to the Creative Life from the American Creativity Association on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Billus Bleece. Our co-host is Darlene Boyd. Today on the show, we will be discussing poetry, knowing why the revolution must come. Our guest is Dr. Roger Rees. Dr. Rees is a poet who has said he wants to be catapulted into a poem. Ask him about that. He earned his PhD in poetry at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently an associate professor of poetry. He earned a prestigious National Education Association Fellowship and a Pushkart Prize. And his work has been selected for anthologies and has been published in the New Yorker Poetry Magazine and more. Dr. Rees' first collection is published under the title King Me. And he has a new collection coming out in February or March of 2022, soon. And it's called Best Barbarian. Before we meet Dr. Rees, I want you to know you can send your questions in by email to questionsatthinktechhawaii.com. Welcome, Roger. Let me start with you. Hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, well, we're very grateful to have you. And my first question, I've already alerted you. What do you mean by wanting to be catapulted into a poem? I think what I mean, and there's many ways to be catapulted, but one of the ways I'm interested in being catapulted into a poem is through the language. I want to either hear a snatch of language or be driven to write something down, something that is unescapable and something that won't let me go. I want that sort of impetus because that feels inevitable. I want the thing that I make to feel inevitable. I want language because that, to me, is where transformation can occur or where probably beauty resides or difficulty. Difficulty resides and what won't let you go. And so I'm always interested in that. And that catapulting could be, again, language. It could also be image. It could be I see something or there's a mood. Sometimes it's a mood. You have a feeling and you're looking for the language of that feeling and you're sort of feeling around. Or sometimes it's, for me, the catapulting comes through great work. In some ways, a book will make you want to be in conversation with it. I think as a writer, I'm always interested in what someone else has said and then the sort of little gaps and absences that I find in that thing. Like David Ferry is an amazing poet who I often find a lot of space in his work and an invitation to write. And that, to me, is that catapulting. The catapulting can be an invitation, like coming to the house. There's alchemy, almost, the way you talk about the words being a kind of serving as sort of an alchemical transubstantiation of feelings made manifest through your words. Yeah, I definitely think that words act alchemically. I think sound does that. That is the nature of something. I think that's why all the great biblical books, all the great sort of spiritual texts start with sound. There's some type of utterance that makes a thing. So I think about ashe, or amen, or all these different sounds that sort of can transform the physical and the spiritual. And they move sort of because they sort of start in the body and start somewhere else, but they become physical. They become manifest. And then there are ephemeral as well. They disappear. So it's just the process of language itself mimics this alchemical process. I say hello or come in, and then you come into my house. I think this is why a vampire tales. We have to invite in the vampire. I think that there's something to that invitation. You're sort of requesting the fate of the vampire, of that sort of energy. And so I think language does that. Yes, and you're, you know, darling and I are in the American Creativity Association trying to catalyze this force, this creative force in many ways and this alchemy and your language and poetry. It seems to get right at the heart and the juice of the creative self, which takes me to the title for today's show. And you say, and I'm wondering, how does poetry tie in with this knowing, knowing why the revolution must come? That's a provocative title and you helped us craft it. What revolution, what revolution is coming and why does poetry help us know that? This is coming, you know, we haven't talked, the audience should know, we haven't really talked about this yet. So I'm going to be learning along with the audience about your title for today. Sure, so the title kind of comes out of this moment. Can I tell a little story? I guess I should tell a little story.  Or at least Toni Morrison would argue, would have argued that, but I was actually traveling to Alaska for the first time and I was in Chulal. And I remember it's a very quiet city, very quiet. It was February or so and I get there. And the first thing I always do anytime I go to new places, I go to its bookstores. I run it and then I go to its bookstores. Those are the first things because I want to sort of feel out what the place feels like on the everyday. I go to this bookstore and it's a great used bookstore and I find an old copy of an Audrey and Rich book and Audrey and Rich, the poet, essayist and I turn to this poem, Dreamwood. And I'm supposed to give this talk at a local library and I read this poem, Dreamwood. And it's talking about, and then all of a sudden there's this line in the middle of poem where it's like poetry isn't revolution, but a way of knowing why it was called. And that connected to me with this other thing that I had been reading from Foucault, these lectures I had been reading of Foucault from years and years and years ago on Parthesia, the idea that like, so there's this concept that the Greeks had and you saw it in Euripides when a less, like say it was the court jester or a servant had to tell the truth to the king or queen or the emperor or to someone like the Senate and that servant had to speak truthfully, they knew that if they said something that could upset the emperor or the emperors, they could get their heads cut off, right? They could die, they could be killed for this. And so they would ask for Parthesia so that they could tell the truth. And the potentate understood that, hey, if this person says I need Parthesia, then we have to grant them that and I can't kill them for what they're gonna say. And this was such an interesting sort of civil idea. I feel like we need a little Parthesia in our world. But I started thinking about Parthesia and the idea of being able to know why something must come and to be able to speak and to say. And so to me, when I hear that poetry isn't revolution, I think about poetry won't necessarily get its universal health care. Poetry won't change the fact that we use currency, right? Poetry isn't, but it can announce why we might need to have new ways of thinking about economics. It can announce why we might have to allow from more than two genders, right? It can announce why black people need to be free, right? Poetry can sort of imagine and begin to see a future. It can begin to articulate that future. And often what happens is the poem is at the space or in the space of the unsayable. It's in the space of the necessity to make a future that doesn't exist, to try to make the invisible visible. That's revolution, right? That is the revolution, right? So a revolution is, I think about the term in big and small ways, right? We can think about economic revolutions. We can think about, I think when, we can think about France, we can think about those types of revolutions, the US, right? The Civil War, those are revolutions, right? But there's also revolutions in our own lives, right? And sort of in order for some of the bigger political revolutions, like when we want a world for which equity really exists, or we want a world in which black people can walk out the door and feel safe and feel that the police, can we imagine, like, how do we begin to imagine worlds without police, right? That begins personally. That begins in the like, imagining a world for which you don't police yourself. There's imagining worlds in which you think of your community, if you're of color, community of color, as not harmful, as not always lacking, right? As your community is big, beautiful, and because I don't think the police are really here for all of us. I think they're mostly here for us with black and brown folks, right? And so to me, this is part of that revolution, right? The poetry begins to sort of make possible in us. You know, what did you think about either Darlene and Roger? When I listened to Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate at the inauguration for Biden and Harris, I, of that whole proceedings, I was so moved by her voice and the language. I saw it that she brought to bear in the moment, both a revolutionary voice, an emotional voice, a transforming voice, but also a conforming voice. I felt connected, I felt woken up and connected to what we are all experiencing in the great divides today. And just through the cadence, the language, and her poetry. And I wondered if you had felt the same. Does that kind of get, if you had a chance to watch her? Yeah, I didn't, but Darlene, I didn't have a chance to watch her, but Darlene, I was wondering what you thought, what you made. In listening to Phyllis Greamer question, I can't help but think of you and we hope to have you read a little bit in your voices as we progress later on in the short time that we have. I found, and Roger, I have to say, I'm hooked on your poetry right now. I think I have tried to absorb almost every poem and I'm going to share a few things with you and why I say that. And thanks to YouTube, I'm able to hear you read the poems. You have several up on YouTube. So you and I come from a similar geographic background and I was particularly moved, so let me backtrack just a little bit. Let me ask you to set the stage. Why poetry for you? Why not prose? Why poetry? That's a great question. I started in first grade. It really was the first thing I gravitated toward when I was interested in art and I didn't even know it was art at the time. Interesting. Yeah, I didn't know it was art. I just thought it was, I was raised in a Pentecostal church where we had to recite poems during Easter and Christmas. And so I was just raised around as a like almost spoken, even though I was learning it off the page. So it's always just been the way that I've thought about language. I do write prose, but I find poetry a bit more seductive. I find poetry, it's really funny. I think it's like a poor people's art. It doesn't require much. It doesn't require, like when I think about visual art, for instance, painting or sculpting, right? That requires material outside of yourself to some degree. And I think I chose poetry or why I chose poetry to start my artistic career. It's not the only place, but why I think I chose poetry as my starting round was, I grew up with a single mother who we didn't have a lot of stuff. What we did have, my grandmother, we lived with my grandmother and what she had was, she had this coffee can full of pennies. And we had like old paper. And I just would, that's, and so I was like, okay, I want to make things. And all we had were these pens and reams of paper. And so that's why- And there it was, okay. Well, I just, not to take us through a lesson on prose versus poetry and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think the most simplest, simplistic description would be that prose, you're just writing something. And to me poetry, you're bringing in and drawing in the senses. Of course, there's the rhythm and all the logistics that I can't speak to that you can and that you do demonstrate and illustrate. And I didn't answer your question and I should. You asked