Now I'm a cover gospel music, but I also want to kind of move into just Christian music in general because What's happening in gospel music is also happening with just regular contemporary Christian music as a matter of fact You're seeing more and more today a blurring of the lines, and I'm not gonna act as though. I am some expert on it I'm not I do have a little bit of Musical ability and that I you know I played the drums as a matter of fact I used to teach drums for a while So I love music. I love drums Obviously, I love God and one of the things I used to be over at another church was just the overall worship portion of the service So when you walked into the building there was something going because you know how we are sometimes we are Our attention can get different ways whether so we might put the announcements up Made sure that all the sound everything was working right the the cameras and the screens and so forth But just the overall worst experience was there that there would be nothing that would take away from What God was doing there'd be nothing that would take away from The sermon but also that there'd be nothing that would just kind of overshadow it and Sometimes you see that in music today whether it be Gospel and when I say gospel, I mean obviously there's Southern gospel does that but what we're talking about today happens to be more What we would call black gospel soulful gospel Contemporary Christian praise and worship just regular choir music that kind of stuff and so what's happening today Is it really what we ought to be doing now? Let me say this before I go There is no Standard that the Bible puts out that says you have to sing it this way or this the preferred style or method If this is the right genre, we don't know there will be singing in heaven We just don't know what the genre is and so I'm of the belief that I'd like to kind of have a little bit of all of it Just so because some people have different preferences and so my preference Is it better than yours yours isn't better than mine, but it's just a preference But one of the things that we know is that and you ask any church leader this The if you want to find out where the good fights are where the where the Divisions are where all the mess is go to the choir because that that's just I don't know what it is about the choir There just seems to be a lot of stuff happening Maybe maybe it's because it's one of the arts and you can kind of get yourself Kind of into it and you end up maybe want to express yourself and people's feelings get hurt Who's gonna leave this song? She can't sing that well. He can't play that well all that kind of stuff like that that happens in every other part of the ministry as well and Sometimes when you see the way the the sausage is made so to speak in church You might not like it, but again, these are human beings But as it pertains to to gospel music a couple things you need to know about gospel music and as I said We're gonna transition into just regular Overall Christian music as well because some of the same things that trouble this genre Troubles others as well When black folks came out of slavery, obviously, they're gonna bring some things they had handed down to them from their roots some of the Rhythmic sounds and so forth that came with them from Africa And that was also brought into slavery and then you have these old Spirituals that were sung in many cases in many cases They were sung to kind of leave people away if they were thinking about running if it was time for let's say Tonight was gonna be a good night to run date might they might sing the song sweet swing low sweet chariot Or Michael row the boat of shore just kind of let folks though Hey, this is happening tonight And so some of those old Negro spirituals were really mashed as songs to help them get away But then a lot of those songs were just songs to kind of keep them encouraged because it was a rough life being a slave We don't we talk about how how race relationships are today in America. No, they didn't have a race relationships back then It was just you were a slave and that was it and so they would seem to kind of comfort themselves Because what happened to them was they came to know Jesus by and large and so they would speak about this They would speak about yeah, it's rough on this side But when I get to that side, it'll be even better when I get that great buy and buy And so some of the songs that we sing today that buy and buy So those songs were born out of a struggle born out of a hurt born out of a need and when you sing in church There should be a couple of things that are happening We come together in church for a lot of corporate things corporate prayer Corporate study corporate fellowship, but also corporate praise and worship and so It should come as no surprise because of all that was happening of all that kind of transpired Before the 19th century before the 20th century a lot of the struggle was built into some of these songs And so in some of these songs you would hear them talk about Just the struggle just the things about how how God has kept me how God has blessed me, right? The problem is and by the way, you would even see some of the Emotional aspects. There is nothing wrong with a choir member or a singer or someone having emotion come out Now there are some people have a preference where they want things to be kind of reserved and quiet That's fine Also, and there are times where folks just want to just they just can't control themselves if any of that is genuine Then amen if any of it is manufactured.  They're in church and so there's a little bit of messiness going on right there That's why a lot of good bands think about when you were younger even today A lot of the good bands that were in let's say rock or R&B or what have you they don't last because this Bitey same thing happens in the church because egos take over and so you don't want the ego or you Outshining who we're supposed to be putting on on display, which is obviously God, which is Jesus We come to magnify him. We come to praise him, but we also want to thank him And so some of the songs in gospel tend to center around What God has done for us or what he can do for us my wife was the first person to kind of introduce me to Contemporary praise and worship music what some folks will call that, you know, white music, right? Some of the the muses where what was the song it was casting crowns?  I cannot I cannot remember the name of this song But when I first heard the song Wow, that's just where is this song been all my life or these kind of songs And so I found myself going back listening some of these older songs that were ten years old five years old And it's like I didn't know these songs existed I've just stuck in this old gospel way, which is fine The problem is that many these songs even after we've come out of the bigger struggle They tend to be centered more about What I'm going through and God you blessed me and how you kept me and so forth which are good songs. That's fine But we did not sing enough about songs that were about him God You're awesome. You're wonderful. Even if you don't bless me God, you're amazing those kind of songs. And so We see that in gospel one of the problems that happens in gospel is Partly because of the emotion again, some of these things you'll see some of these same traits that you see in Contemporary Christian music and just your regular old praise and worship music Even in the different genres some folks are into this like Christian rap and so forth I really hadn't quite got into to Christian rap although. I'm not against it There's a few artists that I do listen to But I don't know calling me getting old or whatever. I just don't listen to it as much But you'll see some of these same traits that are in gospel music That are also in the other genres because it's just human being singing. Hopefully to the praise of God. Well as The emotions kick in The question is when this person is singing Are they singing more so much because they love God or because they're trying to show off? one of the things you'll know about black gospel music is that The runs are exaggerated and long so you all know about if we just started singing amazing grace We all at least know the first verse, right? But here we've got someone singing amazing grace And this is just the first verse and it takes quite a long time That's part of the thing if you go to some of these black churches If you got somewhere to be immediately after church, you might as well just not go just call and tell me You're not gonna be there on time because it ain't gonna happen That's part of the thing Maybe that's why when I was I didn't go to church as a little boy Maybe that's why I just hate it being there for so long The preaching may have been about this long and the singing was this long We're gonna sing for this much before and this much afterwards.  I know about what it's like playing in a band and you want to have fun And it's okay if you are singing to enjoy yourself You should enjoy yourself praising God praising God should not be a chore But praising God should not be about you as well And so the question that we often wonder and I've had times I'm sure other people in ministry have had these occasions where they've had to tell somebody maybe a drummer Maybe a guitar player. Maybe someone has a listen. It's not about you. You want to settle down So the question is are these guys praising God? Are they jamming? So that's kind of now listen, I play the drums to stand and play the drums That's hard now the guy's talent. He's gifted and maybe that's what he's trying to show off and There is the the little tension that a lot of choirs and churches have hey listen It's not about you it's about him and I get that you're talented if you weren't talented We wouldn't have you playing but you're trying to show I never forget this one time We have we had lighting at our church And we can even move the light we just you know push a button have a light aim a certain way and We had a drummer come in who wanted to kind of fill in with the youth choir And he asked he said he said can I have you get one of those lights to kind of shine on me You know, I got this particular role as I tell you what I'm gonna do I got a light just for you man I'm have a one particular light shine on you, but I want you to sit your little narrow behind right there in that first pew That's where you're gonna be and we'll have somebody else playing I have a light shine on you because you just made it about you. We're not gonna have that now if he was smart He was smart he kept his mouth closed So but we have that problem in church, right? And so you deal with it, but the problem is Trying to kind of recapture really what it used to be Compared to what it is now, and I don't know how old some of you guys are And how how old you are how long you guys have been even watching or paying attention to Christian music and gospel music Some things are different. Obviously. I mean obviously with time you get more Amenities, I mean we didn't have intelligent lighting in the 50s and 60s, right? You didn't have some of the microphones that you had you didn't have some of the buildings design the lighting and so forth You didn't have all that stuff that you had back then you didn't have that the in your mics and so forth that you had at the jab now back then and so The issue is Should we try to even compare how it was back then? Or is it should we be like we were back then should we be? Different because it's a different time But you all tell me you look at these two clips and tell me is there any sort of difference? And then also if gospel is not your genre see if you see the same thing in other genres contemporary Christian Southern gospel What have you so now compare what you just saw with her and What you saw with those groups versus this Now I am intentionally turning the volume down because I want you to look at this video and you tell me if you could you tell Me that they are singing anything Closely or remotely related to Jesus. Let me know if you think so I don't think you can look at this and come away with a conclusion that they are singing unto God I did what has happened is it has now become more of obviously a show and So even in these wars, you've got the red carpet and you've got people who who come down and and they They want to look a certain way. They want to dress a certain way. It's about their image all of that stuff and That's the sixth side the satanic side of really just Gospel music Christian music in general Because after a while we want to make sure we're getting paid We want to make sure that we're getting booked for other tours if you want us to come because often times in some of these In the Christian circles, you don't see the concerts taking place like you would see a heavy metal concert or rock concert Or our beam concert anything like that. They're not usually booked in stadiums Usually these artists are booked in churches And so there there needs to be this desire this this this swelling of interest To have this person to come and so if they see them Maybe their gas appearance with someone at a at a performance, so they'll come to such-and-such church that church that church The way that happens is someone needs to coordinate that but they need to be seen and so they'll go out there and Oftentimes you think that these people were on a Hollywood red carpet You would think that these people are are I don't go into the Grammys or go into the Emmys I'm not I can't remember which one is for music, but we got a