Good day fellow investors. How many stocks should you have in your portfolio and what should be the maximum exposure? This is a great question that came from Fabian. Sven, would you mind doing a video on portfolio allocation? Allocate enough of the portfolio not to over-diversify and have a positive impact in case of upside, but not so much to avoid catastrophic loss. Is 10 to 15% max of your portfolio value what you have been using in your pair's personal portfolio? So this is such an important question because you have to eliminate the problems that might come from a fixed, unflexible investing mindset and on the other hand have some structure to lead you to whatever might happen in the stock market. Usually a stock goes up 50% and falls 33% during a year. That's normal. That's the stock market. Even the biggest companies do that like Apple. So there will always be big changes in your portfolio, especially if you have a small number of stocks. Now you can decide, okay Warren Buffett says that diversification is for fools, however on the other hand Peter Lynch always had more than 50, 100 big positions in his portfolio and another 100 small positions. So first decision is okay, what's my strategy? Am I going to focus on a few great businesses, great value investments and I'm going to be sure, especially if it's value investing it's much easier then you know okay I'm going to get the return eventually so you can have a smaller number of positions. If you're more like Lynch that follows the market, follows the earnings, follows the trends, follows what's going on, tries to find those undiscovered gems then you might say okay I'm going to have 100 positions because if of those 101 is the next Amazon then I will get a 200 bagger out of just that one stock that will cover for all the portfolio. So first what you have to decide is what's my strategy? A lot of stocks and then I'm going for the jackpot, 25 baggers or something or just a few carefully analyzed assessed risk reward investments and then you go with a lower number. I am not so much inclined into Lynch I like his strategy but I like to apply also that strategy on my five to seven ten holdings. I think with the number of holdings I will go up to seven and when I come to seven and currently at five still researching then I'll use John Templeton's advice to sell only when you find something 50% better. So if I find something in my research that's 50% better than my seventh holding I might replace that holding with this new one. This will really focus to put quality quality quality into the portfolio and the more quality I put during time into the portfolio some will be taken over, some will explode in price, some will be very bad as there is something that I didn't see which is normal in the stock market and then I'll manage the portfolio and here I want to say managing a portfolio is a process therefore you shouldn't have a fixed mindset. So I would say see what's your strategy, have I don't know seven stocks, ten stocks, 150 stocks or 100 like Lynch but then don't have a fixed portfolio exposure. Many say okay I'm going to have maximum 13 or maximum 10% of my portfolio exposed to one stock and I think this is a big mistake because that one stock might be really really good and you want to just let it grow over time, let it pay you dividends and it might be coming at some point in time 10, 20, 40% of your portfolio and if you know it's still good why would you sell even part of it because you are selling the good in order to buy something worse and this is something you have to see. So okay have a set number of positions in your portfolio but be flexible with the exposure that's my message and I'm flexible with the exposure I hope that some of my current portfolio holdings fall 50% so that I can put 20-25% of my portfolio in it because when then I compared value investing risk, the risk of permanent capital loss over the long term I know that it is minimal and I can have 20-20 something percent of my portfolio in a stock because I know that okay the yield then business yield should be above 15% close to 20 which relative safety a good business and then I'm happy to go even higher. I used to have also 70% of my portfolio in one stock in 2009 didn't have much time to look at stocks but I found something good put 70% of it became a five-beggar and I did really really well. So on how much cash you should have in your portfolio Registratia asks is cash still a king? So after this video about currencies the potential the practical loss the definitive certain loss of what currencies bring over time he wants to buy assets real estate commodity stocks goals etc but everything looks so expensive now true to according to video all these assets inevitably will be more expensive so he's confused my simple answer when it comes to cash is when you find investments that give you a decent return on investment in relation to the risk for your investing appetite you invest when you don't find them you don't invest and over the past year I have found six such investments that satisfy my investment criteria give me a good return and if there is a recession of course I will bleed but in the meantime I will do well with nice dividends a nice return so it's not about a certain level of cash you should have in your portfolio it's all about the risk and reward of what you can find my lump sum portfolio is 60 percent 65 percent invested now and as things go along if I find more such opportunities a little bit diversified across the world I might even go to 80 percent and 20 percent I'll always leave for short-term volatility to take advantage of the short-term volatility that always arises especially if you own eight stocks and that's it whether there will be a recession many expected the crisis in 2012 and have been out of the market out of stocks missed on what seven years of dividends seven years of business growth etc so on cash it's about your personal situation do you need the money to buy something or it is about the risk and reward the message is the conclusion have a fixed number of stocks in your portfolio because this increases your sharpness allow for flexibility in the portfolio exposure if something is good 25 percent 30 percent no worries if something is bad you try to put it out replace it with something good and that's what the portfolio positions allow you but be flexible there because really assess the risk and reward of each investment the quality of it and then see where it leads you as I said portfolio managing is a long-term process thank you for watching looking forward to your comments and I'll see you in the next video


We are currently on a yacht while you guys clicked into this video is to see me and Gav getting it on We got a prank this out of the view is good, but you look even better Our guys I'm calling Mariah right now. Oh, so you don't like her any word.  What is good? Welcome back to our channel. Oh my god, so it's so crazy. Wait, so this video is going up Friday, right? So Sunday we are posting a video on our vlog channel of us on a different boat Yes, but we are currently on a yacht from Florida yachts international and we got the holy yacht to ourselves all day today up until sunset It's gonna be crazy with so much content coming and stay soon because we're gonna give you a yacht tour real soon And you guys are not gonna want to miss it. It's literally insane We got all of our friends here her twin sister gab like literally so much stuff is gonna go on Right now, let's go. Oh my god. This is so crazy. So this is just the back of the boat This is like the diving platform and where we're going to be going off and I also think there's a jet ski So right here, I think it's in there. I'm not sure but we're gonna be getting like content on there It's so funny like right here. It was like almost bigger than half of the last but we are on but right I take the beautiful steps Follow your girl Like that We're on the ocean we're gonna get some ocean content coming soon We just have to depart first what we want to film before the music starts flaring. So here's the bad area We got a table another chill area. You can go on the I think it's the bridge or whatever and it takes you to the front of the boat Let's go in here. Let's let's see what's going on over here Like a chill air conditioning area, so if you're getting a little too hot, so we got gapped twin sister Mike Madeleine my friend that just happened to live out here. So we invited her out here. And what do you wait? What are you holding? Already we haven't even left yet. Okay, all right So this right here is the kitchen this is where Mariah's gonna be cooking it up, you know making some garlic Name So you walk down the stairs guys, I don't know if you've ever been in the yacht This is actually crazy, but we have room over here. Hold on. Look at this. So this is a shower a full Bathroom with a sink a toilet and a shower Mariah stand in the shower. Don't know how big it is. We're on a boat Just remember that look at how nice this boat is So I think this is the master. Oh, there's another bathroom. What wait, so there's two bathrooms guys We're gonna keep a count of what's going on in here. This is super crazy. This is the master bedroom Are these windows open? Can I actually just like throw something out here? Oh my god.  That's actually crazy. So we got a TV in here. Let's go. There's still one more level There's still one more level to go down and then we'll show you that wait. What's in here? Oh, there's a bedroom in here Storage. Oh my god crazy. All right. Wait, I want to go down here It looks like the master. Oh wait, this is the master. Wait, what? There's a third bathroom. So there's so far three bedrooms three bathrooms Wait, did you just break that? Right, I just broke the handoff. That'd be bad Okay, we're gonna walk away from that. So right outside the master bedroom is the water literally right there And we're moving off right now. This is insane. We have to call it We might have to film a new one in the boat video. I was kidding though. Alright, Mariah just walked up there I need to go up to gab right now because I know why you guys clicked into this video is to see me and gab getting it on and Frankie Mariah.  What the heck? Stay tuned. This video is gonna be wild. Gab's coming out right now. She's out here They're all inside and I brushed on this topic just a little bit But I want to like go into more detail because everyone clicked in the video to see me and you doing something that me and you shouldn't I know it sounds weird This is all on Mariah guys. So what the plan is I feel like there's three bedrooms I know you already did a tour, but there's three bad. There's three. Yeah, you didn't see it. I only saw one There's three Wait, I saw two bathrooms in one bedroom. Yeah, there's three bathrooms and three bedrooms. So you gotta redo you Yeah, no, it's crazy, but I feel like we should be in the way way way lower one and that's the master It's bigger than the one that you went down. Yeah, there's a bigger one. So I feel like we should be in there There's like a couch and table in there and a bed. I feel like we should just be like chilling in the bed You know looking at the sea Maybe making some noises and that you know the drill like I'm sure you like seen some of these videos That's the plan are you down we got a prank Let's put those about to fly out of here look at this frickin view look at that. Okay, you're blocking my Okay, yeah, right, okay, wait, maybe I should say that right now I'm gonna talk about how loud because Mariah's like yeah, you can't see through it as you can tell but all right ready.  