Okay. Thank you very much, Stefano. Well, I've been interested in minimal diffeomorphisms and homeomorphisms in dimension two since the very beginning of my PhD at IMPA. And in fact, I'm very interested in, essentially, in this question, in this problem. And my main motivation to study such systems comes from the lack of periodic points of minimal diffeomorphisms or more generally homomorphisms. You know, periodic points are extremely useful in dynamics and at certain extent, minimal diffeomorphisms are the simplest periodic point-free systems because when you have minimality, you have a certain form of homogeneity. So if you want to understand systems with no periodic points, maybe that's a good starting point. And the choice of dimension two, of course, comes from the fact that in dimension one, everything is very well understood. I mean the dynamics of minimal homeomorphisms after Poincaré. And dimension three already is too difficult. You will see that all the results I will mention so far we don't have any idea of how to attack the problem in higher dimensions. And in fact, the first problem I considered for my PhD thesis was the following one which can be considered as a very weak version of the CR-closing lemma. Essentially, the idea is if you have a minimal diffeomorphism, a CR diffeomorphism, if it is possible to destroy minimality by arbitrary small CR perturbations. Fortunately, I found some other problems because that one is still open. I mean, to tell you the truth, I think we are very far away from solving this. And you see dimension two, minimality, so far it's not clear how to attack this problem. And in that moment, in the beginning of my PhD, I had the naive idea, the naive project of trying to get some kind of classification of minimal diffeomorphisms in dimension two. And so if you are interested in finding some kind of, maybe not classification, but to find some common characteristic between minimal diffeomorphisms, let's start recalling very well-known examples of minimal diffeomorphisms. Of course, the first one are ergodic rotations, are the fundamental example. In fact, all the time what you do is, what you consider as another system is to compare the dynamics of the diffeomorphism that you are studying with respect to the rotation. So this, of course, is the fundamental example. The second kind of examples are time t of reparametrizations of minimal flows. So you start with a minimal linear flow. You consider a reparametrization. The reparametrization is still minimal, the flow. And so that means that you have a genetic set of times such that the time t is diffeomorphisms. You have an ecological condition here. And if this ecological equation does not admit continuous solutions, then you really get something new. I mean, something new means different to an ergodic rotation. And in fact, if you have that property, you'll get weak mixing, for instance. So it's the time t, when it is minimal, it's weak mixing, so you have something new, different to a rotation. The third kind of examples are the celebrated work of Furstenberg, which was the first example of a minimal diffeomorphism, which was not uniquely ergodic. Once again, you have a comological condition here. You ask this comological equation if there is no continuous solution, then automatically you know that the skew product, this is an skew product here, is minimal. And if this equation admits a measurable solution, then you have something which is metrically isomorphic to the rotation with alpha zero, which is not, of course, not ergodic. And so this was another kind of example. And the four kind of examples that we will consider here are irrational then twist. This one is completely different to the first three examples because the first three examples belong to the isotopic class of the identity. They are isotopic to the identity. And this fourth one, it is not. It's isotopic to, so right here, but it's isotopic to the linear map given by this matrix in t2. So these are probably the most well-known examples of minimal dephiomorphisms. And what they have in common, all these examples here is that they exhibit an invariant foliage. You can see in all these examples you have an invariant foliage. And this is, of course, extremely useful because when you have an invariant foliage you have a one-dimensional transferred structure. And so at certain extent you can reduce the dimension of the manifold. And so it's very desirable to have an invariant foliage. So the question is, okay, is it true that any dephiomorphism in t2, minimal dephiomorphism exhibit an invariant foliage. The answer is no. In 2009, with Andres Koropeki, we showed that if you take the smooth conjugacy class of rotations and you take the infinity closure, this is the typical space where Anosov-Katok method work, you show that a generic dephiomorphism exhibit no invariant foliage. And previously, Michel Hermann and Albert Fatih had shown that a generic dephiomorphism here in this space is minimal and uniquely algorithmic. So combining these two generic constructions you can show that there are a lot of dephiomorphisms with no even topological foliage. So at certain extent this is a bad news because, well, all the things are a little more complicated than you can think before. What happened in the isotopic class? Whoops. Stop it. Ah, sorry. What happened in the isotopic class of the twist? Is it true that there are minimal dephiomorphisms with no invariant foliage? Okay, we will return to this question here at the end of this talk. But the answer for question number one is no. So how you can study minimal dephiomorphisms? How you can continue the analysis of the dynamics of such systems? Well, let's concentrate in the isotopic class of the identity. In the isotopic class of the identity you can try to imitate the rotation theory of Poincaré. So not to denote the isotopic class of the identity. When you have a different homomorphism which is isotopic to the identity, any lift to the universal cover can be written as identity plus a CD periodic function. Okay, this is very classical. And in Poincaré showed that when you are in such a situation the integral with respect to any invariant measure is the same, it's always the same. This is the so-called rotation vector, rotation number, sorry. Hence if you have this for any invariant measure that means that this expression must converge uniformly to the rotation number. Okay, this is a situation in the one-dimensional setting. In higher dimension the situation changes a lot. In general you cannot expect to have a well-defined rotation vector but what you have is a rotation set. Again, you are considering the same expression than here, but the difference is that you can have different measures with different integrals when you integrate the periodic part of the cover. Okay? And so you will say that f is a pseudo-rotation when you have a well-defined rotation vector. The setting in higher dimension to study homeomorphisms which are isotopic to the identity. And so the question is, okay, what happened with minimum, yeah, sorry. For instance, a good example here is the following. Let's suppose this is the circle, 0, 1. Here in the middle you have any rotate. It's an SQ product. And here you put a completely different rotation. You press up here. And in this direction you put a north-south dynamics. And so for instance, in this case, you have every point here has rotation vector in the up direction, here in the down. And any other point here has exactly this rotation vector because you converge on S. So this is a very simple example when you have essentially two, only two rotation vectors that they are associated to ergodic. You have only here, if these are irrational rotations, you have only two ergodic invariant measures. And in this case, the rotation vector is vertical. This is over the, sorry, imagine this is the 0 and this is the rotation vector of this guy here and this is the rotation vector of this guy here. And the rotation set is a whole segment here, but you only have point with this rotation vector and with this rotation vector. I don't know it. Oh, okay. No, no. Yes, for instance, in... Not very much. In this case, when you have minimality and when you have unique ergodicity, you automatically have a pseudo rotation because you have only one invariant measure, you have only a vector here. And you can see that here... Well, I didn't say that, but genetic diffeomorphism here are weak mixing. So you have a pseudo rotation with a completely different dynamics comparing with the rotation, with the real rotation. Okay. So, yeah, in general, it is not to be a pseudo rotation. Well, it's not very close to be a rotation. So this is a pseudo rotation. So all the examples I mentioned, all four... No, sorry, the first three examples that were isotopic to the identity, all of these examples were pseudo rotations. Of course, the rotation, it is clear. The parametrization of the flow to show that it's a pseudo rotation is a nice exercise. A skew product of ergodic rotations of the circle are also pseudo rotations. This is a nice exercise. Not exercise. It's a problem. This was a lemma proven by Hermann in some paper of his. So, all these examples that I mentioned before are pseudo rotations. Okay. So, what else? What can we say about the rotation set of a minimal diffeomorphism, a minimal homeomorphism? You have this theorem of Frank's, which is very useful, because as you can see here, I said if you put an irrational rotation here and a rational rotation here, in this example you have no periodic points, even though you have a lot of rational points in the rotation set. So, in higher dimension, it is not true that any rational vector is realized by a periodic orbit. But the theorem of Frank's said that if the measure is topologically equivalent to Lebesgue, then if the rotation vector of the measure is rational, then you have a periodic point. So, that means that in the case of minimal diffeomorphisms, you know, any variant measure has no atoms and has no total support. So, that means, by Oksofius and Thornin, it is equivalent to Lebesgue. And so, that means that if you have a minimal diffeomorphism, then it cannot contain any rational point. In particular, we saw the rotation set is a compact convex set. So, it must have the rotation set has empty interior. So, essentially, you have two possibilities. You have just a point. So, you have pseudo rotation or you have a segment, but you cannot have no empty interior for the rotation. A segment like this. When the rotation set is not a point, the rotation set is a compact convex set. So, it can be a point. It can be a segment or it has no empty interior. But it cannot have no empty interior because of this property here. So, these are the two possibilities. And in the beginning of 1990s, Miserévic has conjectured that any minimal diffeomorphism, in fact, any periodic point-free homomorphism must be a pseudo rotation. Very recently, Artur Abila has constructed