two or three days. By and cattle, he said. He was with another woman. Now you might be jumping at conclusions, you know, ma'am. No, I'm not. Why else would he have wanted a divorce? Jay, I reckon I've got what we've been looking for. Rat poison. Bought at a lion's drug store in town. Just about half an ounce gone. Looks like he was scooped out with a teaspoon.  And now I know why. Because he's got another woman. Hey, Mrs. West, did you buy this poison? Me? Well, I've never bought anything like that. Then we'll check and see if your husband did. You're going back to town? Yes, ma'am. Don't leave me here. Oh, please. I'm afraid of him. I don't want to stay in this place a minute longer. He'll kill me.  All right, Mrs. West. You can wait in the sheriff's office while we go to the drug store. Oh, wait. I put that poison register. Yeah, here we are. Any idea when this poison was bought? Yeah, I'm afraid not. All right, we'll just start turning pages till we come to it. West, west. Well, if that ain't luck, hit it on the third page. Yeah, it was rat poison, all right. What day did he buy it? It was on June 25th. Did you say he? That's right. Then there was some kind of mistake, Ranger. It wasn't him bought that poison. It was her. See? Amy West. Did you go to the drug store already? Yeah, Amy. We went to the drug store. Sheriff, is something wrong? Mrs.  Yes. This is the poison register from Lyon's drug store, Mrs. West. Yes? Is that your signature? Oh. Is there any chance somebody else could have signed your name? No. No. It's mine. I remember buying it now. I don't know how I could have forgotten. We're not angry, Mrs. West. All we want to do is help you.  I hate to ask you questions from your upset, Amy. But it's important that we find out about this. Did you really see Mark put poison in that capsule last night? Yes. I thought I did. I don't know now. Everything seems to be spilling around in my head. I'm not sure of anything anymore. I think that's enough for now, Sheriff. I could see it so clear. Mark standing by the kitchen table, putting that white powder. Maybe I've been imagining things all along. Maybe I'm crazy. Oh, Ranger, please help me. I think we better take you over to see Dr. Sobel again, ma'am. I don't care what you do. Just help me. Help me. I called Dr. Sobel. He said he'd get a room ready for Mrs. West. While the sheriff took her to the hospital, I headed out to the ranch to see her husband. I learned he was still out in the range, so I unloaded charcoal from the trailer and started out. It was nearly five when I found him in a makeshift branding pen three miles from the house. Woo, woo, Charkey. Woo, woo, boy. Mr. West? Oh, howdy, Ranger. Be right with you. Hurry up with the rest of them, Ted. Want to wind it up before sundown. What can I do for you, Ranger? I'm afraid I have some unpleasant news for you. Who's about Amy? The sheriff just took her over to the hospital. What's happened to her? Nothing serious. She's just a little bit upset. Oh, I thought you were going to say something, Mr. West. I get so worried about her way she's been acting lately. She can't sleep, and I'm thinking about it. Dr. Sobel's one of the best in Texas. Anybody can help her, he can. Sometimes I think she's better, and then...  She looks at me like she's never seen me before. It's pretty awful, Ranger. Yes, it is. I'd like to go see Amy as soon as I can. Well, you'd better call Dr. Sobel first, but I don't think there'll be any objection. See, take her medicine along with her. I couldn't say. I better bring it to her. She'll be needing it. Oh, I don't think you'll have to do that, Mr. West. If she needs medicine, they'll give it to her at the hospital. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I suppose you would have that. Well, I'll be along to see her tonight. On the way back to the hospital, I kept thinking about his mentioning the medicine. It bothered me and created a growing suspicion in my mind. The time I reached the hospital, I was convinced we didn't have all the answers. Sheriff and I decided to listen to any conversation between West and his wife, who set up a hidden microphone in an empty room, and we asked the head nurse to have Mrs. West moved in there. We settled down in an adjoining room with earphones and a tape recorder. At 735, we heard the door, and Mrs. West's room opened and closed. Feeling better? Ranger said you had a real good doctor. Mark, I... Yeah, honey? Everything is so mixed up. I sure hope you don't cry. You'll be all right. When you get out of here, we're going to have the best time we've had in the whole 12 years we've been married. You really mean it. I've been married for a few months. Oh, Mark. You just get a good rest so you can get out of here. Oh, I almost forgot. Mrs. Dunlap sent you some candy.  Here. I don't want it. Honey, you know you love this stuff. Go on, take a piece. Sheesh. What's the matter, honey? Would you want any? What's the matter? Sometimes I think I'm the biggest fool in the world.  Ah, that's it. I shouldn't stay too long. I'll leave the candy here by your bed just in case you get hungry later on. And I'll be in to see you tomorrow. Night, Mark. Night, honey. Sleep well.  I don't know. Right at the moment I'd say it was a toss-up. Let's get in there. Evening, ma'am. Hello, Amy. It's nice of you to come and visit me. You just missed seeing Mark. Mrs. West, have you eaten any of the candy on the table? Oh, Mark brought it. No, I haven't eaten any. Would you like some, Ranger? Yes, ma'am. If you don't mind, I'll take the whole box. What? I'm sorry, Mrs. West. But we want to be sure it's just candy. We submitted the box of candy for rush analysis. Forty minutes later, the results came through. One of the pieces of candy contained arsenic. We broke the news to Mrs. West. She accepted it in stony silence. We decided to let West believe his plan had succeeded. We outlined our idea to the doctor. Last night, we had him phone West and ask him to come to the hospital as quickly as possible. When he arrived, he was kept waiting alone for nearly an hour. Sheriff and I sat in Dr. Sobel's outer office. Finally, we phoned the receptionist and told her to have West come in. He ought to really be stewing by now, Jase. That's what I'm counting on. Jase, I swear I didn't... Hold it. Hold it. He's coming. Oh. Doc in his office? He's upstairs. Come on in, Mr. West. He told me to get down here as quick as I could. I've been waiting for an hour. What's it all about? I don't know. We've got a call, too. How long have you been here? About an hour. What's happened to Amy? We don't know, Mr. West. She went down to her room. She wasn't there. Yeah, we were down there, too. Where's that doctor?  Dr. Sobel's up in the lab. He said he couldn't be disturbed. Lab? What's he doing up there? The nurse said he was making some tests. On Amy? I don't know. I'm not going to stand for this. That doctor's got no right to keep me waiting like this, and my wife might be dead. Dead? What makes you think that? Oh, I'm sure, I said. Amy didn't want to live if she wanted to kill herself. I never got that idea about Amy. Well, you didn't know the way I did. She was always talking about killing herself. Last night, I caught her filling those capsules the doctor gave her with rat poison. Saw her put them in her purse. You did? Yeah. Took them away from her. I mean, I didn't find them all.  Why didn't you tell us this before? I should have told you all about this, because I was ashamed. Now you're going to blame me. You're going to think it was my fault Amy committed suicide. Well, go ahead, say it. Mr. West, you're liable to be getting excited for nothing. Nobody said anything about your wife being dead. Two years, I know it. She's not in her room in the docks of making some kind of tests, ain't she? She's dead. She committed suicide. She's dead. Hey, get easy, Mark. I can't understand it. I tried to make Amy happy. Why don't you want to take her own life? I don't think she did, Mr. West. Huh?  Candy? Candy? I didn't bring her any candy. We know you did. But that's a lie.  