problem, right? It should be that there's a clear line I'm gonna get to the scriptures in a little bit But there should be a clear line between what the world does and what we do I'm not saying they're gonna be there won't be any similarities. Obviously there there will be But when you look like them when you when you kind of grind and move like them Why come to church? I'm good with what I'm doing. I'll just read my bible on my own, right? And so what has happened is As they have tried to reach out and won the bad thing about a lot of times in gospel music And it's the same thing in in contemporary christian Is one of the first thing that seeps in is bad doctrine, right now I'm gonna say something that might be a little bit controversial But that's okay. I didn't write the bible. I'm just simply saying what it says And so this issue even of tongues comes up and if a person believes in tongues, okay fine We won't argue that right now But what about tongues when you're singing? I'll be honest. I've I've never seen Verse and chorus sung in tongues And okay fine. They believe in that well, well, okay Who's interpreting that and I wonder if they put the words on the screen? Are they putting the tongues on the screen and I know I'm sounding silly and kind of facetious, but What are we doing here? It's almost like we're trying to even compete when we're singing this show. Who's the most godly? Who's the most spiritual who's the most whatever? It's as though when we sing people are instead of seeking him they're seeking their own and That's really what a lot of times a lot of music has kind of delved into gospel obviously Praise and worship temporary praise and worship all of it. It's almost about What we want god give me some stuff, right? Give me some stuff bless me and then that's how I'm going to praise you that's why I'm gonna praise you well That's an artificial cheap praise. It's conditional praise, right? God do for me before I do for you forget the fact god that you've already done more than anyone can ever do Or I could hope for anyone to do Forget that I need some more what you did was not enough And so god I need some things and I promise you lord if you're giving this I'm gonna praise you So I'm gonna shout I'm gonna do all these things that I should have been doing And it teaches people who are also listening because when a person comes to church and they hear that They believe all of this is is is approved by the church leadership And so if it's said in the choir and saying then it must be it passed through the hands of the pastor as well One of the things that a wise pastor would do Is to always make sure Always make sure that I see What you guys are singing that we kind of coordinate this. I want to know what you're singing. Why? Because if you say something that's just out there Who's got to come back and fix that who's responsible for these people that are that are going amiss because you said something that was just really utterly Unfounded and unbiblical for example There's a guy from my hometown of Indianapolis named Alan Lawrence Got some good songs, but some of the songs just aren't necessarily biblical, right? And that happens a lot because people that's seeing They're not necessarily theologians. They're not studying Although I think they probably should Because you're still up before the people ministering and they look at you So I think you ought to be doctrinally straight as well, but he has a song it's called it's The sound of my breathing And he takes the the tetragrammaton the the yad hey the the y h w h that we have in english And says that that means it's been kind of a a thing for the last maybe 20 years People have tried to say that that is The unpronounced name of God with those four letters are actually what the sound of breathing is And that's God's name and they make it into something really really spiritual. Oh my god. That's what that means. That's God's breathing No, it's not Okay As someone who's hebrew. I mean who could speak hebrew as some jewish person is that the case they'll say no That's just silly. That's just christians looking to be more than what we are That's not what it means Well, then having vows. Well, here's here's the truth Hebrew words period Do not come with vows at least in the old the masoretic texts Added the vows later so people who as they were taken into captivity and began to stop speaking hebrew When they tried to learn it They were familiar unfamiliar with the words and so the masorites would put these vow markings there so they could know what's saying To come up with this goofy idea that is is the sound of God speaking I mean, I mean of us breathing. That's just now you're making up something. Okay, so What we want to do though, as always we want to go to the text and just be mindful It's not got a few more things. I want to say as well And so let's go to I hope I put it in the in the dark mode Hope you guys can see this, but he says uh and and Romans 14 16 says so do not let what you regard as good be evil spoken of or some verse may say Don't let your good be evil spoken of and so The reason why that's important is if you're singing if you're involved in something It should not be an occasion Uh for an offense to be caused for someone to see something that in this case He's talking about if someone sees you eating meat and though eating meat is not sinful Don't do it in front of the people, right? Well nowadays though, we're doing things that look to be sinful Or questionable avoid those things Um my third oldest child Hannah. She is Her job is is a praise and worship leader at a church for the youth and We had a conversation before And it was about just your appearance, right? Now she doesn't dress in in a provocative way But you got youngsters there who might be looking at you and you want to be mindful of that so that No young man. No older man will look at you Objectively as though you're something some some piece of meat That nothing that you do the nothing that you wear takes away from the gospel, right? Well, we see this a lot nowadays in churches. We see people who just have forgotten how to dress Uh, and I know it's hard ladies. I'm speaking ladies right now, but also guys I know it's hard to find clothes that just aren't, you know Tight and got your veins showing I get that But understand when you wear those things, I don't care how godly the guy is He's gonna notice that right and then some of it's up to the men are wearing Again, I was under a rock, maybe but Some of the things that the men are wearing. I mean It maybe it's just me. I'm out of touch. I guess I you know I'm still not down with the With the tight jeans and so forth But even some of the things that let's say that like you saw the the curt frankings of the world wearing It's like what what are you wearing? What are you doing? What do you what do you have to prove?  You got a few dollars You can buy something that's fashion fashionably and in vogue whatever, but Again, we want to have a holy appearance. Granted. We're not going back to robes and to Whatever they wore in in in the first century church time. I get that But we don't also have to look like The world like we're selling our bodies, right? And so He says don't let the good that you're doing Be spoken of in evil fashion. Then let's look at another passage that That paul brings up First Thessalonians 5 22 of my there He says abstain from every form of Evil and guys, I promise you I was trying to not bring up any greek, but I will this word form Is the word edus, which is just the outward appearance. So this is where some version might say Avoid the very appearance Of evil. So when you're singing Avoid the appearance of evil avoid it looking like it's about you and you're at some show You're at some concert avoid that it should that should not be the case. It should not be that When we see you we see all the lights. I don't have a problem with some of the lights I do have a problem with the uh, what do you call the power techniques? I do have a problem with some of the Illuminations that just make the smoke. I have a problem with that because now we're we're What are we doing y'all? Well, we're getting to where we're trying to entertain and so Now the attention is not on the word and what god is doing the attention is on man These guys are jamming these guys are getting down these guys can really dance look at her look at him, right? And even to the point now where people are going to show off again their bodies up there What's happening now And it's not just as I said in just gospel It was just in the black gospel circles But it's also happening in the white churches predominantly white church And it's sad that we even have these these black church white church. I know but bear with me But what's happening is in all the different churches and all the different nominations Obviously seeing creeps in And there are some people out there that are talented who have no business being In choirs who have no business being in praise and worship I've seen churches By the way, do you know if if you have the talents here in Dallas? If you have the talent to play let's say an organ or piano or drums There are churches that will pay you to come in Let's say their piano player leaves or their organ their organist that whatever goes out of town. Well God forbid we got to have the music going and so what do we do? We need to make sure that we got somebody in here. So we'll go and pay somebody and these guys make a good amount of money You can make upwards between the thousand depending on the size of the church a thousand two thousand twenty five hundred dollars a week Playing the organ playing the piano in the Dallas area I don't know where what it what it's like in certain areas certain areas church eating is big Right, but here in the Dallas area in this in this area you're gonna have churches that Listen I don't want to give place to the devil when I say this but it's true Um church has become in many cases big business It's become something because and I get it every church I remember times where we wanted to make sure okay. Well, what was the offering like not because we cared about it But well, we got to pay some bills. We got to pay these things these ministries costs and so forth The gas for the van to go pick up people that cost all the stuff it cost The electricity the electric company doesn't care that we love the Lord. They still want their money same thing with the gas company so I get that there is a A focus at some point in time on money But sometimes we say we got to make sure that we keep folks coming in and entertain that way That way they'll give because a happy parishioner is a giving parishioner, right? And if we can entertain these people and make them feel blessed because what's the one thing that we do sometimes and and Some of you folks that may have been to a predominantly black church or charismatic church would have you a Baptist traditional Baptist church When the music is going we'll say oh child, didn't we have church? We don't know what was preached. We don't know what the topic was but we enjoyed the Lord today We had church, right? so That shouldn't be it should be that we went and received a word from the Lord that could develop us and keep us going throughout the week, right and so in churches today as I said the world creeps in One of the biggest problems. I thought it was just in the black church, but no, it's in the white church in the choirs Issues of sexuality. First of all, I don't know how many affairs have happened in church choirs Don't know But a lot Whether it's a big church Whether it's a small church, it happens a lot. You've got men that see women who may be there for a legitimate reason But they've got issues. They've got pain some guy did them wrong. And so while they may be vulnerable this wolf sees This fox over there and His tongue gets the hanging out and he gets to salivating and he sees somebody And look here. So I understand what you've been going through and you know me too good. Can we pray together sometime? You know, uh, here's my address. It's my number, right? That happens These relationships being exchanged it happens You've got one of the things that we always talk about was how uh, the piano player or the organ in the church Organists in the church was gay a lot of homosexuality showing up rear and head in Church choirs church praise and worship team because they they're gifted to Um, and and there's a lot of gay guys that can sing and he can sing and he can play And so let's get him in here. Uh, let's get him on and here's here was one of the things that happened Let's get him in here. Let him play and then we'll see if we can convert him later because Pastor my god, he can't he can't hear the gospel outside and and let him come in and play Well, guess what that'll allow him to hear the gospel and and to convert him, right? No, we're not no the standard is going to be the standard the standard is up here We're not going to lower it because somebody can play or somebody can sing so The issue that we're having over and over again is that we are trading in actual worship for a fake worship for a plastic Lighting and smoking worship that sounds good that tickles the ear But wouldn't it be sad wouldn't it be sad to hear good music and let me let's let's call it what it is It's good music now. It's not necessarily delivering music But let's say we hear all this good music and maybe we hear hear word And we're entertained and and and and to go to church and to enjoy yourself in church and still go to hell How bad would that be?


