I would like to introduce to you Kolbrünn Friedrichsta-Pierre. The fact that this name is pretty easy to pronounce already points us to our tonight's topic, which are morphologically complex languages. And this is what Kolbrünn will be talking about. Kolbrünn is a junior lecturer at the faculty of Iceland, and she is also co-author and project manager of the online language course Icelandic Online. Her connection with UCL, she will mention during her talk, so I won't say much about that. And the only other thing I wanted to say is that her research has focused on the acquisition of Icelandic as a second language, and mainly the morphology and how you can teach it. So very well, thank you very much for sitting today and over to you all. Afternoon everyone. So as Sebel said, I'm Kolbrünn Stokke from the University of Iceland, and our session was great Sebel. And first of all I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. So this afternoon I will be talking to you about how the web has provided a great opportunity for the teaching of a small and highly effective language like Icelandic. First I'd like to outline some general information about the course Icelandic Online, and later I will go online to show you detailed examples of search and ideas for the activities. So Icelandic Online is the University of Iceland's free online language course in Iceland. Icelandic Online is student-centered, guided on sequence to interact with and visual exercises as I will show you later. The course is self-instructed and the way we're going to focus is in advance. It offers integrated functions and grammars as you will see also in a minute. And the course presents various oral and written texts followed by comprehension and accuracy exercises. So the development of Icelandic Online started in 2008. Icelandic Online, available in two themes, as we call it doctor and nature, was launched in 2004 for beginners. And Icelandic Online 2 was launched in 2005 for intermediate learners of Icelandic. In 2006 we launched Icelandic Online 1 and 2 Plus, an expanded version of Icelandic Online 1 and 2, serving as a business learning course at the University of Iceland. This expanded version is not free as the other courses have. There's a teacher and me. And in 2006 we also had a tracking system available, which allows us to follow students learning pattern as they travel through the course. There we got some information concerning gender, the students' gender aids, education, where they are studying in the woods. And we know from this tracking system that we have around 600 students a day studying on Icelandic Online. This is quite good. But Icelandic Online is expanded fast. The courses we have now, Icelandic Online 1 and 2, or Icelandic Online overall is now serving as models for perfect development. And we are currently working on three more courses. Icelandic Online 3 and 4 for intermediate to advanced learners of Icelandic, focusing on the 1B2 proficiency level, according to the Diamond placement tests. And another project in the pipeline at the moment is Icelandic Online for Immigrants, for foreign workers in Iceland. And the 5 on Icelandic as reported, focusing on students with no prior experience in foreign language learning. Icelandic Online plays an essential role for certain programs at the University of Iceland now, serving as a prerequisite for all applicants to be a program in the department of Icelandic for foreign students at the university. But also for students who wish to attend international summer courses in Icelandic at the university. And both courses 1 and 2, Icelandic Online 1 and 2 are also fundamentally true courses in Icelandic for foreign students at the university. For example, for Erasmus exchange students. A few words of collaboration we have this project. Icelandic Online was developed on behalf of the University of Iceland in cooperation with lectures in Icelandic at five European universities. UCL is one of them. This was one of our co-workers. And all the universities, including the University of Munich and Copenhagen, finally the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As you can see here, we have received funding from Icelandic and European sources to work on this project. Icelandic Online 1 and 2 are primarily aimed at adults, as you can see there, university students in Iceland from the board on scores of the students who are interested in Icelandic. And some teachers are using these courses in Icelandic and other student teachers' lectures to do this. Okay, let's take a closer look. I have the description of the course before we move on to the Icelandic grammar. Icelandic Online is rich in content. It's including 1,200 learning updates. It takes approximately 90 hours of study to complete the courses one or two, so there's a lot of work to be done on skills. There are two proficiency levels, as I mentioned before. Icelandic Online offers immediate, ultimately, feedback on every single exercise. Together with both levels, the students have auxiliary resources aligned and scaffolded grammar pathways, as we'll see later. Pathalized learning and restriction, which is also scaffolded. Thus, both the grammar and the dictionary are adapted to the beginner's level and the professional level. I will show you some examples later. Okay. So, now I want to draw your attention to Icelandic language, as I mentioned before. The infracted language is a top learning of grammar. You don't get very far in a beginner's course without having to explain why some words show updates on any different course. The students will, for example, experience 16 variants of the same of each noun. So, let's take the noun course. This has to mean course. As you can see, there will be 16 forms depending on the course position of the kind of grammar place and sentence. So, we can have as the best, as the best, as the best, as the best, as the best, as the best, as the best, as the best. This is what our students are dealing with. We have three simple sentences there which is noun, course, and this is a course. This is the first sentence. There is one form of the noun. Fair off a noun has, which course is it, so there's a different form of the noun. And the ear-out has to, course is mine when we have an example of the third one and we can have 13 others. So, of course, this is a conclusion for a noun. This is, that's, of course, about Icelandic grammar. Before we move on, Icelandic has many, many categories of implanted words, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and the numerals one to four, there are four cases. There are three genders of nouns. Adjectives, most pronouns, and the numerals one to four are also between the three genders. Words are conjugated according to tense, person, number, name, and words. So, here we have a slide. Just to give some example, we have part of a sentence, one white horse. And the first one, we can see a numeral one. White is Peter, a horse. Again, this is Esther. And these all the words are gray in gender, number, and place, and they are all there in the nominative case. Just to give you some insight. The second one, the same sentence, in the accusative case, is simple. A Peter has it. The third one, Peter has it. A Peter has it. The fourth one, the genitive case. So the genitive case of each word in the sentence is each has it. So this is what our students see very soon. We must start with the last one. So, gender of nouns, this is something I would pay special attention to. My tool. What way, I can tell you in what way we introduce a collection of morphology to our students online, in Icelandic online. So students in the course get the information that nouns in Icelandic are binding the schema in order to ask a question before. The gender of a noun is grammatical, meaning that it relates to the form of a noun rather than its meaning. So as you can see on the slide here, guest, this masculine, you can see the kester, this is the Icelandic word for guest. This is a masculine or an Icelandic. Soup or soup up is a feminine noun in Icelandic. And glass or glass in Icelandic is new, too. But it's fundamental for learners of Icelandic to learn the gender of nouns, for meaning of the intellectual, or intellectual, or your vision. The endings of a noun often give, the endings of a noun often give a clue about the gender of a noun. That is what we highlight in our course online in order to explain and simplify the grammar. This is what we're trying to do in the Icelandic online. So as you can see here, here is guest, which is you are, I think, telling the student early that this is a noun, so you are, I think, are kester. Then the rest most of the time are priest or kester. You also, if you are ending, this must be a kester. This is Lomibord. Kester, if you are ending, this also must be you. So this is the form, student's word. We are getting the clue there from form. The same is true for soupa, the feminine noun. They see the ending telling them that it's feminine. And then they see the end of the term what is