me what I thought of our little poetess. As I was watching the inauguration and watching her, I was thinking back to when we had, I work in a center and outreach center mostly focusing on Brown and Black students, but we were very fortunate to have Maya Angelou come in. We were funded, there were 300, 3,000, excuse me, students in the Brent Center, a big center. And the students of high school students came in, of course they were rather noisy when they came in and there was some chatter even when Maya Angelou began, but I would say 12 minutes into that program, there wasn't a single sound. They were riveted. And that was the sound of her voice. She was also demonstrating and explicating her poetry as you just have with defining for Phyllis your perception of the revolution as it relates to poetry. And in many ways Maya Angelou was doing the same, but it was just amazing. And I think if someone, if they had been given a book that would never have been the same and they'll always remember that in their life and their voice. And I think that's what I was seeing come through in the inauguration. I think we have a little Maya Angelou there coming forth. So when, so you said you wrote your first poem when you were in first grade. I don't dare ask you about it. I'm sure it was charming and engaging. But I think I read something about you when you were 16, something, someone challenged you or am I correct in that? Well, so it's interesting because there's several things I want to address. I love the research because yes, at 16 I was writing journalistically in high school and I had a great journalism teacher, Mr. Connelly. And he just challenged me to revise. He challenged me to think about the world in some really interesting ways, really ways that contradicted the way I was being raised. In fact, thinking a little bit larger than I was being taught to think. And that was great. It's something I go back to all the time. I think about Mr. Connelly. In fact, during the summers, it's when I think about Mr. Connelly actually because I would send him- Why the summer? Because I would always send him work in the summer. I would send him poems. I would send him things I would write in. And he was so encouraging. He would write back and he would talk to me. And that was a great sort of lesson too about poetry and about the communities that poetry and writing makes because I think one of the things is it's so extra-curricular to be a writer.  Awesome, let's set you up.  People are so behind that. You wanna be an engineer behind that. You wanna even play basketball and be a football behind it.  People are like, so you wanna star, right? And so Mr. Connelly was one of those that it's where writing really happens. Writing really happens in these like back doors and after school in the summer when no one can see. You know, it's interesting because we know we can find research to support anything if we really look hard enough. But there is conclusive research that tells us, especially in the area of creative productive thinking that generally if we really think really hard there's probably one person that has made a difference in our lives. And that person is generally a teacher as you're giving your example, Mr. Connelly and setting our life on track and also developing a passion. And one of the dimensions that we talk about or hope to talk about with each of our guests, Billison and myself, we hope that we're able to identify that we have someone that has developed such a passion for their art. And we really think that you have that passion. And as I was looking at your particular poem, Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, I guess you could guess why I was looking at that one. I had many things going through my mind. And one of them being that for me I think the difference between the prose and the poetry, as I've said, would be the senses. But you did something for me in that poem as I was reading it that I wasn't expecting. And it's kind of humorous. Coming from that area of Philadelphia and South Jersey, myself growing up, you mentioned the kiss on the Delaware and the smell of the chemicals. I thought of my kiss, which was not on the Delaware. I'm not sure I wanna think about it. But I thought, thank goodness I was upwind because those chemicals smell so bad. And if your kiss reached that of those chemicals, no wonder you can't forget it because of all the factories. So when folks now land in Philadelphia, that's not just the fuel from the plane you're smelling. It's some of those, if you happen to be upwind or downwind, whatever happens. But the reason I mentioned that, not just for the humor, and I appreciate that you're smiling over that. But I think when I read your poetry, I felt that I was watching a movie. And not only was I watching a movie because of course the artistic part and the visuals were amazing for me. The kiss on the Delaware, so simple. You talked about Mick Wittgenstein and Foucault and just going from the crumb of the Delaware at that point to the analytic philosophers, their arguments, I find that amazing and refreshing. But the sensory experience was quite interesting and quite incredible. I'm looking forward to your book coming out, your next book. Wow, thank you. It's so interesting. Like I love that that was the way you connect. Like for me, I'm always interested in where people come into a poem because it's not always the first line, right? But when you find your way in, all of a sudden the poem sort of, how it becomes sort of multi-tune-ness, becomes mansion life in a lot of ways. Since we're talking about revolution, and also in that poem, you talked about the lawn jockey with the Blessed Virgin looking down on the lawn jockey. Was that a church setting or a yard setting? Because in my growing up, and no one complained about them, there was another reason. There were lawn jockeys all over the place. White families, black families, it didn't matter. And there was probably because we were in, we had the race tracks, we had the AC race track, we had garden state race track, and horse racing was an interest. And jockeys were respected. Not to say that the statues were always treated with respect, they seemed to move around sometimes. My father wanted one and my mother wouldn't let him have one. But the idea of how you messed the Blessed Virgin looking down on the jockey, I found that rather interesting. Where did that come from? Chicago. That's from living in Chicago and walking my daughter to daycare every day down this one street. Her daycare was at an in-home daycare that was like two blocks from our house. And I would walk by, like you walk by fences and I'm walking by this sort of eclectic gathering of lawn material. But what's interesting, I think why I found it, there was no grass. So there was a lawn jockey and then there was a moving marriage. And they were in the same space. It's true. And I just thought this is such an interesting juxtaposition. To me, that's how art happens is these interesting juxtaposition. These two symbols that carry so much weight, so much American historical weight, world historical weight. So for those who haven't read that, do you want to start to just share some of your poetry with us? That one or are slaves caring for masters and deforming mastery or the film from Philadelphia to poetry? I don't have, it's funny, the two that I brought up that I was like, oh, maybe I'll read these two are actually not those, but... That's okay. I think we need to hear it from the master himself being Roger and I'd like you to share. And we have about five minutes left and we do have a couple of questions from our audience. So I'd like to, they make a nice closing. Okay. I can read one poem and then... Please. And this one sort of, again, is thinking about my upbringing slightly as it overlaps with James Baldwin's upbringing, actually. It was also raised in the storefront Pentecostal Church. Rendle, all lions must lean into something other than a roar. James Baldwin, for instance, singing Precious Lord. His voice as weary as water broken over his scalp in a storefront sanctified church's baptismal pool. All those years ago, when he wanted to be somebody's child and on fire and that being Lord, I want to be somebody's child and chosen water spilling over their scalp. Water taking the shape of their longing, a deer diving into evening traffic in the furrow drawn in the air over the hood of the car. Power and wanting to be something alive and open. Lord, I want to be alive and open. A glimpse of power, the shuffle of a mother's hand over a sleeping child's forehead as if clearing the city's rust from its face, which we mostly are. A halo of rust, a glimpse of power. James Baldwin leaning into the word light, his voice jostling that single rain in his throat as if he might drop it or already have. I am calling to that grain of light, to that gap between his teeth where the many of us fatherless sleep and bear and be whatever darkness or leaping thing we can be. In James Baldwin's mouth, my difficult beauty, my weak in war, my future as any number of angels which is not unlike the beast rendle coming out of the wild heaven into the hills and halls of the meat house at the harpest call with absolute prophecy in his breast and desire for mercy for a friend and end to drifting in loneliness and in that coming down out of the hills, out of the trees, for once bringing humans the best vision of themselves. Of course, must be slaughtered. Roger, you're on your way to Radcliffe at Harvard. I want to make sure our viewers know that for fellowship. So we wish you well and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you all for the wonderful interview. Thank you all for the conversation. It went too fast. Thank you, Roger. And I think we'll have to leave it there. Let our audience know you have been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii. Today, Darlene Boyd and I have been discussing poetry and how it wakes us up to the meaning behind revolution itself. Thanks for participating. And thanks to our viewers to turn tuning in. I'm Phyllis Blyse. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life. Aloha.


This research has developed a novel open-channel droplet microfluidic system which can generate hundreds of droplets from a single channel without requiring any external power source. This system is capable of performing various tasks including droplet splitting, transport, incubation, mixing, and sorting. Additionally, it allows for direct access to the droplets via physical tools such as tweezers and styli, making it easier to manipulate them. This system could be used for a wide range of applications from chemical analysis to material science and biology. This article was authored by Jianwei Kor, Oryen Li, Jean Berthier, and others.


This crew knew that to be successful, we needed to do the reps correctly so that we could progress because if these recruits did not do the reps correctly, we would get sent back. So this crew was just focusing on having physical and mental toughness, one of the five Marine Corps attributes, so that these recruits could progress as a group. This recruit learned that to try to always maintain his bearing even when he has a 50 pound long log on top of him, and to try to motivate others to always give their 100% and to make sure this recruit always puts out every time he can. So for this recruit, it would be recognizing his weaknesses, and instead of throwing down his rifle and just saying, I'm not good at this, I can't do it, this recruit has had to find ways to say, okay, this recruit's not good at this, what can I do, or who can I ask, or what can I see that will make me better at that particular thing.