I bet you everyone Everyone probably thought that we were together. It's hilarious. It's so funny Right look at the view though. Look at it out here. It's gorgeous. Why are you looking all mad? There's porno right here It's like a layout area and we have the whole sea we got the Miami man I'm glad that the water's more still over here. Oh my god. It was so choppy so choppy, but I'm glad that this is way better Are you gonna jump in? No, you're not gonna jump in here. I feel like it's only like 10 feet though Oh, we'll have to ask them still they don't like when there's choppy areas. Oh, yeah So Megan and Jordan are trying to film like one of their first tick-tocks right now And it's totally like failing. We did this tick-tock before it was the one where you're on your shoulders obviously, but It's a little behind the scenes You got him out the words Jordan Okay, I'm gonna leave you guys to this you guys can do it whatever you want to do Oh god as a train wreck out there Mariah is occupied right now But I'm trying to find gap because she is missing in the boat right now like the boats that fit. Oh my god What are you doing over here? Taking pictures in a bedroom. No. No. No. I'm editing. Oh you're editing. Okay. It's quiet Preset on it Mariah is filming tick-tocks with my good right now, and we have to do it right now because wait wait first I have a question. What is this picture cute? Oh my god. Oh my god It's a smiley one. Okay. Yeah, it's it looks amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Anyways, what's up? Okay? I'm shut the door because we're doing it right now. Do I go in here? Say it like that In here yeah, because it's like a lower level I don't know how she's gonna like hear us like I feel like I should ask This is what you bought oh that's water it's water. Are you sure you made a really weird face when you drink that Do you want me to know I know I don't know you're good ice water. Do you want to look at it? Okay, whatever. All right wait guys. We have to okay wait. We gotta get this is so scrambled I'm just trying to lay back and enjoy my god. Should I set the camera up somewhere like how should we do this? Oh wait here, huh? I feel like I should put it like over here. This is terrible No, the lighting just is really weird in the boat. All right, so we're gonna get this prank going right now Sorry about the lighting beat me. She's going to be good.  I'm fine with that Okay, if you need help out if you need help out just yell out like oh like a phrase word and we Pineapple okay pineapples a co-word if you have yells pineapple. It's going down So guys stay tuned. Let's get this prank rolling in All right, sorry guys if this video is so scrambled I'm trying to get this prank going right now gab just went upstairs for a second to check on Mariah But we're gonna do it right here Mariah is actually like literally above me like she's taking pictures of Megan Jordan right now And I don't know if you could see them so Megan Jordan are right there and then Mariah is right there literally they're right above us, so we're gonna get this going right now I got gab's tripod because I forgot mine and let's set this camera up Wish me luck wish gab luck, and I'm gonna call her back down here, so we can start like doing whatever Yeah All right, she's coming. She's coming All right, this is actually not bad. I feel like we should just sit back right here There's video tape whatever goes down. Here's the thing guys me and Bill are besties we go back We go way back since January since January like come on think about that a long no But me and below are actually a lot of like yeah, so this is not weird I see you more as like a brother. Yes. I don't see you as anything other than that Yes, I would just love to put that out there So none of you guys come at me in the comments But that's not what this video is about this video is about making Mariah think that the yacht vibes kind of got to me and It's really Do those doors lock oh should we lock it? I feel like you should I locked it. Are you dead? I think I'm good Yeah, I was thinking oh Maybe we should make a sound and then you hide in the bathroom, and I could be like oh no one's in All right guys, I'm calling Mariah right now. We have to act like we're already talking Just just like a moaner. Oh, so you don't like her anymore.  Listen if you feelings what it's not your fault.  Yeah, I'm just looking at why did you say on the phone kiss me? Just kiss me already. I'm looking at our footage looking at your footage. Why? I was looking at what we were filming earlier Explain why you said kids. Where is she? Where's Gab? Gab's not in here. Gab's not in here. She's not in here No, stop. I understand.  I did not say that. We're all out here. Why are you guys?  Are you joking? It's not like that. No, how fake? No, where is she? No, she's not in here. She's not in here. She's not in here. She's not in here. She's not gonna come in here. No. She's not in here. Babe, no. It's not what you think. We didn't know that way you think. Why are you Pineapple. What do you mean pineapple? Right. We didn't get we're just talking about you. I was trying to- You're talking about me?  No, I wasn't kissing you. I was just talking about you literally just said on the phone. Okay. Okay. Come on. Stop.  Why are you filming right now? Let's talk about this and not make everyone think we're in an argument. We are though.  Hold up. Gab, okay. Okay. Gab, come on. It's not that big of a deal, right? It's not that big of a deal. Dude, you guys can go with- We were just talking- How you were doing in here? I'm done with you. No, no, no. We were talking about- Listen to me right now. I was saying about how I think of him as a brother.  Where did you hear that? I didn't call you. You just said that. You just said that. I heard it. Babe, no, I denied. Dude, I didn't- Okay, okay. No, stop. Hey, I said pineapple. I said pineapple. Babe, come here. We need to- Me and Gab need to tell you something. Stop. Me and Gab need to tell you something. No. The word pineapple is meant for a reason. Sit down. I just got in your word. What? I'm gonna sit down. We need to talk to you about something. Even though I kissed Gab. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. It's just a prank. This is just a prank. Yeah, it's just a prank. Yes. Yes, the pineapple is a safe word in case you guys- Why do you think I've been recording the whole time? Why do you think I've been recording the whole time? Let's do it. Go out. No, no, why? No, hit her. She's the one that came up with this idea. Gab, you made her compass idea. Okay, babe. I would never do anything. I'm not even kidding. We were talking. Gab is like a sister to me. Come on. We even have a handshake. Do you see that shirt? Are you ready? Ready, ready, ready. Look at that. Oh. Oh. No. Woo. Look at that. Look at that. I know. No, I'm a little salty still even though I know it's a prank. I'm still a little salty. Babe, I'm sorry. Can I just tell you guys right now? I want you to know that we did not tell anyone else on this boat that we are doing this.  I am sweating so much. The captain thinks that we're pissed. All right, let's go up there. I cannot deal with this **** anymore. But babe, I am sorry. We'll see you guys later. We're both like sweaty. That made it better though. What do you think that means? Gab was not sweaty before we came down here. I'm actually going to pass out.


فشرف بل اشتغالي بالعلم ولا تبغي به ما عشت يا بدا بدا وياله من شراف عظيم الحمد لله رب العالمين والعاقبة للمتقين ولا عدوان إلا على الظالمين وأسلي وأسلم على من أرسله الله رحمة للعالمين سيدنا والنبينا محمد وعلى آله وأصحابه والتابعين لهم بإحسان إلى يوم الدين أما بعد أسلي وأسلي أسلم ومؤمن who believes in Allah and the Day of Judgment today in the kind of time that we're living and in the kind of society that we're living in the person will feel a strange amongst his loved ones the people who he loved his own family members he feels like a stranger and the reason for that is because he wants to call to the people that which will benefit them their worldly affairs and that which will benefit them in the hereafter but the real reason is because for you to call the people to that which is beneficial for them in the hereafter and that which is beneficial for them in this world you would have to go against the people's whims and desires in the minute that you start to wage war against the people people's whims and desires you start to realize that your enemies are more than your allies and you become a strange the most closest and the most beloved people to you become your enemies they are the ones who expose you and they are the ones who mention your shortcoming and your faults and they are the ones you are thinking about and they are the ones who you are concerned for الإمام ابن رجب الحمبر رحمه الله الإمام ابن رجب الحمبر رحمه الله he read a book and he called it كش في الكربة كش في الكربة في وصف حالي أهل الغربة كش في الكربتي في وصف حالي الغربتي removing the distress from the people who are strangers he called it a distress removing from them a distress ابن رجب describes in that book of his and by the way that book he wrote it patain into a particular hadith which we are going to come to which is بدا الإسلام غريبا وسيعود غريبا كما بدأ فطوبا للغرباء دهديت إمامه الإمام مسلم إبن ماجأ الأحمد أجري رحمه الله they are narrated in their books on the authority of Abu Huraira رضي الله تعالى عنه and we will be speaking about that بإذن الله الكريم this hadith and extract benefits from it ابن رجب wrote that book on that particular hadith but when he was writing in his book he was trying to describe the creation the human beings how they are and he gave a description about them and he said about them ففوتينوا بالدنيا وزهرتها that the people have been tested with the dunya and its glitters and its glamour وصارت غاية قصدهم and the dunya became their ultimate objective their ultimate goal لها يطلوبون وبيها يرضون for the dunya they request and for the dunya they become pleased ولها يغضبون and for the dunya they get angry ولها يوالون and because of the dunya they give an eagence وعليها يوالون and because of the dunya they show enmity towards one another فتقطعوا لذلك أرحمهم and because of the dunya they have cut the ties of kinship وصفقوا دماءهم and they spilled each other's bloods ورتكبوا معاصي الله and they committed the disobedience الله سبحانه وتعالى بسبب ذلك because of the dunya and its glitters and its glamours so the people of the strangers اهل الغربة they are the ones who are who are fighting with the people's desires for the dunya that they have لذلك الله سبحانه وتعالى said in surah to whood ay 116 ay 116 الله سبحانه وتعالى says and a group who remain who prohibit from corruption في الأرض on this earth and Allah then says إلا قليلا they are only little who do that من من أنجيناهم those who we saved ألمام ابن القيب رحمه الله when he brought this book in his kitab مدارج الساريكين the description of these people who protect this earth from corruption who are literally number who are the remaining righteous people who Allah saved ابن القيب said فإن الغرباء في العالم هم أهل هذه صفة المدكورة في العية ابن القيب said the strangers in this world they are the ones who have that description that is mentioned in this ayah meaning this ayah is actually talking about the people of أهل الغربة and there is a hadith which أحمد ابن حنبل الإمام الأجوري ابن المبارك البيه القينيس كتاب زهد الكبير ابن عساكن تاريخ الدمشق on the authority of عبدالله ابن عمر ابن العاص in which a messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم says طوبة للغرباء طوبة للغرباء طوبة means prosperity in this dunya and in the hereafter أزمان من نوة برحمة الله he said in his شبح سحم مسلم for who the strangers the companions they asked ومن الغرباء يا رسول الله who are the strangers the prophet gave them a description my beloved brothers and sisters the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he said أناس صالحون قليل في أناس سوء كثير they are a people who are righteous they are little in the midst of a large amount of evil people من يعصيهم those who disobey them are more in number أكثر من من يطيعهم are more in number than those who obey them so the description that the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم gave pertaining to them was what they are a righteous people but they are little they are little in number and they live in a place