So my name is Nira Sitola. I'm PhD student at high school. So brief introduction about myself is I've completed master's in computer science from Syracuse University. And I'm working towards ethics in AI and data science as my research topics towards my PhD. So today I'll be talking about some of the problems, approaches and future related to ethics in data science with perspective given on the jobs as well. So maybe I'll start now. So if you have any question please feel free to stop me or let me know. So just to start with the motivation. So the job demands for the data science are really growing according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is estimated that around 11.5 million new jobs will be there by 2026 for the data science. And what does the typical data science jobs require is it consists of processing the data to find the patterns that will benefit the organization to make some business decision which would profit them. But then with the popularity of the data science and the machine learning and AI that has been used in different domains, there's also rise in the ethical concerns related to that. And it's also being like, look carefully by the industries and now the job descriptions on the data science are including the job responsibility related to the ethical concerns. So these are not only related to one job industry but I saw that many diverse industries including the responsibility related to the ethics in the data science in the job descriptions. So I was just quickly looking on the job and like advertisement site like LinkedIn and indeed.com with the title data science and then including the ethics in the job descriptions. I found some of them which I'm just going to quickly go through. So here I'm just showing some of the job descriptions that has data scientists on the title and also includes AI ethics on the responsibility or the some of the tasks that would require the position to handle in the future. So here, just looking at the first one is it says the distinguished data scientist on ethical artificial intelligence and it was asked on the Verizon which is the technology and the communication. So it's more about the mobile network and internet. So here they asked about like knowledge of AI ethics including fairness, accountability and transparency and previous work related to machine learning audit. So other is like the data scientist on the freestyle outfits and it was on the statistics. The company is more about personalized styling, shopping and clothing company. And it talks about like if you think ethics in AI the impact of machine learning on society and want to bring that to bear in our work here. So and the other is the Microsoft which is software electronics and PC and other different services Microsoft provides. And here in the data science job title it asks about contribution towards the ethics and privacy policies for collecting and preparing data provided providing the updates and suggesting around internal best practices. So even over here we can see like three different industry over here like Verizon is technology and communications whereas this fix is about personalized clothing and Microsoft is more about the software electronics and PC and similarly other industry also are including ethics on the job descriptions like other one icon was scientist engineer on data analytics from Segan and then it asks about testing the machine learning models such as cross validation AB testing for bias and fairness. And the other one was data scientist on the other company which has a data science as a service platform. And it also asks about the knowledge about fairness accountability and transparency in machine learning. And similarly the Walmart which is the retail department store or the grocery store it asks for the data scientist position and then it also have inclusion of like that's related to the ethics and bias on the AI and machine learning where it says about to measure the diagnosis and mitigate the bias in our AI and ML solutions. So the list tip on increasing so other one was like chemical insurance which is the insurance company and then asked about the cross validation and bias and fairness on the machine learning models over here. And similarly, automotive industries like previous asked about the data scientist position which also includes the bias and fairness. And similarly Amazon web service which is about more about cloud computing also required like understanding of the in depth of technical and scientific issues related to machine learning fairness and explainability and develop new solutions to solve in ML problems ML fairness and explainability. So the list may keep on increasing. So the whole which I wanted to show was like it's not only one particular industry which is looking at taking more seriously on the ethics but the whole different diverse domains of the industries are like taking it more seriously and have started including on the job description as well when they ask for data scientists they also look for some knowledge on AI ethics. So I just want to start with the sum of the backgrounds and like how the problems have been growing and what are the problems that have like got more attention. So some of them have already like at the end of the previous talk, Professor Daniela Kunal so the example of like how machine learning model or the deep learning model can be biased. So there are various other cases that has been found. So I'll be discussing some of them. So one of them was like YouTube auto captioning which was