an example of a minimal diffeomorphism which is not a pseudo rotation. In fact, the rotation set is a segment of irrational slope. So, if we were trying to get some kind of classification of minimal diffeomorphism, things are getting worse and worse because we have no invariant foliation. The rotation set can be not a point, but maybe a segment. So, the situation is much more complicated. The good news is that these pathologies in a certain way cannot coexist. So, that means that, this is the first result I want to talk about, if you have a minimal homomorphism which is not a pseudo rotation, then you have something very similar to an invariant foliation. It is not exactly a foliation. It is a partition of the manifold in sets which, in the universal cover, they are closed and connected, and they have a well-defined homological direction. So, it's something like a foliation with leaves having probably some hairs. Maybe it's not something like this, but probably it's something like this, something here, maybe something even worse on this, but they are set in the universal cover that can be written as intersection, or less the intersection of strips having a well-defined homological direction. So, this is the first good news that you cannot have simultaneously a minimal homomorphism which is not a pseudo rotation or a invariant foliation. It is not a foliation, but it's something similar to that. And the second result is a work in progress with Patrice Le Calvet. And essentially, it's answered in a topological way. The second question I asked before, if you have a minimal homomorphism, which is isotopic to a dend twist, then automatically, sorry, automatically exhibit an invariant pseudo-foliation. Essentially, what you have is that any minimal homomorphism in the isotopic class of dend twist is automatically an extension of a circle minimal rotation, a topological extension. Once again, the fibers can be very weird. But you have something like a foliation, you have definitely a factor, you have a semi-conjugacy with the rotation. Okay? So, how you can study this problem of invariant foliation and so on? The key idea here is the rotational deviations. In the one-dimensional case, you have a very, very nice property, which is uniformly deviations with respect to the rotation number. That means that if you have a circle homomorphism, anyone, and you consider a lift, then the displacement of any point after n iterates, and if you compare this displacement with the rotation, yes, it can be different from zero, but it's always bounded by one. So that means that every point goes with essentially the same mean speed of the rotation. In higher dimension, this doesn't hold anymore. For instance, it's very instructive to see what happens in the Furzenberg case. In the Furzenberg case, in the horizontal direction, you have a rotation, a true rotation. So, of course, there is no deviation there. So that means that if you analyze the deviation with respect to the rotation vector here, and you analyze what happens in the horizontal direction, there is no deviation at all. But on the other hand, you have unbounded deviation in the vertical direction for every point. So this is a typical situation where in certain directions, it's okay. You have bounded deviation but unbounded deviation in others. And there is a folklore theorem, which is, in fact, it's an easy corollary of Gotchalk-Hedlum theorem, Gotchalk-Hedlum theorem that I will need later. If you have a homeomorphism, which is minimal, and you have a continuous function, a real continuous function, such that the birch of sum, sorry, and there exists a point x0 in x, such that the birch of sum of x0 is uniformly bounded, is uniformly bounded here, and exists m for every n. If you have this, then automatically you have, that there exists u, continuous here, such that uf minus u is equal to 5. And this means that if this holds for one point, automatically holds for any other point, not exactly with n, but you will have that the birch of sum in any other point is also uniformly bounded. And this is just a consequence of this, it's a corollary of this theorem. It's said that if you have a certain direction, when you have bounded deviation with respect to the rotation, then you automatically have an invariant pseudo-foliation. It is not, as I said before, it's not necessarily a foliation, so using this theorem here, you will see that if you want to study the existence of invariant pseudo-foliation, what you have to do is to analyze the problem of rotational deviations. And so that means that we will consider the case, for instance, I will consider in this case where the rotation set is a vertical segment, and we will try to analyze what happened, we will try to show that such a system exhibit bounded deviation in the horizontal direction. Bounded deviation with respect to this rotation. Yeah, alpha. And this is the way that you construct the invariant foliage. So how you can study the problem of rotational deviations? Let's start with this case, which has nothing to do with the minimal case, because in certain cases it can be, but suppose that you have this, you have the rotation set, it's contained in the y-axis, okay? So if you have such a situation by a classical work of Birkoff, you can show that you can define this set here, you can show that it's not empty. What is the idea of this set here? You are saying this is the plane, you are considering this is R, the vertical, and you are considering this semi-plane, okay? And after that, you take the maximal invariant set of this semi-plane, and this is the connected components, the unbounded connected components of this invariant set, okay? And Birkoff showed that these sets are not empty whenever you have this property here. If the rotation set is contained, the first coordinate of every rotation vector is zero, then you have that the maximal invariant set here has unbounded components. And that means that this set is not empty, okay? And what's the topology of this set? If your f here exhibits bounded deviation, uniformly bounded deviation, then these sets here are very thick in the sense that you have that, you have all the semi-plane containing this set. And this is essentially if the point is here and exhibits bounded deviation, it cannot cross this with some sort of iterate. And when you have unbounded deviations, this cannot happen, or I'm cheating a little bit, but you have something like a hertz, okay? It's not filled. They are just hertz. And this is very extremely useful to study the problem of rotational deviations, because when you have an invariant set which have something like a hertz structure, this imposes certain restriction on the possible dynamics on the vertical direction. And for instance, this set were used by Nancy Gellman, Andres Koropecki, and Fabio Tal to show that if you have an area preserving an area preserving homeomorphism, and the rotation set is a vertical segment, then you automatically have uniformly bounded rotational deviations. There is no chance of having such a hairy invariant set. Okay? Okay, so what happened for minimal homeomorphisms? For minimal homeomorphisms, you know that if f is minimal, then you have this property due to Frank's result, and if it's a vertical segment, you are supposing that it's not a pseudo-rotation, then automatically you have that alpha that does not belong to Q. So in particular, it's different from zero. So if you try to imitate the situation in the previous slide, and you say, okay, I will try to define exactly the same set, you will see that this set is empty, because everybody, suppose that alpha is positive, everybody is going in this direction, so the inverse is going in this direction, and every point escapes from this set. So it is not a good idea, it is empty. So you have to change the definition. Okay. So in fact, what we want to study here is the following. We are trying to estimate this expression here. This is n alpha, we are trying to estimate the deviation with respect to the horizontal, in the horizontal direction, and so you want to estimate this quantity here. So one thing that you can do to imitate the situation in the, where the rotation set was on the y-axis, sorry, is the following, you could define this set, for instance, and you will have exactly the same thing that you have before. Okay, that means that when f exhibits, if x exhibits bounded deviation, then you have a thick set, like this, and if it exhibits unbounded deviation, then you have a hairy set, but it is not empty. So it's this definition, this attempt of definition is much better than this one. But there is a problem. This set is not dynamically defined. It is not invariant, I mean, by anything. So it's not very useful to do dynamics. It's not an f-invariant set. It is not an f-invariant set. So you have the set, you have something very similar to a previous case, it seems to be rather hard to use it to get any result. So what can we do is the following. First of all, they will work in the area-preserving case. Minimum homeomorphisms, you can suppose that they are area-preserving because you can conjugate to preserve the back. This is SOC-STOV-ULAM theory. I will consider the space of lifts of area-preserving homeomorphisms, which are isotopic to the identity. And you have, in this case, you have the rotation vector of Lebeck. This is exactly the same definition I used before. But in this case, you have a group homeomorphism. Okay? So you have a group homeomorphism and the kernel of this group homeomorphisms are the so-called Hamiltonian homeomorphisms, homeomorphism, sorry. I mean, I just consider this as a definition. Hamiltonian homeomorphism is a homeomorphism such that its area-preserving and the rotation vector of Lebeck is zero. And when you have such a situation here, you have a simple group theoretical remark that this short exact sequence split. This essentially means that this projection here has an inverse. Forget it, it's not important what is interesting here is that the symplectic homeomorphism or area-preserving homeomorphisms can be written as a direct product, semi-direct product of R2 and Hamiltonians. And when in algebra you have a semi-direct product in dynamics you have a skew product. So if you consider this decomposition here, you can construct a skew product which is very useful for dynamics in the following way. You consider an area-preserving homeomorphism and a lift. And let us write rho for the rotation vector of Lebeck. In this case, then you can define the following map which is an skew product over T2 times R2. This is essentially motivated by the previous formula, the previous remark I said, that the group of symplectic homeomorphisms can be written as a semi-direct product of R2 and Hamiltonian homeomorphisms. So you have this structure here and notice that the interesting point here is this. This is a Hamiltonian homeomorphism. And why this is interesting for us? Well, you can write the lift in this way. You can