First of all I would like to thank very much Karl Reber for the for the invitation to join this meeting here today and for the organizational work that he has done to accomplish this session. The Celtic landscape of the Carestia is relatively well known although not in great detail. For a brief overview of cult places we may single out the famous sanctuary of Poseidon that he arrived us, especially known for literary sources to begin with Homer's Odyssey. The cult place associated with Hera on top of Mount Archey, to which the enigmatic dragon's house can be possibly associated. The small temple in the settlement of Eganpolis and the extra-urban temple at Platanistos Elenicop. And sanctuaries of Pacheri and Carababa, west of modern Carestos, that are the topic of the present paper. In addition to these a number of small rural sanctuaries have been identified in regional surveys. Of the temples that the classical and Hellenistic polos of Carestos must have housed we know next to nothing. The sanctuary at Pacheri was as investigated between 2010 and 2015 as part of a multidisciplinary research project combining systematic excavations with geological landscape research, paleoecology, geobotany, zoologiology and the study of marine faunal remains. The Carababa sanctuary and its associated procession road where research is part of a diagronic regional study of land and sea connections in the Carestia between 2016 and 2019. Both projects were carried out as a collaboration between the Ferreunis State Amsterdam and the effort of antiquities of Yubia. In my presentation I will reflect on the development of the Pacheri sanctuary. It's functioning in relation to the Carababa sanctuary and finally I will comment briefly on how the sudden part of the island fits in the water called the landscape picture of Yubia. The southern part of Yubia was probably uninhabited during the larger part of the late Bronze Age. After some three or four centuries the earliest signs of reoccupation of the region come from the Pacheri sanctuary. The earliest finds here belong to the sub-Mycenaean period and consist of six symmetrical arch fibrillae with twisted bow, three violent bow fibrillae as well as three sub-Mycenaean dresspins. The earliest dateable pottery can be identified as early to middle protogeometric and since Pacheri is the for a long time the only early Iron Age site in the region we think that it can be identified with early Iron Age and the cake Caristas. Theoretically it is possible that Pacheri started off in the 11th century BC as a hilltop sanctuary and only during the 8th century when we have the first settlement evidence became the location of a local community that continued to use the hilltop as a cult place. Such a scenario is not very plausible however as it supposes that during the first two centuries of existence this cult site would have been literally in the middle of nowhere considering that the nearest human presence in the protogeometric period was probably found on the opposite coast of Attica. Of interest in this connection are the chance finds of a gold finger ring and an ear ring deadable to the early 9th century possibly the remains of a disturbed tomb near the northlet axis of the Pacheri hilltop. If these items indeed originate from a destroyed grave we can push the earliest evidence for people living and dying on the flanks of the Pacheri hilltop back to the later 10th or early 9th century BC which makes the chronological cap gap considerably narrower. Let us first consider the development of the cult place and its layout during subsequent phases. Most of the earliest material found in the sanctuary was part of the so-called sacrificial refuse area, an open air deposit lying to the south of the sanctuary's upper terrace. This sacrificial refuse area contained large amount of animal bones, charcoal, ceramics and small finds identifiable as photo offerings dating from the 11th to 6th century BC. At some point before the mid 7th century a long wall running north south was constructed on the hilltop and that's the red wall on the plan, delineating a terrace or an open space to its east. During the following phase perhaps in the later 7th century a peribolus or terrace wall retaining a large stone fill was constructed and that these are the brown walls on the plan. In the southern part of this terrace a semi-circular stone altar was built in the 6th century and that's the yellow structure for B on the plan. Inside and next to this structure we found burnt bones and other burnt material, an iron hook and a number of iron knives probably used for butchering sacrificial animals, a bronze fialemason for us, a large iron thrusting spear, a terracotta rattle in the form of a birch and a bronze horse figurine suggesting that this was the focal point for a variety of rituals taking place in the open air. At some point in the classical period presumably around 400 BC the sanctuary was restructured and partly rebuilt. A monumental entrance or gateway building was constructed providing access to an open space which was enlarged probably to accommodate a larger group of cult attendants. On the upper terrace which may be considered to be the most sacred part of the sanctuary a small building was constructed or rebuilt and a forecourt was laid out covering earlier cultic structures. A small building which you see on the lower left-hand side, the small building probably functioned as a pantry and storeroom for precious and sometimes antique items. Let us now continue with a brief overview of cult and cult practices. It seems that right from the start the plackery hilltop was reserved for cultic activities. Already during the 11th to 9th century communal eating and drinking and the dedication of photos were part of the cult activities. During the 8th century we see an intensification of cult activities of plackery. The sacrificial refuse area already mentioned yielded some 33,000 pottery fragments, over 26,000 fragments of animal bones and more than 430 small finds. The majority of the pottery dates to the Middle Geometric II and Late Geometric Periods. Dr. Xenia Nethalumbidu, who studies the ceramics for publication, reports that the painted findwares, among which many imports from Attica, represent the whole range of vessels needed to transport, store, mix, distribute and consume wine on a considerable scale and probably on frequent occasions. We assume that a large part of the animal bones are to be associated with this same phase of increased cultic activity. Most of the identifiable animal bones belong to sheep, goats 80%, followed at a distance by cattle 8.5% and pigs 0.3%. Of the sheep goat fragments only a small portion, 6.5%, were burned. Most of these burned fragments were from the femur and lower part of the tail, which matches with what later literary and iconographic sources tell us about the goat's portion. The much larger percentage of unburned bones suggests that most of the meat was cooked before consumption, probably by those attending the sacrifices. Many of the photo offerings found in the sacrificial refuse area and elsewhere in the sanctuary area were broken or in the case of metal objects bent or folded. A case in point is the body fragment of a male sphere-relation figurine. Together with the numerous pottery fragments this suggests that objects that were used in rituals or offered in the sanctuary were ritually destroyed before their position. Locally produced terracotta figurines of helmeted figures, horses, bovines and a wheel or vehicle may reflect the interests or indeed the lifestyle of part of the male population. More numerous are in fact photos that belong to the female sphere and there are a number of reasons to hypothesize, these are still some of the male items, a shield strap and a bronze collar from the fourth century which has a parallel in the so-called tomb of Philip II in Virginia. We have a number of reasons to hypothesize that these photos that can be associated with the female sphere were dedicated as part of life cycle rituals. The small building A dating to the classical period that we already mentioned was destroyed probably by fire in 325 BC. This event marked the end of all cult activities at Plecary but this unfortunate course of events also meant that the building's entire inventory was preserved. It provides us with a large and diverse collection of mainly local pottery, incense burners and lamps, most probably used for feasting. Much of this material was painstakingly reassembled by Phile Sungu in charge of the fine processing. Some of the vessels carry inscriptions which Dr. Maria Hediruglu will discuss later today in a paper but let me single out one that has a monogram of the letters Alpha P already shown also by Bettina. Possibly referring to Apollo who may have been one of the main deities venerated at Plecary. Let me now turn to the sanctuary of Karababa. The Karababa hill lies opposite of Plecary overlooking a valley with probably ancient agricultural terraces. The sanctuary is situated at about 220 meters above sea level, a little sea level, a little under the crest of the hill and has full view of the Plecary sanctuary. That's going to be seen on this view shirt on the left of the hill. Dr. Donald Keller in his survey during the late 1970s had already identified some festivities that indicate the presence of a cold place. However, thanks to a combined pedestrian and drone survey and with a little help from a wildfire in 2016, I should say we have nothing to do with that, we have been able to identify more structures and reconstruct the general layout of the sanctuary. Like Plecary, the Karababa sanctuary was an open air cold place. It contained several stone-built platforms, some incorporating outcroppings of the natural rock, as well as one or two semicircular stone-built structures reminiscent of the one at Plecary that we have identified as an altar. That's the one over there. In the south, part of a threshing floor has been identified from the air and on the ground within its center a rectangular feature. It was built on the same terrace at platform A and the semicircular feature slash altar, which may indicate that this threshing floor is ancient. Also, it lies within the confines of the sanctuary. During our survey we find in two places rock inscriptions, Omicron Role on one side and Yotah Epsilon on the other, probably indicating Horos Yeru, that is boundary of the sanctuary. Let me point out what's more the location of these two Horos inscriptions. Both read or on one side and in the other. Clearly indicating where the boundary of the sanctuary was. In the fields between Plecary and Carababa, we know that rows of stones set on their side in the ground apparently marking a road. You can see a series of them there. On the basis of a combined drone and pedestrian survey, using mobile devices running an RGIS application to manipulate factorized features and synchronize remote sensing and survey data, we could identify various road segments and finally reconstruct the road system that appears to connect Plecary with the Carababa sanctuary. This road that we interpret as a procession way runs along the northeast side of the terrorist area, then takes a westward turn along the north side of the terrorist area to arrive at the Carababa sanctuary. It is the trajectory that the road takes. The terrorist area is enclosed by a long and substantial boundary wall preserved in some places up to one meter high. That's the green wall that you see over there. It is especially well visible on this combined drone auto photo. Part of it also delineates the sanctuary in the north and for this reason we think that the area that closes can be identified as sacred land. According to contemporary epigraphic evidence, rural and other sanctuaries frequently possessed such taminoid, which they used or leased out to private persons to finance sacrifices and other cult activities. And I think that Athena has excavated such a lease in Paliochora, which also concerns a sacred land, as it shows that this was also practiced in the area. On the basis of the layout of the sanctuary and the connected road system we think that Carababa was a rural sanctuary on the edge of Plecary's catchment area. The presence of a threshing floor may indicate that it was dedicated to the meter, an association that we also find in the literary records of sanctuaries and threshing floors. Surface pottery found within the Carababa sanctuary and in structures associated with the road date to the later catecholonistic period, which shows that the sanctuaries and roads coexisted and were part of the same cleansing landscape. Now to sum up some differences and similarities with sanctuaries in the central part of the island, that is very clear that like at Eretia communal eating and drinking was very important, especially in the 8th century, but there are also a number of very clear differences. And one is of course the development, the early installation of a cold place, perhaps even an urban place, urban population on the Plecary hilltop, and that has everything to do with the particular settlement history, continuity in the central part and a break in occupation in the south part of the island, resulting in the re-establishment of a settlement in the sub-wisening period. Another thing is that at least three sanctuaries in the south seem to be open-air cold places, apart from this very small building at Plecary, and there was no temple building on the side. And there are also a couple of specific features at both Plecary, Karababa and Mount Ahi, like these semi-circular features, probably altars that are very uncommon in the Inglis, that's that shape, but that have been attested in these three sanctuaries. And we also see both at Karababa and at Plecary, and maybe Ahi as well, that these sanctuaries are not only open-air sanctuaries, but they also incorporate rock outcroppings and all kind of rocky features, sometimes with ledges or niches cut into them. It seems that rocky things were important for these cold places, and many of them are also on high ground. And so that seems to be a characteristic of Karistian cold places, which makes them different from things happening in the south. Thank you very much.