also feminine. And through Lomibord without ending, so they have the formula when you're ending. And this is what we are trying to do in a simple and simplified way of doing in this complicated branch of students. So given the information and practice concerning the gender of nouns, the next step is to draw our student's attention to the declension of noun. This is just a table but I don't think I will go into the spaces for pain. I'm very early but we have to learn them. How this is the pattern for masculine nouns feminine nouns. Transitional pattern. They have to learn by ropes. We have addons there. They have to learn by ropes. Many of the items so this is what they are we need to simplify them. So this is our big chance how to present the assessment of the quality of the grant and on the beginning course. As I demonstrate in a minute, the computer allows for interesting opportunities to present grammar in this. Do the use of functions such as less as you will see later and all the programs you can actually clarify and simplify complex grammar through visual and interactive practical issues. So this slide we can see the relevant pathological approach lies in the drawing and I will demonstrate the response we need. Overall we use visual and interactive presentations for making up vocabulary and explaining grammar in that way we appear to different learning styles and present them by using different formats visual, interactive, text based etc. We use what we call memory devices by introducing a complex of quality we need to provide guiding lights to help remember and figure out the system which is complicated. We use focus on form in order to help learners to notice particular forms in a meaningful context to pick out the structure to pay attention to, you will see it soon. So focus grammar is highlighted in the text. This couple grammatical information the structure of Iceland is present gradually as to better share the needs of beginning learners and we offer a line and scope of the dictionary to build the knowledge of Icelandic vocabulary. Okay, so now we are going online which is maybe so far. What do you mean by scope of learning? That's why I mentioned this. Yeah, I think the best way is to show it here. The scope of it is like leveled in the magazine. This is, now we are nice that we are online one. Nature theme another one is mainly character this is nature. Okay, we are here in lesson three so they know a lot now. This is for first of all I mean the context is interesting. The text the content is appealing to adults. And we are focused this is a conversation here okay so it doesn't matter but we need the student to focus on focusing on grammar now and we need to focus on certain form. We are starting to tell them about the clenching. We have the red color here they get some one liner here telling them about telling them what is happening in this sentence. They get the information first level information, verb, commonplace, just like conversations do. So this is what they are we are talking about the question of now this now right now and we are telling them that the verb in the sentence is covering case determinants and they also get the information here that the preposition is also covering. The preposition determines the case of the noun that follows it. And the yellow focus is where we are focusing on the declined noun followed by the preposition here followed by the verb. Okay and we want to look at this here and here we are really demonstrating in a visual way what is happening in the sentence. So here we have this plus existence. This is a student with a tension strong to the ending This is what this tension is about changing and this. I, by, here is the verb okay you know from here that the verb is controlling the case. I click here and then the verb comes in changing the form of the noun. We understand. So this is what we do we are focusing on the noun here another word blaming I forget my jacket and when this sentence when the verb comes in the noun is changing the ending is changing. So this is our focus on form. Do we have some sounds we have the sentence with? You claim the yacca You blame the yacca. I am in a noun with certain ending they have got knowledge about what will happen to this form or how it is declined that we are demonstrating to simplify and clarify what is happening. Here is the noun is un-declined but when this verb is in the sentence with this form the form changes. You claim a patient You claim a patient So this scaffolded grammar here we have focusing on form focusing on the input real and then this is the two leveled or scaffolded grammar this is like basic information opening what is happening understanding the text we have here the information earlier words, common case just like the position is good and then they click on the reminder and get some grammar so now it really means grammar and here they have in English some more information concerning this grammar topic in the text verbs like prepositions to turn on the case of the words so this is what I meant by scaffolding two leveled we wanted to have it like three levels like word source on grammar in the third level but we only had two now so this is what this was about scaffolded grammar but of course they got practice many many exercises working on this declension maybe in the end I don't know what is yaw maybe take one example of this like guiding lights how we use the web as a tool it's a plus and we are here focusing again on the form they they still they have learned about definite articles of the German they know a lot here we are focusing on here is possessive pronoun like this is my path so this is what we are doing we are focusing on toward their attention to what is really this is the definite article up until now the possessive pronoun is really has the same form double N so this is something to help them figure out understand and memorise things at the case at the case I mean second you have you can talk easily twice as much if you like every exercise like this is followed by other interactive exercises so they should know now case I mean so they can see the double N etc how many we are saying that the web is an invaluable to teach morphologically languages Icelandic is definitely a small language spoken by only 300,000 people so this to the web the possessive and honest opportunity to promote the web is at least out to almost more than possessive and honest work to save the practice thank you


Let's move on to our next speaker and that will be Dr. Carl Dahlin. He's our extension beef specialist, nutritionist and reproductive physiologist here in Campison or Animal Science Department. And we've asked him to talk a little bit about pregnancy detection in cows. So with that, Carl, if you'd like to share with us so we can be done in a timely fashion. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Good luck with the keeping on time thing. But it's nice because now everybody that was in the room has cleared out of the room. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about methods of pregnancy detection. That was kind of the charge and I'll give you the very abbreviated version. If you guys have got any questions, just feel free to ask. But when I talk about methods of pregnancy detection, the first thing that comes to mind was, well, what's going on out there in our industry currently? And I don't know how many times I've shown slides like this where I come in and talk about a NOM survey that shows that less than 20% of our producers out there are using palpation for pregnancy detection. And reasons for and against that, you know, this is an individual operation decision. But this is the basis that we are starting with. So four methods that I'm going to talk about. The first is going to be an old standby. I'm going to go out and bump that calf. Then the most common will be a palpation perectum and getting into, you know, some modernized transrectal ultrasonography. And one that's come about more recently is evaluation of blood samples for some pregnancy specific proteins. And the question ultimately is, which one is right for you? So my goal at the end of the day is to have a discussion about what is it that you need to consider when looking at these different methods. So this is the old bumping the calf routine. And I don't know how many of you have done this. Normally if I have an audience that I'm not talking to a wall, I would have a show of hands for something like this. But here we got our old baldy beef cow. You make a fist, put it up against your flank there, give it a good push. What you feel is that calf as it's kind of coming back from that push hitting up against your hand. Now this is kind of a remnant throwback from a lot of dairy work that's been done.  