easily show that you have this expression here. And that means that when you take the n iterate, you have this property. Forget about the first coordinate. Consider the second property. The second coordinate is exactly what you want. You want to iterate n times. You are iterating here, and you are pushing back to the origin in a certain way. So this expression here is always Hamiltonian. So that's the reason why I define this as a Hamiltonian skew product. You have on the base you have a rotation and on the fiber you have Hamiltonian homeomorphisms. So that means that you can now apply exactly, not exactly, but you can define the birch of stable sets using this skew product. You know because suppose that the rotation set is always alpha AB, you consider once again the vertical semi-plane and now you define for each T you will have a fiber invariant set for each T in T2. You consider exactly the same set, but now for the skew product. And you intersect this invariant set with the fiber of T and you consider the unbounded connected components on this set. It seems to be a rather cumbersome in a certain way, but on the other hand you have this. This is really an F invariant set. This is a dynamically defined set. So taking the union on each fiber, you have a dynamically defined set. And now you can try to get the same result you had before. You can try to get here. The first remark is the following. Of course we are trying to prove through MA that we are trying to show that we have uniformly bounded deviation with respect to alpha in the horizontal direction. So let's suppose that this is not the case. Suppose that you have unbounded deviation. And due to the Gotchal-Hettlund theorem you can suppose if you want that you have one point with unbounded. You have one point with unbounded deviation. In this case, in fact to prove that the set is not empty, it is not necessary to have unbounded deviation. But in this case you have that this set is not empty. The second case is also rather easy. If you are considering the maximal invariant set with respect to this semi-plane, of course this contains the maximal invariant set starting here to the right, this is clear. But the two fundamental properties are the following. If you take R very, very negative in this way and you take the union, you have something dense. And on the other hand due to Gotchal-Hettlund theorem if you have a maximal invariant set by the right by the left they cannot intersect. Because if you have one intersection you have a point with uniformly bounded deviation and if you have a point with uniformly bounded deviation you have every point with uniformly bounded deviation. So you have two hairy invariant sets such that if you translate in this direction you get a dense set. If you translate in this direction you have a dense set but they don't intersect. They don't intersect. So you start to see that it's very particular. The idea of the proof is that always assuming this unbounded deviation the first thing is that you can show that the homomorphism, the original homomorphism is spreading. What is spreading is something stronger than topologically mixing. In fact, what you can show is that you take any invariant set, sorry, if you take any small set U and you take a ball of rises R, very large and you take epsilon very small then you have after some time N for every small N you have that this set the N iterate of this set is epsilon dense in a ball of rises R. So this is in the universal cup. So you have something which is much stronger than topologically mixing. For instance, in the Anosov case you always have mixing but always along the direction of the unstable, of the unstable direction. Here you are getting a mixing in every homological direction. How you can prove this essentially it's rather complicated. This was a result of a student of mine in Brazil. The idea is that you have this head structure here. This is this set of minus infinity and you have some head structure here from plus infinity and you have inside the set U you have point that goes up and point that goes down and you have to avoid this set here if you started initially you have chosen U the joint of this set you have to avoid this and so that means that the image of U have to oscillate a lot. This is essentially the idea of the proof. Secondly, you have this the horizontal set and you can also define the vertical set. It's essentially the same thing here you are considering not this semi-plane here but this semi-plane for instance the upper one. You can show that this set is completely empty but the argument is completely different to the Birkhoff argument. This is a combination of Lefchitz-Fixhorn theorem a result of Patrice Le Calvea and Jean-Claire Stofiot-Cos for the index of iterates of isolated fixed point and another theorem of Réderique Le Roux about also the index of not isolated of fixed point but combining these three results you can show that this set is non-empty and due to the spreading condition you have two Hailey sets in this direction you have two Hailey sets in this direction and all these sets are disjoint they cannot intersect I mean this third argument is a very crafted argument it's not easy at all but you get a contradiction from the existence of this fourth set that cannot intersect and well I have three minutes and for the case of the dent twist the argument is similar at first we thought that the dent twist should be harder but in fact it's easier this is less involved so you have when you have a homeomorphism which is isotopic to the identity to the dent twist of this form here any lift have the following form here in this case you cannot consider the rotation vector because this function here is not a co-cycle for the homeomorphism but this one is a co-cycle so you can imitate the rotation theory you can define in this case the vertical rotation set essentially in the same way okay when I say when this is a co-cycle I mean that if you take the n-iter here what you get is the Birkhoff sum and in this case it is not true here you don't have the Birkhoff sum okay or not the same or what the problem is this m here so you have the vertical rotation set and there is a recent result of Salvador Adasanata García Fabiotal who showed that if you have a minimal homeomorphism which is homotopic to the dent twist then the rotation set is just a point and this point is Russian this point is Russian so what happened here well you can construct a very similar skew product the problem is that the skew product now it doesn't exist on T2 times R2 but it works in T times the open annulus essentially the formula is the same you are also using this idea of the semi-direct product here you will see that here if your this area preserving is area preserving yes and this is a vertical rotation vector you will have here something which has zero rotation number with respect to the vector so you are pushing all the time things down and so you can define exactly the same set but in this case you define the vertical set well you have unbounded vertical deviations you show that the set are non-empty closed and unbounded and using the argument once again of minimality you can show that this the set from below and from above are disjoint so they have non-empty interior and again you have the same property that the translates are dense where essentially this is the whole idea because when you have a twist map there is no invariant set like this like that one if you have an unbounded invariant set for a twist map with zero a complete invariant set automatically it is the neighborhood of infinity it is completely filled but in this case it is not necessarily true that it is a twist map but when you regard a homeomorphism which is isotopic to the identity if you look them from very far away it seems to be a twist map so you can repeat some arguments here and to show that this is not the case thank you very much


Hello, everyone. I'm Sean Boyd in the State Operations Center here at Cal OES headquarters outside of Sacramento. As of today, there are over 9,400 firefighters fighting fires in California, fires that have burned almost a quarter of a million acres. Here's the latest on the three largest fires, starting with the Camp Fire in Butte County. It has already become the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in California history. It's burned over 140,000 acres, containment is now up to 40 percent. Over 10,000 structures destroyed, 56 confirmed fatalities, with still more than 100 missing. The Wolsey Fire, covering both Ventura and Los Angeles counties, is now closing in on 100,000 acres, containment up to 57 percent, and now three confirmed fatalities. And firefighters continue to make great progress on the Hill Fire, also in Ventura County. The Hill Fire now almost fully contained. There are over 1,100 fire engines now on these fires. Of those, nearly half are local government engines from all over the state. 18 percent are mutual aid and have come from over a dozen states from all across the country. Cal OES engines make up 17 percent of the force, with Cal Fire and federal engines rounding out the total. And now a quick update on shelters in Butte County. The American Red Cross will take over the operation of the shelter at the Glenn County Fairground starting Friday, November 16th. Overall, there are nine total shelters and one on standby for the Camp Fire. That information can be found at wildfirerecovery.org. For survivors of the Camp Fire, a Disaster Recovery Center will open on Friday, November 16th. The center will be located at the former Sears Store in the Chico Mall, 1982 East 20th Street in Chico. The center will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. The Disaster Recovery Center will have information and resources for homeowners, renters and business owners who sustained damage as a result of the Camp Fire. The California Highway Patrol has been providing mutual aid since the beginning with traffic control, highway closures and law enforcement. The CHP is working with the Butte County Sheriff's Department and Paradise to help clear roads and highways of vehicles that were caught in the fires. Their safety hazards and once on tow trucks will be moved to a staging area. They tell us they're all working well together. Its teamwork made better through relationships they've already forged. We work very well with the local law enforcement. So that teamwork early on, we come up here, we know people face to face, we know the communities and we can step in and fill whatever role they need us to do. Now they're also checking carves for the remnants of valuables left behind, though at this point, they may only have sentimental value. Now if you need additional information on assistance, shelter or recovery, you can find all of that information up to date and more on our website, wildfirerecovery.org. For all of us here at Cal OES and all of our partner agencies working hard for you behind us, I'm Shawn Boyd. Thanks for watching.


Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Helen Dora-Heiden. In our show this time, we'll cover a meeting of the China seminar, dealing with the closing of the Chinese mind. It featured remarks by journalist Richard Hornick on Xi Jinping's drive for complete control of the flow of ideas in China. China has gone beyond Xi Jinping's initial campaign to root out corruption. Now Xi and the Politburo are focused on controlling ideas in China. You might have thought the trend was to more freedom of thought and expression in China, but these days that is clearly not the case. Freedom of thought and expression among the public and in educational institutions is under increasing attack by the government, sometimes in ways that are subtle and other times in ways that are not so subtle at all. In China, if you are inclined to speak out against the government, think again. There is a myriad of civil and criminal sanctions that can and will be used to make free expression very dangerous. For many China followers, all this is a bit of a surprise and disappointment. Where we may have hoped to see freedom of expression in China become more open, now we are seeing it become more closed and repressive. We'll hear more about this from the footage we took at the China seminar. Be prepared. What Richard Hornick says does not paint a pretty picture of China today or in the years to come. Richard Hornick's talk was entitled, The Closing of the Chinese Mind. Xi Jinping's drive for complete control over the flow of ideas in China. He pointed out that since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, one of his primary policy goals has been to reassert party control over all information flows. The initial focus was on censoring and shaping internal social media and on reinforcing party control of news outlets. But in the last two years, those efforts have brought in to include academia, civil society organizations and foreign influences. With the latest party Congress anointing Xi as China's most powerful leader since Mao, the future for exchange of ideas in China is the bleakest in four decades. The implications for Chinese society and the economy will be substantial. Given our current president's penchant for fake news and his unprecedented war with the press, this should make us all the more concerned about freedom of expression in the United States. And taking that with a Putin effect in Russia, what are the global sea changes on this critical aspect of human rights and democracy? Richard Hornick is currently the Director of Overseas Partnership Programs for the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, where he has lectured on journalism since 2007. Richard was the Executive Editor of Asia Week and Deputy Chief of Correspondence and News Service Director of Time Magazine in New York. He ran Times Foreign Coverage and served as Times Bureau Chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong. He was also Times National Economic Correspondent in Washington, D.C. and its Europe Business Editor in London. With that, Richard has more than 30 years of journalistic experience around the world. He is also an editorial consultant and has designed editorial reorganizations at Reuters and the Harvard Business Review, where he was interim editor in 2011. Richard was a visiting lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in 2012 and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2015, when he was the inaugural Daniel K. Inouye Visiting Scholar at the School of Communications. Richard co-authored Massacre in Beijing, China's Struggle for Democracy and is written for Foreign Affairs, Fortune, Smithsonian and the New York Times. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Press Club. He has an MA in Russian Studies from George Washington University and a BA in Political Science from Brown University. Clearly Richard Hornick is a journalist's journalist and a scholar worth listening to. With all that in mind, here is our footage from his recent remarks at the China seminar. And how that's changed over the last 30 years. This talk is not about rights, it's not about NGO registrations, it's not about the rest of human rights lawyers and activists that was made for another time. This is simply a talk about the flows of information, how they are increasingly being controlled in China. I was a staging director of chief in 1985. And at that point, their information flows in China were completely controlled. There was no internet, all of the publications were controlled by the government or the party. The news was highly massaged, manipulated. And so that was sort of my starting point. In 1991 I was Times Hong Kong Bureau Chief and at that moment things were beginning to change quite a bit. It was post-89, so there were a lot of political controls, but still there seemed to be a sense that information was being more widely shared within the country. I taught at the University of Hong Kong in the fall of 2012 as an experiment to see if we could de-Americanize the course. And my dean wanted me also to try to spread it inside China. And I told him he was crazy. I saw no way that they would permit this. But to my surprise, we developed a very strong relationship with the communication University of China. We had multiple visits back and forth. And in 2014 I was a guest lecturer in a communications university of China. So I was going to get four lectures and train two academics to give the rest of the lectures. And after the first two lectures everything seemed to be going great. And then the three of us showed up for the third lecture. And there were no students. And the two Chinese academics were quite nervous. They didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was happening. I never gave another lecture. I spent two more weeks there and was basically doing nothing. And since then we have lost all contact with our academic partners there. Emails not returned. And we don't push it. But to me that's sort of a turning point, at least an inflection point in this talk. So let's talk for a minute about the high watermark of information folks. 2012 this gentleman here was the head of transportation security, provincial head of security. And he shows up at a horrible accident where a tanker truck hit a bus and over 30 people were killed. And he's smiling. And China's netizens saw this and went crazy. They denounced him and then they started doing research. And they went and looked at all of the photographs of this guy that appeared over the previous year or two. And he was wearing 11 different watches, each more expensive than the last one. Each more expensive than the annual salary of a Chinese provincial official. Things did not turn out well for that time. He was sentenced to 14 years in jail for corruption. So this was the moment when I started teaching news literacy in Hong Kong. I viewed this as a very positive process for China, not for freedom of speech or freedom of information, but for the development of a modern economy and a modern civil society. One of the problems you have in authoritarian regimes is a lack of feedback. If you've ever studied management, you have to know what the people at the bottom are thinking. You can't rely on it all to be passed up to each level. At this moment, you know, around 2013, but certainly by 2014, what China started doing at that point in time was to closely monitor what was happening on social media. There were various channels, Waybaugh, which was blog posts and stuff. WeChat, which as many of you know, sort of the messaging, personal messaging. So they started monitoring both using artificial intelligence, but an army of 50,000 employees watching to see if anything untoward was being said. They also had a bunch of people who supposedly were paid to post pro-government comments or to try to influence things, not unlike, I suppose, what the Russians were doing to us last year. And they made internet companies responsible for the content they show, even that generated by users. Now imagine Facebook or Google or any of the social media platforms were responsible for the defamatory comments that are being made about people. Don't hold your breath. It's not going to happen anytime soon. So, you know, there were certain positive elements. So during all of this, there began a sort of cat mouse game. Chinese netizens are very, very clever. They love playing games with government. So this, of course, is the most famous picture from June 4th, Tiananmen. It's also the least known photograph from China. It is, they have, all of their screening materials are used to keep these sorts of photographs from coming up. So some of them avoided the screen. And it stayed up for a few hours, and then it was taken down. And they've been doing a lot of this sort of stuff. They can't say June 4th of 1989, so sometimes they'll say May 35th, 1989. This was from earlier this year. But a lot of netizens were comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh. As a result, you can no longer search for Winnie the Pooh or Pooh Bear or whatever. It was a cat mouse game. And so China's netizens stopped using Wavewall, and they started using these private messaging services like WeChat. But censorship has now gotten, went almost immediately to WeChat as well. A lot of netizens and foreigners have used these virtual private networks to circumvent the great global firewall. But VPN access is now very difficult. In fact, someone was just sentenced to jail for five years for selling VPN services in China.  