Okay, it's Monday. It's the 12 o'clock rock. I'm Jay Fidel, and this is Stink Tech. Welcome to Midnight in Brussels. Our show today is called Europe Reacts to the Trump-Russian Controversy. We're going to talk about Europe evolving on policy involving Russia, NATO, nationalism, and nuclear deterrence. Our guest for the show, of course, our major contributor from Europe is Gary Kondekar. Welcome to the show, Gary. Again, we love to have you here. Thank you. Pleasure to be on again and again. So, you know, the big story in the U.S. and people are, you know, sort of, they're sort of attracted involuntarily to reading the news in the middle of the night and finding out what our new president is doing because we can never anticipate. We only know that he manipulates the media. We only know that he makes all these mistakes and we're not sure if they're intentional or unintentional. He's got people around him that scare us. So, you know, it's like a reality show, actually, but it has real-world effect, and I believe it has effect in Europe. Do you agree? Yes. It created quite a stir. One of the biggest cornerstones of Western civilization has been the transatlantic partnership for decades and decades. And today the U.S. is emerging as it's set to Europe, as seen from Europe. So President Trump has vocally supported, disintegration of Europe, has supported various Brexit movements, and this actually goes against U.S. policy since the end of the Second World War. That is the United Europe, which is the safest bet, you know. And it's also now emerged as it's perceived as a big security, but every day, I mean, every day is a scandal almost in the U.S. and European leaders don't know really how to react. There's a lot of turbulence globally and the U.S. has been seen as the harbinger of global security. It's a security provider for the world or as it's seen from Europe. But with the rule, the receiving rule of the U.S., most Europeans are worried about what is going to happen to global politics, what is going to happen to stability, and they're now thinking about assuming a greater role, being more integrated, and how to go forward. Yeah. Well, what kind of reaction, not only in terms of the astonishment, but in terms of the governmental reaction and the change in the balance between left and right in Europe, what effect does the travel ban have? And again, there's another travel ban where he banned visitors from six countries, not seven. He let Iraq off the hook for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, and he gave it until March 16th, so people would have a chance to prepare and plan. But we have repeated travel bans, and it's very clear that he's willful about this. What kind of effect does this have in Europe? Yes. Well, on the first side of it, in terms of counterterrorism, so when you want to tackle radical terrorism, any religious radical terrorism, the biggest mistake that Trump has made is to link it to Islam, and American security analysts have, and from the institutions themselves, they criticize this move, saying that it poses a bigger threat than not linking it. Europe agreed with the US position that you don't link the jihadist terrorism to Islam because it mainstreams it. It creates a more turbulent movement within the religion, perhaps, and leads to more radicalization when an entire religion is being seen as criminalized. So Europe has been against, anyway, the linking of Islam and terrorism, but the ban of these six countries, which have not contributed even one terrorist incident in the US, is seen as odd. And many here question why not a ban on Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, which have caused the majority of foreign terrorist attacks in the US, sorry, led by foreigners. There have been some national that have been affected by the travel ban, some European national who hold dual citizenship. And this has been considered as a very serious issue. So as you know, for many, many years, there has been visa free travel between the US and Europe. Last week, I believe, the European Parliament has moved a proposal to suspend this travel ban, if not, we draw it completely. So there might not be visa free travel between the US and Europe, which is incredible. Yeah, well, it's interesting that Europe is, you know, more liberal about it than we are, even though Europe has suffered more greatly than we have. I think he's taking a page out of the European experience and making it sound like it has happened in the US and he's less liberal than Europe is. We interviewed a Swedish girl the other day from Sweden and she was very upset that Sweden was not accepting migrants. She thought that Germany was doing the right thing by accepting lots of migrants and she was not happy with Sweden, her own country. So what you have is sort of a moral shift, a shift to morality in Europe, even despite the fact that there have been terrorist attacks. And in the US, we have a shift away from that because of Trump, I think. He's elicited that and fomented that and now we're folding in on ourselves. This is not leadership. No, I agree with you. There are many, many people in Europe. You know, the media also plays a role here in portraying migrants as how they are portrayed, basically, the people they interview and there's been a lot of negativity surrounding this refugee humanitarian crisis. There are a lot of people here which I interact with myself who are so open to receiving migrants. They've even opened up their own homes to them and I personally know them.  The incidents that have happened, and there have been a few, quite a few, where migrants who come recently into Europe have been perpetrating violent attacks against women, in particular. And that doesn't help their cause either. So it's, you know, it's We're in a funny place right now. Yeah, it's a balance and maybe a tipping point. Yeah, nobody seeming to be helping the situation. But this is what I've maintained from a long time is that, well, the US had a very strategic attitude towards getting migrants from where their migrants come, the kind of migrants they want. Europe has largely received refugees from some of the most rural areas. So I'm talking about North Africa, some Morocco, Egypt, rural areas really. And when this happens, it's a major cultural clash. Unless you've been growing up here for many generations, it is still a cultural clash. Yes. And Europe has been at the most liberal end, while these communities have been at the most conservative end. And you can't expect an overnight integration. So integration does take time. Yes. You know, I wanted to move on to the very interesting talk that's happening in Europe about forming, and it's again, a reaction to Trump, forming a joint European nuclear organization. If Trump goes through his threat to withdraw American protection. This is this is interesting and a little scary, that Europe for the lack of protection by the US would organize its own nuclear organization. And I guess stockpiled weapons to that effect. What have you heard about that? What does it mean? Yes, there have been analysts here calling the research community calling for it for a long time, to build a European army to have a common nuclear secure Europe based on French nuclear arsenal, which would then be shared and sponsored by a joint fund. But these have been proposals and they're unlikely to go ahead. For many reasons, some of the countries are neutral. Excuse me, can you, sorry. Yes, we can hear you. Sorry, excuse me. Yeah. Well, let's take a break. We're about that time in the program. We take a one minute break. That's a gallery condo car. She talking to us late at night from Brussels to report on things things in Europe. And there's lots of things in Europe which interestingly track what Donald Trump is doing in Washington. We'll be right back. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1pm, where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha and thanks for watching. Okay, I'm here with Brett Overgaard of the Faculty of the School of Journalism and the Department of Communications at UH Minoa. We've had a number of shows we have a movable feast going on. And we talk about journalism, we talk about language, we talk about communication in general, and we talk about the effect of that on the country and on individual people. Brett, it's so good to be able to discuss this with you in our movable feast. Oh, it's my pleasure. This is a great opportunity. You'll have to come back again and again. Okay, deal. That's the deal. Brett Overgaard. I'm Jay Fidel. We care about everything. Thanks. Hey, we're back. We're live. We're here with Galerie Kondekar. She joins us by Skype from Brussels and we learn about what's happening in Europe. And now we're examining what is happening in Europe in response to things that Donald Trump is doing in Washington. And one of the things that's happening is there has been talked by some leaders about forming a joint European nuclear deterrent organization on the assumption that Trump will withdraw American protection from Europe and NATO. So where does that all go? You indicated before we before we left for the break that you didn't think it was going to happen? No, there won't be any European army for for the foreseeable future. Most European leaders, especially Germany, remain against it. Germany, of course, for historical reasons does not want an armed European army, let's say, and it does not want to lead it. They're very sensitive about that, aren't they? They were remarks made by recipient Erdogan in Turkey over the weekend, making making a comparison of the Germans to the Nazis back when. And wow, the Germans reacted very badly to that. They do not like to go back to that time.  