But the third step to this whole technique is hope that her kick doesn't connect with you, because most likely our beef cows, this isn't a real practical method. Works great if you've got nice calm cows. Cabs have got to be pretty big. There's got to be something there for her to, you know, to come back and hit your hand on. So this is a late gestation thing. Is that cow out there pregnant? She hasn't calved yet. She hasn't started to bag up yet. Everybody else has dropped a calf. This one might be an option for you. If you do, good luck. Alright, palpation perectum. The concept of most of the palpation perectum is what we call a fetal membrane slip. And we talk about fetal membrane. Most of you guys, what you see out there is Doc's got his arm up cow's butt, and not quite sure what he's doing, but he's really green if it's a good summer day. When we've got calves that are in utero, we've got a calf here, and there's three layers of placenta. Alright, we've got the first layer, goes right around the calf here. This is amnion. And then we've got two layers out here. Corion and allantois. When we talk about a fetal membrane slip, what we're doing is we're in there and we're actually squeezing the uterus around the edges of this placenta. And as we squeeze them together, this membrane slips away from them, these membranes. That's what we mean fetal membrane slip. So that's what Doc's doing when he's in there messing around. Other things that we look for during palpation perectum. A fetal membrane slip is the first thing that we can feel in there. As we progress into pregnancy, around 90 days we can feel what we call placentomes. Now, placentomes are basically placental attachments. It's the whole big structure in there. On the damn side, on the mother's side, we have car ankles. The way I remember this is mom drives a car. On the calf side of the placenta, we have cotyledons. Okay, so baby sleeps in a cot. Together these form the placentomes, we can feel them ball-like structures on there. This is a placenta just got dropped out into a pasture right here. We've got one of these balls here. One of these balls think, okay, we're dealing with a calf placenta. So these are cotyledons. If you're so unfortunate to have a uterine prolapse out there, that's the time when we really get to see this other side. And it's never pretty. All right, another thing that we can feel, again, as we progress through pregnancy calves get big and we may not be able to physically reach them. But this one right here from Midas, this is basically a whole bunch of blood pulsing through a uterine artery. Early on when we don't have a pregnancy, we've got about 3.5 millimeters. So if you think about it, that's maybe about the size of a thin, thin pencil. That's how big that uterine artery is inside that animal. Now, that increases to about 1.5 centimeters. So if I think in centimeters, now we've got well over three quarters of an inch, about the size of a thumb. So that's a tremendous increase in size. And what we can do is just reach in and feel the blood vibrating through there. And that's all we'll say about that. The other thing that we can feel is just the calf. We can physically feel the calf. And so as we progress through pregnancy, we say, okay, a two month old pregnancy, about the size of a mouse.  I'd say kind of a full grown beagle. I'm not sure if that's a 10 inch beagle or a 12 inch beagle, but it's a beagle. This is by far the most common method, the palpation perectum as a whole. If you're really, really good. And again, I've got much, much, much experience out here. Heifers, you might be able to get around 30 days, cows around 35 days. Now this is right on the border. Most people, most veterinarians are comfortable with this 45 to 60 days of gestation of calling pregnancies at that point in time. This is a veterinarian specific measure of what they are comfortable doing. So have that conversation with your veterinarian about where, what stage of pregnancy they can physically palpate. The nice thing about palpation perectum is I get an answer right now. Cows there, in the chute, if she's open, I can put her right on a truck. No questions asked. So immediate answer. Okay. This next one I'm going to talk about is ultrasound and I've given classroom lectures on ultrasound and talked for about three hours at a crack on this. So I'm going to try to keep it short. Here I've got one of my graduate students, Sharni Klein, from out in the Bula area. She is learning how to ultrasound and there's a pretty good learning curve associated with this. But the principle of ultrasound, you've got a box here and that box produces electricity. You've got all kinds of little wires in this probe or this transducer and at the end of that transducer we've got a whole bunch of little crystals. This goes back to some physics classes and things like that that you may have heard. Energy is neither gained nor lost. So what happens when that electricity hits the crystals? They make a small change in shape. That change in shape of the crystals causes two things. One it causes a small amount of heat and two it causes a sound or a noise. This noise is at a level, a frequency that we can't hear. That's why we call it ultrasound. It's a sound, it's there but we can't hear it. It may drive your dogs crazy but we're not going to be impacted by it at all. So what we see on the ultrasound screen is actually those sound waves as they're bouncing back up into the probe and being interpreted by the machine. So a black color means fluid or that the waves did not get bounced back up into that probe. A white color means that, yeah, the sound waves bounced right back up. So this is what we see with a 25-day pregnancy. Here is a fetus very, very small and we've got a little bit of fluid surrounding the fetus. Fluid around a fetus is kind of the hallmark that I start a lot of people looking for because it's the easiest thing to pick up. As we progress, this is a 35-day pregnancy and on your far right we've got a 50-day pregnancy. Again, we've got a nose, a muzzle here, a head. We can see the spine of the animal, umbilical cord, some back legs.  And yeah, we can age a fetus. We can do this with palpation. We talked about the cat, rat, dog, that whole concept of different sizes of fetus. With ultrasound what we can do is we can do pretty soon after conception we can start to get a real accurate age on these fetuses. And this picture shows a concept of fetal growth and what happens. So along the bottom here we've got the size of the fetus. And along the side here we've got a stage of gestation. So this middle line is, we're going to call it a normal calf. Then on this line on the right we're going to call it a fast growing calf. And a line on the left is a slow growing calf. Now if you look at the differences here, early on in gestation we've got pretty similar growth among fetuses. The further we get out into gestation the more variation in fetal size there happens to be. So where I'm going with that is if you want to get a real good age on a fetus do it as soon as possible after conception that's going to be your most accurate age. As we proceed later if you're just trying to get a good fetal age and these calves maybe six months old already very very difficult to do with ultrasound. Alright we've also got all kinds of different parts of an animal and we know kind of at what stage these different things start to happen. So around 20 to 21 days we can first see an embryo with ultrasound and a lot of this is basically from a heartbeat because we've got some type of movement some little flicker going on in there. And then we've got all the other things that develop. So if we want to get really picky we can say okay well this calf is, he's there, I can see an eye orbit but I can't see any split hooves. So that right there tells me he's between 30 and 45 days old. That's one way to do it. Trying to figure out what I've got here. Alright a 30 day pregnancy uterine width that just kind of looks at the measurement of the uterus here. This is a 100 day pregnancy in the middle. Again what we're looking at here is a hind foot. So this is bone in the leg. We've got due claws right here and we've got each of the hooves at this point. So that's a hind limb on a 100 day pregnancy. Over here we've got a 43 day pregnancy and what I'm looking at there is called the crown rump length. So it's top of the head to the bottom of the butt. Okay that's what I'm looking at here. Now you'll see on the right hand bottom right hand corner it's that ultrasound can be used effectively until 120 days of gestation. There really shouldn't be a number here. It's more of a concept that ultrasound works until you can't reach the calf anymore. As a calf grows up at certain point in time it may just tip right over the pelvic rim and God was very kind to me. He gave me very long skinny arms so I can stick them way inside a cow. But there's an awful lot of cows that I can't physically reach the calf on. So age determination these kind of things with ultrasound are pretty limited once you can't reach that calf. Now in other cases you can reach these calves all the way through gestation. So there shouldn't be a number of days here. This was just kind of a ballpark at which point in time majority these are going to