which a researcher found that there was higher error rate in women speakers as compared to men. And this was published around like 2017 and other is like word embedding. So many of us are maybe familiar with like comparison of the word embedding where the words of similar were predicted. So as an example, there was like man is to king then woman is to queen would be like predicted. So using the similar kind of embedding researchers found it could be really biased. So they found like man is to computer then woman is to homemaker. So that was biased found on the word embedding using the word to vex. And then which is the popular model everybody used for word embedding. So other was like collection of data itself could be biased. So this was on 2013, I was in 2013. So collection of data to understand the portholes using the smartphones in Boston area could be potentially biased because the smartphones may not be accessible to everyone. So that may cause bias in the data collection. And eventually when those bias data are used for building any models or making any decision then that may not result on the fear decision and cause the bias decision itself. So other issue was from the compass which is the software that was built and then found to be biased against wondrous as it produced higher risk scores for black defendants compared to the white. So other problems are related to the privacy as well. So this was back in 2012 when target the retail industry for the store was able to predict in is a pregnancy and sent advertisement for baby products when even the family of a teenager was not aware about pregnancy. And the other problem of privacy was found when like two anonymized data from the Netflix and internet movie based database were combined by researchers and they could identify the individual in the record data set, even though it's two data is both of this data set were anonymized separately when combined they could reveal the identity of individuals. So other problem was tables.com like charge different prices based on customers estimated chip code. So that would be biased based on like because based on the chip code people the system was trying to estimate the people's spending habit incomes and other different things which then they used to present different prices for the customers. Similarly e-commerce websites like Home Depot and other travel site display different pricing based on the mobile and desktop the user are using. So this could be like privacy related data that we may not be aware but then systems were using those to give some recommendation which were problematic. And like one of example we saw in the earlier talk different problems with the image application as well. So Google made headlines in the news on 2015 when with the headlines like Google photos labeled black people as gorillas. And this was the other case where AI powered facial detection software built could not detect the mask in face. And there are other serious issues as well like in the research where the researchers tried to build a prediction of like being someone being criminals using the images of the real persons and trying to predict it. And it was published as a paper on with 89.51% accuracy. The model could predict if someone would be criminal or not which drew a lot of like negative attention and researchers had to justify their work. So and the other work was that caused like that drew the attention was like model built to predict whether a person is gay which raised the serious ethical concerns. And this was this project I think was used by using the 75,000 or something images that were found on the dating website. So this drew a lot of like attention on like how the data that are available on the website are being used and how can they be used by anyone. So the concern was I think like just because some data are available can we use it or not and then how that affects the privacy of the other people. So there has been a lot of like approaches to handle these policies like problems with some of them being introduction of new policies, rules and the organizers themselves. So some of them are like California introduced the new privacy law that would allow users to have rights to see, delete or stop the sales of the personal details from all kinds of tech industries that operate in the state. San Francisco in California ban facial recognition technology by police and other agencies. And the other policy was the after the fatal accident of Uber autonomous vehicle in Arizona Uber was banned from further testing there. And even the researchers, universities and the industries are collaborating together with multiple disciplines to see what are the new policies rules that are needed to handle these problems better. And we're maybe other one of the popular policy maybe GDPR, which I think is like implemented in the Europe. And the other approaches is to look for the algorithmic transparency. So understanding the machine learning results can become really hard when the data grows when we have large data and then it has a lot of features it becomes difficult to know exactly what's going on inside and how these models are making decisions. So which makes them like kind of black box model and these models can turn someone's life upside down. Algorithms can use like statistics and produce probability scores which are difficult to interpret. And ultimately still they would be used to make decision which may include like someone could be bad hire or not. Like when I, if I apply for a job if my application has some feature