Basically, what it amounts to is that you here in the United States and almost anywhere in the world, you can create fake accounts. You don't have to say who you are or where you live. It's very easy. In China now, that is absolutely forbidden. Every account has to be registered to an individual. And as I said before, every platform is responsible for enforcing this and for enforcing the controls on the content. The change began, as I said, in earnest in 2012, but this was promulgated in 2013. So in addition to looking for pictures of Winnie the Pooh and Tiananmen Tang, the censors began to look for references to things like Western constitutional democracy, universal nature of human rights, the empowerment of civil society, neoliberalism as a challenge to China's basic economic system, Western views of journalism. I think that's where my course ran aground, because my course is basically a way of understanding how journalism works or how it should work. Historical nihilism is one of my favorites, meaning trying to actually talk about history without worrying about a political consequence. And any questioning of China's economic reforms. This then developed further. So in 2015, China's education minister basically banned the use of Western textbooks in China, or at least Western textbooks that contain any references to those nine bills. Not just in textbooks, but also in lectures. So even at the worst, 1985, close to now, when China's universities reopened, Chinese lecturers were pretty much allowed to say anything they wanted, as long as it was within the classroom. They went out on the street, that was something else. But academic freedom was remarkably open. And now they are videotaping professors. They are asking students to report professors who go beyond this number of professors at the jail for things that they said in lectures. Xi Jinping was, it turns out, was behind much of this. In fact, it dates back to 2010, when he, before he became first party secretary. In 2010, he was the head of the Central Party School, and he made a number of lectures at that point, which sort of talked about these issues. And he has been spending the last couple of years reinforcing on this. So Xi wants the universities to be a stronghold of the party's leadership, tertiary or university educational institutes who are responsible for the next generation of communist leader, and they should firmly uphold the correct political direction. As a result of this, more and more universities are making Marxism, Leninism, mandatory courses. They're not just ones where people go to sleep anymore. When I was in China, for the last 15 to 20 years, those sorts of courses were always a joke. They paid attention. It was widely accepted. It was just something you had to do. That's not true. This is the result. This is Tsinghua, which is China's top university. If there's any doubt about that, it's one of the top universities in the world. Said that instructors' political stances would be made central to their performance evaluations. A party official, this is a conference discussing the Xi Jinping directions. A party official from South China Normal said that it built a database to track and analyze political opinions of more than 2 million college students in the conference. We're now not just talking about professors. We're talking about what students write, what books they take out, libraries. In 2017, it went to the point where the corruption agency of the Central Committee, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, broadened its mandate from looking for bribery and graft to looking for politically untoward elements within the universities. The checklist includes whether colleges have strong political awareness, the understanding to safeguard Xi's status as core leader, and recognition of the need to tow the party line. Last fall, as you may know, the 19th Party Congress was held, and Xi Jinping's thought became a central element of that conference. Now, these are the front pages of People's Daily. Dating back to 1977, this is the Waguo Feng, the one who Mao supposedly said, with you in charge, I am at ease. He wasn't at ease for long. Anyway, each successive party congress featured pictures of the standing committee of the Politburo. Deng, sort of in the middle, sort of in the middle. Here's 87, Jiaziang, 92, Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin gets a lot more play here, 97. Of course, he just accomplished the handover of the Pong Kong. So, and then we start seeing slightly less again. This is from 2012, which was when Xi Jinping became party secretary. For the first time since the era of Mao Zedong, a leader's thought has been put as a key element of the party constitution. Since 1921, only Mao Zedong had such an honor. Deng Xiaoping, who could argue would be named the man of the century for bringing more people out of poverty than anyone else in the history of mankind, this thought did not make that. Want to know more about what Richard Hornick is doing these days? Check him out at stonybrook.edu. Want to know more about control of information in China? Just Google it and you'll see what we mean. Want to know more about the China seminar? Check out friends at eastwestcenter.org. Don't age without a smartphone, radio, TV or computer. The whole, and now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward. Think tech broadcasts talk shows live on the internet from 11am to 5pm on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on thinktecawaii.com and YouTube. 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Yes, we take calls during our live shows or any time night or day. Leave us a question or a commentary to say what's on your mind. If it's not abusive, we'll play it. You can leave your name or be anonymous. Speak up, speak out, speak your mind on think tech, and make yourself heard. Or if you would prefer, we'll call you. We want to include you and engage you in our conversations.  If we call to say, we'll be calling you live on one of our shows. Stand by for that call. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube, or send us a tweet at thinktech.hi. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. And now here's this week's think tech commentary. The whole state of Hawaii woke up today at 8.07 a.m. to an emergency alert sent to all cell phones in the state reading in boldface type ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. There are better ways to start a weekend off than for everyone in paradise to jump out of bed thinking they're about to die in 18 minutes that is. It took 38 minutes for Hawaii civil defense to finally issue a second text through the same line confirming the false alarm. Until then, I gathered bits of information through various phone lines and Twitter posts mostly saying not to fret, but I feared all of those could have just been attempts to quell panic. I wasn't about to rest until I heard it from the same source who'd issued the alarm in the first place. Why on earth did it take so long? In 38 minutes, people could have jumped out of buildings preferring to die quickly rather than slowly burn to death. Someone I know did overdose on pills and now can't attend the Sony Open today.  I'm just thankful I haven't heard worse. The delay was indeed inexcusable. Where were you when it happened? I was in the midst of a deep second sleep when someone frantically barged into my room and woke me up. Telepathically enough, I'd spent much of the night dreaming about wait for it, nuclear war. Yes, I'd been dreaming that our world went up in bombs and blazes right before the apocalyptic text arrived. Of course, it was surreal to wake up and find my dream about Armageddon had become reality. I doubt Walt Disney has this situation in mind when he tells us to the tune of fireworks at the happiest place on earth, dreams do come true. And how did you react when you first got the text? Never again need any of us respond hypothetically when asked, what would you do if you had 15 minutes left to live? Now you know exactly what you do because whatever it would be is exactly what you did today. When I started frantically searching the net, I couldn't find a thing. Like I said, I suspected the news was deliberately quiet to avoid panic when we'd have been dead meat regardless. Radio and police phones were completely tied up. No one I called knew anything for sure, but Michael W. Perry was saying on KSSK when he finally said anything at all about it, that the message was a glitch within civil defense, an internal drill accidentally leaked external, and with the added typo, not. Not such a minor typo, was it? Or was it Kim Jong-un? So there it is. It happened and we survived. Now we have a choice. We can indeed be angry, demand whomever made the typo be fired and complain about civil defense's inexcusable lags. Those are legitimate reactions, but for your own sake I suggest another one. As a late friend of mine once said, let's all just be grateful, hey. Unlike my late friend, you and I are now still alive. My friends, we have at least another day.  We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech, but first we want to thank our underwriters. The Atherton Family Foundation. Castle and Cook, Hawaii. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. The Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. Hawaiian Electric Companies. The High Tech Development Corporation. Galen Ho of BAE Systems. Integrated Security Technologies. Kameha Meha Schools. Dwayne Kurisu. Calamon Lee and the Friends of Think Tech. MW Group Limited. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. The Volo Foundation. Eureka J. Sugimura. Okay, Helen. That wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it just like Helen does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on Think Tech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our Think Tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii, and of course the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Helen Dora Haydn. Aloha everyone.