drop over the pelvic rim. Okay another thing with ultrasound is we can pick up twin pregnancies. In both of these cases here we've got one pregnancy here and another one here. Again another case of twin pregnancies down here. Now just because you use ultrasound are you going to see all of the twins in the herd? The answer is well it depends. In order to see twins you've got to be about the right stage of gestation. The easiest time to see twins is between about 40 and 60 days of gestation. Before that they're kind of small. After that it gets to be a little bit big. So do you know when the cow was bred? A lot of times we don't. The bull got out there and we're just kind of there. That's one question. The other question is are you making a concerted effort to look for twins? And there's some cases where you may want to do that. But finding twins inside a cow takes time with ultrasound. Yes you can see them but you almost have to be looking for them. One of the things that I do when I go in and preg check cows is I will physically look at the ovaries of each cow and I will count the number of cl or corpus luteum on those cows. Corpus luteum develops after a follicle is ovulated follicle held the little oocyte. So if I find multiple cl on an ovary of a cow that's when I go in and I look for two babies. And I do this because about 97% of all twins born come from two separate ovulations as opposed to being identical twins which result from a single ovulation. Alright the next thing I'm going to talk about is fetal sexing and I've got a couple of fetuses here. Just to point out here this is an umbilical cord.  If I look at the calf on the right here's my umbilicus there's nothing there but right underneath the tail this is the vulva of that calf so this is a little heifer this is a little boy a little bull sorry and this is what I'm looking for. This structure is called a genital tubercle when a calf is young like this and interesting point is that this thing starts at the exact same location regardless of whether something is a bull or a heifer. So if you do a fetal sexing too early you won't be able to tell whether it's a bull or a heifer. Now the point in time where this happens is right around 45 days is when you can physically tell by looking at a calf that yeah this thing is moving up here so it's a heifer or no it's down here so it's a bull. On ultrasound this is what this looks like and I've got kind of a key down in the bottom here of what in the heck you're looking at but basically this is a male fetus we've got four legs that stick out umbilical cord comes in looking as a slightly gray structure right behind that this bright white spot that is our penis. Back up a little bit more we've got one white flag here one white flag here these are testicles we come to the right what we've got here is these are the hind legs of a calf and so we're basically looking at the rear end of this calf this body is away from us so here's our hind leg this bright white spot right here that is our genital tubercle which in this case is the vulva of a female fetus disadvantage of ultrasound right off the bat it is by far the most expensive method you can get some payback on it again depending on what your goals are and we'll get into that later because you can check earlier now for practicality standpoint you know 25 to 30 days is pretty possible and you can go you know 26 days and a heifer I'm confident that we can move right along in a cow that number is about 28 days other things you can get from ultrasound if you need it or want it you can determine whether there's a viable fetus in there okay this is one thing that the other methods don't necessarily do unless it's palpation perectum and you're grabbing your calf and you feel it kick you that happens too you know that calf is alive then but with ultrasound it's a pretty non-invasive way to determine whether you've got a beating heart okay it's very very accurate early ingestation you can get a very accurate age you can also figure out the sex if you're at the right stage of pregnancy other limiting factors you've got cost by far and away and then maybe a bigger component depending on where you're at is the availability of expertise technicians veterinarians to actually go out and do this ultrasound for you the other thing that I just kind of put in here you know with these early preg checks the thing that people need to remember is you're always going to have a certain amount of normal loss okay normally between around a 30 and a 65 of pregnancy in beef cattle you're going to have between a 2 to 4% loss of pregnancy now that's not because you worked with palpation perectum or that you worked with ultrasound it's just that was going to happen anyway so we've got to point that out normal biology and sometimes people misinterpret that and say well your ultrasound caused my pregnancy loss and we've looked at these numbers a lot and regardless of whether you check them or not the pregnancy rates after a certain point are about the same all right the last one I'm going to talk about here is pregnancy specific protein so these are proteins that are released from the placenta of a calf we don't have a placenta of a calf unless we've got a calf so that's why the pregnancy specific commercial tests say these can be detected in the blood around 28 days of gestation but the other caution you've got to have here is that when you're checking a cow if she's not more than 90 days postpartum then you could be getting proteins in her blood from her previous calf okay that's a danger so what that means is that that cow had to be about 60 days after calving when she was bred in order for this test to mean anything if she was only 45 days and then she got bred and you're trying to catch her really early around 28 days you'll get a false positive reading on that test or you could get a false positive reading on that test I got this picture up here to show you that you know what it's really not that difficult to go out and collect blood on the right this is my graduate student Phil Steichen I've had him bleeding cows all over the place but on the left this is Ben Klinkner he's another student at NDSU and he's a pig guy so I took a pig guy out there and we were able to get him within a few minutes to be pretty handy at collecting blood from the juggler vein and cattle whether you collect it from the juggler vein which is going to give you a nice big target to hit or from the tail vein working back behind the cow both of them are accurate the issue is going to be it's going to be easier to collect blood from the head and but then you need a halter you need to catch them the technique of collecting blood from the tail takes a little bit longer to figure out but it's still very very possible okay the thing about pregnancy specific proteins is you absolutely got to have good records and I say this because you need to go and you need to take a blood sample you need to record the ID tag of that cow on the blood tube and then you need to send that information into a lab the lab's going to analyze the results and send back something that says whether this cow is pregnant or open so if you don't have good ID systems at your house this is not a good option for you if there's questions if you've got duplicate IDs anything like this in the danger of not having this stuff in line is that you come back and you sell the wrong cow because you said well the test came back and said she's open you're not exactly sure if you don't have good records so samples again you send these blood tubes in samples are returned within a few days the doubt fall if you're going to go out and you're going to then sort off the open cows is now you've got to gather your cows up again once you get the results and you've got to work them again so you've got to work cattle twice in order to call out your animals on the bright side or the downside depending on which seat you're in no veterinarian is required for this test some veterinarians are actually promoting and using this test with their clients but nothing is required you can take the blood samples on your own send them into a lab so when I think when I step back and look at all these different options what do you want to consider the first one is how are you going to use the data okay I'm a big proponent of doing things for a reason so if you're not going to call out your cows that are not pregnant or you're not going to do anything with it don't even bother with any of the methods okay the next question I say is well how accurate do you need to be is there a reason why you want to age a fetus is there a reason why you want to want that kind of information what time of the year will you check okay and this is in reference to having cows that are bred say you know May through June if you're not going to preg check those cows until into November some of the methods of preg checking namely ultrasound and maybe a more limited information to you at that point you know the converse of that is how early ingestation do you