She had it with her all the time. I didn't bring it to her. I'm afraid you did, Mr. West. We've got a witness to prove it. Witness? Bring Mrs. West in, Sheriff. All right, Amy. You can come in now. What's the matter, Mark? Aren't you glad to see me? Amy, I... Maybe you can understand how I've felt all these weeks. Hoping I was seeing things and knowing I wasn't. Now you know. Oh, it's all a mistake, honey. A big mistake. No, it isn't. You wanted me dead. So you could be with your other woman. Who is she, Mark? Is she pretty? You tell her how soft and silky her hair is. Like you used to tell me. Amy, please. We have little jokes together like we used to have. Little pet names for each other. Mrs.  Where did you get it? My husband brought it to me. Amy, that ain't true.  Did you, Mark, when? You had it. Try and remember. Amy, honey, you've got to remember. Ranger, she forgets things her mind wonders. I never brought the candy to her. I swear I didn't. It's no good, Mr. West. We know you brought the candy. Well, you're not going to take her word. She's crazy. She'd say anything. We don't have to take her word. What are you talking about? You know what this is? I'll tell you, Mr. West, it's a tape recorder. Tape recorder. Your wife's room was wired. You'd like to hear what you said to her tonight? No. No. You ready to tell us all about it now? All right. I tried to kill her. She wouldn't give me a divorce. How do you think it feels? I mean, somebody else can't agree with her. Let me see her a few hours now, then. How do you think it feels? That's right, Mark. Quiet. I didn't think you knew how. Go ahead and quiet. I can't go away right here. I don't want to see her. You all, Mr. West, her or any other woman, come for a long time. Come on. In just a moment, we will tell you the results of the case you have just heard.  Next, it's The Big Show, with a star-studded guest list and your unpredictable hostess, Tallulah Bankhead. Meredith Wilson will be on hand to direct The Big Show, Orchestra, and Chorus. And be sure to hear the hilarious Phil Harris and Alice Fay show, featuring the comedy addicts of Frankie Remlade, Julius Abruzio, and Brother William. There's Murtha Music with Phil and Alice on their delightful program. And remember, too, that Theater Guild on the Air will bring you another entertaining dramatization of an exciting play co-starring two of your favorite Broadway stars. Yes, Sunday is fun day on NBC, because of the many fine shows sent your way to add to your listening pleasure. Later tonight, you'll want to hear Jack Parr on the $64 question, as Jack asks the questions and gives away the money. So remember, for fine entertainment, all the rest of the day, stay tuned to this station of the NBC Radio Network. And now, back to The Texas Rangers. Here are the results of the case you have just heard. Suffering from nervous strain, Amy West went to a private rest home. After six months, she was fully recovered. Mark West, having confessed to the attempted murder of his wife, was sentenced to 10 years in Huntsville Penitentiary. Joel McCrae and another authentic re-enactment of a case from the files of the Texas Rangers. In San Francisco's story, a Warner Brothers release, the cast included Tony Barrett, Parley Baer, Jeanette Nolan, John Stevenson, and Byron Kane. Technical advisor was Captain M.T. Lone Wolf-Gonzalez of the Texas Rangers. This story was transcribed and adapted by Charles E. Israel, and the program was produced and directed by Stacey Keach. Hal, give me speaking. Next, enjoy 90 minutes of comedy, drama, and music on The Big Show on NBC.


The guest today is Prime Minister Stefani of Italy. Prime Minister Fanfani and I have had productive discussions today covering a wide range of issues. We confirmed the broad consensus that exists between our two countries on matters concerning the Middle East, western security and solidarity, international economic cooperation and world peace. President Fanfani and I have had productive discussions today covering a wide range of issues. We confirmed the broad consensus that exists between our two countries on matters concerning the Middle East, western security and solidarity, international economic cooperation and world peace. I took this occasion to thank the Prime Minister for Italy's continuing vital contribution to the Western Alliance, particularly in regard to INF on which Italy's support has been exemplary. I can say without reservation that the United States regards Italy's role in NATO as second to no other member of the alliance and our friendship as a precious asset. I can say without reservation that the United States regards Italy's role in NATO as second to no other member of the alliance and our friendship as a precious asset. amicizia costituisci un vantaggio prezioso. In recent months, Italy has been demonstrating its courage and its admirable sense of responsibility in the multinational force and observers in the Sinai, and participating in UNIFIL, and as a part of the multinational force in Lebanon. And Italy has been doing its share and more. This burden, as must be expected, has not been without cost. I express to the prime minister our deep regret over the death of Italian soldier Filippo Montesi and the wounding of several more Italians in Lebanon. These brave men stood side by side with our Marines, serving the cause of peace in that troubled country. In recent months, Italy has always demonstrated its courage and its admirable sense of responsibility in the multinational force and observers in the Sinai, and in its participation in UNIFIL, not that which component of the multinational force in Lebanon. Italy has done its part and much more. This burden, as must be expected, unfortunately, has not been without cost. I have expressed to the president of the Council our deep regret over the death of Italian soldier Filippo Montesi and the wounding of several other Italians in Lebanon. These brave men stood side by side with our Marines, serving the cause of peace in that troubled country. Italy has also been in the forefront of endeavors to promote harmony in the Horn of Africa and in seeking tangible progress to alleviate world hunger. In the important area of east-west economic relations, the prime minister and I confirmed the significance we attach to current discussions aimed at achieving a broad transatlantic consensus. As we proceed on to Williamsburg, I am most grateful to have the continuing benefit of Italy's wise counsel and advice. We Americans share the values of democracy and individual choice. Italy has also found the rebound of initiatives to promote harmony in the Horn of Africa and in the search for effective progress to alleviate world hunger. In the important area of east-west economic relations, the prime minister and I confirmed the significance we attach to current discussions aimed at achieving a broad transatlantic consensus. As we proceed on to Williamsburg, I am most grateful to have the continuing benefit of Italy's wise counsel and advice. And since Italy's spectacular liberation of General Dozier from his red brigade captors back in 1982, the general feeling around Washington has been Viva Italia. The genuinely friendly nature of our relations and Italy's tangible commitment to preserving peace and freedom caused me to repeat that sentiment today. America is proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting with the United States. I am proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting with the United States as a friend and as a partner in meeting with the United States. I am proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting the challenges ahead. And I personally look forward to having the continued counsel and support of Prime Minister Fanfani and other Italian leaders. And welcome again, Mr. Prime Minister. I am proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting the challenges ahead. And I personally look forward to having the continued counsel and support of Prime Minister Fanfani and other Italian leaders. Mr. President, at the White House, I am proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting the challenges ahead. I am proud to have Italy as a friend and as a partner in meeting the challenges ahead. At the White House, already with Eisenhower in 1958 and then with Kennedy in 1961 and 1963, I experimented what possibilities between the United States of America and Italy exist. I thank President Reagan, who, with his courteous invitation, was able to accept the friendship that he had with the White House. Mr. President, at the White House in the past, with President Eisenhower in 1958 and then again with President Kennedy in 