None of them are actually the Germans have. Well, to be to listen, give the facts in many countries in Europe who who bring up the German past, let's say, especially the Greeks with the Greek crisis when it was that it speaks. And some of the Greeks still do because they're unhappy with Germany.  And Erdogan is no different, I guess. Politically, and technically, it would not be very feasible because, well, European budgets are on on the decline. Anyways, austerity has become the norm almost in Europe, even though Europe has has been growing recently. None of these countries have really emerged from the crisis still. And contributing, making major contributions to defense will not be on the cards. This is what this has been one of the main issues that Trump has been pushing forward with Europe is for them to spend more money into the NATO military budget. And that is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Interesting. So that leaves it in Trump's court. Well, thinking of courts, there's there's been a report that the International Court of Justice in the Hague is hearing a case brought by the country of Ukraine against Russia. I find it very interesting. And in that case, Ukraine is claiming that accusing Moscow of illegally annexing Crimea and illicitly funding separatist rebels rebels in in the Ukraine. And a very interesting, maybe a precedent setting legal experience in the court. What have you heard about that one? Well, this is really recent news. And what I can say is that, of course, this was illegal, most of the countries in the world have agreed that is illegal, except for some of the BRICS countries, actually, who supported Russia. Now, it's an unprecedented case, as you say, what will be the power of the International Court of Justice to impose this decision on Russia? It's, we still have to wait and see. But especially how the case goes down, you can already say that, you know, Ukraine will be receiving European support, as they did support Philippines when it when it went against China in the court of first instance court, I believe, in the Hague. But it's too early days to comment on this. Okay. But you know, there is a really chilling parallel between what happened in the South China Seas and what happened in Ukraine. And the fact that the International Court of Justice Tribunal got involved in the case of the China experience has essentially ignored the ruling. And I imagine that Russia would likewise ignore a ruling, you know, that their takeover was illegal. But it all, it all, sorry, go ahead. No, they will, of course, as you spot on, they are going to ignore the ruling. Nothing's happened to China. China is building territory in those tiny islands in the South China Seas. Politically, it might create some impact. Russia has been dealing under the sanctions effect, which might continue. But that has also affected most European countries because Russia is the top supplier of fuels. But I don't think legally it might change anything. Crimea is not going back to Ukraine. Yeah, I don't believe that. Well, more and more, it seems that Russia is emerging and Putin is emerging as a rogue. Not caring much about what people and the, you know, the international community think of what he's doing and taking very aggressive steps. And, you know, and then, of course, the issue with Trump, which could, which could be Trump's Achilles heel, is his relationship with China and the relationship of his staff, campaign staff and current staff with Russia. I'm sorry. And and the concern there is that he may have an illicit relationship with them, that he's not willing to talk about things that might be wrong or criminal, that will embarrass him greatly or worse. And I wonder how people in Europe feel about that. Because more and more, it appears, he did do things that were wrong. And more and more, this this threatens his presidency. But what do the people in Europe feel about his relationship with Russia? It's unnerving. So many countries in Europe, Finland, Sweden, Norway, even all the Baltic states fear, really fear a Russian invasion. And this is a palpable threat when you go east from Brussels. Even Poland is afraid that Russia might invade them. Russia has been the biggest security threat to Eastern Europe. And it still is. And while the US has been the biggest guarantor of security for East, Central and Eastern Europe, until now, it's a complete overnight shift, which countries have not been prepared for. And now they've really been left in a quandary. So those countries like Greece, for example, who've had a cordial relationship with Russia might not be that much in danger, let's say, or in political turmoil. But for countries like Sweden, for instance, or Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all the Baltic states, all the Central and Eastern countries, it is an existential threat. And that's how their policies are going to be shaped now, especially in Europe, inside the EU. Well, this has got to affect the way they see the United States, who was their protector before, and is now leaving them in the lurch. And I, you know, I think that probably changes the world order, at least as far as Europe is concerned, and diplomatic relations, perceptions on the street and in government and diplomatic community have got a change because of what he's doing. Don't you think? Well, it's, no, I put it, most of the community is not seeming to take term statements so credibly. You see what I mean? Because they change from one day to another. If you see the statements on the Palestine-Israel issue, before he was elected, he said that he would not support a two-state solution, while very recently he said he would support anything that both parties want, which is basically a two-state solution. So it's hard to take anything credibly. Also, his statements on NATO and then when the American defense chiefs come to Brussels, they have been assuring the countries of support, despite they've been assuring of US security guarantee to Europe. So it's, you won't see a very strong statement from European leaders because they're still trying to make sense of what is happening. Yes, yes, and so are we. But you know, one thing is clear that there was manipulation or attempted manipulation of the American election in November by the Russians. And what I found very interesting and a good reminder of the reality of that is a remark made by Boris Johnson in Britain. And he made a statement, he wanted to make it clear to Russia that they should, quote, keep their nose out and, quote, of European elections. And I guess drawing a parallel if the Russians would attempt to manipulate an election in the US, why not do that in Europe? Has there been any evidence that they have done that or would do that in Europe? They are doing that. If you notice, Russia has been very active, of course, in the French elections. So Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far right party from National, her party received about 10 million euros from the Russian government. Oh, my goodness. Here it will does in the Netherlands as well. He is, he's covertly receiving funds from Russia as well. So Russia has been funding these far right movements across. And there are possible news that they've even provided funds to the Brexit. Those who are those who wish to leave, leave the EU. They funded Brexit. Right movements because the United Europe is not in Russia's interest. The Marine Le Pen from National case is documented. The others, there is speculation, but there are credible links that Russia has been funding these movements across Europe. Oh, that's shocking. I wasn't aware of that. But I think we have to follow that closely. It is one thing for a non non democratic state. And I consider Russia a non democratic state to try to manipulate political events in democratic states. That's very scary. So are you writing anything to these? Go ahead. Sorry. I mean, just to give another example, I think it was 2008. Oh, I don't remember the year, but very recently, in the last decade itself, there was a cyber attack by Russia on Estonia. Estonia is one of the most IT advanced countries. So basically, to give you an example, people can file their taxes, their annual taxes in 3.5 minutes. So it's that advanced and people work with one card which they use for transport, medical, everything. And the Russian cyber attack on Estonia was in a similar direction, you know, but it was a large security threat. So Russia has been very much present in European countries meddling in their affairs. And it's no surprise for us here, probably. Yeah. Well, it's it's really awful. And I think we need to follow it. We need to follow it with you in two weeks time. We learned so much from you, Gary. That's Gary Kondekar. And we are at the end of our show now. We have enjoyed bringing it to you and talking with her as always. And I look forward to our next contact with you, Gary. It's been great to me too. Thank you. Aloha. Take care.