Now, as gunshots echo across the windswept snow-covered reaches of the wild northwest, Quaker Puff Wheat and Quaker Puff Rice, the breakfast cereal shot from guns, present the challenge of the Yukon. It's Yukon King, swiftness and strongest lead dog of the northwest, placing the trail for Sergeant Preston of the northwest mounted police in his relentless pursuit of lawbreakers. On King, on New Huskies! Gold, gold discovered in the Yukon, a stampede to the Klondike in the wild race for riches. Back to the days of the gold rush, with Quaker Puff Wheat and Quaker Puff Rice bringing you the adventures of Sergeant Preston and his wonder dog Yukon King as they meet the challenge of the Yukon. Like skyrockets that shoot into the night, now you see them, now you don't. Yes, when you pour on a bowl full of swell-tasting Quaker Puff Wheat or Quaker Puff Rice for breakfast, and milk or cream and your favorite fruit, now you see them, now you don't. So crisp, so tender, so tempting, they disappear in a flash. For luscious, nut-like flavor, you just can't beat Rice or Wheat shot from guns. They're the one and only Quaker Puff Rice and Quaker Puff Wheat that come in the big red-and-blue package with the smiling Quaker Man on the front. Mike Foss was seated at a corner table in the Borealis Cafe in Dawson when he saw a man making his way through the crowd in his direction. There was something familiar about him which Mike couldn't at the moment identify in his own mind. But when the man stopped at the table and spoke to him, recognition was instant. Hello, Mike. Judd Sawyer, when did you get out? Mind if I sit down a minute? Of course not. Take a chair. All right. Got in a surprise, you see me? Naturally I was surprised. When did you get out? Six months ago, and I didn't break out. Or old? No, no, I did my time. Got two years off for good behavior. You see, what are you doing now? Working for a living. I don't believe it. It's true. I'm forming in a mine back in the hills. So you went straight? Mine and company think so. I want me to keep thinking that way. Then the company knows about you having done time? Yeah, I knew they'd find out, so I told them all about it. Said I wanted a chance to go straight. They gave it to me. Well, have you? What do you think? Then what are you doing up there working for wages? That's why I came down here to talk to you. Yeah? What about? Look, the company's got a safe up there that's worth blowing. You can round up another fella to help you. It'll be a small fortune for all of us. Judd, I'm no safe blower. And I don't know any safe blowers around here. You don't have to worry about that. We got an explosives expert up there who can handle that into the job for us. I thought you said only three of us would be in on the job. That's right. You won't be in on a split when we get the dome. I don't get it. This is a setup. There's a lady involved in this. A lady? I might be interested in. A few days later, a sergeant Preston and the Great Dog King approached the camp of the Klondike Mining Corporation located on Caribou Creek. Night had just fallen and the lights of the camp blinked in the soft darkness. Instead of heading directly into the camp, the mountainous dog made their way to a cabin that's set well away from the others. In response to a knock on the door, their friend Carl Dykes, a young explosives engineer, greeted them. Sergeant Preston and King... Oh, Carl. How about taking in a couple of boarders for the night? Sure, come right in. I was just fixing up supper. There's plenty for both of you. Come on, King. Hang up your gear on the rack over there. I'll get supper on the table. Thanks, Carl. I thought we'd be welcome. You're always welcome, you know it. What brings you here, Sergeant? Nothing in particular, Carl. Just to routine patrol. Oh, I see. See, maybe you'd like to attend the dance tonight. Dance? Yes, the first one they've had since I came up here a year ago. Quiet. Thanks just the same, but I think King and I'll enjoy your fire instead. But don't let us interfere. You go right ahead. No, no, I... I'm not going to the dance. No? Alice Wells and Dawson? No, she's in camp, but we've had a little spat. Can't be serious. I don't know about that, Sergeant. I think I should tell you. No, Carl, I don't want to get into your private affairs. Anyway, I can't take sides. You see, Alice is a good friend of mine. So are you. All the same, there's something you should know. While we eat supper, I'm going to tell you. I'll leave that to you, Carl. As they ate, Carl Dykes told how Alice Wells, the daughter of the mine owner, had been going with a new foreman named Judd Sawyer. Whom he had recognized as a one-time forger. And I... I checked on him and learned that he served his time in prison and is now free. That's right. I know him. Did you tell Alice what you learned about Sawyer? No, I didn't, Sergeant. If he's going straight, I don't want him to lose his job. But I did tell Alice I objected to her seeing so much of him. No, I understand that. Knowing Judd Sawyer, I doubt that he's going straight. I wouldn't know about that, Sergeant. He's a hard worker, and he's done well here at the mine. But I think Alice should know who he is. The trouble is, I should be the last person to tell her. Is she going to the dance with him tonight? She didn't say so, but I... I guess she is. She turned me down. After I finish eating, I'll go have a talk with her. I hoped you would. She'll listen to you. I tried to reason with you. As Sergeant Preston and Carl Dykes talked at the supper table, Judd Sawyer was conferring with his friend Mike Foss and another man named Joe Wade. They were in an abandoned cabin a few miles from the mining camp. Foss had just introduced Wade. You told me to bring another man to help me. Joe's okay. You can trust him. Mike and me worked together in the States. We did a little time together down there, too. All right, now we get down to business. Yeah. I don't want to be connected to this job. Why? The reasons are personal. The girl? Yeah. I got everything set for you two. You'll have clear sailing. There's a dance in camp tonight. And everyone will be there.  He won't be at the dance. How do you know? Because I'm taking this girl. He'll be in this cabin. Now, look. Get him. Force him to blow the safe. Bring him back here. But leave his tools so as to look like he robbed that safe. Why do you want us to bring him back here? I'll want him out of the way. Permanently. Now, hold on, Judd. I didn't bargain for murder. You don't have to worry about that, Joe. Just bring him here and wait for me. When we've made this split, you and Mike can beat it. I'll take care of Carl Dykes. After finishing supper, Sergeant Preston and King left Carl's cabin to call on Alice Wells, the mine over's daughter. Carl Dykes was in his cabin alone when he heard a knock on the door. He opened it. Good evening. What's the idea of the gun? Get back inside and keep your hands in sight. What's the meaning of this? Come on, Joe, and close the door. All right. I'll search him. Sure. He's not armed. What's this all about? Dykes, we have a little job to do tonight. We need your help. If you're smart, you'll do as I say, Savvy. Just what do you want me to do? Get on your heavy duds and bring along your tools. Tools? What kind of tools? Tools for opening a safe. That'll include a bottle of soup. He means nitro. Oh, I see. The company's safe, huh? Right. Now get moving. We've got to finish the job before the dance is over tonight. Come on, he said move. Carl Dykes knew that resistance was useless, so he put on his heavy coat and fur cap. Then he picked up a small leather case and turned to the two men. All right, I'm ready. What's in the bag? You told me to bring tools. Is everything you need in there? It's my work kit, the one I use all the time. And let's go. Joe, you close the door. I will. Meanwhile, Sergeant Preston and King had been warmly received by Alice Wells. But when the Mountie explained his mission, he felt the air about him literally freeze. Alice, I thought you should know about Judd Sawyer. Frankly, I don't appreciate your coming here and interfering in my personal affair, Sergeant Preston. I know all about Judd Sawyer. He told my father he'd serve time. He did? Yes. He wanted a chance to go straight. Dad gave him that chance. Now you're here to hound him.  