that will just reject my application even for the job without me knowing like what's going on over there. And it could also be something like risky borrower if I'm applying for a bank loan or anything it could be rejected based on different features that system has or the machine learning model has learned and may try to relate to my application. So that could be some of the negative impact. And so there, we have, like algorithmic transparency has been one of the focus of the whole research as well to make it more transparent on what's going on behind when the machine learning models or these algorithms are making some decisions on any of the tasks. And one of them has been like investigating an effect of removing any training point of the model on getting inside of like how it's influencing the training or on the prediction of the model. So other one has been like visual analytic system. So that which looks on the goal of bringing the humans in the loop than just relying only on the machine learning models or for making decisions so that there's like more understanding on what's happening on the predictive outcomes of the system. We can also see some of the deep learning package which like TensorFlow shows some of the visual analytics on displaying how it's making decision or how the data has been transferred in the algorithm itself. Besides that, there are also like different kinds of computational methods that are like immersing which are trying to handle the bias and fairness issues. One of them is training the separate models for the different groups so that it's fair for different groups and rather like combining everyone together. And there are also being different introduction of like the metrics of fairness. So in the computational field, there have been like a formulation or the equation for the fairness itself which the model would try to learn and be careful of not making a bias decision. So the goal of the model would be to maximize the fairness for the similar treatment among the groups and individuals. And beside them in the universities, there has been like different courses on ethics to make students more aware about these ethical concerns on the field of AI and data science. So these courses are, some of them are data oriented. So one of the example I saw was where the students learn from their own data on like what can the data reveal, but privacy issues and then predictive analytics, what can it reveal from the data so they have like some hands on experience on what are the ethical concerns on the particular data and how can they think about it. And there are also courses which includes theories and philosophies related to ethics because ethic terms itself may not be clear to many of the students. So there are different philosophies that are being introduced for students to make them a little bit more aware about the ethical issues and how they are handled on different fields and domains which can be taken into the AI as well. And the other way is to introduce the case studies. These examples that I discussed about the problems are also being introduced on different courses so that students are more aware of like what are the previous problems that have occurred due to the use of AI and that caused the bias or the unfair decisions. And some of the future work I see is like the interdisciplinary approaches. So instead of like only computational or the computer science being more focused on the AI and the data science, I think more of the current works have started in including experts from different fields from like social science and other fields like journalism or the domain experts which then gives like more understanding of like what could be the issues related to bias and fairness in the algorithms and only thinking from the computational perspective. Other future works I see is the cross-cultural differences in the case studies and research because even with the AI ethics and fairness bias all these different issues that are there the most of the focus has been on the Western world and even on like more on the US society. So there are more future works to be done on the implementation of these case studies on different society. How would this be related on some of the Asian context or something related on different society because there has been some problem on like just importing algorithms or the algorithms from one society to other may not work. So as an example like we can adopt the technology because the computational system may be similar on different society but then ethics may be different on different society which makes it a little bit complicated. So the understanding of different cultures and backgrounds may be something required more for developing the ethics and to mitigate the bias issues on related to the AI on different societies. And there are also challenges on implementation itself for these ethical issues because there's lack of unified regulatory framework and as well as it's vague to apply in practice because if we think from the computational perspective we can just like write some code or do some mathematical computation to ensure if everything is correct but then if we think from the ethical perspective there may not be like something that would apply on every cases because that's something which needs like more analytical thinking and understanding. So it becomes really difficult to apply in practice even if there is policies and then if there are rules of regulations and like I said there's like proven methods to translate AI ethics principle