where there are a large amount of evil people the people who listen to them who take their advice who take their guidance are little and those who disobey them are large in number and no doubt that's going to happen because this individual is fighting against the people's women's and desires and of course the حديث which I mentioned before إمام المسلم that mentions in his صحيح إبن ماجه إمام أحمد in his Muslimate الإمام الأجوري by the way he wrote a whole book he has a book on it الإمام الأجوري رحمه الله he brings another حديث on the authority this time on the authority this time on the authority this time on the authority this time on the authority this time on the authority it started strange Islam started it started strange و سيعود I will go back to كما بدأ the way it started strange فطوب للغربائ a prosperity and good for the strangers these are the غربائ إبن رجب الحنب رحمه الله in his Kitab كش في القربة في وصف حالي الغربة he says و لهذا جاء في أحاديث نصف منحية أجهزة تفقية موتعددة مدحل متمسك بدين في آخر الزمان يتبعه the one who is holding onto his religion في هذا العالم الأخير وانهو كالقابده على الجملي ويصبحت على شخص who is holding onto hot charcoal هذا هو السبب why the praise has come in regards to this individual ما رجب is trying to say is that it's a time of حالة الغربة زمن الغربة it's a time that person feels strange he is alone his loved ones, his friends have now turned on him I want you all to insha'Allah I'm going to read on you the statement of الإمامه بن القيّم الجوزية رحمه الله في his كتاب مدارج الساريكين on the fourth volume page 22 he says والله his statement يستحق أن يُكتب بما يدهب these words they deserve all of them to be written in ink of gold and if a person in the course of their life while studying and whilst giving دعوة they place the statement of his in front of their eyes and they consistently look at it it will lie without a shadow of a doubt is a تصليح it is something that gives you warmth in your heart tranquility and reassurance that there's nothing to worry about ابن القيّب رحمه الله he says فهؤلاء ذوز خم الغرباء they are the strangers الممدوحون المغبطون those praised worthy ones who the people will the day of judgment they would want to be in their place وليقلتهم في ناس جدا وليقلتهم في الناس جدا and they are very little in the people the غرباء very little in the people سمو غرباء the reason why they are called strangers is he says فإن أكثر الناس على غيره هذه الصفاد because the majority of the people are not upon their description a stranger is what the reason why they are called strangers is why the reason why they are called strangers is because the majority of the people are not of the description they are and a stranger is when he is not what the rest of the people are he doesn't hold the same characteristics as the other people and then look what he gives you an example he says فأهل الإسلام في الناس غرباء the people of Islam are strangers in the people they are strangers a sister is wearing a hijab the people are looking at her غريب a person wants to pray the salah when it comes in and he prays on the street sometimes it has to pray because the salah entered he is a غريب people are looking at him as a stranger the religion of Islam is غريب but then what's more even غريب والمؤمنون في أهل الإسلام غرباء والمؤمنون في إسلام are even more of strangers وأهل العلم في المؤمنين غرباء and within the believers the أهل العلم the people of knowledge are even more of strangers and then look what he says after that and amongst the people of knowledge أهل السنة والجماعة are the what are even more of strangers which أهل السنة which أهل السنة ابن القيم describes those which ones are the ones who are strangers my brothers اللي pay attention as I said before these words they deserve to be written in ink of gold ابن القيم says وأهل السنة الذين يميزون من الأهواء والبداع فهم غرباء the people of the sunnah who are distinguishing the whims and the desires and the innovation who are distinguishing in it show exposing the innovation exposing the desires of the people they are very غرباء pay attention he still goes on to say in what ودعون إليها الصابرون على أدى المخالفين هم أشد أهل هؤلاء غرب غربة and you know what's even more of strangers now from within those ones is the ones who are calling to it the sunnah who are calling to the sunnah الصابرون على أدى المخالفين who are patient upon the harm of the opponents هم أشد هؤلاء غربة they are even in a most they are even more of strangers ولكن but هؤلاء هم أهل الله حقا but the truth is they are the people of Allah truly they might be strangers in this world but they are the people of Allah فلا غربة عليهم really there's no strangersness to them وإنما غربتهم بين الأكثرين but they are only strangers to the majority الذين قالوا الله عز وجل فيهم the majority in which Allah has said regarding them وإن تطلق أكثر من في الأرض يضلوك عن سبيل الله سورة الله العام آية 116 الله says and if you obey the majority of the people on the earth they will misguide you from the straight path فأولئك هم الغرباء من الله تعالى the majority are truly strangers from Allah ورسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم ويدينه and they are also strangers and they are also strangers from the messengers صلى الله عليه وسلم and his religion وغربتهم هي الغربة الموحشة and those majority their strangers is the strangers that is loneliness وإن كانوا هم المعروفين المشارعوا إليهم even that though they are the well-known ones on this earth and the ones that the people point towards meaning the majority انتها كلامه with the statement of ibn al-qayyim finishes there this speech and this statement is it's weight is very heavy والله the statement of ibn al-qayyim رحمه الله is a tassli as I said it gives you that tranquility and that that insha'Allah that you either have to choose between you have to choose between either being the غريب in this world or being the غريب from Allah and his messenger that being the case the true believer my brothers they are strange in their religion and the reason why they are strange in their religion is because they are holding onto their religion correctly so when they hold onto it correctly it makes those who are what those who are not holding onto their religion correctly see them as غريب and those who are holding onto the sunnah become غرابة strangers because those who have now fell into following desires and innovation see them as غريب strangers also the one who is عقيد is perfected and is following the correct عقيد those who عقيد has become corrupt and those who's عقائد has become deficient and tainted are now looking at those who are holding to the correct عقيد as strangers those who are praying the salah correctly who are perfecting their prayer as they should do are being seen as strangers because of the people tainting their prayer and the way that they should pray so when the people divert from the straight path and they take a path other than the path of the messenger عليه الصلاة والسلام they then turn towards those who are holding onto the path of the messenger عليه الصلاة والسلام as a stranger ابن القيب رحمه الله he says and this is a description he gives to us when he is getting into the people who are the غرباء so if you want to be from them you need to look for these characteristics in you و من صفاتها اولا الغرباء الذين غبطهم الهبيب صلى الله عليه وسلم the characteristics of the strangers is what التمسك في السنة they hold onto the s gonna of the messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم و إذا رغب عنها الناس even if the people do not desire anymore they hold on to the s even if the people are not in love with the s و تركوا ما أحدثوه و يتركوا من ذلك التي يمتلك الناس و إن كان هو المعروف عندهم even if the innovation has become the common thing the common trend وتجريد التوحيد والتخيطات من الناس غورباء والسيخون they purely come with توحيد فالله تبارك و تعالى and they strip it from shirk و إن أنكر ذلك أكثر الناس even if the majority of the people reject that concept from them and also from their characteristics is what وتركوا الانتساب إلى أحد غير الله و رسوله they leave off attributing themselves to anyone besides Allah and His Messenger لا شيخا ولا طريقة ولا مذهبا ولا طائفة they do not attribute themselves to a teacher and they do not attribute themselves to a path and they do not attribute themselves to a methodology and they do not attribute themselves to a group بل هؤلاء الغورباء منتسبين إلى الله بالعبودية له وحدهم they only attribute themselves to the غورباء to Allah تبارك و تعالى with servitude them alone and to the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلمة by following him with that which he has come with سبحانه و تعالى صلى الله عليه وسلمة ابن القيّم then goes on to say و هؤلاء those whose description I have given you هم القابضون على الجمري they are the ones who are holding on to the hot charcoal حقا really ابن رجب الحمبلي رحمه الله يسانين كشف الكربتي page 320 these are quotes and statements that one needs to write and to memorize these quotes if he can and to understand them and to live by them إن شاء الله و تعالى ابن رجب الحمبلي he said و إنما ذل المؤمن آخر الزمان لغربتي بين أهل الفساد من أهل الشبوهات والشهوات the believer has become humiliated in the آخر الزمان just before the hour لغربتي because of him being a stranger between the people of whims and desires and the people of doubts فكلهم يكرهوا all of them dislike him و يوديه and they even harm him لمقالفة طريقته لطريقتهم they harm him because of him opposing the path in which they were up on و مقصوده لمقصودهم and the fact that he has an objective opposite to the objective that they have و بوباينته لهم فيماهم عليه and the fact that he has taken a path other than the path which they are up on they hate him they harm him because of that أهل الشبوهات والشهوات the people of whims and desires and the people of doubts my brothers and sisters who are listening the issue of giving this name and title to a people and saying it was something that the self used to do at their time meaning the غربة was even present at the time of the self the strangeness to be a stranger in your community and in your people is something that the pious predecessors also they felt and they were going through الامام الالكائي و ابقاسهم هبط الله هي الالكائي الاسكتاب و صوله اعتقاده الاسولة والجماعة ابن الجوزي الاسكتاب ابن عيما الاسمهاني انسكتاب حلية الأورياء و طبقات الأصفيا ان البيه حقيقي انسكتاب ملاقب الشافعي with the chain of narration which is Hassan اذا بمدهة بالسير على بالوبلاء السيوط المفتاح الجنة they all considered it to be the author of a statement which is Hassan لا السفيان الثوري رحمه الله he said استوصوا بأهل السنة خيرا فإنهم وراباء استوصوا بأهل السنة خيرا give farewell to the people of the sunnah with good فإنهم وراباء for verily they are strangers because all of us are aware my brothers and sisters islam it started off with individuals and a minute and a very small amount of people and the day of judgment when it comes it will go back to exactly how it used to be like the message صلى الله عليه وسلم دار الأرقم and a small number of people islam will go back to that بدأ الإسلام مغريبا إسلام started off strange we were amazed with what the prophet was doing his movements, his actions everything just looked strange and everything is going to go back to that سفيان الثوري the statement is also again حسن أبو العام الأصبهاني الإسكتاب حلية الأوريا والطبقات الأسفية ابن الجوزي الإسكتاب تلبيس وإبليس اللالكائي إسكتاب أسولة اعتقادها لسنة والجمعة and the statement is أثر which is حسن إن شاء الله تعالى السعود that سفيان الثوري you said to you سفيان الثوري you said to you سفيان الثوري you said to him إذا بالغاك ع الرجل بالمشرق أنه صاحب سنة if it reaches you that in مشرق there's a man of the سنة there فبعت إليه بالسلام sent to him a salam say somebody go to him and give him my salams convey my salams to him وإذا بلغاك عن آقرة بالمغرب and if you find another one in مغرب you see أنه صاحب سنة that he's a man of the سنة فبعت إليه بالسلام sent to him a salams فقد قل أهل السنة والجمعة because really the people of the سنة and the جمعة are very little الإمام ابن مفلح رحبه الله الإمام ابن