Well, there is also some baseball today. Menaga hosting Cebica first round of section 5A. This one was a pitcher's duel throughout. Al Patila of the Braves with a strikeout here. That'll keep the deficit at one. But Cebica just didn't surrender any runs today. They get the strikeout here to end the game. How about an upset in round one? That's your final scores. It'll be one-nothing Cebica over Menaga. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


103.9 FM W.O.Z.O Radio. Knoxville! It seems to be the case that everyone, at least from a religious perspective, largely relies on tradition to inform their impression of reality. And I can only see from the outside, different people pointing at very different things with utmost confidence and using tradition to back that up. It makes me realize that perhaps tradition may not necessarily be the best way to reach that kind of conclusion. For something that should be the most important thing for me, whether or not this God exists, whether or not I'm actually getting, like, true information, whether or not these feelings that I have actually are coming from this belief, or if there's something I'm generating within myself, and that would be a great thing to unlock if I actually knew if that was true or not. And while I wouldn't discredit anything that you can get from Episcopal Church, I really love it. I like, I love the concepts, I love the sense of community. I do wonder if the grand conclusions that are coming about with regard to a supernatural deity are justified, and whether or not I'm justified in having them based on an idea of tradition. What do you think? Welcome back. I'm Dottie Five. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM, here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And today we're talking with a guest. His name is Baby Seal. And what's interesting is he's one of the last people that I actually had a SE conversation with. I went up to Nashville, let's see, like last weekend and set up at the park and I got a phone call and turned out to be a guy with a screen name, Baby Seal. He wanted to talk about his church, why he believed in God, and some of the philosophies that he had. And I thought it was a really interesting conversation that we had. So I invited him to come onto this podcast slash radio TV show, not a TV show, just a radio show and a podcast and have a chat. And we've been talking for, let's say, the last 30 minutes about a whole bunch of different things, including his Episcopalian Church and his beliefs and stoicism of philosophy on how we should live towards what we value the most and not waste time on things we don't have control over.  And now we're going to really delve into his religion and why he believes it, which is always like the fast at anything, right? Like the epistemology behind it. So join me and Douter5 as we delve into this guy's beliefs. But hey, let's see if we got any more announcements. Douter5, you got any more announcements for us? Since the school year is starting back, the Secular Student Alliance has programs to give comradering community to any free-thinking high school or college student who might be like to be involved in the free-thought movement or who we'd just like to find other free thinkers to hang with. Everybody needs like-minded friends and atheists are no different. Earlier, no, we didn't actually mention it earlier. No, we didn't. But we do have an atheist call in TV show. What? We have an atheist call in TV show? Have you ever seen it? No, what's it called? It's called Freethought Forum and you can see it every Wednesday between 6.30 and 7.30 on Concast Channel 12 or on Charter Channel 192. You can also watch it streaming online at ctvnox.org. You can also find archive of some of their shows on YouTube where Fan has been posting them. Just go to YouTube and do a search for three words. Freethought Forum Knoxville. Okay, that's all for the announcements back to the show. Today's topic is stoicism. Stoicism with our friend Baby Seal and us. You know, like I said, it's not an interview. It is a conversation. I was telling him during the break, it's like, hey man, you're free to talk to us or ask us questions too. We don't want you to feel like we're the spotlight. And we really appreciate this call. Yeah, I appreciate being here. Thank you very, very much for having me. So we had talked about Mr. Rogers. That's a really, really fun show. I love that show. It's like one of the best PBS old school shows of all time. My opinion, it's one of the best. Then we went into a Episcopal Church, tenets of the Episcopal Church. And then I think we left into the break talking about reasons why we believe. And you had mentioned that you wanted to talk about, Baby Seal, you had wanted to talk about some of the things that you experienced that justifies your high confidence in the god-belief presented by the Episcopal Church. What do you mean? Oh, well, I should clarify.   And we welcome them. And we actually, I did want to mention too that we have open communion, right? I mean, certainly other Christian churches believe that you have to be confirmed or, you know, believe certain things to actually come and partake in communion. And at our church anyway, we... Dude, you're selling me the brochure. I love it. I love it. No, I know. It's great. I know.  Sounds a lot like the Episcopal Church. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I think for me, the reason why I still go to the Episcopal Church versus the Unitarian Church, because, you know, in a lot of ways I agree the Unitarians are very similar in that way, is just the fact that I'm comfortable with the liturgy and the words. So I just want to... And I just want to outline, you're free to go wherever you want. This is America. I mean, you're said Texas, so that's like prime America, right? And you can believe whatever you want. We're not here to tell you. What we're asking though is, what's justifying the belief that you have, that the God actually exists? And is it... No, sure. So what do you have? So, again, harking back to our conversation, I thought I was thinking a lot about, you know, how do you get comfortable that my feelings and experiences, you know, the spiritual experiences that I've had in my life around God and feeling, you know, cared for and loved, sort of in a universal kind of sense. Yeah, good feelings. And so, you know, I looked into it and noticed, among other things that, you know, belief in God in the US anyway has gone from, I think, 99% in the 40s to around 90% today. So it can continue to move, right? But I kind of feel like, okay, I'm interested in your take on how... Not that I'm confident in any particular set of beliefs around God, but the fact that God exists based on my feelings, based on the fact that at least 90% of Americans believe in God too. I'm interested in your take on that. Well, let me ask you this. Just as your personal opinion, why do you think that all the different religion and all the different people who believe in God can't agree on what he's like? Or even if it's a he. Well, no, that's an intro. Yeah, exactly. I'm very much a fan of not using the key pronoun whenever possible. But I do wonder, and I think I also benefit from sort of interfaith. I belong to an interfaith group. And I really appreciate, like, hey, we as multi-faiths can get together to do good works. We all agree that we can help out people and volunteer. The volunteering is good. So I really appreciate the aspects of faith that are kind of more universal across the majority of faiths to say, hey, maybe this is aspects of God or reality that we can agree on that maybe this is... Those are the areas that maybe have something to say about reality and at least inform me about how I view reality and God. I'm not sure if I followed on that answer. So if there's a lot of different people in different churches, even on the same block, and they all have very different ideas of what God is like, but are all saying, well, we believe because of faith and personal feelings. And the next group says, well, we believe in a completely different other God that we're sure is true because of our personal feelings and the faith that we have in them. And then another block on the other corner. You come to Tennessee, it's literally every corner of the block. Yeah, it is. Right. And it's like, hey, our personal feelings and our faith have pointed us to this complete other nature of God. And they're not compatible with each other. In fact, I think there are people that could have personal feelings and faith that there is no God. It's interesting, right? Certainly, like when dogma doesn't agree, you know, those schisms, it's really kind of where like the, you know, well, certainly we experienced it in the Episcopal Church, right, around Gene Robinson when the gay bishop was elected. And I think it was the early 2000s. There was definitely a lot of tension between the group that thought, hey, we should be accepting of gay bishops.   And that's very much like where I think, you know, when you get into those like little nuance things, that's where a lot of animosity builds up. But I think that at the same time, religions in general do have some common elements around ritual, around, you know, loving each other, trying to be, you know, compassionate. Well, it depends on which testament they come down on, I guess. I'm not familiar with the Episcopal, but I assume they still use the Bible. Yes. And the Bible does not change. And the people who are saying that gay men and women are okay and should be treated equally as regular citizens and all that do not have a lot of biblical support where the people are against it do.  But when it comes right down to homosexuality, there are lines in the Bible that prohibit it. Yeah, the clobber verses, sure. How can you get around that in the church? Well, I'll tell you how I get around it. And that is to say that, you know, I personally view the Bible as man's search for God and not, you know, God's, you know, literal word. And so just like I eat shellfish, you know, I wear mixed fabrics, right? All those sorts of things.  And that's to get back to Mr. Rogers. Right, and left handed people, right?  And that turned out to not be the case. So I think, anyway, that's how I personally view it. Can I throw something out? If the Bible just represents the search for God, why use the Bible at all? If the God that you believe in seems to be compatible with potentially being chaos or non-biblical at all. Right, your own. Yeah. Why do you need the Bible at all? Well, I think that there's definitely a traditional aspect. You specifically. But me specifically, I think that I've accepted that human beings relate to things narratively. So I'm just going to catch you here again. I'm not talking about human beings in general. I'm talking specifically about you. Why do you use the Bible? Sure, but for me, I still, like, I'm a human being, I think narrative is very powerful. And I think that, you know, Jesus's parables are powerful. I think that, you know, as an example, the Adam and Eve story, as Wombat we were discussing before, I think gets to a fundamental problem that we, as humans face, that we, you know, are biologically evolved to live in hunter-gatherer groups, right, in the Pleistocene era. And, you know, millions of years ago or hundreds of thousands of years ago, when biologically we're identical, right, to those humans that were living in the Serengeti. Yeah. And that's not what we're living like right now.  