want to check if you want to check these cows that you know 25 to 28 days you know that the pregnancy specific protein or the ultrasound are pretty much your your only options and then the final question here do you want additional information so do I do you want to know the sex of these fetuses that kind of thing that's your last consideration so last thing I'm going to point out on this particular slide is that there is not a single method of pregnancy determination that can tell you if a bull that's in with your cows at the time of preg check did he breathe that cow yesterday or did he breathe that cow three weeks ago she could very well be pregnant but if you don't pull him off and get him out of your cow herd you're not going to be able to tell whether or not you've got a pregnancy there all right so other things that you want to consider all right why do you want to preg check do you want to reduce feed requirements for some reason okay if we come into a drought situation you've got limited feed resources then you can go ahead and identify those open cows get them out of your herd do you want to reduce overall cost you know every day we feed a cow we've got an additional cost on that animal so the rationale for some people is to only feed those cows that are indeed pregnant and are going to give you some financial return in the form of a live calf the following year do you want to sort cattle into groups for some reasons if you're running kind of a stalker option operation with bulls there's some real financial incentives to kind of do an early preg check on these animals and you have a group of pregnant heifers but if you do this early enough say you go out there and you preg check in these girls in August you're going to be able to get these pregnant or these open heifers into yearling feeder calf markets okay that's going to be a whole different financial situation than waiting until December to find out that these heifers are open because then they won't fall into that category of yearling cattle for feedlot use okay the other way people may want to do this is they want to directly sell their open cows into calm markets or they want to take those open cows off put more weight on them another way to sort these cows is to use your information about age of the fetus and make some concentrated cabin groups so you go out and you know that today I'm going to concentrate on this pen of cows it's up close to home and the others they're going to be I'm still going to go out and look at them but they shouldn't have for a little while longer and then you can also identify potential issues so do you have some fertility problems out there you've got herd nutrition bull problem something like that if you do an early preg check you can identify those problems and you can do something about it the other thing that you can identify as twins but back up to the fertility problems you know preg checking isn't your only option here and this is where I'm a big proponent of getting out there and looking at those cattle seeing what's going on in your herd because if your bulls are out there and they're busy they're actively breeding really late in the breeding season maybe you've got something else going on here or if you see a lot of open cows a lot of riding activity when most of them should be pregnant go ahead and try to do something about that well you can still salvage the breeding season you may have some late calving cows but at least you've got cows that are calving all right so the last slide I've got here I put all of these methods into one graph and said all right well what's important if I want to compare side by side and I made this graph for you guys to look at your individual operations when you're deciding which method you may want to use so the first line is detection limit you know this is basically age at which you can do these things and I've got them circled up here ultrasound and pregnancy specific protein if age is your thing you need to get these cattle project early then one of these options is best for you okay now the accurate fetal aging this is going in and identifying how old this baby is you can't do that with pregnancy specific protein you can do that with palpation at certain stages and you can do that with ultrasound at certain stages early on in pregnancy ultrasound is going to give you the most accurate fetal age later on in pregnancy palpation is going to get a better age simply because you're feeling for different things with rectal palpation than you are with ultrasound identification with twins and determining the viability of a fetus ultrasound is a way to go if these things are important to you and consider that next line I've got in here is veterinarian required I mean we're in a state and actually the whole nation has got a shortage of large animal veterinarians so if we've only got a few veterinarians out there they can't cover everybody's cows all the time so if you don't have a veterinarian or nobody to do it pregnancy specific protein may be your answer speaking of answers do you need an answer right now so if you go out and you want to sort off your cold cows today palpation or ultrasound are the way to go you can't do it with pregnancy specific protein experience and here I'm talking about how long has your person palpating your cows been palpating cows you know a story about a year and a half ago I had a call that said you know we have this issue and according to the ultrasound all these cattle should be calving around a time that's much later than anticipated and it was simply an issue of experience the operator didn't know what they were doing okay you don't have that issue with pregnancy specific protein now your veterinarians that are out there in your communities they've been doing this a long time they're pretty darn accurate alright and then price the final issue if you're only concerned about price either the palpation or the pregnancy specific protein would be the way to go and actually there's times when this pregnancy specific protein is cheaper than palpation but again that's kind of on an individual basis in a relationship you have with your veterinarians


And from the green to direct chambers, the Senate has condemned what it describes as the unlawful encroachment and arrest of Nigerians by the authorities of the Republic of Benin. The upper chamber has now directed four of its committees to work with the ministries of foreign affairs and justice as well as the National Border Commission to urgently check this. The Nigerian Senate has condemned what it describes as the unlawful encroachment and arrest of Nigerians by the authorities of the Republic of Benin. The upper chamber has therefore directed its committees on foreign affairs, judiciary, human rights and legal matters, and state and local governments to interface with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Ministry of Justice and National Border Commission to urgently put in place the necessary mechanisms that will provide lasting solutions to this issue. The upper chamber's decision to intervene was reached amid its resolutions following the point of order raised by Senator Tolu Odebe. Coming under Order 4252 of the Senate's rules, Odebe recalled the numerous reports of alleged encroachment into Nigeria's territory by authorities of the Republic of Benin, which, according to him, has become increasingly disturbing. We are calling on the federal government to immediately secure the release of Nigerian citizens currently languishing in detention in the Republic of Benin as a result of their resistance to the continued encroachment. Aware that the continuous unchecked egress and egress of persons are the different entry points and borders between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin, the country's closest neighbor highlighted the result of the publicity of our country's borders. The Senate in its resolutions condemned any act of unlawful encroachment and unlawful arrest of Nigerians by the authorities of the Republic of Benin. We've been shouting, we'll continue to do that, about even the Tongijia island which is in Nigerian territory. As we speak today, except for what maybe the Nigerian government is doing now, Tongijia island will go the way of Bakasi island. Time and again you will see them coming into the Nigerian territory to arrest Nigerians and they will be taken to their country and nothing will happen. Indeed, they will be released at their wings and campuses whenever they wish to. Every citizen of Nigeria must be treated with dignity and respect by any nation in this world. Nigeria is not a pushover and Nigeria is not an ordinary country. The upper chamber however directed its committees on foreign affairs, judiciary, human rights and legal matters and states and local governments to interface with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Ministry of Justice and National Border Commission to urgently put in place the necessary mechanism that would provide lasting solutions to this issue.