into practice which is the other challenge and then future work. In context of high school I see there like the good various future works as well which would help on the future works. Some of them is like the school gives broader understanding of data. So from my personal experience I come from the computer science background. When I was in computer science most of my focus was to get the data into the model and increase the performance of the model but then I was not much aware of like how the whole process of collection of data labeling of the data goes. So that's something which I learned in high school which gives the broader understanding of like how even the research question or the problems are defined and how the colleagues recollect the data how we label the data what are the problems that may occur and labeling the data. So this gave me like broad understanding of like what may be the possible issues when I just take the data and then build a model. So also high school is diverse. So we have experts from the different domains. So knowing data from different domains would also be useful to understand like what may be the problem and one domain may not be another other but then how can we think about like from the domain specific problems. And so like I said, the diverse faculty who have expertise on different kinds of data and methods as well. So one of the easy way for me was to reach out to different professors and talk about the research and also to volunteer on the research projects which gives the idea of like how to handle the data how that data handles and what are the problems experts think about and then how are the approaches to take and how to address them when we are doing some processing or applying them. And beyond that, they are also like diverse student collaboration which includes like different departments of students from different departments take different courses in high school like data analytics and natural language processing, data science, data visualization, human computer interaction and others. So there are a lot of opportunities on collaborating with the different students themselves which gives them understanding of like how others view the data because something I learned like coming into high school was like, I have different kind of biases that I may not be aware of but when I work with others and I realize those kind of bias and I understand like where I can think more critically when I'm applying data and making some changes or trying to make some decisions. So here are the references. So maybe if you have any questions. Yeah, so thank you very much. I think there's a couple of questions that we had time for a couple of questions. So the first question was you talked about job descriptions, job postings if you will, where ethics was a key part of it. One of the questions is did you in your searching find any university roles in a university data science positions where ethics was discussed? So I found most of them related to university was like teaching jobs related to ethics but I did not like see with the ethics on the universities off from that but then I think like since different universities are collaborating on and creating the labs on the ethics on the data science. So I think there definitely to be some opportunities for the students who want to do research or to work on that. But I did not look for something related to university and the data science jobs. And maybe time for one last question which is what's one piece of advice you could give either current high school students or recent graduates that are starting to do data science so they weren't hired in into a role that specifically talked about ethics. They're doing data science but what's the one piece of advice that you could give them to maybe either think about something or how can you help them kind of be more ethical than like what's the one thing you would suggest? So those who are in high school I would suggest just to be much involved on the data science project with different faculties because I see like when we're involved in the different faculties research projects we can see how the data is being handled and then different questions comes up not only within like from ourself but different students or the students or faculties or the researchers ask about ethical concerns. So that gives some of the awareness of like what to think about. So that's something I would say and those who are like recent graduate as well I would say like to keep on looking for the news and then as well as the because I keep on seeing different kind of ethical issues. So that's something I would say for the recent graduate as well to follow up on the research and the ethical issues because those who are in high school I think they have some opportunities to even work on the projects related to the AI ethics and then data science.