What would be left for him then, but to continue his life of crime? I have no desire to cause him to lose his job if he's really going straight. But I don't think he has any such intentions. You talk just like a policeman. You policemen never give a man a chance once he's made a mistake. Judd Sawyer made many mistakes. I must ask you to leave, Sergeant. All right, Alice. Sorry you feel this way. Come on, King. And you can tell Carl Dykes I don't appreciate him sending you here. Now good night. Good night, King old father. Looks like we've lost a friend. Let's go back to Carl's cabin and break the news to him. When Mike Foss and Joe Wade disclosed their mission to Carl Dykes, the young engineer said nothing to indicate his unwillingness to obey them. But he was thinking desperately, wondering how he could upset their plan and affect his own release. I remember that Sergeant Preston and King returned to his cabin. But it was too much to hope they would do so before he and his captors departed. In view of this, he planned to trick the pair. Just how he planned to do it, never dawned on them. Even when they reached the mine office and Carl began rummaging through the leather bag he had brought with him. All right, Dykes. Quit stalling. You'll a hole in the combination of that safe and pouring some soup. I... I can't do it. What do you mean you can't do it? I've forgotten something. I thought it was in the leather case, but it isn't. What's missing? I see you've got plenty of drills there. It's the nitroglycerin. I forgot that I took it out of here this morning. Joe. Yeah? Look in that case. See if he's telling the truth. Sure. But keep him covered so he don't try any tricks. He's covered. How about it? See any soup? No, he's telling the truth. Dykes, I bet you left it out there deliberately. Why would I do that? To stall for time. I have a good mind... Now, hold on. I don't want this safe open, don't you? Yeah? If you slug me, you won't be able to open it. Now listen to me while I...  He's right, Mike. Let's hear what he's got to say. Well, all right. But talk fast, Dykes. There is nitroglycerin in my shack. If you'll take me back there... Oh, no. You're staying here. But I need nitro to open a safe. Joe. Yeah? Do you know nitro when you see it? Sure. I know it by the smell of the stuff. Then go back to Dykes' cabin. Look around till you find it. Then get back here on the double. Don't worry, Mike. I'll get it. I'll be back proud of him. Watch out for tricks. I have a hunch this guy forgot the nitro on purpose. I'll be careful. When Sergeant Preston and King returned to Carl Dykes' cabin, they were surprised to find him gone. But Preston assumed he'd soon be back, so he made himself comfortable. He removed his red coat and hat and hung them on the rack on the wall beside his gun belt and handcuffs. He was seated before the fire, reading a newspaper when he heard the door open. He turned. Huh? I thought you were Carl Dykes. Quiet, King. Carl sent me to get something for him. Where is he? He was called out on a special blasting job, but he forgot his nitro. Sergeant Preston recognized Joe Wade as a man whose face he had seen many times on police posters. He saw also that Wade kept his hands in the side pockets of his heavy coat. His suspicions were aroused, and he decided to question this man thoroughly. But first, he knew he must get his gun hanging on the wall before the man knew what he was up to. Pretending cooperation, he said. Oh, uh, you mean nitroglycerin. I know where it is. I'll get it. As Sergeant Preston got up from his chair and moved toward the rack, Joe Wade saw the red coat, the broad brimstets and hat and the gun belt. He understood what Preston was about to do and acted swiftly. Freeze, Marty. I have a gun in my pocket. It'll go off if you move an inch. And that's not all. I've heard about your dog. Keep him quiet, or I'll put a bullet through him before he can move. Savvy? And if I don't keep him quiet? Then you'll both get it. Take your choice. We'll continue our story in just a moment. Say, fellas and girls, did you ever go up into the mountains and listen to the echo of your voice? Like this. Or like this. Quaker, pop rice. Quaker, pop wheat. Sweet shot from gun. Hey, am I dreaming? You're no echo. I am, too. Why, an echo always calls back the same words. Oh, but I get tired of always saying the same thing other people say. Hmm. I suppose it would get monotonous. Now, if I could eat the same thing other people eat. I take it you already know that Quaker, pop wheat and Quaker, pop rice are the famous ready-to-serve cereal shot from gun. Naturally. An echo hears about them all the time. Oh, they're famous. It seems like everyone loves Quaker, pop rice and Quaker, pop wheat because they're so tenderly crisp, so nut-like in flavor and downright delicious tasting. Mmm, makes my mouth water. And when you top these giant-sized grains of wheat or rice with milk or cream and fruit, it's a dish fit for a king. Man, oh, man, I could go for a heapin' bowl full. That's how millions feel about Quaker, pop rice and Quaker, pop wheat. And, fellas and girls, the wonderful part of it is they're so good for you. Every bowl full gives you added food values of restored natural grain amounts of vitamin B1, niacin and iron. Yes, for a nourishing breakfast that's super delicious and tenderly crisp and tantalizing, treat yourself to Quaker, pop rice or Quaker, pop wheat. Get both delicious kinds at your grocers tomorrow. And now to continue our story. Joe Wade gripped a gun concealed in the pocket of his heavy coat. He had given Sergeant Preston the choice of quieting King or having King shot. Preston knew that King would spring if he gave the word, thus giving him a chance to get his own gun from the holster hanging on the rack. But the Mountie also knew that if he did this, he might save his own life and capture Joe Wade, but that King would be killed. Quiet, King. Leave him alone. You're smart, Mountie. Now I'll open the door. Tell him to get out of here. Tell him. King, go outside, fella. As I say, boy. Go on, outside. Outside, you mutt. What's your next move? Get on that iron bed over there.  You won't get away with this. Let me worry about that. Now keep still while I get your handcuffs. Both pairs of them. Joe Wade took the two pairs of steel handcuffs hanging on the rack with the gun belt. In a few moments, he had handcuffed Sergeant Preston to the iron sides of the bed. Then he searched through the shelves of explosives until he found a bottle of nitroglycerin. Here it is. I can tell by the smell. Now so long, Mountie. That dog of yours jumps me as I go through the door. I'll put a bullet through him. If you do, the shot will be heard in the camp. It'll bring someone down this way to investigate. Maybe you're right. I'll have the dog come back in here. Hey, King. Hey, King. Don't be too sure of that. Hey, King. I tell you, he's gone. So long, Mountie. Joe Wade swaggered out of the cabin and slammed the door. The cabin was mystified. He knew that King had not understood when he had ordered him not to charge Joe Wade. He knew, too, that King had not understood when he told him to leave the cabin. But where had King gone? Had the great dog caught the scent of Carl Dykes and gone to look for him? This, Sergeant Preston, you might mean death for both King and Carl. Meanwhile, Judd Sawyer, the mine foreman, called on Alice Wells to take her to the dance. Alice, what's wrong? It's nothing, Judd. I... I have a headache. I can't go to the dance with you. Oh, you promised you'd go. Everyone's expecting you. I... I know, but I... Well, I just can't go. You seem mighty upset about something. Has Carl Dykes been making trouble? Oh, no. No, I haven't even seen Carl. Believe me, I... I just have a headache. Well, I never saw anyone cry like that because of a headache. Hey, what's that? It's a dog trying to get in. Well, I'll open the door and run him off. Carl, get... get out of here. Come right here. No, no, don't kick him. Here, King. Here, boy. Do you know this dog? Yes, I know him. Now, be quiet, King. Quiet. King's a friend of mine, aren't you, fella? He is. Well, Alice, I'll go on to the dance by myself. I'm sorry, Judd, but have a good time, won't you? Sure, I'll have a good time. Good night. Good night, Judd. Now, what's the matter, King? You seem upset about something. Here, you don't want out. You just came in. All right, I'll let you out. For a moment, Alice was puzzled and then annoyed. Though she opened the door, King refused to go out. Instead, he caught the hem of her skirt in his teeth and tugged gently. No, King, you'll tear my dress. Oh, I'm beginning to understand. You want me to go with you? Is that it? Go? Go? I wonder if Sergeant Preston sent you here. Judd Sawyer, the foreman, didn't go to the dance as he had promised. Instead, he circled the camp and hurried toward the mine office where, from one window, he could see the faint glow of a lamp. Creeping close to the window, he raised