1961 and 1963, I had already experienced those possibilities of understanding which exist between the United States and Italy. I thank President Reagan, who, by his courteous invitation, has afforded me the opportunity to ascertain again how solidly the friendship that was so successfully promoted by Alcide de Gasperi has been maintained. In his courteous welcome, President Reagan has pointed out some important things that I would like to share with you. I would like to thank President Eisenhower, who, with his courteous invitation, was able to accept the friendship that was so successfully promoted by Alcide de Gasperi and with his courteous invitation, I would like to thank President Eisenhower, and President Reagan has pointed out some important aspects of this friendship. The Atlantic Alliance, which commits us also with respect to intermediate-range nuclear forces, ensures peace through the necessary arms balance. Our common action in the Sinai and in Beirut facilitates the settlement of difficult situations. In Geneva, Vienna, and Madrid, we are seeking just solutions to the problems of disarmament and human rights. I also wish to recall two beneficial effects of this long-standing cooperation of ours, the rise of Italy from the situation in which it found itself at the end of the Second World War and the end of the Second World War. I would like to thank President Eisenhower, who, with his courteous invitation, has pointed out some important things at the end of the Second World War amid all the destruction to the position of being one among the seven most industrialized countries in the world, and the cooperation given to the United States also by Italy in order to avoid the 1962 Cuban missile crisis become the first nuclear war. These are two effects of a common action for progress and peace. Today, on all peoples, there are two concerns. The economic crisis and the threat of a nuclear clash. The exchange of views with President Reagan allows me to consider this meeting useful to strengthen two great hopes. The hope of the economic recovery to consolidate in Williamsburg. The hope of a constructive conclusion of the negotiation currently taking place in Geneva. Today, there are two major causes for concern for all people. The economic crisis and the threat of a nuclear clash. The exchange of views with President Reagan allows me to consider today's meeting as useful in order to strengthen two great hopes. The hope for economic recovery which is to be consolidated at Williamsburg. The hope for a constructive conclusion of the negotiations currently taking place in Geneva. With the fulfillment of these two hopes, the world's economy will benefit from the recovery we all see. Peace, even today uncertain, will become finally secure. Millions of individuals will return to work. All peoples, especially those from the Third World, will resume the path to development. Funds which will be subtracted from armaments will give a decisive impetus to the Third Industrial Revolution. The horizon will rise again and again to the citizens of the United States of America and Italy that cooperation between the two countries continues to be an important factor of progress and peace. The clearing of the horizon will make the citizens of the United States and of Italy realize once again that cooperation between the two countries continues to be an important factor for peace and progress.


Okay, Emmanuel, the floor is yours. Thank you. So, I come from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast, and we have a pretty large archive of our forecast. In fact, it is the largest in the world, and so extracting data from there is quite tricky. What do we do? We are an international organization financed by 34 member states, and we perform operational services, namely weather forecast, and we support the national weather services in the exploitation of our data. We do research in this field, and we also provide some Copernicus services, so free access to some of our data and some data that we compute, especially for that. Obviously, this is not just computing, we also have to acquire quite a lot of data. In fact, weather data for us are two main categories. One is made by your observation, so we collect data from satellites, from radar, from weather station, and whatever we can fetch, and we archive those data in our system, and then we use those observations to create an interpolation of the status of the atmosphere. Then from that interpolation, we start our numerical models that are couplet models. So, we have an ocean model, and a sea ice model, a land model, and an atmosphere one. Obviously, we are more interested in the atmosphere. This model is producing a simulated set of variables for each cell of the hour grid. Obviously, the variables are temperature, pressure, windspin, and direction, humidity, and so on. We are interested in both 2D fields, mainly on the land surface, and 3D fields like the wall atmosphere. The computational cost is linear in the number of cells, so we have to somehow optimize the data grid that we use to reduce the computational cost. In fact, now I will forget for a while, the observation I will focus on the model out with the part that we really are required to archive and assess quickly for our users. Again, the grid. Instead of keeping a regular lot long grid, we optimized a little bit the computational cost by using a grid that is decreasing the number of points as we approach the poles. We call the grid the reduced Gaussian octahedral grid, why octahedral? Because it's essentially based on an octahedron that is just outside of the earth, and so we can somehow alph the number of points that we use for describing the each layer of the atmosphere. Obviously, this is really helpful from the computational point of view, while all the geometric computation are somehow affected by the fact that we have to interpolate from this grid to the one that our user wants. Another aspect is the z-level. We cannot use a constant z-level when we have a mountain. Obviously, we are not interested in the atmosphere under the ground, so we have the layers, that are following the shape of the earth, so the digital elevation model up to a certain pressure, and then we go on constant layers. So even on z, we have to interpolate in a somehow custom way. Having those constraints, we designed a system that is able to scale with a resolution. So the idea is that we want to provide higher resolution simulation for our user, but usually increasing the resolution is quite costly. Doubling the resolution is usually costing us eight times the computational power. Two for the dimension, one because we have to reduce the time step to get the accurate calculation. So the impact on the computation and on the output file is pretty heavy. Right now, we are running our system at nine kilometers per cell. So essentially, every cell is 81 square kilometers on the global simulation. These generate layers that are 6.6 million points, roughly, and so each field is stored in about 50 megabytes. The problem is that we store 137 layer for each variables, and we perform 51 different simulation every twice a day, to be honest. So essentially, we generate millions of fields every day. So our archive is increasing nearly 200 terabytes per day. So in five days, we had a petabyte. So a little bit more in detail. We perform every day, twice a day, so with two different timing at midnight and noon, a simulation at nine kilometers. Then we perform an ensemble of 50 simulations at 18 kilometers of resolution. Again, twice a day. Then we have a lower resolution, but extended in time simulation. And then we have also quite a lot of research activity that is also generating new data sets. This is the amount of data that we distribute. And in the last few years, the amount of data has been increasing almost exponentially. And this is our forecast. So right now, our simulation that is performed in one hour is generating roughly 70 terabytes of data. So it means that we are writing to this roughly 19 gigabytes per second. And this is our major constraints. Our model can scale way better. We theoretically could already produce this amount of data, but simply we cannot store it. The IO that we are using today, that is a parallel system with Laster and so on, is not able to cope with that. And we are working to improve on that