Oh man, look at this stuff! We've got Dune, Jules Verne, H.E. Wells, Frankenstein, Foundation. Buckle up guys, this is going to be lit. There's quite a bit of historical literature about fictional technology and its implications, but sci-fi developed into a form that we'd sort of recognize today around the 1930s, with the rise of serial short stories in pulp magazines. One of the first of these ever published, The Skylark of Space by Doc Smith is kind of to modern science fiction what Lord of the Rings is to modern fantasy, laying down a rich tapestry of tropes invoked and referenced by future authors, an interstellar spaceship propelled by a newly discovered element, a charming scientist slash pilot slash pugilist slash marksman slash engineer exploring new life and new civilizations boldly going where no man has gone before. Any of this ring of bell? In one of their adventures, the aforementioned hero, Dr. Seaton and the crew of the titular Skylark find themselves stranded on the planet Oznami, smacked out of the middle of a war between two civilizations, Condal and Martenale. After escaping from a Martenale prison, they meet the ruler of the Condal, a king, who assists in recharging their ship's power source with Element X. The crew of the Skylark are grateful for the Condal's aid and repay them with rare earthly minerals that will help them build unstoppable war machines. Let's read a little of the speech they give in thanks for Seaton's intervention. Not only have they given us a boon that will make their names revered throughout the nation as long as Condal shall exist, but they have also been the means of showing us plainly that our age old institution of honor is in truth the only foundation upon which can be built a race fitted to survive. At the same time, they have been the means of showing us that our hated foe entirely without honor, building his race upon a foundation of bloodthirsty savagery alone, is building wrongly and must perish utterly from the face of Oznami. These strangers have already made it possible for us to construct engines of destruction which shall obliterate Martenale completely. Fun fact, this speech is delivered at Seaton's wedding, and it moves both him and his new wife Dottie to tears. Happy tears. So, quick recap. Humans land on Oznami. One group of aliens tries to imprison them, they escape, a different group of monarchic aliens helps them fix their ship, and our heroes reward them with the technology they need to commit genocide. The Skylark actually fights in the final battle against the Martenale, destroying their entire military force. It's very dramatic and heroic in a World War I kind of way, but a modern audience might understandably have some reservations about how this whole thing has gone down. And I haven't even gotten into the racism or slavery bets. Now, to be fair, the Skylark of Space was written in the 30s, and it's pretty clearly a relic of its time. But it was a significant part of the initial canon of stories that established the vocabulary for science fiction, concepts that future authors would build on, and it sets up a trope that crops up a fair amount in modern sci-fi. Politics might be something that happens to the protagonist, or maybe around them, but it's a feature of the landscape, or an obstacle, not an important part of their interaction with the universe. When Dr. Seaton discovers the millennia-long race war on Oznami, he doesn't ask how it started, why it's still going, how it affects the people involved, or whether everyone on both sides of it is as invested as the rulers of these societies. When he meets the monarch of the condol, he doesn't ask how he got to be monarch, where his power comes from, what he does as monarch, or what his subjects think of his rule. These questions would be the lowest possible bar to act with any sort of awareness of the political forces in play, or likely political consequences of his actions. But Seaton doesn't concern himself with these matters. This might seem like a minor nitpick, after all, not every story has to be about politics. Still, the apolitical or even deliberately anti-political protagonist is a sci-fi trope that crops up repeatedly after the skywork of space, and, as we've seen, can sit uncomfortably alongside the genre's affinity for exploring radical departures from our current technological and social norms. This isn't to say that politics doesn't appear in sci-fi stories, but the genre trends towards an individualist or libertarian framing, focusing in on a competent protagonist, their problems, and how they solve those problems with science and technology. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, asserts as much in this interview. None of my books have any message. I never have, like, a moral or a deeper meaning or anything like that. For me, what's front and center is the science. If you confine yourself to the real physics, then that's hard science fiction. And it's considered even harder science fiction if the technologies used actually exist. I don't put politics in my novel because as soon as you can see the political slant of the author, you know that the universe of that book is going to conspire to validate the author's political viewpoint. In The Martian, the multinational group of scientists that work together to bring Mark Watney home operate outside the political apparatus of their states to make that happen. When they're hatching the plan, members of the Chinese National Space Administration explicitly say, if this becomes a negotiation by diplomats, it will never be resolved. We need to keep this among scientists. Space agency to space agency. Explicitly libertarian messages are also fairly common in sci-fi novels, as anyone who's read any Robert Heinlein can tell you. Has space-tuit world travel? The man who sold the moon? The moon is a harsh mistress. Heinlein's libertarianism suffuses his fictional worlds. There's actually a substantial back and forth between sci-fi and real-world advocacy for libertarian policy. Heinlein's initialism, T-A-N-S-F-A-A-F-L, used by lunar colonists as shorthand for, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, was adopted as a real libertarian campaign slogan. And there's an annual award ceremony by the Libertarian Futurist Society to promote works of science fiction that best reflect their values of individual freedom and autonomy. There are a number of reasons one might point to for why so much sci-fi treats politics and politicking with such reservation, if not outright hostility, why libertarian or anti-political messages appear so frequently. For example, many founders of the genre, including Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and John Wood Campbell, held similar views about governance and how it ought to interface with individuals. As little as possible.  But there were also many early sci-fi authors who took opposite tax. Isaac Asimov's influential foundation series turns on notions of collective responsibility, political savvy, and shared social destiny. I'd like to advance a different possibility. Maybe there's something about science fiction as a genre that lends itself to libertarian apolitical storytelling. Not that you can't tell sci-fi stories that feature politics as a central element, but that there's a vibe that makes it particularly easy to tell sci-fi stories that don't. A central feature of sci-fi, part of what makes the genre so different from other literature, is plausible change, justifiable novelty. We take our universe, inject some new technology or scientific discovery or alien species, and we see what happens. These changes often provide fresh insight into our world as it is, but when we read a book with a spaceship on the cover, it's partially because we want to hear about a world that has become different from our own, driven by some sort of scientific or technological force that's not wholly outside the realm of possibility. If a sci-fi author is interested in getting the most mileage per unit of suspended disbelief, it makes any element of their world that resists that force of change, an obstacle for the story they want to tell. If the protagonists can't get their hands on the cool new gizmo, or if the aliens can't communicate, or if the brilliant scientists can't get funding for their research, these barriers must be overcome for any sci-fi to happen. We might indulge in a little dramatic tension building up to that point, but the payoff is always ultimately seeing just how much change we can ring out of some new fangled thingamabob. In that light, politics isn't just ticking up space that could be dedicated to telling us more about the awesome, cool future stuff. It's also a retarding force on the reach and power of that stuff to change things, which is kind of what we're reading it for in the first place. We want to see what awesomeness Dr. Seaton can manage after unlocking the power of Element X. If he starts ringing his hands about whether the condo government is politically just, or trying to establish some due process to ensure that he's acting in accordance with the wishes of the osnomians, or any such political nonsense, we're sacrificing some amount of that potential for plausible novelty, which is kind of like, insert your favorite metaphor for denied satisfaction here. This idea also plays well with the favorite setting of most science fiction, space, the final frontier. With a decent FTL drive, a boundless number of worlds to explore, and unlimited resources to exploit, it's much easier for the protagonists to exercise their scientific and technological power without social or political obligations they don't want. They don't have to worry about asteroid mining rights, or whether the neighbors will complain about the Dyson sphere they're building. They can always just hop in their ship and jet off to a new solar system if things get too crowded. Of course, none of this implies that other political ideas can't be explored in science fiction. It's a fertile ground for speculation about everything from anarchism to fascism to fully automated luxury gay space communism. But what do you think? Does the genre exert some anti-political or libertarian pressure on sci-fi stories to unchain science and technology from anything that might hold back whatever cool stuff it might do? Can you think of some science fiction that makes politics into more than an obstacle for the protagonists? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to above and subscribe while I share, and don't stop thunking.