All right, so I'm gonna talk about the Apple Watch. And yeah, you might have other sleep trackers, but this is the sleep tracker that I've been using to track my sleep and also optimize my, I haven't actually had a lucid dream as a result of this work, but I wanna talk about my experience with the Apple Watch as a sleep tracker. So, and I'll probably overlay some footage of the actual Apple Watch and going through the settings and everything like that, but the Apple Watch itself is a really good sleep tracker. And there's a few features I wanna talk about this, but firstly, you should know that it's not cheap, except if you get the Apple Watch 3, which is the one I've got, which is now only 190 pounds. So like, I guess it's just over 200 euros or $200. It's not cheap, straight off the bat. And it doesn't come with a default sleep tracker, meaning it doesn't have like the other Apple Watch health settings, you know, where it has like step counter and all of that stuff. But the sleep tracker that you can get, which is I think it's three pounds, you can get, you can buy a third party one for three pounds or you can pay an extremely, you know, high price for a recurring one. You can pay like eight pounds a month for, you know, a more luxury premium sleep tracker. I've tested both and I have to say the one's three pounds basically does everything you need it to do. There's not really any reason to pay for the recurring one unless you just have money to throw away. So, yeah, I'll be overlaying some footage of, you know, the actual app itself and why I think it's good. But here's a few things that you might want to know about how the Apple Watch tracks sleep and also just a few warnings and tips and things like that. So, firstly, if you do have lots of tattoos like I do, especially tattoos on the wrist area, it's not going to work as well as it should. Especially if you have dark, thick tattoos on the wrist like this one, for example, you will find that the Apple Watch heart rate laser, the infrared laser can't really penetrate through the ink so you don't get an accurate reading. And this is really annoying. There's nothing we can really do about this. Apart from just waiting for them to make a better Apple Watch that can read through the tattoo ink. But I did find a workaround. In my case, I did find a workaround because on this particular wrist, there seems to be like a gap in the ink. You know, just where this particular part of the tattoo is, there's a little gap there and the laser can go through the gap. So it works for me, but if you have really solid tattoo sections on your wrist, it's not going to work. Yeah, bear that in mind. Most people don't have wrist tattoos, however, so 90% of people will be fine. But if you do, then it's a bit annoying. It does limit the features you can use. Like for example, the wrist detection doesn't work as well and also the passcode function doesn't work as well because those rely on the sensor. It needs to be able to tell when you're not wearing it in order for it to lock the Apple Watch. For the 90% of you who don't have wrist tattoos, it's fine. And I think it's going to be a really good sleep tracker for you. Here's how the sleep tracking function works. It doesn't detect body temperature and it has a very limited way of working out which sleep stage you're in and it does that by basically movement and also just the algorithm which works out things like what time it is, your usual sleep routine and pattern. And it calculates that based on a rolling four-day average. So if it knows that you go to bed roughly at 10 p.m. and then one night it detects that you moved a little bit as you were going to sleep, it knows that you're probably trying to fall asleep at 10 p.m. even though you're still moving. So it's quite clever in that sense. It can work out when you should be sleeping and when you probably are not sleeping. But it mainly tracks things through the heart rate sensor and the accelerometer, the gyroscope. So it does know roughly when you're moving. It knows when you should be sleeping. And then on the app itself, it gives you a readout of what stage of sleep you're in and how much you are moving. This is quite important for working out your sleep quality because obviously in low deep sleep stages, you shouldn't be moving much. You should be quite still. And it also combines that with your heart rate throughout the night as well. So you can kind of tell what your sleep quality is like. It gives you a readout of your heart rate variability in the morning, which is very useful if you're exercising or doing hip training or something, you need to know your heart rate variability. And I explained more about that on my other channel about biohacking already. It's not really a lucid dreaming metric, but it's quite useful to know. It's quite useful to know that it can track that. So yeah, the app can track things like deep sleep, light sleep, and being awake obviously when your phone's moved. And it can do all this quite accurately. And then as you go throughout a period of days and weeks, you can actually write notes on your sleep as well. So you can write like, for example, last night I got more deep sleep than usual. And the only thing I changed was I didn't wear a shirt or socks to bed. So I guess you can guess what things affected your sleep quality. So in this case, I would say that I probably got more deep sleep because my body could lower my body temperature more easily because I wasn't wearing a shirt. So things like that are really useful, being able to write notes alongside each day, almost like a sleep journal. In terms of actually giving you actionable insights, it is really good because you can look back, like I said, and you can tell which things had an impact on your sleep quality. In my case, wearing a shirt or not, wearing socks, whether the window was open or what time you went to bed, these things all have a big impact on your sleep quality. So that's an interesting thing to think about. Another thing is if you want to learn how to, if you want to do, I guess you could say sleep hacking, if you want to use your sleep quality data to lose your dream, that's also quite easy because here's what you can do. You can