size. But in any case, we are committed to increase to five kilometer resolution by 2025. So we are still working on that. Our computing facilities, we have a redundant system with two supercomputers. We already signed for better ones that are going to be deployed this year. But right now we are using those that are still in position 42 and 43 of the top 500, so not too bad. But again, the bottleneck there is the Laster parallel system. Then we have also some resources, some cloud resources for disseminating our data. One is under the umbrella of the Copernicus services and the other one is still experimental, is a European weather cloud that is useful for our member state to exploit those data close to the data source. So instead of fetching the data from our mass, moving the data in their own facilities and performing the simulation there, they can move the computation close to the data and hopefully reduce the overall latency. And the most interesting part, our archive. Right now we have 300 petabytes. Obviously, we cannot keep everything on disk, so we have a large tape archive, but we have also some nice caching policies. So essentially, only 4% of the requests are hitting the tapes. All the 96, all the remaining 96 are either performed from an object store that we designed or a disk-based cache. Again, we are adding nearly 250 terabytes per day, so four, five days are an additional terabyte for us. And also, our archive will meet the capacity of our Oracle tape libraries because the four tape libraries that we have are going to store up to 370 petabytes, so we have to extend it somehow. And in any case, we are going to move all the archive in another computing center during this year, so we have to manage carefully all those data. Okay, quite a lot of data. How our user requests the bit they need. They give us a user request, we have a query language designed for that. They can specify the number of levels they want, the sum of the parameter, temperature, humidity, or whatever they need, a range of dates because they may be interested in simulating the evolution over time, and also the accuracy. We store a description of the atmosphere each hour. So they can even decide to sub-sample. In this case, they are requiring 10 days of simulation with a file every three hours. And also they can specify a regional domain. Usually our services are interested in downscaling on a special area, so we provided the simulation worldwide, and then they focus on their country, their area. Okay, we can easily split those requests in two parts. One is related to the hypercube data access in the sense that we consider our data as filling an hypercube with the several dimension that are the data, the level, the variables, and so on. And we have to index those data according to that. And then a geometric query, up to now a box but probably something more interesting will be arriving pretty soon. Okay, how can we cope with the hypercube data access? We have a domain-specific object store that we call the FieldDB, FDB, so each data bit in our FDB is a layer, so is a field described in the atmosphere. The model is writing directly to the FDB, and this is also required to support the throughput that we need from our model, in the sense that the parallel system cannot guarantee the 19 gigabytes per second that we need. So we have this cache that is supporting the IO operations. We are also adding several kinds of different backend to our object store. Right now, again, in operation, we have a POSIX file system, and we are adding something really fancy using NVRAM. And in that case, we can reach 100 gigabytes per second. But we are also considering some cloud-friendly layer like a set. Set is still not performing to the level we have from POSIX, so is roughly four times slower, so we are still working on that. In any case, the object store is supporting our hypercube queries, so all those parameters are selected from an index, and then we just hit the disk for loading the field with a length and an offset. We get nice properties like is fully acidic the system. All the data are fully flushed, so we get some nice guarantee on the data that the data are stable, even if we have a crash in the computing system. Moreover, having a large computing environment, we may have trouble like a node that is dropping or something like that, so we may need to rerun a computation, and we still want to guarantee that the data are fully accessible and reliable, so we have a right once policy. So in case of a rerun, data are not overwritten, otherwise we can risk to have two instances of the data that are not fully consistent. We write in a newer location, and then we purge the space that is no longer required when the new write has been completed. Okay, the idea is that we produce the data, we store on the parallel system, and then we archive on the tapes. With FDB, all the process has been modified, so the object store is taking care of all the IO, and then is forwarding the data to the parallel system to the archive, and eventually we will provide also a cloud consumer that is really interesting for assessing the data and performing computation close to them. For the geometrical part, again, we have agreed that it is not user friendly, in the sense that it is not the regular lot alone that our user needs, so we have to interpolate to a regular one. Up to now we are interpolating the wall layer, so the globe, and just then we crop the user selected domain. We do that because using Laster, we cannot byte address the data, so we have to read the wall field and compute on that. We are all working on nicer data storage for byte addressability, and so for being able to read just the subset of the data that are required for the interpolation, so essentially the portion of the Gaussian grid that are required to interpolate just the sub-domain. This is still in work, but hopefully it will see the daylight in a few months. Again, what can we do for giving all the user access to our archive? We are developing a cloud-as-a-service system for letting the user to use our query language and real-assess the data. The system is under development and is financed by a couple of European projects, namely I'm paid by one of those that is Lexis. The idea is that the data are accessible even from externally by simply eating a REST API, all from the European weather cloud that we are hosting. Everything is a nice RESTful API with both a command line interface and a Python client that is connecting and supporting all the queries that we offer. We give through these polytop, add access to the archive and to the real-time data. There is a license issue up to now, so essentially the data are not freely available. We are selling the data for a living, but we are committed thanks to an effort of our member state to release our data, but it will take a few years. More details on the exploitation of those data from the cloud will be in this talk given by my colleague, John. Yeah, obviously for question, if we have time. Thank you very much. Any questions in the back? Okay, we have an open source version of the model that is OpenIFS. We have open access for research to the archive. The only thing that is not accessible for free is the real-time forecast in the sense that for research usually having the data with a few days of delays is not an issue, but you can easily ask for a research access and play with the high resolution and whatever you want. And the project I'm working with, we will have an open call for exploiting those data, and so you can apply for the Lexis open call and ask for access even of the real-time data. It will be time constrained for the lifetime of the project, but still something relevant and useful for playing with the largest archive that Aptona is available on the world. Okay, another one? Okay. How is the interface? Sure, sure. The possibility to get the data on a regular lat-long grid is already there in the sense that the interpolation is a parameter of the query language. So you can select the desired resolution, one degree 0.23, whatever you want, up to 0.1 degrees up to now, and essentially the interpolation is performed on the fly for you. So you already can get the data on the grid that you like without the need to implement the, oh, sorry. So you can start afterwards if you want. Sure. Thank you very much. Once again. Thanks.