مفلح رحبه الله إذا بكود الأداب الشرعية ابن مفلح he's a student of شيخ وليسام ابن مفلح ابن مفلح you are not ابن مفلح you are مفلح you yourself are مفلح you're successful yourself you're not the صلب مفلح but you yourself are مفلح ابن مفلح very knowledgeable individual a great scholar and he was very strong in the حمبلي مدهب very strong الفروع الفروع as a book with الفروع and he's also a book a very four volumes four volumes book on معنز and etiquette very strong book he started the first volume page 263 he says يبغي أن يعرف أن كثيرا من الأمور يفعل فيها كثيرا من الناس خلاف الأمر الشرعي pay attention to this he said it is needed it is required that one knows that the majority of matters a lot of the people they do it in opposition to the to the شريع legislation so he's trying to say to you it is required from every single one of us to know that the majority of the people in their affairs they do it in opposition to the شريع pay attention ويشتهروا ذالكة بينهم and then that that opposition becomes famous well spread ويقتدي كثيرا من الناس يبهي في فئله and a lot of people then start to follow them in this action so it becomes well spread and it becomes well known and it becomes the والذي يتعين على العرف مخالفة في ذلك قولا وفعلا ولا يثبطه عن ذلك وحدته وقلة الرفيقي وقلت فرضوعين تفقد رائعة تفقد رقم على المجموعة الذين يعلمون يفعلون ذلك وضعون كتابة السُنة الرقم كلها الان بسبب ذلك ويرجع� ومجموعة سواء كتابة السُنة الناس who knows انه يحبن إلاهم بطريقة ویکيش طريق هل تعني ون يحبن انتظر في ذلك because he feels like he's alone on this or he has very few who are going to follow him in this He shouldn't be fooled by the majority basically And he should not feel inferiority complex That I am alone, I don't know what I'm going to do لا تغطر يا عبد الله But slave of Allah سبحانه وتعالى do not be deceived by the majority of the people who are doing it Don't be deceived by them Don't be نعوذ بالله من الخدلان Or Allah do not humiliate us in this dunya الإمام يونس بن عبيد رحمه الله الإمام يونس بن عبيد رحمه الله سبحانه وتعالى He said أصبح من إذا عرف السنة عرفها غريبة وأغرب منه الذي يعرفها الإمام يونس بن عبيد رحمه الله He said It is very amazing He's trying to say to us It's become a time which is amazing at this moment The one who would actually go And call the people to the sunnah today And what is more amazing and fascinating is The one who would actually accept that sunnah when he's called to it It's actually strange It's actually shocking that you even find a person calling to the sunnah nowadays And what is even more shocking is what The one who when he calls to the sunnah Those who would obey him is even more shocking


Hey everyone, we're here to tell you all about the Summer Reading Club at the West Bend Hoover Memorial Library. Yes, Summer Reading Club is still on. And we have something for everyone in all grades and all reading levels. This video is for our Reading Superstars who are in grades 2, 3, 4, or 5 as of June 2021. For those of you in grade 6 currently, you have a choice to make. You can either join the Summer Reading Club you're about to hear about now, or the Teen Summer Reading Club. You can find more information about the Teen Reading Club at WVML.ca forward slash TRC. Now in just a few minutes we are going to tell you what Summer Reading Club is, why you should join, how you sign up, and some of our favorite new books that you can get at the library. Summer Reading Club challenges you to read for 50 days for at least 15 minutes a day over the summer. And the best part is you can read whatever you want, wherever you want, and however you want. There are lots of reasons to join the Summer Reading Club besides getting to choose what you read. Number one, it's totally free. It doesn't cost you any money. And you don't even need a library card to join. Number two, the trophy. The school with the highest number of kids registered will win a trophy. We have three trophies based on school size to keep things fair. Reason number three, prizes and programs. Summer Reading Club members get exclusive chances to enter prize straws and are first to hear about upcoming virtual programs such as virtual reality, escape rooms, coding, and more. Reason number four, make your brain happy. Did you know that even when you read for fun, you are getting smarter and you're giving yourself a head start from when you go back to school in September? Reason number five, the medal. Every kid who reads for at least 15 minutes a day for 50 days over the summer will earn their very own medal. It's true. Signing up for Summer Reading Club is easier than ever. This year, it's completely virtual, so you don't even need to come into the library. All you have to do is go to the SRC website at wvml.ca slash src and click the link that says register now. Just enter your first name, current grade, school and email address or your parents email address and boom, you're registered. You'll receive a confirmation email with your SRC starter kit within 48 hours. And then starting in July, you'll receive a weekly SRC scoop email with book recommendations, virtual programs and so much more. Once you're signed up for the club, we give you three ways you can track your reading as you work towards your goal of reading for at least 15 minutes a day for 50 days. Number one, print out your WVML reading tracker that you get in your SRC starter kit email for every day that you read for at least 15 minutes. Color in one circle when you colored in all 50 circles at the end of the summer. You've completed the Summer Reading Club. Don't have a printer. Pick up a reading tracker at the library after you register. Number two, you can create an online account with the BC Summer Reading Club website. You can create a goal, track your reading and collect fun badges. This is an awesome option for all of you super readers out there. Number three, design your own tracker, get creative. Make your own reading tracker out of some notebook paper, craft supplies, Google spreadsheet, any way you want to record your days of reading over the summer. I have a question. Um, I don't live in West Vancouver, but I go to school here. Can I still join? Yes, you can. In fact, we want you to sign up for the Summer Reading Club at the West Vancouver Memorial Library so your school earns points to get that trophy. Hey, I have a question, too. Are you saying we can just lay low this summer? We don't have to come into the library at all to sign up for Summer Reading Club. That's exactly right. Everything you need to register for and participate in the Summer Reading Club is available at WVML.ca forward slash SRC. But the library is open for you to come and look for books as usual. We will also have some extra printed copies of the reading tracker and also some SRC goodies available, too.  Fifty books. That's way too many. Well, I'm worried. Oh, don't be worried. Remember, the Summer Reading Club is about the time you read, not the amount of books you read. Some kids may be reading a ton of short and skinny books. Well, others may be reading one giant book or something in between. As long as you are reading for at least 15 minutes a day for 50 days throughout the summer, you get to choose what you want to read. You can also choose how you read. Get a digital library book on Libby. Libby by Overdrive is the name of the free app with library eBooks and eAudioBooks. You can use your smartphone, tablet or computer to read or listen to books. If you haven't tried Libby yet, you have to. It's totally free and has thousands of popular titles to get started. Just search for Libby by Overdrive in any app store and use your library card to set up your account. We can also help you set up or help your parents set you up if they email, call or visit us at the library. Listen to a play away. These are self-contained audiobook players you can borrow from the library. We have lots of popular titles for all ages. Listen to a wonder book. These are awesome new books with an audiobook player built right into the book's cover. You can check them out like a regular book. Read to someone else or have them read to you. Read in any language or multiple languages. We have books in all these different languages that you can borrow from the library. Now if I could get a drum roll, please. Here are some of our top picks for grades two to five this summer. Remember, you don't have to read any of these books or even read library books at all. But we can't resist telling you about some of our favorites. If you are a fan of Princess in Black or Mercy Watson, I think you are going to adore JoJo McCoon's, the used to be best friend. This is the start of a brand new, hilarious series about a first grader whose Ojibwe name is Jo McCoon's Azure Nindezina Cause. And JoJo points out that if you think her Ojibwe name is too hard to pronounce, you probably learned to pronounce the word Tyrannosaurus Rex so you could learn how to say her name too. JoJo is going through something I think we've all gone through before. And that's feeling like her best friend may not want to be her best friend anymore. The author Don Quigley is a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, North Dakota. And I can't wait for her to write more. They threw us away by Daniel Crows. This is book one of the Teddy Saga, but don't let the name throw you. This story is not light or fluffy. It's dark and gloomy and at times violent. This is a story of Buddy, a specialty bear, eager to be chosen and taken home by a child. One morning, instead of waking up on the shelves of the department store, Buddy finds himself in a garbage dump. He finds other teddy bears that have also been thrown away and together they embark on a dangerous journey home. I want to tell you about a graphic novel called Twins by Varian Johnson and illustrated by Shannon Bright. It is the first day of grade six and identical twins Francine and Maureen are trying to figure out where they fit in. Even though they're identical, they are completely different. And the drama unfolds when the two sisters decide to both run for student body president and it puts their sisterly bond to the test. This book is full of humor. It's all about family, friendship and finding out who you are. I am so excited to tell you about Ways to Make Sunshine by Renee Watson. It's about a fourth grade girl named Ryan Hart, whose family is going through a rough patch. But the thing that I love about Ryan is that she's always able to find the bright side of things. Reading this book is like hanging out with your sparkly, kind, funny best friend. And it just made me feel so happy and hopeful and way less lonely. Plus, there is a big surprise for Ryan's family at the end that that leads right into the sequel. Check it out. Shirley and Jamila save their summer by Gillian Gertz. This middle grade sleuthing graphic novel is perfect for summer. It's light and bright and funny and sunny and it takes place in Canada. This is a story of Jamila, the new girl in town who loves basketball and Shirley, the local weirdo and kid detective. These two unlikely friends save each other's summers while also solving some local mysteries. This is perfect for fans of smile, roller girl and real friends. You can find all of these books in the library catalog, but please make sure to place a hold, even if there is a waitlist so we can order more copies. You can also look for these books on our brand new Lucky Day shelf. Lucky Day books are special extra copies of our most popular books that you'll only find when you visit the library. Finding one means you get to skip the waitlist. It's like winning the lottery. So that's everything you need to know about the Summer Reading Club. Still have questions? Visit WVML.ca slash SRC or contact us by email, phone or stop by the youth department on the second floor of the library. We are pumped for an awesome summer of reading and we can't wait for you to join the club. Remember, no matter what's going on, you always belong at the library and we can't wait to see you. Happy reading.