How traveling and reading can make you rich. Hey, have you wanted to do some traveling?  Now, first off, what is rich? Okay, you gotta define rich. What is rich? Rich can mean a lot of different things. It can mean rich, you know, in your soul. It can mean rich as far as money goes. Rich can mean a lot of things. Before we get too far into this though, don't forget to subscribe, hit that button down there, give me a thumbs up, turn on bell notifications. You gotta click that bell because if you don't, you won't know, you won't know when I do a next video. So make sure you do that, you'll be part of the family. Now, I consider rich in several different areas. You know, being rich as far as traveling the world and seeing things and knowing what's out there, well, that's kind of a mental richness, okay? But that leads into some financial richness that I also wanna talk about in this video that I think you're gonna agree with. If you have any questions about this, don't forget to put the comments below, ask me any questions you want. Let's get right into this and let's start talking about it. Let's talk about what it does to you to travel, what it does to you to travel. Now, right now I know, I know traveling's tough, traveling's tough because we're middle of a pandemic, okay, and at the time I recorded this, we are at the height of the pandemic. I hope it's the height, I hope it doesn't get worse, but that's where we're at right now. So that part of traveling is difficult right now. However, we're gonna assume, assume at some point the world's gonna get back to normal, people are gonna be able to travel again, people are gonna be able to go places, that is my actual positive attitude towards that. I know it's gonna happen. This is a matter of time we have the vaccine coming and I don't wanna get off one to a tangent or anything like that. However, the point is that we will get back to normal times again. So when we travel, it can make us rich in so many ways. It was a few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Asia. Never been to Asia before, never been there, but I was very, very interested in what was going on there. I don't know why, I like the food, I like different stuff, so I had an opportunity to go there and I went to Bangkok, Thailand, which was a very interesting place. But what it did for me was it opened my eyes to a whole lot of different things and if you travel it'll open your eyes to a lot of things too. And I wanna talk about some of those things. First off, it's gonna make you a more interesting person, okay? Somebody who's never left their town. Let's say you walk up to somebody and they're 50 years old and you say, where have you been, what have you done? And they say, I've never left my hometown. What do you immediately think about that person?  Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with their hometown or where they live, but we live in a world and to relegate your entire life to one little tiny area, your entire life, doesn't make sense to me, okay? That's just my opinion. If you disagree, put it in the comments below, that's fine, but bottom line is if you explore your world, it's gonna change your thoughts, it's gonna open you up to so many more things and it's gonna make you a more interesting person. If I go to a party and I meet somebody and they're from Bangkok and I say, well, I've been there, they're like, oh my gosh, you've been there. And it immediately starts a conversation, it gets something going. They're like, oh my gosh, you've been to my country. They're gonna have more interest in you, the more traveled you are. I have a friend who's been in, I think over 80 countries now I could have this wrong, but he's been in over 80 countries of his wife. They've traveled all around the world and they can speak on a lot of different subjects and they've tried a lot of different foods. They're interesting people. They're different than the guy or the woman who stayed in their hometown for 50 years and never left town, just never left town. They stayed there. It kinda makes you wonder why, but those are more interesting people, right? The next thing it's gonna do for you is that when you see new, you think new. When you see new things, you're gonna think new things. Understand all your thoughts are based on everything you've seen and heard so far in your life. That's all that can be on, right? Maybe you saw it on TV, maybe you saw it live or whatever, but it's something you saw, it's something you heard, or it's something you read and that's something I haven't touched on yet in this video, but reading can do the same thing for you. Reading, generally, when I'm reading, I'm starting to picture those things I'm reading about. And reading, calm down, can be audio reading, it can be visual reading, okay? So if you don't wanna pick up a book, if you get sleepy thumbing through a book, and sometimes books do that to me, but I read books too, you can always listen to a book. You can do audio books, you can do that, and you can travel in your mind by just listening to audio books. I like to combine them with a couple different things. Let's say I'm going to do a workout. Many times, I've listened to the entire audio books while I was doing a workout. So I actually read a book and exercised at the same time. I got two things done. I think that's pretty cool. When you can do that and get two things done, you don't waste as much time, and I enjoy doing it. You know, I don't need to listen to the music or anything like that, like music, but having an audio book and hearing another book is very fulfilling for me. I like that, I enjoy that. It can also open you up to new ideas. There was a gentleman, and this is going back many years, probably in the 80s, yeah, it was in the 80s, and he went surfing with some college buddies, and he went surfing down in Mexico, and he lives in San Diego, and when he went down there on the beach, there was a little hut, and they were serving tacos that were made out of fish, they had fish tacos. They had taken these pieces of fish, and they had dipped them into a beer batter, and they had made these fish tacos, and he fell in love with them. They had cabbage, and they had this white sauce on them. He loved it so much that when he came back to San Diego, he opened a fish taco place called Rubio's Fish Tacos, and it became so popular because nobody had had a fish taco before. It was amazing how people just love this fish tacos, and it grew, and it grew, and it grew, and he finally sold it to a major corporation, and I can't remember the exact numbers, it was maybe $30, $40 million, he sold that company for, and it was all because he explored a new area. He went somewhere, and he saw something, okay?  Now I'm gonna move over to reading a little bit. Reading can be very interesting, and I don't really read much fiction, though it can be very interesting, there's nothing wrong with that, but basically when you're reading a book on, let's say SEO, or you're reading a book on how to sell, or you're reading a book on how to be a good speaker, whatever it is, you're tapping into something that's not available to a lot of people, and that's called other people's knowledge, okay? By picking up that book, you're tapping into their knowledge. They've had life experiences, and they've been alive 20, 30, 40, 50 years, whatever it is, and they've gone through all these life experiences. When you pick up that book and you read it, and you hear their ideas, you're actually grabbing their experience. It didn't take you 30 years to get that knowledge. It didn't take you 40 or 50 years to get that knowledge. You got it in a book in a few hours. So the ability to gain knowledge, the ability to get smarter about stuff, to know more things through reading is just really crazy. I'm always reading two or three books because I'll set one down, then I'll move on to another one. I eventually get them all done, but I like to switch it up a little bit. I don't know why I've always been like that, but every time I do that, I learn some new stuff. Now, is some of the stuff in those books stuff I already know? Yeah, most certainly. However, you look for those little kernels, those little nuggets of things that are different from what you know, and that's gonna help you as a person grow faster than the average person who has to go out and experience everything to get to that stage. You've used other people's knowledge. Now, I think also through reading books, but more so in traveling, it makes you really more appreciative of your life. I've been to some pretty poor countries and I've seen how some people live and their situations down in Mexico or in Asia and you see that people get by on $2, $3 a day. And that really is the majority of the world. If you're sitting in a nice home and you've got electricity and running water and all that, that is not the majority of the world.  What am I doing with my life? I've got all these opportunities. I've got all these things I can do. I've got access to money. And having access to money to most people in the world, anything $30,000 a year is a huge amount of money. And most of the people in the US make that or more, in England or in Australia, they make that amount of money. And they don't realize how rich they really are. And they don't understand also how they can parlay that into something else. Your knowledge can be very valuable too. And I'm gonna leave you with one other thing. And that is, are you sharing your knowledge? Have you shared your knowledge? Have you written a book? Have you written a blog? What have you done with your knowledge? There are plenty of people in the world.  