Hi, my name is Richard Allen and I'm the Director of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. I want to tell you about a research project that we have to collect a new generation of data that we can use to reduce the impact of future earthquakes. To do it we need your help. We want to use the sensors on your phone to record the impacts of an earthquake so that we can understand them. But in the near future we hope to use it to be able to send a warning out to you and other users of the My Shake app in order to give you a few seconds warning before the shaking starts. It works best when you actually have your phone on a stable table. So all smartphones have an accelerometer which allows the phone to sense motion whether you're walking, whether you're running, the orientation of the screen. We use that data to be able to detect earthquakes. When the earthquake strikes, the accelerometer in the phone will record the ground shaking, send that data to our system. We can use that data to understand the physics of the process beneath us, how the buildings around us respond to these earthquakes and we will have more data than we have from the traditional seismic networks. My Shake can improve earthquake early warning in places with traditional seismic networks like the US. But in other parts of the world where there are no traditional seismic networks there are still millions of smartphones so My Shake could bring earthquake early warning capabilities to those regions too. Right now it's only available for Android. The free download is available from the Google Play Store. My Shake doesn't interfere with any other applications on your phone and uses only minimal power. With the help of thousands of you downloading the app we'll be able to more rapidly move to the next generation of My Shake and actually start providing alerts. With your help we're going to change the way we do seismology and we're going to reduce the number of lives lost and the total damage in future earthquakes.


Hello everybody, HoodedCobraCommander788 here and I'm back with another vintage GI Joe toy review. Now I have already reviewed the 1982 version of Snake Eyes, but you really should not go back and watch that video because it sucks. It's one of the first videos that I ever uploaded to this channel, and I think I've improved a lot in my video quality since then. So don't go back and watch that video. This is not exactly a remake of that Snake Eyes review. I am going to look at the 1982 Snake Eyes, but I'm also going to look at the 1985 version 2 of the GI Joe Commando Snake Eyes. This is version 1 of Snake Eyes from 1982. This is version 2 of Snake Eyes from 1985. However, there was a version in between these two, version 1.5, which came out in 1983. It was essentially just the swivel arm version of this guy. This 1982 version had the single point of articulation at the elbow. In 1983 he had a swivel arm battle grip, so he had a swivel at the bicep, an extra point of articulation. I don't have that version, so we're just going to look at versions 1 and 2. This version 1 of Snake Eyes came out in 1982 and it was part of the first series of GI Joe action figures when the toy line was relaunched in 1982. Those 1982 GI Joe action figures had a very military look to them, so as you can imagine they were mostly green. So in that sea of green action figures, Snake Eyes really stood out. Whoa, this guy is black. He looks really cool. This version of Snake Eyes was only available in 1982 and 1983 as I said he was replaced with the swivel arm version, so this action figure was only available for one year. For some reason the swivel arm version of Snake Eyes, version 1.5 from 1983, is harder to find than this first version, the straight arm version from 1982. Version 2 of Snake Eyes was introduced in 1985 and he had an animal companion, Timber, the wolf. He was available in 1985 and 1986. He was discontinued in 1987. The third version of Snake Eyes did not come out until 1989, so there were no Snake Eyes on the shelf for a little while. However since then, almost every year we have had a version of Snake Eyes and in most years we've had multiple versions. Yojo.com lists 67 versions of Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes is not the first of those 82 GI Joe's to get a second version. In 1983 we had a tan version of Grunt and in 1984 we had a tan version of Clutch. However, those were just recolors of the previous action figure. This version of Snake Eyes, version 2, is an entirely new sculpt for the action figure.  Let's take a look at the accessories for version 1 of Snake Eyes and he came with only two. He had this really nice looking Uzi. This is a great looking miniature version of the real world Uzi submachine gun. Of course the Uzi is an Israeli 9mm submachine gun and it has been in service since 1954. So Uzi's have been around for a really long time. Some versions of the Uzi are seen with a collapsible stock but not this version. An Uzi is the perfect weapon for a commando like Snake Eyes who needs a light weapon for close quarters fighting. This same Uzi accessory was also released with the 1982 tank driver Steeler. Version 1's second accessory was his explosive pack which is kind of the satchel with a strap over it. Despite what my wife says, this is not a purse. He can carry this satchel over his arm like this but I find that it stays on better if you put it across his body like that. It has what looks like three blasting caps and on the underside it's just hollow, no detail on that side. Let's take a look at the articulation of the 1982 straight arm Snake Eyes. He had the same articulation as all GI Joe action figures from 1982 which meant that he could turn his head from side to side like that. He has lift his arm up at the shoulder about so far. He could swivel it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could move his arm about 90 degrees. He had no other articulation there. That's why he is referred to as straight arm. The 1983 version had a swivel at the bicep but the 1982 version does not. He was held together with a rubber O-ring that looped around the inside which allowed him to move at the torso a little bit. He could move his legs apart about so far. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's take a look at the sculpt and color of Snake Eyes. He reused a lot of parts from other action figures as did all of the GI Joe action figures from that 1982 line. His chest and arms were reused by a lot of figures including grunt. As you can see grunt has a green version of the same chest and arms. They also share the standard waist piece and his boots were shared by flash. In one of Snake Eyes only had three unique parts. His head and his thighs. You can see on this side it has some pouches and on this side it looks like he has some dynamite. Now let's look at the accessories of version 2 of Snake Eyes and whereas version 1 only had two accessories, version 2 of Snake Eyes had a ton of accessories starting of course with his signature Uzi. This is another really nice miniature version of the Uzi but it is not a reissue of the 1982 Uzi that came with version 1 of Snake Eyes. It is very similar but slightly different. In particular the barrel is slightly thicker on the 1985 version. On the 1982 version it's a bit longer and very thin and narrow. On the one hand it's really cool that they went through the trouble of sculpting a new Uzi for Snake Eyes in 1985 but on the other hand if you want all original accessories you can't just pair the 85 Snake Eyes with an 82 Uzi. You have to go out and find the 1985 version. Version 2 unlike the first version came with a backpack and this was kind of a special backpack because it stored his second weapon, his sword. I'm going to take a look