Hey learners, welcome back to Lauren learn. I don't know what to do with my hands Anyway, welcome back because today we're gonna talk about the curly girl method and before you sign off You might be like, I don't have curly hair. I might not even have hair But you might want to stick around because this could be helpful for someone, you know that you could share it with And anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I also posted about this on my blog at www.lorenlearns.org So the curly girl method was written by a lady named Lorraine Massey in the 90s And I'm kind of bitter because I'm around I was around in the 90s where the heck was I why didn't I know about this sooner? Because I spent my life growing up with very poofy hair. I did not look like the Pantene Probe commercial And it made me kind of sad But now I have all the information and I'm excited to equip you and arm you with it as well If you have curly or wavy hair. So my friend Sarah started coming up. Hi, Sarah Hi, she started coming around with gorgeous waves and it looked so healthy and shiny And I asked her what she'd been doing differently and she's like, yeah Just I've been doing the curly girl method. So I went home and I did the Googler Licked it up and it turns out I had been taking care of my curly hair all wrong So I stopped brushing it Like completely I really don't even brush it. I kind of finger comb it in the shower now I've stopped using all heated tools except My my blow dryer when I have my diffuser on it if you saw me on Instagram the other day I just do it with Cool low heat So that the curls can dry though. I think I've also decided I like air drying it better and now my curly hair routine pretty much consists of washing it every three or four days with a silicone Sulphate free shampoo those things are really important even though you might think they're not So sulfates are the really harsh chemical found and it's like a detergent found in laundry detergent or And it strips all your natural hair oil out Making your hair even drier and curly hair people know that our hair is already pretty dry and pretty frizzy It's not taking care of properly. So no sulfates and no silicones Silicones are also the plastic thing they put in their products to coat your hair and then no moisture can get in So it looks really nice, but it's not ideal when you're trying to let your natural curls come through So I've gotten rid of all heats all silicones also states and I don't wash as often as I used to because my hair is Doing it doing its job being healthy and natural After I wash every three or four days. I do a conditioner. I don't rinse it out all the way I leave a little bit in and then I use a Water-based gel to just kind of lightly coat on the ends with soaking wet hair And I let it air dry and scrunch it with a t-shirt a cotton t-shirt and it's like it's the best thing I've ever done I'm so thankful. I have the information now Like I said, if you know someone that has curly hair, you can just pass that over to them Just go here go and it's really it's changed a lot about how I get ready in the morning It's not taking as long. I Have found some really awesome youtuber girls that I'm just like can we be friends? Can I go to lunch with you? Is that a thing? But India back then is one and Curly penny and curly Susie They're all fabulous and they all have amazing ideas if you'd like to venture further into the curly girl world But for my channel's purposes, I probably won't be doing too many of these Curly hair videos because not everyone I know has curly hair and I'm hoping this can benefit all Yes, I'm excited to continue learning with you. Go get messy have fun learn Do those things and I will see you next time. Thanks for watching


I'm really happy. So I've been trying to see a talk by Glenn Vanderberg for years, and I always miss him. So I figured the only way I would ever get to see him is to get him here at my own conference. So I wrote him an email and invited him to come speak. He's like, I'm not speaking anywhere this year. I have too much stuff to do. And he says, but it's go, Garouco. How can I say no? So he came here because of all of you. So thank you very much for getting him out. So Glenn has been doing Ruby since 2000. He's one of the old guard. And he's worked at Infoeather with Rich Kilmer and Chad Fowler and all those folks. And I'm just so happy to have him here today to talk to you. He's from Dallas, Texas. So give him a San Francisco welcome. And I currently work for a living social. We're hiring, you may have noticed. So Josh, thanks for letting me do the antipanultimate talk of the conference. I have to make a disclaimer right from the beginning. I'm here to talk to you about something that I'm not an expert about. Like speakers sometimes do, I chose my topic and volunteered to do a talk on this topic because I wanted an excuse to study these things and learn about them and get a little better. So I don't claim to have all the answers. This is kind of me learning in process. I hope you learn something from it. And I would actually really enjoy email and feedback, glenn.vanderberg.livingsocial.com or Twitter GLV. If you have any insights or want to build on this at all and can teach me something, I fully expect that'll be true. So we programmers have some biases and some ways of thinking and some habits of thinking that are often very good and serve us very well. We love for things to be simple. We love simplicity. We like to look for code that's as simple as possible to do the task that we need it to do. I've spent most of my career emphasizing to coworkers and people I was teaching and mentoring the importance of keeping things simple, if at all possible. Simpler code, simpler design, simpler solutions are easier to read and understand. They're easier to debug and extend and change.  But pays off in the end. Because of the nature of what we do, we also tend to think in black and white. Our world is binary. The answer to questions are true or false. Solutions are right or wrong. They're either work or they're broken. Our work teaches us to think this way because those are the concepts we work with in code. And that's a good thing. But it carries over into other parts of our thinking, when maybe things aren't so black and white. Now to be fair, this bias is not unique to programmers. Everybody tries to oversimplify and think in black and white terms. And dealing with vague things is kind of unsettling. Programmers like complete solutions. We want a solution that covers every edge case, handles every boundary condition, completely solves the problem. And the holy grail for us is finding the algorithm or design that is both simple and complete. It handles all those edge cases and boundary conditions and special cases without having special cases in the code. Daniela told us a mathematician's joke yesterday. So I'm going to illustrate this with a programmer's joke that I heard a while back. No, sorry.  And they're standing in the back of this vehicle and they see this herd of zebras flowing across the steppe. And they're standing there looking and taking this in. And the zoologist all of a sudden goes, my god, that zebra is spotted, not striped. Nowhere in the history of my field has anybody ever recorded and discovered that spotted zebras exist. I'll be famous. And the physicist says, now, hold on there, guy. Don't get ahead of yourself. At this point, all we really know is that at least one zebra is spotted.  The only thing that the evidence tells us at this point is that at least one side of a zebra, of one zebra, is spotted. The programmer, of course, is standing in the front of the vehicle going, oh, a special case. Now, when I first heard that joke, I said that joke was clearly made by somebody who's not a very good programmer. Because a good programmer would have a different reaction. A good programmer would say, aha, spots are generalizations of stripes. And this turns out to be true. If you're writing shading algorithms, you can write one where you tweak the parameters a little bit and it might generate spots like a leopard or more like a cheetah or stripes like on a zebra or a tiger or something like that. And so that's the holy grail, right? One algorithm that if you change its inputs, it handles all the rich special cases you see in the world. We like simplicity. Sometimes we also like complexity. If it seems like there's a bound to it, if it seems like it's possible to get your mind wrapped around it, we like that, right? We like the challenge. This is why we have languages like Scala. It's also why we have obfuscated coding contests and bad coding contests and things like that. So we had one of these inside living social a little while ago. And the number of people who said, oh, this is great. I can write some complicated code and took on that challenge. This is my solution.  It's disturbing how proud of this I am. And Tony was here a minute ago. Where are you?  But in any case, we like complexity sometimes, but not all the time. There's a certain kind of complexity that doesn't seem like it has a bound to it. It doesn't seem like we can ever really grasp it. There are problems that have no clean solution. Maybe sometimes they aren't even computable. Maybe they're context dependent, but we have no hope of ever really knowing or pinning down all of the little bits of context that we need to solve this problem. Maybe, in some cases, even the best solutions we can think of have severe downsides. And we're paralyzed trying to choose between these flawed solutions. And we tend to recoil from these complex problems. And if we are not able to completely run away and just ignore them, often, unfortunately, we pretend. We oversimplify. We act as though the problem was simple. We argue with each other as if the problem were simple. And we decide as if the problem were simple. And I've got to be honest about where the motivation for this talk comes from. It's an election year. And I was earlier this year. Josh had asked me to come speak. And I was thinking about what I would talk about. And I was really frustrated about how in our sound bite and anger driven political culture, we oversimplify every problem and don't seem capable as a culture of dealing with the full complexity of difficult problems that face us. And then I thought, that's not just a characteristic of political culture. Programmers do the same thing. So I want to talk about the ways we oversimplify and the ways we jump to decisions and make poor decisions because we don't face the full complexity of the problems ahead of us in some cases. And then I want to talk about some techniques, some habits of mind we can cultivate to help us not recoil from complex problems, but really think about them and try to have productive discussions about them and reach some kind of more sane solution or compromise in the face of complex problems we face as programmers. So one way that we oversimplify is that we concentrate on primary effects and ignore second order effects that happen indirectly because of the solution we put in place. As one example of this, a friend came to me a few years ago and wanted me to build a software system for him and his business partner. The business partner was actually not the business partner, but a friend of theirs was the leading patent holder at Dell Computers. This was when Dell mattered. And so he had, working with the lawyers at Dell, sort of systematized a process for building and writing and submitting patent applications that were highly likely to go through the process and be approved. And they had succeeded in making that process streamlined and cheaper. And he thought, we could build a product out of this and help people submit successful patent applications. And so my first objection to taking part in this project was the world doesn't need more patents. But I pushed back on them and I said, this isn't going to work the way you think. Because this is not a mechanical process you're trying to game. It's a human process. The patent office is comprised of human patent examiners and managers, and they are already overworked and underpaid. And if there's a product that streamlines and accelerates and funnels more patent applications into this process, you know what's going to happen? We're going to change the process. And it's a great example of ignoring second order effects and assuming that the system you're trying to change is not going to push back on you. Another totally different example of this is I'm old enough to remember when Java started.  