For the comment today, I hope you've had a great day. I know I've had a great day. I enjoy Cloud Foundry Summit quite a bit. So I want to talk a little bit today sort of like the black holes discussion. What does this cloud-native transformation mean to you? Trying to put a little bit of actual science behind how we're going to get there. Sort of thinking about cloud-native, you've got to start with, what does it mean? How do you define cloud-native? Talk about for those of us who've been on this journey for some time, what are the lessons that we've learned? And I guess more importantly, what does that mean going forward? How do we take what we've learned and what we know today and move forward with that? And then something I want to kind of analysis exciting is some work that we've been doing with Mezos and with the Cloud Foundry community. And so what is cloud-native? Cloud-native is simply defined by these three different areas. You have sort of container packaged. So how do you take an application and look at making it sort of a subset of components? How do you break that application into smaller pieces? It's sort of the orchestration and dynamic management of that application. So you have to, one thing is having container packaged. The next thing is orchestration and the management of that in a dynamic environment. And I think the last thing which gets overlooked a lot is it's this whole new sort of application architecture or application design pattern that is microservices enabled. How do you take an application architecture and break it into the smaller components that you then can make containerized? So those are the three areas that we think about when we talk about cloud-native in the industry. When you think about those three things, you think about the people in your organization. You're probably saying, well, we've had a hard time just moving into cloud, much less moving to this whole microservices model. I think it's important to realize that you have to work with your people, help your people understand. And these are like employees, developers, and operators, and DevOps teams. Help them understand what this means to them, right? That you can't just use the term magically, microservices fixes all of these problems, right? You still have a lot of organizational legacy ways of doing your business that you have to look at. You don't have to change all of them, but you have to look at which ones make sense to change versus which ones do not. You also have a lot of process areas to think about. And so this whole SDLC process and this whole move towards agile development is great, but it does come with a little bit of a new methodology around how do you develop your code? How do you manage and maintain your code? How do you then deploy that in a lot of different environments? So when you think about cloud, you're not looking at just your own internal data systems anymore, you're thinking about other environments as well, typically. And so how do you manage deployments across multiple environments, multiple infrastructures? How do you operate that service across multiple environments? How do you update it? How do you maintain your software differentiation when you're deploying this service out into the public internet? And there's this whole problem of it works fine when I was developing it. Why doesn't it work in production, right? And so a lot of what we've seen in this process is that development is much more complicated now than it was before. We've done a great job as an industry, I think, especially from an infrastructure side of things. We made the infrastructure really simple, really fast to get your VMs or get your containers, right? And it's very simple to do this. But you pushed all of that complexity now to the developer. And you ask a developer to make these hard choices about how much CPU they need, how much memory they need, where they want to deploy their application. As an industry, I think we've pushed the problem up to the software level. And that's where a lot of times you see this issue of, it worked fine when I was testing on my laptop. But why doesn't it work in production? And the thing I've noticed with cloud native development is that it always works great when it works. But when it doesn't, it's very difficult to troubleshoot. And that's a problem I think it's an industry we can solve for sure. There's also obviously technology pieces as well, right? And so everything in our industry has a lot of technology pieces. And so when you think about your data centers and how they're transforming always, you want to sort of think about something I call hybrid DevOps, which is you're in a current state. There's a future state you're going to always want to get to, kind of building a continuous pipeline of going from where you're at to the future is something you should probably invest in now, right? Instead of always having a next gen something, let's create a platform that has sort of next gen built into it. So as next gen comes around, it's just a new service or a new capability that just shows up in your SDLC. You don't have to think about, how do I involve this new platform? The other thing that I think is interesting is this commoditization of infrastructure, right? And so when we talk about multiple clouds and hybrid cloud, now you're asking basically your developers to not only understand how to write the application in a way that differentiates your business, but they also have to now understand the APIs of any sort of external cloud site they deploy into. And so now they've, in addition to making sure their application is helping your business grow and differentiating in your business, they now have to understand how all these other cloud providers, APIs, will support them. And any time there's a change to those APIs, guess whose job it is to figure that out? The developer, right? And so you just complicated their job, again, by saying, hey, go use this cloud provider. They're great. And they're like, oh, that's great, but I don't know that API. Now I have to learn that API, right? And if a provider comes along and says, hey, we'll give you a great deal, switch over to our cloud, guess what? It's, again, the developer's job to figure out how to write to that API again, right? And they might say they're compatible, but they're really not. So that's just kind of a trick to remember from a technology standpoint. So what are some of the lessons that we as a community are learning? Not just the Cisco customers I work with, but being in the community, I've worked with a lot of different customers from different areas. And so I think the first one is, whatever you're doing from a deployment model, however you're orchestrating that deployment needs to be part of your test process, right? There's sort of this new problem that we didn't really quite understand until recently that, instead of it being that it worked on my machine, it's an ops problem now, it's sort of like, well, it orchestrated on my machine. Why doesn't it work in that environment, right? And so the more that you can take your orchestration components that you leverage for deployments into whatever environment you deploy into and make that part of your build process and your testing of that build process, I think the better off you are at solving this problem. The other problem that we've kind of looked at, at least from a Cisco standpoint, is this entire infrastructure thing I mentioned before with we made it really easy for infrastructure, we made it more difficult for the developers, how do we sort of help the developer now? How do we think more about the software developer and make it easier for them to deploy their application, make it easier to integrate with how they develop? And so kind of this whole like, as you build your application, let the developer write in the programs that they like to write in, right? So a good example of that is Cloud Foundry is a very popular framework. So why not allow the developer to develop in Cloud Foundry, focus on their application and then separate the deploy from that piece so that you can then have a choice of places to deploy to that you've already sort of made sure that those APIs work with that infrastructure deployment model, right? So you don't have to ask the developer to go figure out those infrastructure components and then give a single interface for that developer to look at that application running across those multiple hybrid clouds and understand how it's going to run. There's this whole like aspect of how do you solve for this code issue, right? As you write your code and test it, you want to kind of make sure that everything's working together. The way you kind of take a big model application and break it into smaller components is important in this conversation because if you are going to think about applications as terms of smaller services and how those services interact, it's important to consider at first, how do I break that apart? Do I, how many services do I need? And there's a new term that we've been starting to use called nano services, right?  You want to kind of break your software into small enough chunks that you can execute them at a level of abstraction that doesn't require you to make individual calls to each individual component. You also want to kind of understand how to control where these clouds are being deployed to some extent, right? And this is one of those debatable areas, but I think there's still a desire for having policy and having an ability to kind of control compliance and governance type of areas and security components within that infrastructure and in those deployments. And so having the ability to sort of control that, I think it's still important in this discussion and being able to really make sure that that visibility extends across the entire spectrum, right? Because today it's very difficult to isolate a problem because you have to log in to four or five different consoles. And maybe one of those consoles will tell you where the problem is, but in most cases it's a combination of issues that cause the problem and it's hard to isolate those. So this is kind of tying back to the previous conversation, right? I think Einstein had a lot of great ideas, but this is probably the best one, right? That when you're doing this, it starts a complicated environment today. Let's make it simpler, right? Let's try to make this a lot easier to do. And I think when you look at cloud native architectures, that's trying to get to that discussion where we make things simpler in the end. It may seem complicated if you get underneath the covers, but it should seem as simple as possible. The other thing is you don't wanna have too much of a hierarchy within your organization so that you sort of cause your projects to fail because you just have too many different layers of individuals and processes and tooling that has to be gone through. And so a big part of this is don't forget to look at your organization, how you structure your teams, how you structure your projects, how you structure your development projects and frameworks. And then the last lesson learned is sort of this whole composition thing. Making these services as reusable as possible and as self-contained as possible is really important, but don't forget that there's still linkages between these services, right?  And so that's sort of the lessons we've learned along the way and that are still learning, I should say. And so then what I wanna talk about next is sort of what I've been working on at Cisco is creating a Mezos framework to support all the cloud native services. And it's kind of, we'll call it a containerized, trying to containerize Cloud Foundry is what we're trying to do. I'm working with the foundation right now to sort of get certification for this work. But the idea was sort of taking each of the different CF components and putting them inside a framework and we're demoing this in our booth if you wanna come down and see it tomorrow. But all the different aspects of a Cloud Foundry deployment you can leverage within a Mezos framework. And then what we've did was kind of tie it into the pipeline, of course. So as new capabilities come out, we pick them up and create a relevant framework and highlight those changes in the pipeline. And then the other thing is a lot of administration has been done in a lot of enterprises that take Cloud Foundry and kind of leverage the authentication mechanisms. So we wanted to make sure we supported that as seamlessly as possible. So if you're interested in learning more about any of these projects, we have a couple of sites. So you can go look at Mantle.io. This is an open source project that Cisco started, but it's a large community now. It's definitely not, I think I have like eight developers on it, but there's like 70 developers working on the project. So it was definitely not a Cisco only project. But the whole point of Mantle is sort of taking the best of breed open source components and bringing them together and making it easier and simpler to run services and this whole new infrastructure that we'll call in microservices infrastructure, I'm making this whole cloud native model a lot easier. We also have a developer experience to kind of go along with this. It sort of looks at that problem I mentioned earlier of trying to solve this developer, making it easier for developers to build and deploy and run their applications without having to worry about the underlying complexities of the infrastructure. And so that's at CiscoShip.io. And then so those are sort of the two big projects we have the work we're doing in Cloud Foundry, containerizing Cloud Foundry as part of that Mantle.io site. So you can look at that code if you want. And so in summary, the cloud native transformation is something that is occurring in most places already. Most of you guys are here because you're part of that already. So there's no reason for me to make it more obvious than it's happening. You can look around and see other people here. So we know it's happening. There are the things that you need to think about with your people and your organization on how you look at that. There are things in the process and making sure that your orchestration is happening as part of your development process versus an after the fact thing. And there's a lot of lessons to be learned on sort of how do you adopt new technologies and make this more continuous from the beginning. And then the interesting, if you're interested in the work on the MESO stuff we're doing, we're also planning to do the same thing with Kubernetes. And so our goal is to sort of make it an open platform that allows a lot of different choice for the developer and for the infrastructure admins. And so that's sort of what we're working on. And thank you very much for your time.


Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of our Pokemon VGC 2019 battle series I hope you're all well having a great week and looking forward to today's episode So we are gonna continue on we've got two more episodes with this dialogue of Kyogre team And thank you so much to each and every one of you that suggested this team I'm about two weeks ago when I put a question out to you all for what you'd like to see next It's been an absolutely amazing team to play and the core is just really great So I hope you've enjoyed it and hopefully we can get some circuitry action in in the last couple of days It's been the running theme over the last week or two, but Hopefully we can change things around. I'm not gonna force bringing it to matches like we'd normally do Just to showcase that we may do that tomorrow if we haven't brought it To any matches today again But we want to get wins and just showcase the team for what it's able to do And I think we've done that really well so far over the last two weeks So hopefully you can continue doing that today so without further ado Let's get into today's episode put some music on that we forgot to do in yesterday's episode now really loud not that loud Get your earbuds out, but if you enjoy this sort of content guys make sure you do drop a like on the video because It does really help the video out a lot and it helps the channel out a lot as well And it lets me know more than anything that you enjoy the sort of content and that's the main thing But also if you subscribe as well, it means you like the content you want to see more content in future And you don't want to miss it so that's really good as well And I really appreciate all the support and everything that I get from each and every one of you and all the comments and things like that because It's just amazing to have all the time and I really enjoy it and we have a competition going on flinch squad The flinch clothing at the minute, so I'll drop that in at the end before we end the episode and Let you guys know how you can enter to win some swag Some swag some flinch swag and so Hopefully doesn't take too long to find our first point today If it does like usual, I'll just cut to where we find them and the magic words haven't worked So we're gonna do that We got Scotty from the United Kingdom Playing a team off. Let's get in a team preview. Let's go Jordy stay Why I got Scott and he's playing a team of incinera Kayoga, I'll stop there. Sorry, you probably don't appreciate any Jordy This but Jordy is wearing from from Newcastle originally, so well Northumberland is close enough And but we've got Scott as our first opponent today playing a team of incinera or Kayoga tapu finish over there Nile ego and Tornades, what a great combination of Pokemon We've got that so go there or Kayoga that we played again yet against yesterday So it'll be good to go up against it again today and see if we can kind of have a little bit of better luck against it And I feel like dialga has a real good time today. There's not as much Fighting threat as we had yesterday is obviously the super power from the Sorgall ale But we know that dialga is able to take those attacks pretty comfortably and with a moonga sitting next to it We can do some nice things. So I think we will bring dialga for show And Do we bring incinera up front, how do we just lead off with a moonga's and I Think what we'll do is we'll bring Do we need incinera on this match? That's the other thing I don't know if we do I because I prefer to bring a moonga circuitry and Kayoga and I'm gonna lock in with that and I'm gonna say good luck to our friend Scott and hopefully We have a really good match to kick us off today It should be a lot of fun. It should be a lot of fun Now you leave your tornadoes now you guys such a good Pokemon We had such good success with it when we put it into the the cure and white team work perfectly So I can't see it working any differently in this sort of team gonna see Kyoga and Incinera come out for Scott as we lead off with dialga and a moonga. So The old dragon and he's mushroom there Or you see the rain Launched out onto the field All right, I think because of the fake-out pressure here. We just double well We can just trick room trick room and Trick room grass not I think it's not a bad play Yeah trick room grass not Because we want to weaken the Kyoga if we can and if we can't hit it with a grass not Because it's pink So pink there's a water spout. There's no fake-out coming out. So we're gonna get there.  There's a flablet. This won't be enough Not in the rain. I'm afraid to see Yeah, so prokaberry will get a nice tasty grass not off put us in a real nice position got into this next turn Because we can spoil the incineroar. I had imagined the Kyoga switches out and We've got thunder on Dalga to take advantage of there You got earth power to the incineroar But yeah, we're sitting pretty pretty happy right now gonna thunder the Kyoga I'd imagine the Kyoga switches out, but I mean anything coming in There's not very much prevention for the spore abuse from a moongus now I'm on the inside of the field cargo gonna switch out saving it for later I don't want to entertain this trick room environment, but to tap off any coming in It's another Pokemon. That's not really gonna enjoy the The thunder abuse from us, but it does prok a misty seed which is interesting This spore being denied by the misty terrain, which is very good and a knockoff into dial again Taking away our wiki berry, which is fine And we'll be able to get a thunder off Into that finny and but the next turn we can go for that clear Did we bring in our own Kyoga now, I think our own Kyoga would be pretty nice But we could thunder and clear smog the type of finny which would also be quite a good play for us I think and I mean we might end up losing dial guy But I still don't think we do I think we still got enough to kind of hang around But this plus a thunder now removing those stat changes to type of finny should be enough So you see another flag let's come out. It's gonna be into the movies This should be enough to take us down now, but opens a door for our Kyoga to come in which is all we need Although the incineroar is is slower than us But it's fine, it's fine.   We've got on the field where minimum speed. There's the wide guard Yeah predicting that Gonna launch So probably prokaberry on to the incineroar Just out of very range, which is ideal and there's the Hydro vortex. It's gonna now launch into the the soga layer remove that from the field And then I think we've got one more turn of trick room So that that's enough for us to kind of double thunder into that slot And Then close things out Because I'd imagine that the kyoga is scarfed in this this variant Now the kyoga coming back in and there's not too much my ponies got left in the tank to do unless that kyoga can protect But I I don't feel like you can so we'll just earth power the incineroar and Oh, no, we have to we have to Have to thunder it man. We have to thunder with dialger and We'll scald The incineroar as you turn in the kyoga It's trying to get some damage off onto it's called coming up This would be enough to take it down and then thunder will be more than enough to take down the kyoga And that should be game so very good game to my opponent as I say they go really nice composition of Pokemon in their team, but I think the Game allowing the trick room up Tim one Was really difficult for them to come back from after we got it set up. So it's just one of those things where you Especially in a best of one if you get caught on that turn where you think maybe your opponent's going to do something else Because I saw pressure there, especially with both things out and then the moonga surviving as well They probably didn't expect the moongas to survive Which was a big deal because it meant they had to adjust after that They took big damage with the grass not from the moongas that turn while we set up the trick room So it was a bit of a double whammy there and so a bit unfortunate But very good game nonetheless and a nice one to kick us off today So we'll go into our next one and hopefully it doesn't take too long to find an opponent Oh, it's cool. What music are we gonna go for today? Well, haven't we had for absolutely ages hoeing Pokemon? I guess that's one what we haven't had um I keep myself weak I'm trying to think though with this team one of the things is um I don't feel like we've got too many bad matchups like we identified hydra again is something we've gotten nothing to take against and to be honest, we could probably put dazzling lean back on to So uh Zerketry because we we're not really utilizing the grass the grass not whenever we do play it But we've got our next opponent. We can talk about this later. We've got shroding Playing a team of tapu koko lunala and mungus stack attacker in senor and zonius So that lunala zonius combination that we saw Saw early on in this format and really well in the sun series as well Combination we're gonna see premise around this team is getting the zonius normally set up With the gm ansi and the lunala coming in with the psych up You've got a lot of support options around the whole team to kind of protect against a lot of different stuff Um, the stack attacker and the mungus are going to be the trick room checks here Um, the big important things for us in this match are going to be predominantly the incinero for that lunala Otherwise, we've got very little to kind of deal with it. Um I think if we go incinero dialga here, it gives us a good opportunity to go um pretty hard early game I'm gonna have to bring kayaga. I think and do I want to bring zerketry? I don't want to bring bronzon or mungus. Um mungus Not so much bronzon Bronzon's not bad, but the lunala does threaten us pretty heavily. Um, and the zerketry gives us an option to like do some real Nasty shenanigans stuff. I think I'm gonna go with zerketry in this one and like I say We haven't brought zerketry To too many matches so far. So just including it in this game It's gonna be nice for us to see if we can um, we can do something with the tail glow Especially against such a big threatening kind of team You always want to bring the bronzon and and the mungus to these sort of matches But you can't really just think that um dialga's not up to the task. So um, especially if you can get the trick room up We're not being too bad a spot We're gonna see taba koko and lunala come out for my bronon wonder if it's Electric seat it wouldn't make much sense if it was because I think it's probably more z move But I don't think I'm gonna set the trick room up just yet I feel like my opponent probably adjusts their board position protecting lunala Uh, I mean, I'm actually gonna just knock off the lunala and Do I knock off An earth power the lunala I mean I could do Or I could just fake out the koko. There's every chance the koko has the z move as well Which I don't really like the idea of um And the slightly little lunala protects. That's the thing.  