at the sword here in a moment but let's look at the backpack. This backpack has some pretty good detail. It has this kind of texture pattern on the top here, a couple of pouches, a belt across the middle. It's got these clasps. These clasps are for the sword. The sword should fit neatly down in there like that. Now let's take a look at the sword. This is a very interesting looking sword. It's very unique looking. Snake Eyes is a ninja. He has trained in the Japanese martial arts but this is definitely not a Japanese style sword. His rival Snake Eyes did come with more traditional Japanese swords. This almost looks more like a scimitar with the kind of curve on this end, with the hilt that's kind of curved up there. Definitely not Japanese style and not really even European style. I want to say this is more Arab or Persian. Last but certainly not least, the Version 2 of Snake Eyes came with an animal companion, a wolf named Timber. This is all one solid piece of plastic. There's no articulation on the wolf at all but this is an excellent sculpt of a wolf. It looks really nice, some great detailing in the fur. You can see that this is very fierce looking. He's in an attack position with his body low to the ground, his teeth are bared, his ears are back and he just looks like he's ready to pounce. Timber is molded in a light gray but he does have a paint application on his belly. There is a white paint wash on the belly which is a nice subtle contrast and I think it looks good. This is a good animal companion for Snake Eyes. Both in the comic book and in the cartoon series, Snake Eyes was associated with wolves. Snake Eyes is not the only G.I. Joe action figure to come with a dog animal companion. Of course we had Mutt and Junkyard and later on we had Law and Order so there are quite a few G.I. Joe action figures that have these solid plastic molded dog companions. Timber is somewhat unique though in that he's not a trained dog. He's a wild animal that Snake Eyes befriended. Let's look at the articulation of version 2 of Snake Eyes and he had the typical articulation of 1985 G.I. Joe action figures and that was considerably more articulation than his first version. First of all, his head was on a ball joint so he could turn his head from left to right but he could also look up and down like that. He could swing his arm up at the elbow about so far. He could swing it all the way around. He had that joint at the elbow so he could swing his elbow about 90 degrees and he had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel his arm all the way around so he could grip his weapons with a two-handed grip. He was held together with a rubber O-ring. He could move at the torso a little bit. He could move apart at the legs about so far. He could move his leg at the hip about 90 degrees and he could bend at the knee about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpting color on version 2 of Snake Eyes and there's so much more to look at with this version. This is his iconic look. This is the Snake Eyes that most people remember. On his head of course he has this visor. I'm not sure exactly if this is supposed to be like a clear visor with a dark glass on it or white but it's a visor that covers his eyes and his nose. He has sculpted on lips under his mask and this is something that I really don't understand. Why do they sculpt lips on the action figure? I do think this is probably the reason Snake Eyes that was in the movie Rise of Cobra had those sculpted on lips but that just is not a good look and that's not how he appears on his card art. If you think about it, why would you ever see his lips behind his mask unless he's biting the cloth behind that mask? Why would you do that? It just doesn't look right.  He has a dark gray on some of his molded on accessories there, on this strap, on some of his belts and that gives a nice very subtle contrast to the black. He has a single strap that goes across his chest and that continues to his back. He has some sculpted on grenades which I could live without. I still think they overdid the grenades on these action figures. On his arms he has these pouches on his upper arms and on his right wrist he has this silver dart gun. It looks like a little miniature arrow gun and that looks kinda cool. This is the only part of the action figure that is not black or gray and it's not bad. They are not overusing the silver paint on this. On his left wrist he has a watch. On his waist piece he has a double belt that's in that dark gray and he has some more pouches. On his right leg he has a sculpted on pistol with the holster also in that gray and on this side he has a sculpted on, looks like a dagger also in that gray color. Those are appropriate weapons for a commando. Then you get to the boots and he has these pouches on his ankles and you know that's getting really close to overdoing the pouches. If you do too many pouches you're getting into Rob Liefeld territory. But it's not overdone on this action figure. I think he has a reasonable number of pouches to add some detail and he just looks really great doesn't he? He's so much more detailed than that first version. Comparing the two, version two looks bulkier. He has bigger arms, bigger chest, bigger legs. He looks like he's been working out. So which version do I like better? I think I originally said I liked the first version better but I've had some time to think about it and I have to go with the popular choice. Version two is my favorite of the two. Even though I really like the version one I think that he was very original for the time. He really popped on the shelves. Version two, he's just so much more detailed and he just looks so great. I can't deny it. Version two is just a beautiful action figure. Let's take a look at the file cards starting with the first one. These file cards were printed on the back of the card on which the action figure is packaged. You can see the part of the front of the card here and this has a portrait and it says his factionist GI Joe. It says up here commando and a commando is essentially just elite light infantry. It comes from an Afrikaans word which roughly translates to mobile infantry regiment. Commando is also slang for not wearing any underwear. As to the question of whether Snake Eyes goes commando, that remains a mystery. Any Scarlet knows for sure. His codename is Snake Eyes. His file name is classified. His primary military specialty is infantry. His secondary military specialty is hand to hand combat instructor. His birthplace is also classified and he has a grade of E5. So a lot of the information about Snake Eyes is secret and that lends an air of mystery to the character. This section says Snake Eyes is proficient in 12 different unarmed fighting systems in parenthesis karate kung fu jujitsu and is highly skilled in the use of edged weapons, has received extensive training in mountaineering, underwater demolitions, jungle, desert and arctic survival and some form of holistic medicine. I'm not sure exactly what they mean by that. This bottom section is a quote although it doesn't say who it's quoting and it says the man is a total mystery but he's real good at his job, heck he's the best. It does not mention anything about ninjas on this file card. That was something that came along later. It also doesn't mention that Snake Eyes does not speak. It also doesn't say why he wears the mask. For kids who got this action figure and didn't have the comic book or cartoon portrayal of Snake Eyes, they could basically make up their own character. There was a lot that was kind of a blank slate about Snake Eyes. Let's look at version two of the file card and this top section is pretty much the same as the first version so I'm going to skip that. The second version gives a