And they perceive the slowness because they see garbage collector pauses and things like that. And they think about what has to happen for this to all take place, going and sweeping through all the garbage in the system and all this stuff. But what they ignore is the fact that all that same kind of bookkeeping has to happen in manual memory management as well. And it's just that the cost is spread out a little bit more, a little bit differently. And certainly the performance profile of garbage collected systems is different and may not be appropriate for some types of systems. But it's not slower because all the same kind of bookkeeping has to happen. And there are all kinds of second order effects. If the garbage collector controls all of this stuff, it can make interesting simplifying assumptions and it can change the way allocation happens so that even though collection is not significantly faster or slower, allocation is actually much cheaper. So you end up with a net win from the whole system. Sometimes these evaluations are really complicated and there are second order effects and you need to factor those into your equations. In addition to ignoring second order effects, we sometimes forget secondary benefits. My favorite example of this is test driven development or unit testing in general. I've done a lot of teaching of that skill and I've noticed a pattern which is TDD has several different advantages, several different benefits that you get out of it. But people aren't good at dealing with equations that have so many outputs, right? When you teach TDD, people tend to zero in on the benefit or the effect that makes the most sense to them and that's what it's about and they ignore the rest. And the interesting thing is if you just choose one benefit of TDD, it's not necessarily worth it. The case for the cost effectiveness of TDD, if you just choose one of those benefits, is not a slam dunk. But if you remember all of them put together, it is a slam dunk. And I kept seeing this over and over again. Well, you know, there's cheaper ways to catch errors. But what about the other benefits of TDD, right? So we tend to focus on the one benefit that seems the most compelling or the most interesting or the most sensible to us and ignore the others. Often we're asking the wrong question. Sandy in her talk yesterday had a great example of this. She said, people ask, what object should know this? What object should have this bit of knowledge? And that's a perilous question because it assumes in the form of the question that one of the objects should, right? And the answer, well, one that hasn't been written yet is not likely to occur to us. But she said, let's recast the question as what message should I send? OK, what message should I send? And you write the code that way. And then it might be clear that you need to write some new class to receive that message. A few years ago, I was working for a large stodgy organization. I was in there helping them sort of hoist themselves into last decade. Charlie made a joke about AS 400s yesterday. Yeah, I know what that is. And so this big development group in this big stodgy organization and a lot of the things we take for granted, source control, testing, automation, repeatable processes, things like that, we're new to them. And along the way, I found out that the ops group, the policy they had put in place for us deploying a new version of one of our systems was that we had to provide them, this is so crazy, we had to provide them a war file of source code and a script for how to turn that source code into the runnable system, how to build it.  And I just boggled at this and I got mad at the ops group for being so crazy. I said, do you realize that this process guarantees that we never can deploy what we've actually tested and started going on a crusade about this? And the ops group was curiously resistant to changing it. And the question I was asking was, why are you so stupid, basically? And all of a sudden, I realized I was asking the wrong question. I'm assuming that they are stupid, but it's better to start by assuming they're smart and they have some reason for this, what could it be? And it turned out, once I started asking the right questions, productive questions, it turned out that the ops group had been told by the disaster recovery initiative that they were, well, and also for legal reasons, that they were on the hook to be able to provide the source code for what was running in production at any given time. Now, if your development team knows how to use source control well and how to tag and package releases and has that all automated so it's consistent and it works, then this is great. The ops team can delegate that responsibility to the development team, and you're in good shape. But they knew they couldn't trust the development team to do anything. So the only way they could fulfill their responsibility to be accountable for what source code was running in production at any given time was to make sure they got source code and built the system themselves so that they could save it and know what was in production at any time. My favorite example of this is one that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about for the past five years or so. Ever since early on as a programmer, I've heard people saying, why can't programming be more like engineering? Why can't we grow up and learn to use formal methods and math and discipline and be more like an engineering discipline? And for a long time I was kind of like, yeah, that makes sense. And then I noticed that that didn't match up well with what I was learning and about programming and how it worked in the real world and it just seemed impractical. And then so for a long time I was part of the crowd that was saying, no, no, no, we shouldn't be more like engineering. It's engineering is not a good metaphor for programming. It doesn't work that way. But a couple of years ago I realized that why can't we be more like engineering? Was the wrong question to be asking. The right question is, which kind of engineering are we like? And it turns out that most of the people asking that question for all those years had in mind a caricature of engineering that was almost entirely built around civil engineering and large-scale structural engineering, big materials-heavy disciplines where experimentation and iteration towards a design are prohibitively expensive. But there are other branches of engineering, like electrical engineering and chemical engineering and industrial engineering that are much more like software. The processes they have are more empirical and experimental and iterative. And we were kind of blocked for a long time from really understanding that because we were asking the wrong question. We have a habit of oversimplifying by thinking in black and white.  Everything's got to be, yeah, the greatest ever. This totally rocks.  It's worthless. You see this kind of argument going on in arguments between static and dynamic typing people and between OO and functional programming people. Yehuda has given me permission to use him as an illustration of this. A couple of years ago, three years ago, something like that, at Lone Star Rubicon. I was sitting there at the table with Evan Phoenix and Evan built Rubinius and he's obviously a big VM geek and I'm sort of a closet VM geek. And so that week, about three days prior, Google had released the V8 JavaScript VM. And so Evan and I had both promptly downloaded the source code and we were there looking at it and talking about it. And Yehuda walks into the conference, just arrived and sat down at the table with us and started unpacking. And he kind of overheard our conversation and he said, are you talking about V8? And we said, yeah. And he said, that has a bug. And that's the reaction we have so often. We have a tendency to dismiss a new idea or something and you know, Yehuda's way smarter than that. But we have a tendency to dismiss something, a new concept or a new idea or a new entrant into the contest or whatever as soon as we find one flaw with it. But it doesn't have to be perfect to be good and useful. Daniella kind of touched on this in her talk yesterday. People reject TDD because they have a mistaken view of what it is and they want it to be mathematically strong and they say, TDD can't prove that a system is correct. All right, of course it can't. It's not a proof, that's not the point of TDD. It helps you establish and gain more confidence in the correctness of a system but it's not a proof. Sometimes when we're arguing, we take strong positions for rhetorical purposes and then we forget and we take our own rhetoric at face value. In the early days of extreme programming, there was a, which is kind of the granddaddy of agile processes for those that you don't know. And it consisted of 12 practices and there was this fairly dogmatic core of supporters that were like, you have to do all 12 all the time or you can't call it XP.  And for the most part, these people knew what they were doing. They didn't really believe that. But they faced the continuing pattern of people and they'd say, well, here's XP, you do this, this, and this, and this. And somebody would say, well, we could do A, B, and C but we can't possibly do D.  In our organization, we just couldn't do that. And they started kind of being dogmatic about this and saying, well, no, you have to. Even though you don't have to, but they'd say, you have to. And what they'd find is that a lot of those objectors who'd say, well, we couldn't possibly do D would say, oh, well, maybe if we did this and talked to them about that, maybe we could do it. So we'll give it a try. So by sort of taking this artificially strong rhetorical position, they were able to break down some barriers and get people to try some things that they initially would have rejected just because it seemed too hard. To some degree, them and to a greater degree, a lot of the acolytes tended to take this rhetoric too seriously and start to really believe it. And the first version of Kent Beck's XP book is very dogmatic and prescriptive and everything else. And it took a while to recover from that. And, but eventually they kind of realized, oh, okay. Yeah, that was a bit silly. And the second edition of the book is much more sort of recommendations and flexible and everything else. And they're not nearly as dogmatic as they were, but they went too far taking their own rhetoric too seriously for a while. We tend to ignore context. An example I was talking about the other night at the party with some of the Square guys. At Living Social, we deploy very, very frequently. And the guys at Square were like, yeah, we do that with some of our systems, but the parts that are taking people's money and making sure that, and that's the right answer, right? But a lot of the times, and so I'm not using them as an example of how not to do it, they're doing it exactly right. But a lot of the times, we tend to make snap judgments. They ought to be doing it like we're doing it and ignore the context, the additional risk, the additional importance of what they're doing that cause them to be a little more conservative about some of the ways they develop software. And finally, sometimes we can't pretend the problem is simple. And we just throw up our hands and give up thinking about it seriously. And we resort to magic. What do I mean by magic?  No knowing why, we just have to find some of them. He just doesn't get it. Whenever I hear somebody say, he just doesn't get it, what that tells me is, you haven't taken the time to understand his objections. That just feels wrong. I don't know why we shouldn't do it that way, but it just feels wrong. Or we should do that because it's so beautiful and elegant. What do those things mean? I'll come back to that in a little bit. But I don't wanna just paint a bad picture of how we're sloppy thinkers and our brains like simplicity and we recoil from complexity. What I've been trying to learn through studying this is that there are useful techniques for dealing well with complexity so that we can make progress and make smart decisions even if we can't do a full thorough analysis of a situation or we have weak evidence, low quality evidence for our positions, or things like that. Examples, we should learn to seek incomplete solutions. We have this bias for complete solutions but we should learn to seek incomplete ones. I worked a while ago with a businessman who has made a career out of taking on problems that all of his programmers say, well, that's an insolvable problem. And he says, well, I bet we can come up with a way that will be an 80% solution for 20% of the effort. A good example of that, he likes to boil things down to three simple rules. And here's his three simple rules for weight loss.   