Baby seal. Or I don't think people are willing to. Just to get back to the crux of the question, it sounds like you have the Bible because you appreciate the narratives that are in that story. But how many other religious texts have you gone through because there may be ones that appeal to you even more so than the Bible? No, definitely. And why not use those as an abandon the Bible that you have? Because clearly there's more contemporary texts where you can get more philosophical texts. If you like hunter-gatherers, there's plenty of actual books that have literacy and articulate points about how hunter-gatherers became about. And you don't need the Bible to explain that. If you like Jesus' parables, there's many much more updated decrees for how laws are developed, how morality should work, how we should treat each other as a functional society that are far more detailed and actually demonstrably successful than anything Jesus had said. Why do you need the Bible? Well, I think that those things should inform it, right? And certainly, me reading books like Ishmael or I read a long time ago so don't try to quote me on it. You know, it's sapiens, right? And I think that's kind of where those things can inform those narratives for me, but I think that it's still a beneficial narrative. I still get something from those stories even if it's informed, you know, by science and by those other readings. And so I guess the reason that I don't abandon them is because I haven't come across, well, number one, you know, that's part of the community. I mean, I don't know if me being able to discuss ideas with people to have that kind of shared narrative that we can then talk about and say, hey, maybe, you know, yeah, this parable is really meaningful, but what if we, you know, updated it or something? What if our understanding can slightly change? What if those parables have already been updated and we already have better texts to go by? Why still use the old outdated parables? You can still read them, you can still inform yourself with it, but it sounds like if I were to go to the Episcopal Church, the main book that would be there is the Bible, and the Wayne thing that you would be taught from is the Bible, when we seem to be in agreement that we have better stories that we can get even more information from. I'm not sure that I completely agree with the better stories. I mean, what better stories do you know about that is a better story than let's just stick with Adam and Eve as a narrative? What if we knew for a fact that a parable in the Bible that we love very much is outdated and we say, hey, I actually have a better way to explain why we have hunter-gatherer societies. I have a better way of understanding how we came about to learn how knowledge works and how we learned what, you know, how to treat each other as people and how we learned if snakes can actually talk or not and stuff like that. Hey, why don't we just use that text instead? Yeah, well, not only that, but I mean, there are Eastern religious texts, you know, Buddhism, Confucianism, that have better philosophical arguments. Oh, yeah, you go to the Egyptian texts, you'll have the Ten Commandants in the Lord. The secular books teach better morals like all the works of Shakespeare and Ulysses and things like that.  Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I'm metifying all the episodes of the Twilight Zone right now. Every episode has a great moral behind it and it's acted so well. I love the Twilight Zone. Oh, listen, I can tell you, I probably learned more from the Twilight Zone than I have from any chapter in the Bible recently. I've read through that thing many, many times, but I'll tell you what, there are options far more so. Like if you were to consider the concept of just one book, decreeing how we should treat each other versus every other book, are we really that confident that the Bible is the best one that we should base everything off of? Well, you know, I think I'm definitely not the best defender of the Bible that you could have on. But you do use it, so I'm asking specifically for you, why rely on it so much? Well, for me, I don't rely on it. I would say I don't rely on it that much. I do think that they are still some beautiful stories there that help me, you know, approach and understand as we develop better thoughts and things like, you know, Twilight Zone, it's not mutually exclusive. And I think that the benefit for me personally and the reason why I still find it meaningful is to be able to have conversations with people in my community and sort of have that shared narrative that we can then go off into other ideas. You know, like I'm sure a lot of them are definitely a better starting place to have that kind of conversation. My stoic ideas. I'm sorry, I can't see you. So it's always this uncomfortable thing of interjecting. But what if it was a better book to use as a starting basis to have that conversation rather than the book that was written, you know, like roughly 2000 years ago? And the thing about it gets me, or I have a problem with is when you share those stories and narratives as it were in your community, it's not simply the idea that you're exchanging and testing their worth. It comes with a whole load of authoritarianism with it. I mean, the societies that put forward those stories are basically telling you that these are true and you have to believe them and obey them. And the different people that you talk to in your community using those shared narratives are going to support the authoritarian part of it to different degrees. And you never know how much they're going to be supporting it. It sounds like you have a good mindset about this, but there are people who will take that far more literally than you and see you using it as a sign for them to be more confident in the authoritarian parts that they are already being used for truth. And I think the issue there is authoritarianism and that certainly isn't limited to religious groups. I think that's Stalin, for instance, wasn't religious. Well, I think this train is a religious person. He was trained as a... Sure, sure. The point to me is that I think, certainly I and I think a lot of people in my personal community would support the... Hey, maybe we shouldn't support the authoritarian abuse of religious texts. I was thinking something else. Interestingly, when you look at the history of the U.S., it was the Southern Baptists who were for separation of church and state because they were the minority religious group at the time. Would you be in favor if the Episcopal Church says, actually, we're going to throw out the Bibles and get the Koran in here? It's the more updated Judaic text. We're going to learn from the Koran here from now on and maybe even in the future, move over to the Bhagavad-Vita or something like that. Would you be... Or Mormonism. Yeah, or Mormonism, yeah. Jewel of great cause. And there's nothing wrong with Mormonism. There's great stories in that book. There's more stories in that book than there are in the New Testament. If you like stories and seeing how people get along with each other, there's more of that in that book. So, why not use that? No, that is an interesting point. But I think that... Why is that funny? It's a good point in the sense of there are obviously very strong families in the Mormon Church. The exact same stories you get from your New Testament, those books haven't moved, plus more stories of how people interact with each other and search for God. Why not use the Mormon text? I think that that gets to tradition. I don't think that that would necessarily happen, but I don't think that I would have that big of a problem with it if we were to change over the narrative. Why wouldn't you do a static? Now you have a book that has more stories, plus the stories you already like. Why isn't that even better? Why don't do it right now? Why is it funny? You gave me the standard. I'm just following the same standard. Well, I think that having read some of those, I don't think that they're that much better than... Why not? You already said you don't take it literally seriously. You say you just appreciate the stories and the constant that people are searching for God. You already said you had a separation between reality and what you participate as this imaginative play. Why not engage in Mormons or Jadism or Jobal Witnesses, Witness books? They have the same stories that are in the Bible that you're reading, plus more. Or bring them all in. Yeah. It seems that there could be potentially a double standard here. That's what I'd like to point out. And it's interesting why. I think that the reason that it doesn't happen is because those traditions like happened organically. And that's where I think, in some ways, we work with what has been handed down to us. And that's where the Episcopal Church certainly updates the prayer book, for instance. And I certainly wonder if, as a means to getting to a true conclusion, just working only with what was handed down to you is a reliable way to get to a true conclusion. Or could there be something better to get to a true or a better understanding of reality rather than just working what's given to you? It seems to be the case that everyone, at least from a religious perspective, largely relies on tradition to inform their impression of reality. And I can only see from the outside different people pointing at very different things with utmost confidence and using tradition to back that up. It makes me realize that perhaps tradition may not necessarily be the best way to reach that kind of conclusion. For something that should be the most important thing for me, whether or not this God exists, whether or not I'm actually getting true information, whether or not these feelings that I have actually are coming from this belief or if there's something I'm generating within myself. And that would be a great thing to unlock if I actually knew if that was true or not. And while I wouldn't discredit anything like I love the concept, I love the sense of community, I do wonder if the grand conclusions they're coming about with regard to a supernatural deity are justified and whether or not I'm justified in having them based on an idea of tradition. What do you think? That's<PHONE_NUMBER>. And now, back to the show. What do you think? Well, I think that that's sort of the aspect that's unknowable from my standpoint and that's where I think... If it's unknowable, why be convinced that it's true? Well, I'm not convinced that it's true. I think that I like the idea of God. I like that it matches with my personal experience and feelings, but I'm very open to the fact that maybe it is chaos. I can't know that from the data that I have from a reason standpoint. But similar to the way that I accept the calculated distance from the earth to the sun but not doing the proof for myself, that's kind of where I think there's something meaningful for me in the ideas that other people have had in the past that we can approach but not take too far, right? In a dogmatic or ideological way. Larry, just an update. We're near the bottom of the show. We'll close out and we'll edit this appropriately but do you still want to do your sign off just so that we can get it in the same time frame? I've got a different sign off this time. Alright, do a quick sign off. Okay, one thing I wanted to say was that you're talking about believing the distance to the sun. Believing the distance to the sun doesn't cost you anything. Religious beliefs can definitely cost you something. Look at the 9-11 pilots who flew planes into the building. They cost them their lives. There's a lot of different things that come with religious belief and they should be examined to see what kind of cost you'd be playing. I absolutely agree with that and I think that for me that's where to make editing really easy for me. How about we'll continue this offline. I'll also record it. But at least for now, we'll see you guys next time. Thank you very much for joining us on the Digital Freakout Radio. This is 103.9 FM. Wozo, we'll see you next week. Alright. Bye. See you. Okay, keep going. I'm sorry. No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to screw up the sign off. Sorry. No, no. Great, great. That's why I'm trying to get everyone on the same page. Alright, go for it. Great. So, okay, where was the thought? Oh, yeah. I definitely think that that's an aspect of, again, understanding our the ideas of God that I have beneficial to me and my community as opposed to creating a situation. And that's where ultimately the homosexuality causes breakdown for me because my experience with my homosexual friends is that they don't have a choice that they're loving. But, you know, there's nothing like that that's happening here. We need to accept them as people and as members of our church and as full members of the church. Sure. And that's really where, yeah. Can I throw something in? Just throwing my hat in here. Like if someone told me, like, if I told someone, hey, or someone told me, hey, I have a cat and I'm like, oh, cool. And they show me a picture of the cat. I believe that they have a cat because that's a pretty mundane thing to believe. People have cats and that's good enough evidence for me to believe that they have a cat. If they told me they had an actual tiger, like an actual Bengal tiger, I'm like, I'm going to have to see a picture or something to like, I won't take your word for it. And they show me a picture of them with the tiger. I'll be like, oh man, I don't know about this. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, sure. I guess I believe, but not really.  If they told me they had like a purple dragon that came from Jupiter in a time machine and they had a picture of them standing next to like a DeLorean and there's like a purple dragon behind them. I'm like, I don't care if you have a picture of it. I don't believe you. That thing is too extraordinary for me to believe what the amount of evidence that you're providing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I can't imagine anything more extraordinary than a supernatural deity that made the entire universe. As a result, if people say, hey, you know, you believe it because a hundred people said it or you believe it because scientists said, you know, the sun exists and like takes time to travel to there. I was like, okay, these are mundane things that we can test and examine but in a supernatural deity, that's an incredibly extraordinary thing. I'm going to need more than just a book saying that it's true. Especially one that monitors every thought you have and really cares where you put your penis. Larry, just finishing the thought. Just finishing the thought. Finishing the thought. I won't believe it just because a book says so. I won't believe it because everybody on the planet says so. I'm going to need more evidence to believe this extraordinary thing. The standards of evidence are different based on how incredible the thing that I'm being told is. It seems to be that case. Do you agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? I do agree with that. I think that, again, a good skeptic or a good postmodernist could say can tear down anything. Any kind of rational argument that you have. As long as you don't accept prepositions you can deal with it all. Ultimately, it all gets down to and even science gets down to feelings. Why does it get down to feelings? And as feelings, a reliable way to get to a true conclusion. I tell you, I've been at work. I've worked the night shift once. I walked to my car and I thought there was a dog rolling around the corner. I saw the dog. I literally saw the dog and he was rolling toward me. And I'm freaking out. I have every hormone in my body firing because I'm like, I don't want to fight dogs, dude. I'm a big black guy. I'm not bulletproof. I'm not dogproof. I can get bitten and I'm bleed too.  It rolled right past me and I'm like, oh my gosh. I had every feeling in the world that this was a real dog coming after me was wrong. That's a real story. Our personal feelings are facts. Yeah. Our personal feelings are a reliable way to get to a true conclusion. If I could be wrong about a dog and a plastic bag, why am I relying on feelings to get me on that God claim? Why was that even useful? And how do you interpret those feelings? Can you be sure that your interpretation is correct? Yeah. How do you know your feelings are the same as anyone else's? Why is that a reliable way to get to a true conclusion? I will get to conclusions. But why true ones? To me, the reliable piece of it is what are the aspects of God that a majority of religion and the majority of people agree with? God is good, right? God is potentially inside the universe is imminent. Possibly outside. That's where I don't know. Yeah. Not to frustrate you, but this is only the current understanding of what the popular idea of God is. You go back a thousand years, it's completely different. You go back another thousand, it's completely different. A thousand years from now, we might believe in a completely different God than we are now. If that changes based on the majority, why are we relying on the majority to determine whether or not the aspects of the God that we believe to be true are true. If that can change based on whoever is around or whoever has the most babies. There is a great, I had a sociology professor who started his college career as a religion major and his first sociology class said, okay, you can predict what kind of religion a society has based on these factors, whatever how developed and what stage of development they're in in terms of animistic religion versus possibly polytheistic versus monotheistic and so on. That's why he changed his major from religion to sociology. I definitely think that that's part of it, but that's where for me, living in the society that we live in, and I have, by the way, gone to mosques out gone to Buddhist temples. I'm not challenging you, I'm just asking why are you relying on feelings to reach a true conclusion? That's the focus of this question. If we can agree that personal feelings aren't reliable, that I can have very strong personal feelings about certain things that aren't true. About people without genres of music or people with certain colored skins or whether or not someone has a penis or not, if I could have feelings about those strong things and they dictate how I act, are those a reliable way to know if that's a true conclusion or not? I can't tell you how many women I've seen drive Jeep Wranglers in the city.  They're things that daddy's buy for their good daughters so that they never get in car accidents that they don't have to worry about. Women like big cars, so they're always going to be whenever I see a Jeep, it's always going to be a woman. I've seen that time and time again. Therefore, in my mind from the personal feelings that I've reached and the evidence that I've had and the experiences I've had, every Jeep Wrangler is driven by a woman. Like, that's a conclusion I can reach with the evidence that I've had. Is that a reliable way to get to that conclusion? Well, I think that interestingly, I mean, this is where what is the crisis right now striking kind of social sciences of being able to reproduce published results in papers that's actually kind of disturbing. What is that? The replication crisis? Have you heard about this? No, I haven't. So this is a pretty recent thing where a lot of published psychology papers... Does this go towards answering the question that I asked? Because I had a question hanging out there I genuinely wanted an answer to. Okay, okay. Well, you said, yeah, your feelings can be mistaken for sure. I would say that feelings that you have over time can be more reliable. I mean, I don't question am I mistaken about drinking my tap water? No doubt. You have a reasonable expectation based on a grand majority of mundane experiences with your tap water that it's not dangerous. I don't know if you have as many with a supernatural being. And I'm wondering why use a standard for mundane tap water for an incredibly extraordinary supernatural being. Why are these two things being used for the same kind of conclusion? It seems like they're a completely different standard of testing. But that's where I feel like I'm not... This is my feeling, right? But my feeling is that I'm not making an extraordinary claim to say that reality outside myself exists, that I don't know all the aspects of reality outside of myself and part of the idea that helps me to capture the wonder that you were describing that I'm very much find like Carl Sagan Carl Sagan's view Spinoza's writings on God Before we get to more names, do you believe that God exists? Again, I think that it's a meaningful concept to me But do you actually believe that God exists? No I believe that God exists That's what we're talking about here That's just what we're talking about I want to know, do you have a good reason for that belief? I think that I think that it's in a lot of ways separate from the knowable universe and in that sense it's outside the ways of proving and that's why I don't I try to keep myself and those beliefs as small as possible and as humble as possible in terms of like the God belief is dependent on at least as far as you presented that you exist in a knowable universe that there's a universe beyond that that we don't know anything about it and that God lives there No I wouldn't say that I think that it's possible that God is the universe like a pantheistic view it's possible that it's a deist view I don't know What I do know is that I guess the aspects of God that I feel most comfortable with is that you know there's a very rational aspect of God that the world is ordered that it has all a certain loss How do we know that's related to a God like I can definitely flip a coin and it can land heads and I can say my cat's black but I can't make the argument of saying well because I flipped this coin and it landed heads I have a black cat like how am I connecting the fact that I have a rational universe that seems orderly and a God existing how are you connecting those two things well because I'm connecting God to reality and that's like a way of tell me the reasonable tell me the reasonable way that you're doing that in like a reliable method but I can believe it too if it's true because I want to know a few things like how are you doing that I because again that that relationship with reality like I could say the same thing about like Shiba or I can say the same thing my camera on my desk right now this kind of desk exists therefore there's rationality in the universe and math exists yes my cat my camera does exist and math does exist but how am I connecting those two it seems so desperate like how am I really what's the methodology that I'm using that you can tell me that connects hey we seem to believe living in an orderly world and a God exists that's responsible for that like what's that connection that's there and is that connection reliable like do you have that you don't have to have it right now we can talk about this in the future but do you have that do you have a reliable way that connects the reality that we seem to be sharing and a supernatural deity that is likely responsible for it and if you do I want to know about it because that seems incredible but I'm hearing things that are like personal experiences you know when you when you say like supernatural God and that I guess my my belief in God is doesn't say that it necessarily has to be supernatural and maybe there is no if your God's natural can we test it no it's not it's not that it's again I think it's something that is do we have an idea where your God exists it seems like it the definition of the God that we're talking about shifts as we get close to it it seems like when I say hey can we test God to God it could be chaos it could be ethereal outside of this reality it's like okay well it's supernatural then no no no it exists in this world and potentially interacts with things like so it does do things that we know about no no no there's no way to know if it exists or not we need to know what we're talking about here because this isn't the first time that we've ran into this loop I am seeing it only I'm only telling you this from an outside perspective I don't have a horse in the race I don't I'm telling you I don't believe that there's no God I don't believe that there is a God I'm not convinced either way so I'm probably the best Larry and I are probably the best unbiased parties to tell you that we're not convinced that you have a very good understanding of this God that you're talking about I know I don't well I don't I don't have very strong beliefs on you know what what what God is I have ideas yet you are willing to defend on multiple hours at a time that this God actually does exist and that your belief is founded by God is real and justified why bother well because I enjoy thinking about it I know I do you know it feels great I think it's but why but how did you be examined and it should be you know something that