lot more of Snake Eyes background. It says subjects served in long range recon patrols in Southeast Asia, that means Vietnam essentially, left the service to study mystic martial arts with the same ninja family that produced Storm Shadow. So finally we have a mention that Snake Eyes is a ninja and a mention of his rival Storm Shadow. According to the GI Joe comic book storyline, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are a part of the same ninja clan, the Arashakage clan. Arashakage is the Japanese word for Storm Shadow and the clan is identified by a hexagram tattoo on their right forearms. Snake Eyes was living an ascetic existence alone in the High Sierras with a pet wolf named Timber, that's how we know that the wolf's name is Timber, when he was recruited for the GI Joe team. This middle section is basically a reworded version of the first file card. It says qualified expert all NATO and Warsaw packed small arms, black belt and 12 different fighting systems and highly skilled in the use of edged weapons. In this bottom section, the writer kind of waxes poetic a bit. It's another quote, again not saying who it's quoting, and it says Snake Eyes was tempered on the anvil of life until he was as dangerous as a razor edged sword flailing in the dark. The GI Joe team sheathed that sword and harnessed its deadly energy, but even they are wont to forget that even within the safety of its scabbard, the blade retains its cutting edge. Both of these file cards portray Snake Eyes as a very dangerous individual, a highly trained fighter, an expert in many forms of combat, and you know he's been through a lot and so he's a survivor. The comic book written by Larry Hamma revealed a lot of connections between Snake Eyes and other members of the GI Joe team and Cobra. For instance, he was romantically linked to Scarlet, and his face was disfigured in a helicopter accident in which he saved Scarlet's life. Also his service in Vietnam on the long range recon patrols mentioned on the file card was with his lifelong friend, Stalker, and his friend turned enemy, Storm Shadow. Another guy on the long range recon patrols with Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow and Stalker was a guy that later became a Crimson Guardsman for Cobra. And of course Zartan murdered the hardmaster for which Storm Shadow was blamed, and Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes both sought revenge against Zartan. So what do I think of Snake Eyes overall? Well Snake Eyes does suffer from overexposure. There have been way too many versions of Snake Eyes, he's really overdone, and I think even a lot of hardcore fans have kind of had enough of Snake Eyes. And certainly he's not my favorite action figure in the GI Joe line, that would actually go to Stalker. But I would still put him in my top five, he's really cool, his backstory is very well written, and you know you just gotta love this guy. His life is filled with tragedy, but he's also highly trained, he's a very sympathetic character, he kind of binds together the stories of a lot of different Joes and Cobra, and you know his story is a central theme in the GI Joe mythos. Plus just look at him, I mean even 30 years later he looks awesome, how can he not like this guy? That was my review of Snake Eyes Version 1 and Version 2 and their file cards, I hope you enjoyed it and if you're thinking of getting a Snake Eyes I hope you found this video informative. If you did make sure you give it a thumbs up, don't forget to subscribe because I've got a lot of great new GI Joe toy reviews coming up, you do not want to miss them. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.


Okay, thanks. Thank you very much and thank you for staying on just before drinks. I won't be too long. The hardy few. So I'm going to be really rapid and fast with this presentation. So Geodirectory just to give you a quick overview, very quick overview. We supply a database of all the buildings in the country we're owned by on post and art and survey and we've been going for a number of years now. It's quite an Irish term, it's a big database, 2.2 million addresses, 600,000 changes per annum. So you can see it moves quick. We're in the middle of many different industries. We serve right across the board from big to small, global multinational to your mom and pop a store or local places, okay? So we've quite a, we've sit in the middle of a lot of projects and we decided to build our own blockchain because we thought it would be a really good thing to do and I'm really not going to talk about what we've done about technology. This is more a talk about how things have developed with blockchain across different markets, but a focus on the public sector in mainland Europe, okay? So a bit of a different talk. We're not talking about Geodirectory at all. We didn't build anything here, we're not trying to sell anything. We're just trying to give share with everybody here. The knowledge that we've gathered and the experiences that we're looking at that affect how this technology is, its rollout has been challenged, okay? So these are the type of things that are the acknowledged benefits of blockchain. I'm not going to read through all of them. They're free to see, they're well rehearsed. For the case studies that we looked at, the benefits from a governmental, stroke local authority, sort of in academic institution was the idea of reducing costs, reduce data exchanges, bureaucracy, corruption, corruption being a big thing because corruption equals trust or lack of trust. Automation, transparency, accountability, okay? So again, well rehearsed for blockchain. In the context, everything happens in some sort of context and these are the four key pillars that the European countries are going to look at now in a second. We're building their blockchains within, their concerns are about citizen ID management, taxation, every government worries about tax, only two things are certain in life, death and taxes. Department of development of aid management services, so helping and redistributing income to less advantaged people and regulatory compliance, regulations, all that kind of stuff. So we're going to look at Georgia, Malta and the Netherlands, okay? And these come from a European study. So the first one is Georgia where they're looking at basically the equivalent of the land ridge here in Ireland and how land title is managed and held and transferred, okay? They're trying to make it a lot more efficient, a lot more transparent. So they're using Exxon blockchain with a Bitcoin blockchain. Exxon is a private version which is then fed out onto the Bitcoin, okay? So that's the, I haven't got a, there's no laser pointer here. So that's the scheme of how it actually works. So the citizen sends it into the notary who puts it in their blockchain, the Exxon blockchain, and then it's shared back through the NPR or NPR who managed the whole citizen relationship and the documentation. And then you and I can hop onto the Bitcoin blockchain and see who owns what property, etc., right? So it's a fairly simple idea. It did reduce the time it takes to do this process from three days to a few minutes, which is a big time saving. It increased transparency, security, all those good things. And you know, an operational saving of 90%. Most organizations and most people who develop products would love to be able to say that. And no additional infrastructure costs. So it looks like a big win. There was problems though. There are problems in maintenance, transactional operation, and the implementation of the Exxon blockchain was difficult. And using, they have to use a, well, they wanted to make sure when they did this project that they wouldn't be locked into Bitcoin. And so they used a, you know, an open system. So next one, I'll flaunt you this is great. Next one is Malta. And they were looking basically a university-based system, which we're looking at making it easy for students to share their certificates with future employees and make it easier for future employees to verify that the students were the owners of the certificates they were producing in interviews. And they produced this thing called block certs. So jumping real quick, this is it here. So on the left-hand side, it comes from the institution out to the citizen, and it's an app. The pupil is called a citizen, but really it's an ex-pupil. You then use your phone, log onto the app, exchange some details, which passes a public key back to the institution, which then they can share through what they're calling there. I forgot what they call it actually here. Can't see it up there. Anyway, whatever they call the blockchain is to have a particular name on it. Block certs is what they call it. They share it back out through Bitcoin so third parties can go have a look.  