look back after you've collected about a week of data and you can look and easily see what times you fall asleep and when during the night you enter your deep sleep. So you can actually kind of guess when your REM sleep will be as well. Really interesting function because although it doesn't tell you when your REM sleep is, it tells you when your deep sleep is, you can kind of guess based on that your sleep cycle. Especially when you think about the fact that the new Apple Watch, so I think the new one is like the five or the six or something like that, it's hundreds of dollars, okay? But the Apple Watch three, which is the one I have, is only $200. And the difference in price is amazing but the features that it has are very similar. So you're actually getting a huge amount of features just for $200. And yeah, I love a bargain, I love a good deal. So in my opinion, that's a really good deal. So if you're considering getting some sort of lucid dreaming device or expensive sleep tracker, yeah, this is kind of an expensive sleep tracker but it can do so much more than that. And I'm gonna get onto how, what else it can do for lucid dreaming as well. But it really can do a lot. By the way, if you are watching these videos regularly, I'd really appreciate when you leave comments, I'll try and reply to everyone. It really does help the engagement and stuff like that. So anyway, so the Apple Watch, going back to the auto sleep app, which is what it's called by the way, the sleep app I'm using, it does also give you reminders based on your, based on your last week of sleep data, it tells you when you should be going to bed in order to get the minimum amount of sleep that you need to restore your sleep debt or credit or whatever. So that's useful, really useful to know that because you can work out the best time to go to bed. Going back to lucid dreaming, here's how it's useful. Okay, so not only can you use it to work out when your sleep stages happen, how long they last, and roughly what time you wake up naturally, but by knowing that, so in my case I know that I wake up naturally about 7.30 to 8.00 AM, PM would be crazy. So I wake up roughly between 7.30 and 8.00 AM. So that, because I know that, I can then count back about 45 minutes and I know that I'll probably be in REM sleep around that time or I can tweak it. I can say, right, tomorrow I'll wake up 45 minutes earlier and try and hit REM sleep in order to do a wake-up bed. The next day if that doesn't work, I can go back a bit further and you can write notes in the actual sleep app itself. Very useful if you're trying to lose a dream. But beyond that, and this is the reason I really love the Apple Watch for sleep tracking, being able to track your sleep is incredibly valuable. Being able to work to actually know how much high quality sleep you're getting is the most important thing you could know. If you're tracking things like, if you're journaling, if you're meditating, you're tracking your calories, or if you have any interest in optimizing your body, trying to tweak things and work out what you can do to make yourself feel and perform better. I would say sleep is the number one thing. It's like the most important thing. And I'm not just saying that because I'm biased because I have a channel about dreaming. It genuinely is. People will refer to sleep as a force amplifier. So whatever you're trying to do, if you sleep better, your output in that thing is gonna be better. And this applies to everything. If you're trying to recover, boost your immune system from a virus, by the way, coronavirus, whatever it is, sleep will help you with that. So it's really important to track your sleep and actually see, because yeah, you might be sleeping nine hours a night, but if you're only getting 10 minutes of deep sleep, then something is wrong. You're not sleeping properly. And a lot of people think that their sleep is fine just because they are sleeping or they're in bed for a certain amount of hours, but that's not the case. As you will very quickly learn when you start tracking your sleep, you could be in bed for 10 hours, but you're only getting half an hour of deep sleep, which is not enough. Equally, you could be in bed for six hours and get two hours of deep sleep. It really varies, and this is why it's important to track it, because then you can work out how to influence your sleep and how to actually get more deep sleep. It's a very important metric to know is what percentage of your sleep hours are deep. Anyway, you can track all that with the app and I'll put links to these in the description, but you can just type in Apple Watch 3. I'm sure you know which one it is. And oh, by the way, if you want to see it, this is the one. I will probably have overlaid some close-ups of this anyway on this video, but if you wanted to see it on me, that is the Apple Watch. Oh yeah, so also it can be used to echo notifications from your iPhone. Now, this, by the way, won't apply to you if you have Android, because my app is not on Android, but if you do care about that and if you do have my app and you have an iPhone, you can echo your notifications from your Apple Watch to your iPhone. Now, why would you care about that? Well, my app, which is called How To Loose It, gives you, among other things, it gives you an auto shut-off alarm for wake up to bed, which obviously when it's echoed on the Apple Watch is a haptic alarm, so it doesn't actually make a noise, it just vibrates on your watch. Very useful if you live with a partner, if you sleep with someone else. You