his head carefully and looked inside. See what he's got here, all right? I'll break the news to him. A moment or so later, he entered the mine office. Hey, what? I thought you were going to the dance. What are you doing here? Blow that safe and clear out of here as fast as you can. What's the excitement? Sergeant Preston and the Mounties is in town. Don't stick around here. Judd, don't worry about Preston. We know all about him. What are you talking about, Joe? When I went over to Carl's cabin to get you... Joe Wade told how he'd gone to Carl Dyke's cabin. How he'd recognized Preston and forced him to run the dog out of the cabin. How he'd handcuffed the Mali to the iron bedstead. So you don't have to worry about him. He'll be gone long before anyone finds him. That's right, Judd. Well, well, so the three of you are in on this job. I might have known it, Sawyer. Yeah, I'm in on it all right, Dyke's. But when it's all over, folks are going to think that you blew the safe and skipped out. Dyke's knew all along Preston was in his cabin. That's why he left his nitro and sent me back after it. He thought Preston would get wise, which he did. But I had the drop on that money. Joe, you made a mistake. You should have killed Preston. I was afraid a shot would be heard in the camp, even if it was fired in the cabin. After you handcuffed him to the bed, you could have put a knife through him. I don't go for killing Mounties, Judd. It means a rope eventually. It'll mean the rope anyway when they don't find Dykes. You had killed Preston. It looked like Carl Dykes did it. It happened in his place. You're right, Judd. You've got Preston's mouth and pinned the job in this pellet, Dykes. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, we're wasting time. You two get down with the job. I've blown the safe. Be sure to use plenty of carpet over it and keep down the noise. Hey, Judd, where are you going? To finish Preston. And I'm going to the dance. I'll have an alibi. See you at the cabin tomorrow. All right, Dykes. Get that drill going. Hurry up. Never get away with it.  Sergeant Preston had struggled to free himself until he was exhausted. While he lay back to regain his strength, he heard King. A moment later, the door of the cabin opened and Sergeant Preston turned his head to see Alice Wells. King raised tortoise master, barking with joy. Sergeant Preston. You went after Alice, eh, King? I thought you'd gone for Carl. Sergeant, where is Carl? What's happened to you? I'll explain later. There's no time now. First look in the pocket of my tunic hanging on the rack there. Yes, Sergeant. You'll find some keys. Get them and remove these handcuffs. In which pocket are they? Someone's coming. King, here's them. Quiet, King. Quiet, boy. There's no time to release me from these handcuffs. Let them go. Preston, Carl. No, it doesn't. King wouldn't growl like that if it were Carl. Never mind the handcuffs, Alice. Take my gun out of the holster. Very well. I have it. I'll go into the kitchen and don't make a sound. King, go with her, boy. Quiet, fella. Make no noise, either of you. Oh, Sawyer, I'm glad it's you. I thought someone else was coming here. What are you glad about, Preston? You can release me. Oh, Wade got the drop on me. What's the idea of that knife? Preston, you know too much. Joe should have finished you off, or he left. But he didn't. So it's my unpleasant job to do it. Like him, King! I got for the knife, King. Watch it, boy. Drop that knife, Joe, Sawyer. I'll shoot if you don't. Go, Miss Dogoff. Call him off. I'm King. I'm boy. I'm guard.  Yes, he did. Now what's the meaning of this? You murder? I'll get the keys for the handcuffs and release me. But I don't know this. King kept a close watch on Judd Sawyer while Alice took the handcuffs off Sergeant Preston. Then the Mountie tied Sawyer and prepared for action. Meanwhile, in the office of the mining company, Carl completed the job of drilling a hole in the combination and fixing the charge of nitroglycerin. As he worked, Joe held a gun on him. When he finished, Mike covered the big door of the building. When he finished, Mike covered the big safe with strips of carpeting. There. That carpeting will muffle the sound of the explosion. Now set off the charge. It won't get away with it. The Mounties will get you and you'll hang. Let us worry about that. You set off the charge. Carl realized that he was helpless. He could only do as Mike demanded. He moved to set off the charge and then the door suddenly flew open. Hey, land where you are and don't make a move. Sergeant Preston, come here. You may like Carl. With lightning speed, Joe grabbed Carl by the arms and swung him around as a shield. Try and get me and you'll shoot Carl. I'll show that money. The whole thing happened in split seconds. Before either Joe or Mike could draw a gun, Sergeant Preston rushed forward with King bounding into the room behind him. While Preston swung a blow at Mike, King went for Joe who dropped his hands to defend himself. Then Carl was free to join the fight. Here's one.  Call him off. Come, King. Quiet, boy. I got Joe's gun, Sergeant. How did you get your hands up? We gave up Preston. How did you get here? I came with Sergeant Preston. Oh, Carl, please forgive me. Are you all right? Oh, sure. The worst saw you.  Thanks to King, he failed. Judge Sawyer is a prisoner in your cabin, Carl. Joe Wade and Mike Foss, I arrest you in the name of the Queen. An hour later, Sergeant Preston with King lying at his feet drinking coffee with Carl Dites and Alice Wells in the latter's home. Camp's going to be very surprised in the morning when everyone learns about the attempted robbery. Yeah. They find out the whole thing was planned by Judge Sawyer, the foreman. Story, I'm waiting to tell Dad and everyone else is how King came and got me. Why, if it hadn't been for King, both you and Sergeant Preston would have been killed. Everyone would have thought Carl killed me, robbed the company and fled the territory. There's no doubt about that, Sergeant. Those crooks said they intended to put the blame on me. But thanks to King, they failed. Why, Alice, it's midnight. Yes, Carl. We still have an hour. How about going to the dance with me? Oh, splendid. King, you and I can go back to Carl's cabin and turn in. This case is closed. In just a moment, Sergeant Preston will give you a preview of Wednesday's adventure. At breakfast time, if you feel like this, then do this. Rush over to the grocer and rush back with a package of delicious, nourishing Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice. Then pour out a heaping bowlful, smother with milk or cream and fruit and take a big spoonful. Ah, what tender Christmas! What delicious, nut-like flavor! Yes, a real, appetite-waker-upper. So get out of the breakfast rut. Serve yourself a tempting, delicious, nourishing treat. Quaker Puffed Rice or Quaker Puffed Wheat. Look for the big red and blue packages with the smiling Quaker Man on the front. Remember, Quaker Puffed Rice and Wheat are never sold in bags or bowls. Listen Wednesday when Sergeant Preston and Yukon King meet the challenge of the Yukon in the case of the return of Tom Beckett. When I met Tom Beckett on the trail, I almost thought I was seeing a ghost because Tom had been reported killed in action down in Cuba. There was someone else who was even more surprised than I and that someone had a good reason for wanting Tom to stay dead. As a result, Tom was knocked out and thrown over a cliff. When I went to rescue him, the fireworks really started. Be sure to hear this exciting adventure Wednesday. These radio dramas, a feature of the challenge of the Yukon Incorporated are created and produced by George W. Trandall, directed by Fred Flower Day and supervised by Charles D. Livingston. The part of Sergeant Preston is played by Paul Sutton. They are brought to you every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same time by Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice. The breakfast cereal shot from gun. Your best bet for hot breakfast is Quaker Oats. The giant of the cereals is Quaker Oats. Delicious, nutritious, makes you feel ambitious. The giant of the cereals is Quaker Oats. Yes, if you want to be a star in sports and school activities, make your hot cereal Quaker Oats helps grow the stars of the future. You get more growth, more endurance from oatmeal than from any other whole grain cereal. Remember, Quaker and Mother's Oats are the same. This is J. Michael wishing you good bye, good luck and good health from Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice. So long. This is ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.