Always park in the most distant parking space from where you are trying to go. He said, these rules are not optimal. It might not be the fastest way to lose weight. Cutting out white foods means cutting out cauliflower, which is not bad for you at all. But keeping the rules simple means that people can obey them better and remember them and more likely to stick to them. It's an incomplete non-optimal solution that it works pretty well because it works with the way people think. You should seek heuristic or probabilistic solutions that might not give you great answers in every case, but help you quickly zero in on answers in a lot of cases. Daniela gave this quote from George Polia yesterday. We need heuristic reasoning when we construct a strict proof as we need scaffolding when we erect a building. Heuristic reasoning is also useful when we can't or really don't need to go as far as a strict proof, but just to help us get to an approximate answer. Other aspects of incomplete solutions? I mean, have you ever thought about the fact that git depends so heavily on the uniqueness of a shah hash for a bit of text? We know that there can be multiple different pieces of text that have the same shah. It's just that it's so mind-bogglingly unlikely that it's worth trusting that it won't happen. My friend Stuart Halloway has called GitHub a globally distributed attack on shah one. A precursor of that, the first system I encountered that sort of relied on this probabilistic, yeah, bad things could happen, but they're so unlikely we don't have to worry about them was a network file server that was a part of plan nine. How many of you have ever heard of plan nine? So there's a network file server in plan nine called venti and it was a block addressable network file server and a file was represented as a list of block addresses and so then you would go and get the block. The block address was the shah of its content and this meant that a lot of files change in small ways, especially down toward the end of the file and so tomorrow's version of the file might share all the same blocks except for one for today's version of the file. So they could have this backup system that had a complete snapshot of the entire file system every day for years and years and years but it would only grow fairly slowly because all those different versions of the files shared the same block. The address of the block was the shah of its content. Obviously that can fail but the probability of it failing is so low that it was a sensible thing to do. I read that paper and that was my introduction to that kind of design and I called it the infinite and probability disk drive. So we should think about how much failure is acceptable. How much likelihood of failure can we accept? We should exploit power law distributions. I expect Charlie will perk up at this. A lot of what Charlie does making Ruby fast, JRuby fast probably exploits power law distributions in the code. We tend, anybody who's had like a basic statistics class knows about normal distributions and bell curves and we tend intuitively to think that probability distributions work that way and that doesn't often give us a lot to work with but power law distributions are everywhere in our code, in our customer base and their preferences. And this is also known as the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule but of course 80-20 thing just depends on where you draw the line between the gray and the white stuff. And if you can find out that part of your system obeys power law distribution, maybe you can find a really good solution for the vastly more common cases and deal with very non-optimal solutions for the small number of less common cases. You can find good solutions for the vast majority and live with weak solutions for others. If you wanna deal well with complexity, train yourself to always think in terms of costs and benefits and risks not in terms of right and wrong. Not long ago in a conversation about technical debt, one individual said, so look, come on, is the technical debt keeping you from doing stuff? That's the wrong question to ask.  What it does is make those things much more costly and much more time consuming and much more risky to do than they would be if you didn't have all that complexity and technical debt. You should always be thinking and asking questions in terms of costs and benefits. Yesterday in Sandy's talk she said, what will it cost me later if I don't change this now? That's the right way to think about the problem. You need to also incorporate the idea of future costs and future risks based on today's decisions.  We naturally tend to wanna think in terms of right and wrong and good solutions and bad solutions.  But if you take the argument all the way to the other end, obviously there's a limit how much we want to spend to prevent those kinds of things. We can argue about what the limit is or how high it is or what secondary bad effects we're willing to put up with from that. Let's have that conversation. Let's don't say whatever it takes, right? Because we need to be thinking in terms of costs and benefits. Exploit emergent phenomena. When we bog down thinking of how complex things are, it's because we're trying to think of a way to control every aspect of it and make sure we get the solution we want. But we should learn about and become comfortable with the idea of emergent phenomena where you have simple rules that reinforce each other or simple flawed measures that back each other up and lead to a larger scale acceptable solution. This is hard to do. It's not always easy, but there are some tips. You can look for small scale rules that seem to exert influence at larger scales. Sandy's talk yesterday was a big example of this. People talking about good OO design have been talking for a long time about big high ideas like the dependency inversion principle and things like that. Sandy presented a very small set of localized small scale decisions you can make that if you tend to follow those things at the level of methods and lines of code, you can often end up generating a much better design than you would otherwise. Instead of trying to control everything that could go wrong, optimize in favor of facilitating things getting done and having good feedback loops so you catch problems quickly and can deal with them. Often a defense in depth strategy can work where you have one flawed practice that catches some things and another thing backing it up that filters through and catches some of the things that make it past the first one, sort of a sieve style operation. In my research into software engineering, I kind of learned that that's the way extreme programming really works. You have a bunch of different practices that gather feedback and make decisions at smaller and larger scales of your system and mistakes that make it through the small scale have a chance to get picked up at any of these other scales along the way. You might also try to just take the time to do a deeper analysis. Sometimes things that seem too complex to be reasoned about, you actually can find some deeper patterns and understanding if you roll up your sleeves and dig in. Try to categorize entities, costs, risks, and relationships in the problem space you're looking at. Look for commonality or distinction. Look for simplicity hidden in the complexity. The example I just showed you, that all started when at lunch one day, David Thomas asked this question or made this comment, if you built a piece of software that was as tightly coupled as extreme programming, you'd be fired. And he was talking about the stuff in the extreme programming book that said, yes, this project is, this practice is obviously flawed, but it doesn't matter because it depends on this other practice that backs it up and makes up for its weaknesses. And if you draw a diagram of all those dependencies, it looked like this. So I can see what Dave was talking about. But at the same time, I was troubled about it because I liked that structure to some degree. Something about the redundancy of it seemed like a good idea to me rather than seeking perfect practices, use flawed ones that reinforce each other. So I started trying to find simplicity in here. And I tried a number of different things to do, dragging it around in graphic editors, looking for patterns. I finally ended up kind of laying things out in a circle and trying to move things closer together that had a lot of connections. I ended up with this, where there were only a few connections that went very far across the circle. And that led me to start finding some practices that were alike and some that were different. Why isn't this moving? And teasing it out so that I had some practices that had a lot in common and others that were very different from those. And it led me to being able to make some structure out of that. So don't give up too easily.  Steven's talk, I don't know where Steven is, but Steven's talk yesterday, he talked about how experts have forgotten what they learned. And we work by intuition a lot of the time when we're experienced programmers, but that intuition is something that builds up into us from experience. And we have little rules of thumb that operate at a level that we're not aware of. But if you're not satisfied with the answer of just it's intuitively obvious or that's ugly or that's beautiful, if you force yourself to dig back in and try to understand where that intuition comes from, you can find out what's going on and explain it to people. And that helps you teach, it helps you reach good decisions, it helps you get over impasses when you're arguing and your intuitions are at odds. And it can help you discover that sometimes your intuition is leading you astray because it's missing something in this context. Finally, spend some time studying what are called wicked problems. Have you ever heard of wicked problems before, anyone? Oh, cool. So wicked problems, this is a kind of a formal thing. They were first described by Riddle and Weber in 73. It comes out of like civic planning theory and stuff like that. You can Wikipedia it, there's a lot of resources. Where I was introduced to it was the weblog of Carl Schroeder who's a science fiction writer from Canada who I highly recommend reading not just his weblog but his books, but he wrote a series of blog posts about wicked problems that we face today.  Here's a sampling. There's no definitive simple formulation of a wicked problem. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. So like, okay, we know we're done now. We know we've solved it now, well no. Solutions to wicked problems are not, yes this one's right, this one's wrong, or this one failed and this one succeeded. It's, well it made the problem better or made it worse. You can only solve them in degrees, make them better or worse. There's no immediate or ultimate test of a solution. You might have to wait a while to see if you've made it better or worse. Solutions are one-shots. There's no way to experiment. You have to try it full scale and by the time you know if it worked, everything's changed now and you have to try something else. Almost all wicked problems can be described as a symptom of another wicked problem. They're very complex things that we face in economics and civic planning and politics and health management, epidemiology. There's a whole raft of these things and if you want to get good at dealing with complexity in our world, which pales in comparison to this, spend some time studying the techniques and the ways of thinking that people have come up with for trying to tackle wicked problems. So just to summarize, yes, seek simplicity, it's good. Don't overcomplicate simple things. But at the same time, when faced with real complexity, grasp it head on. Don't oversimplify things because that just makes it worse.  Thanks very much.