It's what it actually looks like. They click on the URL, they can see that you are, well, the URL you share is you and all your certificates, all your certs are correct. Okay? So that's used in blockchain to simplify a process. Now, it was found to help with identification and privacy protection, which is very good. It was easy to access and use and it was very friendly. There was time savings with it. It's self-administered, so there's time-saving and cost-saving there that I have to make sure that I have the right certificates against my name and I'm making sure that happens and they say the right things and they're from the right institutions. And they used open standards so other countries could build on it. Problems, though, again, high costs. Okay? It's high costs of implementation and then another problem was that it only really works in Malta, not outside of Malta yet, because they've closed it a little bit. So it's proven a concept rather than proven to be very successful blockchain, to be honest. The next one is in the Netherlands. I'm not going to try to pronounce all of those names, cities, because I'm not going to get it right. But basically, the idea here is to supplement family income so that people on low incomes can have an extra bit of money to spend, essentially. Okay? This was a paper-based system where they were given vouchers to go and spend in various outlets. And so the idea was to make it much easier to transact and also to save money, if you like, and much more efficient. So they developed this idea of a smart voucher or a voucher on a blockchain. And you and I apply for it to our local authority, essentially. They confirm we're eligible. They put it in what they call their blockchain here, what's it called? Smart blockchain, Zcash blockchain. All of our details are in there. You then go into businesses that are participating in the scheme. They have a QR code. You read your phone. You automatically get your discount. It goes on to the chain, back into the blockchain, and the company is paid overnight. So instead of paying 100 euros for the product, you might only pay 50 or 80 or whatever the discount happens to be. And the companies don't have to worry about the paperwork. It's all done for them. So it's much more likely the companies will participate in the scheme and it's broadened what they can do considerably. So from cinema tickets to solar panels and anywhere in between. So it improved the efficiency and record keeping. Easy to use and increased public accountability and audibility. You know, it's much better than the voucher system. It's digital rather than paper-based, which is a big improvement, but the high validation cost. So it's not perfect. So there were some, all of these scalability, stability, governance, flexibility, trust, implementation styles, all of these things come down to essentially cultural issues that hit people issues as much as anything, right? And all of them took away from the benefits of blockchain. Now this can be said for any system, any new system going in. So what we're seeing is really the benefits across the tree I've shown you today was security, integrity, reliability, reduced processing time and lower costs, all very good. New generation of services for starting to emerge that could be invented. And the once-only principle and stopping the IT silos that everybody talks about, making it more integratable and everybody able to get access. However, it was neither transformative or disruptive. So the benefits are back-end rather than front-end, and people don't really see the huge benefits in it. It's a slow borner rather than a rapid fire, that's the way I describe it. And there was problems with integrating legacy databases, issues with stakeholders and business and business having different objectives. And, you know, the private data was stored off-chain, that caused bandwidth restrictions, true put issues, and a couple of other issues there as well. So as I said, it's slow borne rather than light the fire under people to move, really, to be honest. Now, we decided to do a blockchain, despite all of that, I suppose, or with all of that in mind. And I'm going to flick through these very quickly. So we took the approach of going industry level first. Okay, so we approach, because of our position in the market, we deal across all industries, so we approach, you know, insurance, banking, utility, telco, that's their first four we've gone to. And we had a series of meetings with them, and both individual and group based. And these are the reasons that they're saying blockchain doesn't really yet fit with what they want to do. So it's the concern about legal and regulatory. There's a fear of new IT infrastructure, how it will impact other things. Other solutions are better than blockchain APIs, shared databases and things like that. And reluctance also to have information shared was actually a another issue. But the real reasons we saw for the non adaptation, the slow take up, I feel like, of blockchain is really a concern about losing competitive advantage. Now this I'm talking about private industry here. The first part of the talk was on the public sector. These are all private industry companies. So I'm giving you two different perspectives here. And many don't want to be forced, even though blockchain is around maybe 10, 12 years, there is a fear about being forced, and a lack of understanding of its potential implications on their business, their industry, and how you and I will maybe react to that. And so that is me finished. That's it done within time. Great. Well done, Dara. Super. And that's really fascinating, because I think we spoke about this before, and you're telling me that blockchain is a technology easy to implement, you have it done, you have it solved technically, but the market's not ready. So what do you think will take to get these companies to really see and adopt this and move forward? Well, essentially, it's persistence. I mean, the back, if you can see 90% saving in customer, so customer force, you can see 90% saving in operational costs, moving from a three days time scale to a 10 minute time scale. They're huge savings. And if you put that in the private sector market, it's also, that can be replicated. You don't have major social network companies talking about investing a billion in blockchain because it's bad. So there are major advantages to blockchain. Just the market hasn't seen it yet, or isn't ready for it yet, or a bit of both. So we haven't reached the tipping point of now, maybe we never will, we don't know. But as our approach is very different, we approach it at an industry level rather than a single in company level. So very good. We'll see it. We'll watch this space. Exactly.