can wake yourself up to do wake up to bed without waking them up, and my app can do that. And like I said, it can echo notifications from your phone to your watch. So the functionality works perfectly on the Apple Watch, even without me having to develop an Apple Watch app, which is just another bonus for me, but anyway. I forgot the cat was in this room. So another thing that my app can do is, and this is the main feature, is that it's a reality check reminder, meaning that you can set it up to randomly remind you to do a reality check throughout the day. Very important feature, and like I said, the Apple Watch 3, which is one of the older versions, can mirror notifications from your phone. What this means is you can have your phone in your pocket, but your watch will get the notifications. So you can be walking around, going about your day, and then suddenly your wrist vibrates and it says, are you dreaming? You will hopefully see my notifications, which are coming through on the watch. Very useful feature. So if you just, if you wanted another reason to get this, and also if you already have an iPhone, because like I said, it doesn't work with Android, you can get that in the description, and then you just type into the app store on iPhone, you just type in how to Lucid. You don't need to, there's no iPhone, so there's no Apple Watch app, but if you get the app on your iPhone, it will echo notifications onto the watch. So basically it's the same as just having an Apple Watch app. The functionality is all there. By the way, if you do have my app, I would really appreciate if you could leave a quick review of that, because yeah, it's quite hard to get app store reviews, and yeah, it would really help me out. And if you do like it, I would love to hear what you think. If you have a criticism of it, or something you don't like about it, I really want to hear those criticisms. I want to hear what you think, because I'm working closely with my developer and I want to make sure that the how to Lucid app is the best one on the mark out there. It's the best one. So I want to make it the best thing for you. So leave a comment on this video, or just reply to an Instagram message, story, whatever. Find a way of leaving a comment for me, and I'll try and improve the app going forward. So I hope you liked this video. Make sure to subscribe if you're not already, and I'll see you next time.


Y Llywyddyn Y Llywyddyn, the first item of business this afternoon is Scottish Parliament corporate body questions. I'll call question number one. John Scott, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Parliament corporate body what plans it has to address the pooling of water on the roof of the garden lobby. David Stewart, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As the member may recall, a question relating to the garden lobby roof drainage was raised on 10 November 2016, and members will give the following The inspection of the roof was carried out in 2007 by a property service consultant, Lee Boyd. The garden lobby roof consists of stainless steel cladding, and glazed panelled roof lights designed as leaves positioned close together. That, combined with the three-dimensional form, creates a complex roof arrangement. Their inspection confirmed that this design can lead to water pooling in certain areas after heavy or persistent rainfall. This bespoke roof has shallow falls and raised seams, which are part of the original architectural design. Our consultants were able to advise that that does not affect the roof's waterproof structure. We clean this roof regularly to maintain its appearance and to check that the drainage points are clear and free flowing. However, areas of pooling are still expected to occur. John Scott, please. I thank Mr Stewart for that answer, but members of the corporate body will be aware that, in recent weeks, not only has standing water covered a large area of the roof and that a red bloom and algal bloom sort has developed on the roof. Has the corporate body considered installing one or several small electric float pumps, discreetly located, to drain off this pond of water and thereby reduce the area covered by standing water, which, in the long term, notwithstanding Mr Stewart's reply, will help to maintain the integrity of the roof, as well as reducing the annual cost of cleaning the roof of some £7,000 or thereby. As such, an investment in roof drainage solution would probably pay for itself in one year. David Stewart has thought our question. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Perhaps it would be helpful if I provided a little bit more information for the member. Facilities management has been aware of the issue since occupation of the building in 2004, and that led to commissioning and inspection by our property service consultants, as I said, Lee Boyd. Following the review of the inspection, Facilities management undertake regular reviews of the standing water in the roof, and I have currently an effective maintenance regime to clear the standing water from the roof and remove any discoloration caused by the allergy growth. FM regularly reviewed the issue with the onsite contractor to make sure that there is no change in the roof integrity and that the maintenance interventions are frequent enough to keep the issue under control. However, I am very happy to arrange for officials to meet again with Mr Scott to discuss the issue further and to assess the very constructive suggestions that he has brought forward this afternoon. To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it