I but I think about why do you know from the perspective of hey this thing makes me feel good therefore it's real and now we can have fun thinking about it versus why do I believe this thing is real do I have a good reason to believe it I'm going to withhold Until I have a good reason to believe in it and then you could be like anybody else in a much more rational perspective of like saying Hey, I don't know if this is true or not I know actually actually believe it but I do like learning more about the history of how it came to be that way I can see from an unbiased perspective because I can tell you I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey It's all about Greek and you're like running around in like a simulation of Reese. I love all the gods I love interacting with like, you know vendors and and pirates and like figures from ancient Greece and from the Peloponnese or It's amazing and I can appreciate it despite the fact that I don't have any belief in those gods Or I'm convinced that any of them were true You don't have to have that belief that you that you're willing to defend at this point to appreciate the benefits of the belief or Even experience the same things that you're already experiencing and I'm wondering what is more important to you The fact that you can have these good comfortable beliefs that you can appreciate looking into or the rationality of understanding Hey, I'm willing to have a high standard for what I believe is true And if in fact this aren't if this isn't true or is true I will I'll say I don't know for now But I can still examine it and still have these really great conversations But not from the perspective of I already am on team this guy exists like there's no there's no reason to send out your Your your colors already like you can if you don't have a good reason to believe it I don't know is one of the best answers that you could have and it goes yeah And it's in the intellectual actually honest position and there's nothing wrong with saying hey I don't know if this guy exists. I don't believe in this guy. I'm not convinced that it's true But I can still appreciate the community that I'm part of I can still contribute and have those meetings or whatever in the interfaith groups I think you're in the perfect place for it But if you don't have a good reason for it, I wouldn't even I wouldn't waste a single second saying well Maybe I do what about personal feelings? What about if a hundred people said that the God was true? What if it was just from tradition? What if I had like these really really interesting feelings that I don't know where they came from or if it makes me feel Bad about relics like no you would immediately recognize these are bad Unreliable ways to get to a true conclusions and I care about what's true and what's not true So why not just why and I'm not forcing to do anything But I'm wondering like why isn't that as obvious to you as it is from us who are on the outside saying hey What are you doing right now? You have a great mind? Why are you convincing yourself that something's true when you have no good reason to believe it? I've got a great video. I like to recommend to people if you're interested sure go to YouTube If you're at a computer, I assume you are I'm at it. Yes Look up evidence 3 EV ID 3 and C3 Do you see he's got a series of videos called why I'm no longer a Christian? I'm sorry. What was the name? It's it's evidence But spelled the second and third E with a three I've got it Also check out Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It's really good Now he's got a series of videos, I think the first 10 of them really are the series Each one's about 10 minutes long where he a very painstakingly documents his his journey from Christian fundamentalist to Atheist and it takes him through college and he has a mentor that he emails back and forth and he talks about every aspect of Belief and he's very eloquent and his production values are great. Yeah It's it's a it's a very Good series of videos and you can break them up into 10 minutes segments if you want to also if you like videos I'd recommend check out other street epistemologists. There's Anthony man Bosco Curious cordial curiosity you will see mold when it doesn't it may not be as clear right now But like the more you see people use the same reasons that you're using to believe completely right or different things makes you realize Oh, okay Maybe I should get better reasons because you should always be in towards the pursuit of getting better reasons for what you believe All right, and when you realize oh Here's the standard and all these people believe completely different other gods or complete like you have fills at ducking them Or that crystals can talk to them or that their grandparents are reincarnated birds and cardinals and parks And they believe right exact same reasons why I believe in my god I need to have a higher standard for what I believe and it's like we said at the beginning of the show You can't choose what you believe you either convince or you're not convinced and you'll either find that you Convince with the current standard you have or that you're not convinced of the standard you have But either way you can keep looking and I feel like I don't want you to ever be in a point where you're like so Comfortable with your what the feeling that you have that you stop looking so I know I absolutely agree with that. I definitely You know what one one experience that I had that was Very cool like early on in stoicism is thinking through like free will and determinism and And yeah, I came to some really I don't know interesting insights there that that were very challenging and no I appreciate, you know the conversation. I guess my question for both of you is what what Would you like Say that your philosophy of life is in terms of you know the why of life and how how you you both Kind of got there. You know where did life come from type of thing? No, no, no like more more personal of like, you know What was the purpose of life? Yeah, what's what's your I guess per purpose of life or what what your goal is Purpose is one yourself give it you develop them there It's very important some of the most important thing you can do in your life is develop your purpose And you don't just have one you have many and they change throughout your entire life. Yeah So I mean, it's it's not a simple question. It's not saying well, this is my purpose because You know they're evolving so I'd say one of the truest things about a secular perspective It's that I'm not given purpose by a greater being to me I get the responsibility to use those for myself and I can change them if I need to and I can involve them as I evolve and grow up Myself and I think that's a wonderful responsibility such that my purpose is now Finding purpose and giving myself purposes and learning from the purposes that I have. Yeah. Yeah, and if you're interested in Some of my writings you can go to digital free thought calm and click on the blog But I've taken those articles and put them in a book and it's not available on Amazon Called atheism what's it all about? But anybody can go to my website and read those articles and more And our shows are archived there too as well. No awesome. Yeah, no So as an example tie like I think you know from our earlier conversation I mean, would you would you position yourself as kind of like an enlightened heatheness? Do you know kind of like the individual and I don't know is kind of the highest good in other words No, I don't so is that like a utilitarian perspective? Are you familiar with that term? Yes? I'm familiar with that but utilitarian. I mean you typically they're more like Whatever Looking at the human human Humanity is like whatever Unit of measure, okay, so I've not I'm not up to date with like the details of these Understandings I would say like I don't know what he's in his new guy. There is either I would I think my my philosophy for ladies how I conduct myself is fairly straightforward I'm willing to say I don't know when I don't know things and I'm open-minded to learning new things and I'll have the I'm trying to have the highest stamp. I How do I put it? I want to believe as many true things as possible But I also don't want to believe the fewest false things as possible So I need to have a very good standard so that I know where the falsehoods are and where the truth Truths are and I'm willing to say I don't know if I don't know that way I can at least put myself in a perspective where I'm at least intellectually honest beyond that it's easy enough to do things that maintain my well-being and That just requires me understanding long-term benefits versus like short-term gains like hey I steal that money from that bank today, but I might get arrested and put in a box for the rest of my life afterwards I'm not gonna do that. So hey, I'm gonna do things that are towards my well-being. I'm gonna pay my taxes I'm gonna contribute to society. I'll be a good moral model for people who can look up to me Maybe you even follow my path or set a good example for the neighborhood that I'm in and these have been demonstrably beneficial to me and I like having things that are beneficial for me So like I call that selfishness, but there's nothing really wrong with looking out towards for my own self-preservation and self-interest I've got a fellow man and my fellow man because that benefits me because now my fellow man looking out for me as well So it all right towards. Hey, what's beneficial and this all benefits me It's called human humanism Definitely and that's you know, again, that's a drop whatever Stoke terms or whatever, but that's very much the you you dymonia like good flow of life beneficial sort of thing sort of you and There's just some very interesting Arguments between like the Stoics and the Epicureans right historically of like The Epicureans were just all about pleasure and like you just isolate yourself and a garden a nice peaceful garden somewhere And that's that's that's that's good And that's the most beneficial thing whereas the Stoics would say no the best thing is for you to like live a life of service and That not only benefits society, but also ultimately you and That's sort of like, you know, I'd like a mr. Rogers would be a great example of Sort of that a life well lived If that's it then I would disagree with that point of view because I would say I shouldn't be obligated to have to Provide service. I would say it's not it's not an obligation though, but I think it's a way of Maybe recognizing that and benefiting others. You're you're benefiting yourself Yeah, my true true benefiting others My idea is whatever you do that causes the least amount of needless harm is the best thing then if there's a guy who's like I just want to have a Beach where I'm sitting and not hurting anybody towards my life I'm like, okay, right? That's not a problem And if there's a guy is like I want to join the military and help and I want to do community service I'm like they're both doing what they want to do with their own lives. Sure neither more causing needless harm I'm fine with it. I'm not gonna force one to do the other or the other to do the Alternative I think they're both rocking it, but if there's some guy who's just kicking puppies Stop either be like this guy or this other guy, but we're gonna stop you if you do needless harm Otherwise do what you do what you want my main my three rules are like just don't be a jerk You know work work hard like you know enjoy the life that you have and then try to keep your I'm gonna bail you guys keep talking if you want to Ryan I wanted to say thank you very much for being on the show Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I'm happy to have you and Hi, thanks again.  All right, so you had done that interview with me I never get the idea or the perspective of someone after the talk that we've had you said you had given it a lot of thought Yeah, was there anything that? You would prefer to Express during the call or was there anything that you thought I could improve on with regard to have a conversation with Etc. Um That's a really good question. I hmm, I Think the main thing that bothered me is you know, just like cell phones have that delay, right?  