A flower is the reproductive part of a plant. And in this picture, as you can see, this flower has both the male and the female reproductive part. But I have, I have labelled only the male reproductive part which is called the stamen. Now the stamen consists of a long stalk-like thing which is called a filament and it has this knob-like structure on top which is called the enter. And this enter is actually the fertile part of this, of this male reproductive part. So this fertile part produces pollen. And this pollen travels all the way to the female reproductive part of the same flower or different flower and fertilizes the egg and produces seeds and fruits. So in this video, we will talk about how this pollen is produced inside the enter. And this formation of pollen inside the enter is called microsporogenesis, where microspore means pollen and genesis means formation. And also one enter do not give rise to just one pollen, it give rise to many many pollens. We will, we will see in a minute how this enter does that. So let's have a closer look at the enter. So here we have taken a bilobbed enter. Enters can be single lobed as well. So the single lobed enter are called monothekis and the bilobbed enter are called diothekis. And the word diothekis very correctly explains the structure of the enter. Di means two, so we can see two lobes and thekis means compartments. So this enter has two compartments. And the pollen, and the pollen is produced inside this enter. So let us have a transverse section of this pollen. Let's cut it this way and see what is inside the enter. So with a close look into the enter, you can see that the enter has this long long tube like thing inside, which is also called a sac. Let me write it down, sac inside which the pollens are produced. This black black dots that you see, these are cells which later will become pollens. So the sacs are called pollen, pollen sacs. And each lobe of enter, as you can see, has two pollen sacs. This is a pollen sac number one, this is number two, and in another lobe, this is another pollen sac. So let me number it this way, this is number three, and this is number four. So in a diatechus enter, that means in a bilobed enter, we have four pollen sacs. Well, I am stressing so much about the number of pollen sacs because a number of questions are asked in the exam about the number of pollen sacs in diatechus and monothechus enters. Now let's zoom in even further. Okay, so now if we zoom in further and look at this part, just this part from above, it will look something like this. This is the two enther lobe and this is the outermost layer, a single sheet of cell which forms the epidermis. So this is the epidermal layer and the two enther lobe, this one here and the other one here is connected with the help of a tissue, which is called the connective. And through this connective, the vascular tissue runs through which this enther gets nourishment. Anyway, so this is the tissue that takes care that the two lobe of enther is connected. And apart from that, beneath the epidermal layer, we also have another layer which is called endothetium. Now the epidermal layer and the endothetium along with another layer which is called the middle layer, they together perform the function of protection. So they protect the microspores that will be growing somewhere here. So let me quickly show you the microspores. The spink pink cells that you see here are the ones that will give rise to microspores. So these are not microspores yet. The yellow covering that you see beside, this is the most important layer. It is called the tippetum. So let me write it here. This is the tippetum and it has a number of functions. But before we talk about the functions of tippetum, let's have a closer look at this part. Just this tippetal layer and the cells inside. So I have made it outside here. So this layer that you see is made up of cells. These are called tippetal cells and the layer is called tippetum. I have written it already. So these cells, these tippetal cells are large and it has a lot of cytoplasm and it can provide for the cells, I mean provide nourishment to the cells that is in the inner layer. And these cells, the very tightly packed cells are called sporogenous cells. So let me write it here. So this here inside are called sporogenous cells and why are they called sporogenous? Because these cells later will become microspores. But again, there are so many cells inside and not all cells will develop into a microspore. Some cells will disintegrate on the way. Few will disintegrate and will be consumed by the cells that are in the vicinity. So they will also act like a food source for other cells. And the few cells that remain will develop into microspore or a pollen. And this part, this part is the most important part of the entire video because a lot of questions are asked from this part. And also from here on, this sporogenous cell will develop into microspores. So let us quickly clear the board. All right. Now among the few cells that are left inside this tippetal layer, let's bring one of them outside. So this one here is a cell from this sporogenous cell mass. Now I have called this cell microspore mother cell. So we call it microspore mother cell because they give rise to microspores. Right? Okay. Now before we proceed and look into what happens to this microspore mother cell, let me tell you something which is common for all plants on earth. A plant can either be in the gametophyte stage or it can be in the sporophyte stage. And the gametophyte or we can say gametes are either male gametes and the female gametes. So in order to form gametes, you may probably know already that the gametes have half the number of chromosomes or we call them haploid. So gametophyte stage is always haploid while as these gametes fuse, they form a diploid zygote and diploid zygote give rise to the rest of the plant body and that plant body is called the sporophyte stage. So that sporophyte is deployed as well. This sporophyte later undergoes meiosis at one point in life and give rise to gametophyte and this gametophyte give rise to gametes. And this is a cycle that goes on in any plant on earth. So in this video as we are going to produce pollen and pollen being the male gamete has haploid number of chromosomes. So to form haploid number of chromosomes, the cells or the microspore mother cell has to undergo meiosis. So now our microspore mother cell is in the sporophyte stage therefore it has twice n number of chromosomes or we can say it is in the diploid stage. Okay now let me get rid of this. Okay this microspore mother cell as we just discussed will now undergo meiosis to give rise to male gametes. Now after meiosis we get four haploid cells and the four haploid cells are here. These four cells are now called microspore tetrad and also this microspore tetrad can be arranged in different ways. The four cells can be arranged in a number of ways. So if it is arranged this way it is called tetrahedral. Here we can only see three cells. One is behind the sphere. So this is a tetrahedral arrangement. This is a linear arrangement. This is a isobilateral. This is the same as this one and this is T-shaped. There are a few more shapes. So this tetrads or these four cells can be arranged in a number of different ways and the most common one is this one the tetrahedral shape. Now this microspore tetrad is held together by a protein which is called callos. This callos are holding all these four haploid cells together in a tetrad. Now all these four haploid cells develop into individual pollen particles. So these four cells will give rise to four different pollen grains. So to form individual pollen particles they need to be freed, right? So for that we need to dissolve these callos and who does the dissolving? So it is dissolved by an enzyme which is produced by this tipatum layer. So I told you this tipatum has a number of functions. So the tipatum now produces an enzyme that dissolves the callos and the enzyme is called chalets, chalets and chalets dissolves callos. So the callos layer slowly dissolves and it gives rise to four individual microspore cells. And this process is called microsporogenesis, the microspores are formed. So are these pollen yet? These are not pollen yet. There are a few more changes required in this microspore so that we can call them a pollen. Now we will talk about all those changes in a future video. But for now what is very important and what is worth noting is that from one microspore mother cell, we get four microspores. And therefore from here we will get four pollens, right? Four pollens. Now if in one pollen sec, there are say five microspore mother cells, it will give rise to how many pollens? Can you think of an answer? It gives rise to five multiplied by four, that is 20 pollens. Now let's say each pollen sec has five microspore mother cells. So how many pollens will we get from adiathicus, diathicus enter? So for adiathicus enter, we need to multiply this 24 times, right? Because we will have 20 pollens in each of this pollen sec. So four times 20 gives us 80 pollens. So let me just write pollen here. So from one enter, from adiathicus enter, we got 80 pollens. And that is the reason we see so, so many pollen in just tiny, tiny little flowers. So this is all about microspore genesis. And after this, in the future video, we will look into the changes that takes place in each of these individual cells that finally forms a proper pollen.


Hi, this is Don. I just want to show you again how fast you can solve a contingency problem using StatCrunch. This is my StatLab. We're given this table. Got a link there. I'm going to open it in StatCrunch. So here we have our data. We go to Stat, Tables, Contingency with Summary because this is a summary. We select our column data. I'm going to click on Stretch. Help my shift down, not Stretch. My row labels result. I want expected counts. I'm going to go ahead and get the contingency or the chi-square test done too. And just click on Compute. I'm going to move this over here out of the way. You can see we have our answers there. It gave us the marginals, 232, 222, 454, 410, 44. And it gave us our expected 22.48 all the way down to 200.48. So remember that. Hope this helps.


Vice Admiral Michelle Howard recently discussed the steps the Navy has made in the past to integrate women into the Navy's operational occupational fields. This particular announcement I think will have a bigger impact in the Army and Marine Corps than it will for the U.S. Navy.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the rescission of the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule for women. As a result, the Navy plans to develop a plan that evaluates how it will open all positions previously closed to women as well as develop and evaluate gender-neutral occupational standards. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Matthew Halls.


Before I was diagnosed, we lived a really busy life, we were just normal people. We built the house that we're sitting in now, we'd rarely stopped. I was diagnosed five years ago and it came to me a little bit out of the blue. I did have a suspicion that it was going to be motor neurone disease. I didn't really believe that until they told us. And then it was like being hit by a bus. I was told by the neurologist, she told me that I had a matter of months at worth to live. Some years at best. The disease is progressing thankfully very slowly. But the things that I can do inside the house or outside the house gets smaller and smaller. The options available to me, as I see them, is one I can take my own life. At this stage, if I wanted to take my own life, I'd have to take it before I was totally incapacitated and do it in a way that wouldn't incriminate my family. Another option, of course, which is well known, is you can go abroad for a dignified and compassionate death. The third one is just to let the disease take its course. We would like to overturn the blanket ban on right to die in this country because we believe it contravenes my own human rights. People with terminal conditions or people who are incurably suffering are made to continue living when they don't want to because they cannot seek assistance to end their lives at a time that they want to. Phil does not want to end his life now. He is still enjoying life, but I think that with a condition like his there could be a point in the future where enjoyment and pleasure in life is eclipsed by pain and fear and anguish. By giving people choice, it means that they know that they don't have to endure years of suffering. They know that they will have a choice to bring that to an end when they wish. It's as simple as that.