I mean I could double in Ah, it's so annoying. I could double into the uh, the lunala all day long. Oh calm mind. Wow That is getting dangaroos man dangaroos Okay, so I mean we get rid of the koko, which is nice always good gives Kyogre a bit of an easier time when it comes onto the field, but That calm mind is not so good. That's why it's annoying that like I didn't just earth power knockoff into that slot It's not coming out now It's probably good that we trick room, right Like now if we can Uh, I think you you fake out the incinerole Um, I don't think you attack the incinerole though. I think you attack the dialga I'm gonna trick room I'm bringing kyoga Because incinerole is still the key to to being lunala the whole time. It doesn't matter how many calm minds it gets up Unless it's got like moonblast Fake out Into kyoga calm mind again If we can work this Well enough We can potentially What we what we we can't do it. We can't do it. We need to uh, we need to water spout Um And we need to bring in incinerole at the same time That's the only way we can do this is break that shadow shield and have lunala in a position where we've got the knockoff ready to just Fire into it under trick room and not really care. Um There's a water spout. I'll take down the incinerole You've got to be a bit worried about wide guard, but I think with the inclusion of calm mind I don't think you carry wide guard as well Unless you do we've not seen protect yet on it As you turn Hmm. I wonder what comes in then that is the amungus But as long as this electric terrains up it's It's not too bad. It's not too bad. We don't want to lose kyoga though. It gives us an easy way to answer um All right, let's see move. It's gonna be into kyoga for sure 100% I know I would do that. Yeah Plus two we do not survive this We'll be cutting this out again with some either just a cut or into some strange dragon ball z Brilliant. Oh, it's into incinerole Okay Hmm. It's not too bad. Could have been worse Could have been a lot worse Ah man that does so much That does so much damage. Um, okay. So what we'll do is switch kyogra out into dialga Um, the amungus is a pain Mungus is a royal pain Did we just switch incinerole in now? I think no, did we? Oh, I really wish I could remember my mind's gone completely blank now. Um Because we could waterspout, but we're probably going to take a big And we need to be super quick about selecting what we're doing. We're running out of time Bring dialga in and we need to proc our berry with um incinerole So let's go into a mungus with a flablet. It's unlikely the mungus has protect a mungus gonna. Yeah withdrawal So there's lunala protect this time around That's a nice play for my opponent just with the pressure there that they've got the mungus. No, we need to adjust Yeah, lunala protecting it makes a lot of sense as well, doesn't it? But now we should be able to proc our own berry, which means incinerole is back in the game now Oh, we might not be able to Ah, yeah, just on the money Could not ask for anything better there. Could we with inci? Um, all right the truck room's still up But we're not doing too much at the same time. I thought was that I could disconnect there Um, okay, I'm gonna earth par Like we get faked out incinerole definitely gets faked out here But I'm still gonna knock off the lunala Fix us out. Yeah, we just need to get damage onto this incinerole now Oh, we might be able to get it with the next one to be honest mungus beam Hopefully it's into dialga That's into NC I don't know if we're gonna be able to deal with the lunala now It's maybe a little bit difficult Um because getting the trick room up is all well and good now, but the mungus just comes back in And does all sorts of shenanigans, I think one thing we could try and do is paralyze the lunala um Sack circuitry here Because I feel like the mungus comes in thinking that we're gonna set the trick room up again But I I'm not setting the trick room up Not until we've got like like if we can get The paralysis on that lunala then that would be huge Hmm I don't think you care too much about dialga in this situation So we might be able to get just a free like it's worth going for the thunder even out of the rain I'm just gonna protect circuitry Yes, I shock We do hit if we can get the paralysis here it does help us out massively Nothing Okay, that's earth power the mungus and I mean we can try until glow. We're not going to be able to get it off though opponent might not are they half side shocked so we could have had a free switch into incineroar, but then again if we do that We just get spoiled Yeah, I don't think we can win this now And it feels a bit like it's gone a bit too far for us to to kind of claw this one back Which is a little bit of a shame But it just shows how good like calm mind lunala can be just like acting by itself with this support network around it um Yeah, there's not very much we can do We can go for the knockoff, but I mean the mungus just I reckon the mungus switches out And the incineroar comes back in Yeah And then lunala protects Just to be super safe No, just moon guys beaming We needed some redirection support there to get around this but like the plus twos are just doing too much damage Like if we had a mungus here, we could but like It's easy to say But side shock would take us down pretty easily Um, no, he's not really got too much to kind of tackle this thing with We're bringing Kyle there, but I think my opponent's probably aware that our best win con now is getting the trick room up I'm going from there So we'll go trick room if we can So whether or not we could get well, we let's protect with Kyle guy first See where the incineroar goes That makes sense Yeah We can get a double protect off Nah Yeah, we I think we need the double We need to be able to take a plus two Side shock which it don't know if we'll be able to do to be honest, um And I think the mungus just comes in regardless Like I think the incineroar just switches out and the mungus comes in One of the things we could do is potentially just earth power the incineroar because we'll wake up and go for the water Into lunala And hope that does enough. I don't think we take the side shock though We do There we go We probably get the oh well It's not quite over it depends how much damage we can do this lunala Is plus two special defense. So I don't think we get it But you never know it is in the rain. Kyle goes a beast 200 base Oh, it's so close. It's so close If we get the incineroar, this really does put us back in a position where we can maybe do it We can maybe get this game. We've got the mungus to deal with but mungus can't touch the auger um And we can totally Well, we can't because the rage powder totally screws us um We needed to get the uh, I mean we can go for thunder Hope for a paralysis Protect kai auger. I mean it's obvious that we protect kai auger Yeah, you just spoiled the dialger. I think yeah Nelly We nearly did it. We nearly did it. We can't be too sad. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense doing that and then Uh, yeah, and then next turn you rage powder. I think can just sigh shock If we get a double protector, it kind of prolongs this so we can maybe wake up Wow, we don't get it. We don't get it. There's a rage powder Yeah, and there's not really much we can do now But you've got to think the lunala Is definitely running out of a tax dial. There's been out in the field a long time and this pressure is There's definitely adding up so This match is not over by any means If you can wake up now and get a protect off it would be super nice Come on dialger. Uh But we still got a berry That's fine rain stops Now we definitely wake up now 100 wake up now but the emungus probably I'm just going to protect because now the emungus spoils us Yeah, but we force the emungus to rage part of this turn because if they don't we attack before um They can spore so this is this is pretty nice for us here. So we can earth power If we can get like special defense drops Be really nice And we're taking these pretty well But we'll take one more and that'll proc our berry I think we protect now The problem is protecting on non rage powder So lunala protects that's what we want to see and then we go for another earth power Into lunala. We'll get it into the emungus Of course as well. We've got to worry about the emungus having a 50 percent berry We guys beam. Ah, this is probably enough to take us down Maybe only had like one left. Maybe one or two Yeah, good game to my opponent. We now you got there in the end But never mind. So that is going to wrap today's episode up guys Thank you so much for tuning in watching leave a comment in the comment section below I love hearing from you as always and like I mentioned earlier We have flinch clothing comm big giveaway going on at the minute If you want to get involved in that make sure you do sign up by the 1st of march Go over to www.flinchclothing.com go down to our mailing list join up there And you'll be in the drawers for all this nice swag And we'll do a nice draw on the second to announce the winners So thank you for tuning in guys. Have a great evening and I'll see you for the next episode tomorrow until then Bye-bye