Yeah But you know that like that's very like whatever a technical aspect, but I think um Yeah, I would say if you like doing the future Like you know, I don't I have an Android phone So I don't know how it works, but like FaceTime or Skype or something where yeah, you can see like facial expressions Yeah, also always like a good a good thing and I think that that's where you know it's very helpful to Have like deep conversations like this face-to-face and that's kind of why I also So it's not outside of the ordinary though. I wonder what would happen to it if I did an hour-long face You would probably be throttled yeah, I think so I think I'd be throttled like why are you so grainy is everything? But yeah, you know, but in terms of everything else. No, I thought it went really well It's it's definitely You know give me a lot to think about is there any Answer you would give differently now Yeah, that's a good question But I think I'm You know what what what you said there towards the end was was very compelling Around Yeah Saying hey, these are these are meaningful, but you know The I don't know is maybe the right the right answer and I don't I don't I don't have I'm sort of surprised by my reticence to You know leap there and so I think that's where I'd you know I just have to do a little bit more work around All right. Yeah, is there something else There or or can I you know get to that point and feel feel better about this? Can I did you do you already know about the coin clip example did I already show that with you? Yeah, and I guess so so just to go Down that road as well as the example that you used about You know a car and putting water versus versus gas in the tank. Yeah So that's where I kind of feel like I You know Feel like I've I've been testing that out in the sense of Does belief in God like actually get my car to where I wanted to go in terms of helping me be a better person, right? right and so I Kind of feel like that's the case I don't think you necessarily have to have a belief in God for you know to get the gas in the tank or Theoretically can be another another source theoretically right in this example But that's what that's what's worked for me So what but this is entirely hypothetical if you stop your belief in God right now I'm not saying do it, but like if you did sure what would change tomorrow about your personal not that much to be honest Hmm. I mean that's that's kind of where you would go around start murdering people or would you start wearing clothes? No, exactly purple and like shoving shellfish down your face and being like I'm gonna lust after every one of my neighbors Whatever exactly yeah, do you think anything like that would happen? No, no, I and that's where I think You know as we kind of ended the previous conversation. I don't think it's that I Don't know Yeah, does it does it doesn't really change anything and so in that sense is it really the gas in the tank? Yeah Digital Thank you


Hi, my name is Frederick just got out of school bitch chin and uh before we start the video Yeah, I am wearing a really oversized shirt because I want to enjoy my summer by doing literally nothing and being in bed all Day comfortable in an oversized shirt because I have SAT camp In about three weeks, so don't try to judge me today But even though I want to do nothing. I also don't want to feel useless So I asked myself What are some things you can do in bed that are known for being stupid take?  You only have to know like The first three letters of pie and that's it, but if you really want to memorize All of it for like a contest. How about you not make a phrase for yourself? That being said pies 3.14 15 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6 2 6 4 3 3 8 3 2 7 9 5 0 2 8 4 1 9 7 1 6 9 3 9 9 3 bitch I won my pie contest two years ago Life hacks for the bathroom. All right. Yeah, I everyone needs that What does that even do oh actually hold on I can do that part I Can do that part. I'm gonna get some napkins look at these Untidy unkept napkins that aren't rolled the right way.   All right pause pause. Let me get there So you just these people just do it too fast man. They gotta know that I'm just a student This is right.  All right. How to tie tie in five seconds. They said go to earth. They said it'll be easy They said let me get it five seconds. They said Five seconds.    All right now.  I don't really think it's gonna fit will it five minute crafts Let me take one key. Just make this five minute craft easier.  Okay. I'll admit I get why this works But the reason I never do this is because you look ridiculous with a key on your shoe Okay, next hack.  Are you? So I realized this is a trick for when you go camping ten out of ten when I recommend that Why all right? Let's look at this girl. Look at this girl. Look at this girl Let's see what they have to offer open pores What this is a DIY mask. Let's just see how much this can cost.   I was looking for earphone hacks Wait, I didn't even see the hack. Oh, you know what? Oh wait. Oh and never mind. Okay I'm gonna do one of those hacks. So first you do this with your hand That's most likely a gang sign and then you do wrap just take it out. I'm still a little skeptical Hmm.  See we're really testing it They did this the guy in the video was like oh No, it doesn't stay in my ear and he goes like Upside down. How is this any more comfortable?  Don't ever speak to me or my Hufflepuff scarf ever again This is a lot of stripes going on right now. This around grab Just happened like this doesn't look right this around grab this grab this boom. Oh You know that worked. I can do something for once. Okay. Now this one. I didn't have this. I'm so lost.    Look at that. Your boy is ready for Hogwarts. All right I actually found a useful hack for once. All right, so I think I found a conclusion as to how five-minute crafts work First of all, they may click big thumbnails. Let's get that out of the way and most of their DIYs are just like so To the extreme of like what who would do that and that's why we watch also the DIYs that I would do are too Expensive and I can just buy the thing I wanted to make in the first place But that's all I have for now So if you enjoyed give this video like leave a comment down below or better subscribe because it post videos on Saturdays not every Saturday gonna skip last week. I love you guys and everything is less than three You


Greetings folks. Dave Hamilton here at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I saw the strangest thing last night for 139 bucks. You, yes you can add a keyboard to your iPhone. Yup. I know. And it looks kind of ridiculous. So like you can see what I saw here. Like it's a case that has a keyboard at the bottom of it. So it's a physical keyboard. I typed on it. It's okay to type on. It's not like the best thing, but I could see people getting used to this. It works. It's 139 bucks for iPhone 14 Pro or 15 Pro. And then 159 bucks for iPhone 15 Pro Max starts shipping in February. I did some typing on it. Yeah, you can see what I wrote. And but then he showed me Command A selects all Command C copies. Command V, paste, paste, paste, right? So that's cool. Command H brings you back to the home screen. Command, I think Command Spacebar brings up spotlight kind of like on your Mac. So like, interesting, sure. You know, and it's oh, and you can use like the space for space bar for play and pause like you can on your Mac, right? When when the shuttle controls are up. So, I mean, obviously Steve Jobs is going to be rolling in just great for this. I don't know that I would spend 139 bucks on this, but maybe you would, because if you want a real keyboard, I mean, it's one thing that's nice is you get the keyboard and your full iPhone screen. So depending on what you're doing, you may really want that, because I know there are a lot of times when I'm like frustrated, like I want to scroll around, but I also need to type. So the keyboard has to be there, but you dedicate a lot of screen to it. So maybe they got something here or maybe, you know, not. I don't know, but I needed to share. I could not share. Right. Check it out. CLIC KS is what they called it. And it is clicks dot tech is how we get there. Our thanks to our coverage sponsors for allowing us to do all of these great things for you. All these videos, those sponsors are CCC backup, collide with a K and Mac updater. So thanks to them. Thanks to you for staying subscribed. And don't get caught without a keyboard on your iPhone. I don't know. You got to figure that one out for yourself.


Now, let's look at what happens when we have the work for variable forces. As a reminder, work is the transfer of energy from a force causing a displacement. Our basic equation for constant force was our work is the f delta r cosine theta. And it assumes several things. It assumes that the magnitude of the force is constant, the direction of the force is constant, and the displacement is in a straight line. If I've got a changing force, then I need to adjust my process. Now, hopefully, I'll be able to divide the entire path up into segments, where on each of those segments, the force is constant along the segment. If that's true, then I can calculate the work for each of the segments and then add up the total work to find the full energy transfer. I want to start with a little bit of a simpler case where the force is all in the x direction. I've got no y force at all. But I've got a change in the magnitude of the force at different positions along that motion. Well, if this is the case where I've got a force in the x direction, that means that I always have a cosine of 0 degrees, which is 1. And so I can find my work a little bit more simply. So for example, for my first segment, my delta x is the width of that segment. The force 1 is the height of that segment. And the work is the force times the displacement. Again, I have a cosine of 0 degrees, which becomes 1. Well, this force times the displacement is also the area of this rectangle. So the work done during the first segment is the area of the rectangle on the curve. I can use a similar approach to find the work done in the second segment, which is also a rectangle. But now I've got a new delta x and f.  And if I was given exact values on this graph for what the force and the positions were, I could calculate out all four of those quantities and add them up to give me the net work. Here's a second one, where instead of having rectangles, I actually have a force which is changing over the particular segment. Well, I still have this concept, though, that that work is related back to the area of the shape. In this case, my first segment is not a rectangle, but a triangle. But the area of a triangle is 1 half the base times the height. In this particular case, that's 1 half, now my base is my delta x, my height is my f. But I could also think of this 1 half f as being the average force over that particular displacement. So I've found the force and the displacement for this segment, I can find the work for that segment. Now in this case, my second one is a rectangle, and so I can use just the force times the displacement. My third segment is again a triangle, so I've got the 1 half the force times the displacement. And again, this force is the highest force or the height of that particular triangle. And once again, it adds up to give me my net force if I add up all three of those areas. I'm going to find the total work done as I move across that displacement. So in general, the work done is the area under the force and position plot. If it's nice geometric sections, it's easy to find the area of each segment. It might be a rectangle, it might be a triangle, but we can find all of those areas. And then we add up the total amount of work done, all of the area of all those geometric sections. Now if my force versus position plot is something that's curved, I'm going to need calculus to find the area under that curve. And I can use calculus to find my work. But in general, I can use the area. So that wraps up our variable forces. Again, this is just an introduction to the concept of it. We'll look at some more examples later.