But there's plenty of people in the world that would love to have your knowledge. If you've got more knowledge than somebody else, that automatically makes you an expert to them. Makes you an expert to them. All you have to do is know more than your audience, know more than that person. And you are essentially an expert to them. So you need to share that knowledge. You need to get it out there. You've probably got experiences in your life. You've never written them down. You've never done anything with them. But you may be surprised if you do that people will actually pay for it. They really enjoy it. Maybe you could even do a video like this right here. And don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to do that. If you hit that like button yet, this is a great time to do that. This is a part of the video where you should do that, okay? Hit that and turn on all bell notifications after you hit the subscribe button. Turn on all bell notifications so I can let you know about the next video. But my point is, share your knowledge too. You've probably got a lot of knowledge that people don't know about. And I've seen people in India and Pakistan and all these other countries that we think don't have as much knowledge as the US, which is not true. A lot of the people I've worked with over the years from India and Mexico and all these places, highly intelligent people, very skilled people, you know, you can learn from their knowledge, okay? Doesn't matter how old they are, okay? I was listening the other day to somebody and they were helping me write a script and they were excellent at it. They were really good. And they were 20 years old, okay? 20. So, you know, it doesn't matter how old somebody is. What is their knowledge base? What is your knowledge base? So, yes, you can get rich from traveling and reading. It's pretty simple to do, but you gotta put it into action. Don't stay in your town for 50 years. That's my advice. Don't stay there. Make sure you read books after you get out of school. I hated reading in school. Hated it. Just really despised it. And now I really enjoy it because I read about what I want to read about. And I think that's key too in school. They make you read things that you don't want to read about. But now you've got the ability. You can read whatever you want, okay? Pretty much easy nowadays. They got Amazon. You can have the book there tomorrow. And as soon as the pandemic's over, we can travel anywhere we want to go, especially if you have a business online. And if you don't have a business online, you need to check out my free course. It's below, it's a $97 course.  All you have to do is click and learn. No credit card required. Now, I've covered a lot of information in this video. And if you like it, don't forget to give me a thumbs up. Put a comment below. What did you think of this video? Have you traveled anywhere? Have you had some books that you'd like to share? Put that in the comments below. Or if you have any questions about making money online, I'd really like to hear it. Thank you so much for watching this video. And I'll see you in the next one. Hey, thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel. And click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there. Keep watching on my channel.


As the British people currently wrestle with the reality that they do not have the power to choose the governing executive, and that their representation is naturality in name only and renders little political control, it's fitting that we celebrate the 375th anniversary of one of the significant events of English history. Across political history, the Putney debates are significant because they represent one of the first instances where the representatives of ordinary people discuss the fundamental nature of the state which govern them. As with many other such significant events in our history, these debates, as you would expect given the patrician nature of the British state, are rarely discussed, but the substance of those discussions still dominates the political situation in Britain today. The debates took place over two weeks in St Mary's Church in Putney, from Monday the 28th of October to Friday the 8th of November 1647. There is a permanent exhibition in the church. The point about being in a church wasn't simply that it was a space for a meeting. In the character of debates at this time, those involved would spend time in silent reflection and prayer while they considered what was being said. An ancient form of spiritual discernment still preserved today in the cognitive of quaking meetings. The ideas at the heart of that debate were presented in the Levenner Manifesto, the agreement of the people. The grandees representing the landed gentry who held power in Parliament didn't like what was proposed one bit, precisely because it would open up the cognitive government to a representative body of all people, not just the aristocracy and the land of the elite who had stacked Parliament until that point. This is why the political backdrop to the Putney debates has resonance today. Right now, with rising inequality and the collapse of the post-war economic consensus, we are facing, in a very real sense, the emergence of a form of technologically enabled neo-feudalism. An asset-rich minority increasingly extracts wealth from the vast majority of the population and that landless population has very little direct control or voice in terms of that economic arrangement. This was the case 375 years ago and one of the motivations of the English Civil War was the promise that this situation might be reformed in the aftermath of the conflict. It didn't happen. 18 months after the debates, the core of the group calling for this change, the levelers, will be broken up by quomrel. Their ideas will be suppressed, not resurfacing until the rise of political radicalism and the chartists two centuries later. There was no contemporary record of the Putney debates. A transcript was made by the Secretary to the Army, William Clark, which largely covered the discussions on the 29th of October after the presentation of the Agreement of the People. It was not published at the time and was lost until 1990 when the transcription was discovered in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford. The text of the Putney debates is available in book form or were PDF online. It is a debate between about a dozen men at the heart of quomrel's new model army. It's very long and there seems to be little point in reproducing it here, if only because in the modern context it requires a deeper analysis to understand the perspectives involved. I first read the modern text, rewritten in modern English and the shorthand notes transcribed by William Clark when it was published in 1998. At that time what I found the most compelling were the contributions from Thomas Rainsborough, one of the leading levelers and one of the main contributors to the debate who spoke in opposition to the Army Grandi Henry Ayrton. What follows then is an edited form of Thomas Rainsborough's speeches during the Putney debates, edited to give a sense of the political consciousness of the levelers at that time, so that we may contrast what progress has been made over the last 375 years. At that time what Rainsborough said was revolutionary, the notion of taking political power from unmodern economic elite is, today, equally revolutionary. Extracts from Thomas Rainsborough's speeches to the Putney debates, 29th of October 1647. I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he, and therefore truly sir I think it clear that every man that is to live under a government awed first by his own consent to put himself under that government and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under. I do hear nothing at all that can convince me why any man that is born in England ought not to have his voice in the election of burgesses. It is said that if a man have not a permanent interest he can have no claim and that we must be no freer than the laws will let us be and that there is no law in any chronicle will let us be freer than that we now enjoy. Truly I think that there is not this day reigning in England a greater fruit or effect of tyranny than that this very thing would produce. Truly I think that the people of England have little freedom. I am a poor man therefore I must be oppressed. If I have no interest in the kingdom I must suffer by all their laws be they right or wrong. To the thing itself property in the franchise I would know how it comes to be the property of some men and not of others. If it be a property it is a property by a law because I think that the law of the land in that thing is the most tyrannical law under heaven. This is the old law of England and that which enslaves the people of England that they should be bound by laws in which they have no voice at all. I desire to know how this comes to be a property in some men and not in others. How it comes about that there is such a property in some freeborn Englishmen and not in others. What has the soldier fought for all this while? He has fought in slave himself to give power to men of riches men of estates to make him a perpetual slave. If these men must be advanced and other men set under foot I am not satisfied. If their rules must be observed and other men that are not an authority be silenced I do not know how this can stand together of the idea of a free debate. I wonder how that should be fought willfulness in one man that is reasoned in another. And therefore till I see that I shall use all means I can and I think that there is no fault in any man to refuse to sell that which is his birthright.