So he really turned down those other teams just to sign back with the Ravens practice squad. I ain't mad at it at all. Team keeping clean, Ravens have been making moves. They've been very busy. As you all already know, yesterday was cut down. They had to get down to 53, but just because they had to get down to 53 does not mean they were done right there because regular season roster still gotta be formed and practice squad still gotta be formed. And let's just talk about Melvin Gordon for a minute who the Ravens signed this off season. They signed him and he has some interesting words to say about J.K. Dawkins situation, but then preseason came and went, Melvin Gordon was cut, they kept Keaton Mitchell on the active roster. But it was said that the Ravens would be interested in possibly bringing Melvin Gordon back to the practice squad and that's exactly what happened. But they weren't the only team interested in bringing him to their practice squad. They were not the only team interested. It was also, this is from Jordan Schultz. He said, I'm told the Vikings, the Dolphins and the Colts all made calls about Melvin Gordon, but he elected to stay with the Ravens and join their practice squad. So that says a lot about Melvin Gordon. That says a whole lot about Melvin Gordon. You know with the Colts, you know all about their running back situation right now with Jonathan Till and all that drama that's going on. He's gonna start the season on the physically unable to perform list. Melvin Gordon could have been like, oh man, let me take advantage of that. Let me just slide on in there real quick. With the Dolphins, they just recently cut a running back. They've been looking at running backs and whatnot. They were very interested in Jonathan Taylor. So they obviously don't have all of the running backs that they want. He could have looked at that like, oh, you know what? Let me go down to Miami and play for them. And the Vikings who just got rid of their guy at running back, Delvin Cook. He could have been like, oh man, they just got rid of him. I know they got Madison and whatnot, but you know what? I'm gonna try to play there, but he didn't. He elected to come back to the Ravens. Who have a JK Dobbins? Who have a Gus Edwards? Who have a Justice Hill? Who have a Keegan Mitchell? Now I wonder, I really wonder because Jeff Zribick has continued to say that he expects Keegan Mitchell to go to injured reserve. So if he goes to injured reserve, he's gonna miss a couple of games and then he will be eligible to come back anytime after that.   But I wonder at the same time with Gus Edwards and his role in JK and Justice with his role on special teams and whatnot, I wonder if there will really be that much room for Melvin Gordon. Obviously he didn't care much about how much room is there or have a little room is there because he's back with the Baltimore Ravens and I like it. Now, he was not the only person that signed today to the practice squad. And we're gonna go down to practice squad in a little bit. Also they got back Daryl Worley. And Daryl Worley is somebody who really stepped their game up throughout last year. I think Daryl Worley broke the NFL record for most transactions by one team and one player in a season because he was added to the practice squad, added to the active roster. Released from the active roster, added to the practice squad all over again like a million times last season. But now he's on the practice squad. So Ravens have him, and you know the second area's been, whoo, the state of the second area. It's like, right now. That's the perfect way to explain it. But Ravens also got some other guys on that practice squad. And let's clear that up. They signed quarterback Anthony Brown. So he's in his second year. He's on the practice squad. So that's good for him. They also brought back surprisingly. I was surprised at this one because I didn't think they were gonna bring him back on right. I went right. They're running back. I thought that it was gonna be on the practice squad is gonna be Melvin Gordon and that was it at running back. I thought they were gonna be done. But Ravens was like, no, the more the merrier. So that's a very interesting practice squad signing right there. They also brought back again, Ben Mason. They been keeping Ben Mason around for a while. So I don't know what that really says about Pat Ricard. I don't know what it says about Ben Mason, but they love them some Ben Mason. So okay, hey, I ain't mad at it. Stay ready so you ain't gotta get ready. Y receiver, Sean Ryan, who had an amazing first game of the pre-season the other day. Laquan Treadwell, who had a really nice touchdown catch against the Bucks. Travis Vocalek, who a lot of people felt like could push for time on the active roster. I'm really surprised he didn't get scooped up. I was for sure that Travis Vocalek was gonna get scooped up by somebody else. And if he gets on with him being on Ravens practice squad, I mean, I don't really see him being on there for too long, but I ain't mad that he's back. So, hey, the more the merrier. Offensive linemen to Sean Manning, Tykeem Dawes, defensive linemen, Rayshard Nichols, who he was there last year too, I believe. Outside linebacker Jeremiah Moon, inside linebacker Josh Ross, who was there last year as well. And defensive back Jeremy Lucian. And also veteran center, Sam Mustaford, he's supposed to be signing to the practice squad as well. So Ravens have been busy. They been busy. Right now on their practice squad, they have one spot left.  Well, we'll keep you updated when we find out because we have no clue right now. But you know, Ravens are gonna feel that out very, very soon. Hey, maybe even by the time you see this video. But Team Keep It Clean, I appreciate y'all. I love y'all so much. I hope everything is going even better than you hope it is for yourself. I love you, y'all. Keep your heads up and we out.


Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways, affecting approximately 10% of children. About half the risk is genetically determined, but the rest we may have some control over. One of the reasons asthma rates may be rising is our rising rates of vitamin D deficiency. Kids just aren't going out to play anymore. A doubling of vitamin D insufficiency levels in recent years such that less than a quarter of U.S. teens hit the mark. Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin. We make no vitamin D from the light coming from our TV or computer screen, so do kids with lower vitamin D levels in their blood have worse asthma? Apparently so, one more than a dozen observational studies suggesting that vitamin D is protective against asthma exacerbations. So should we start giving kids with asthma vitamin D supplements if they're not going to go outside? Well, correlation doesn't mean causation. For example, maybe severe asthma leads to less vitamin D instead of the other way around. To prove cause and effect, you need to put it to the test. Take kids with asthma randomized to one of two groups, vitamin D or an identical looking sugar pill, and see what happens. The problem is there had never been such clinical trials like that until now. Give asthmatic kids between 500 and 1,000 international units of vitamin D3 a day, cuts asthma exacerbations by more than half, perhaps by decreasing the incidence of respiratory infections by boosting immunity while at the same time diminishing inflammation. If it helps with inflammation, what about inflammatory bowel disease? We'll cover that next.


So one of the reasons the Chinese remainder theorem is important is that it allows us to take a congruence where our modulus is a product and reduce it to a system of linear congruences. And this is particularly important in modern cryptography, where one of the things we have to do is evaluate c to power n mod n, where n is some product of primes. Now in general, this is a tedious task. We can speed the evaluation, however, if we know a factorization of n. And we can make the following simplifications. Suppose I know that n is p times q, where p and q are relatively prime. They don't actually even have to be prime, they just have to be relatively prime. And I want to find c to the n mod n. Well, I'll treat that as a congruence. x is congruent to c to the n mod n. Now, because I know n is p times q, I also know that x is congruent to c to the n mod p, and also c to the n mod q. But I might be able to reduce c mod p. So c is going to be some number mod p and some number mod q. Also, that exponent can be reduced because remember that we have the Euler Fermat theorem that any number to the phi of the modulus is going to be congruent to 1. So that means that I can reduce the exponent to some lower value in both cases. And so now my original congruence now becomes two congruences where I'm dealing with much smaller numbers. So for example, let's say I want to find 157 to the power 495 mod 3071. Now, if I don't know a factorization of 3071, I'm stuck. There is nothing I can do that will simplify this problem. I'll have to find this 157 to the power 495 the hard way. On the other hand, if I do know a factorization of 3071 into relatively prime factors, so for example, suppose I do know that 3071 is 37 times 83, then I have a chance of simplifying this problem. So first of all, I'll let 157 to the power 495 be congruent to x mod 3071, and I'll find x by solving the system of congruences mod 37 and 83. So the first thing I'll notice is that 157 is 74 mod 83. Now 83 is prime, so phi of 83 is 82. So I know that for any value of A, A to the power 82 is congruent to 1 mod 83. And so that means I can reduce this 157 to the 495th as, first of all, 157 becomes 74 mod 83, and next I can eliminate powers of 82. So 495 is 82 times 6 plus 3. So this 74 to the power 495 becomes 74 to the 82nd to the 6th times 74 to the 3rd. And this 74 to the 82nd is 1 to the 6th, still 1. And so this first factor can be ignored. And so this number 157 to the 495 has to be congruent to 74 to the 3rd mod 83. And that's much easier to evaluate. That's 18 mod 83. And so that gives me my first linear congruence. Whatever x is, is going to be congruent to 18 mod 83. Now let's take a look at my second thing. I want x to be congruent to 157 to the 495th mod 37. And again I can reduce 157, 157 is congruent to 9 mod 37, 37 is prime. So phi of 37 is 36. So I know that anything to power 36 is going to be congruent to 1 mod 37. And so that allows me to reduce this problem x congruent to 157 to the 495th. 157, I can replace with 9. 495 is 36 times 13 plus 27. So this exponent, 495, 9 to the power 36 to the power 13 times 9 to the 27. 9 to the 36 is going to be 1 to the 13th, still 1. So this first factor drops out and that's going to be 9 to the 27th. And it turns out that 9 to the 27th is going to be 1. So I have my second congruence and my value x is going to be something that is simultaneously congruent to 18 mod 83 and 1 mod 37. And at this point we can apply the Chinese remainder problem algorithm. First of all I can find a multiple of 37 that solves the first congruence. That's 18 more than a multiple of 83 and that works out to be 59.94. Next I can find a multiple of 83 that solves the second congruence. A multiple of 83 that's 1 more than a multiple of 37. Well 27.39 works out. And so the sum 59.94 plus 27.39, 87.33 is going to be a solution to both congruences. Now we do want to find the smallest solution because we're working mod 3071. So I can repeatedly subtract 3071 to find smaller solutions. And it turns out that the smallest solution is going to be 25.91. And so 157 to power 4.95 is going to be 25.91 mod 3071.


I had to basically come in this motherfucker and do everything perfect Absolutely, and that would make the game so precious. It's no guarantee and you you're paid on your performance And it's based on you know Winning what's important now what you did now? So for me, you know competition breathe Confidence bring out the best of you. You know criticism is answered with achievement people can always talk about what they understand But you know, I love it. So I love the competition I love, you know, coming from from from behind and now being in the front and it's all about You know having a vision and a plan and you know putting yourself on that mission and when I was in the lead You know, I had my head down and it was on that mission