plans to increase the number of electric vehicle charging points. David Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Yes, there are plans in place to increase the number of electric vehicle charging points from our current two-spaces to four. Grunt funding has already been applied for additional electric vehicle charging, and the energy saving trust has provisionally awarded us 75 per cent of the costs up to a cap of £1,500. The full cost of installing a vehicle charging point that serves two parking spaces is between £2 and £3,000. The additional charging point is on the Corporate Body's project list and we will progress it in due course. Currently, both existing charging points are in use most business days, therefore the corporate body is proactively planning for the future by ensuring that capacity is available. We currently have access to an electric car as part of the Enterprise Car Club. Members who wish to know that it is exclusive ability to book for business journeys and offers members, staff and corporate body staff the option of undertaking journeys in a more environmental friendly way to register on the Enterprise Car Club website to book the vehicle. Maurice Golden. I welcome that very positive response, but given the targets to vastly increase electric vehicle usage, will the corporate body revisit the number of charging points allocated as and when required? David Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Again, it might be useful if I can provide a slightly more detailed answer for the member. The Scottish Parliament works hard to reduce its carbon footprint and we already have a target to reduce our carbon footprint by 42 per cent by 2020, in line with the Scottish Government's targets. We are in track to achieve that with the missions already down 37 per cent on the 2005 to 2006 baseline figure. We do encourage members to register with Enterprise Car Club. If members and staff are converting to electric vehicles, we will encourage them to inform officials in advance so that we can incorporate that information into our future plans for further electric charging points. I note the positive answer from my colleague David Stewart. How are the transport sectors now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases contributing to global climate change? It is important that we continue to lead, for example, in the Scottish Parliament. In addition to the charging points, what is the corporate body doing to encourage modal shift in the Parliament to get greater use of public transport and active travel? What information does the corporate body hold on transport choices of the Parliament to inform its future actions? It is a bit outwith the original question, but if you wish to answer it, Mr Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Scottish Parliament has an extensive sustainable travel plan, which is available on our website, which details measures taken to encourage staff and visitors to adopt active and sustainable travel. I agree with the points that the member has raised. We clearly want to achieve our climate change targets. Question 3, John Mason. To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what consideration it has given to reducing the portion size of food served in the garden-level restaurant. David Stewart. I hear groans all round about that one, Mr Mason. David Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The portion sizes served in the garden-level restaurant are based on standard catering practices for workplace restaurants. We have no plans to reduce portion sizes. I must come back here more often, Presiding Officer. Although customers can ask for smaller portions, our catering staff will be happy to oblige. When developing the menus, our executive chef takes into consideration that lunch may be the main meals of the day for many customers, however, there are lighter options available. John Mason. I thank the member for that reply. On a serious note, we are told by both the cancer and diabetes sectors that obesity is one of the major problems that they face. I accept that some people need to eat more than others do, but the assumption in the restaurant seems to be that the norm is a very large portion, and you have to really ask for a smaller one. Last week, we had a very large pizza offered to us, plus chips, when in fact half a pizza was sufficient for me. I think that the people have spoken, Presiding Officer. The garden-level restaurant holds the Healthy Living Award plus, which means that all meals are nutritionally balanced and that within the area, wide choice is available to our customers. We are rarely audited for the award to ensure that our meals continue to meet the criteria. Where possible, we will indicate to customers the calific value of a meal and allow them to make a more informed choice. I dread what is coming. Supplementary Murdo Fraser, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. What comfort does the corporate body have for all the growing lads and lassies around the chamber who occasionally would like larger portions? I fear that we are descending to some nonsense, but David Stewart, if you feel you want to answer. Thank you, Presiding Officer. We are thinking of reallocating members' rooms so that members' need more exercise would have to go to the top floor. To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Body how many potential lethal weapons have been seized by security staff in 2017. Jackson Carlaw, please. The parliamentary security office does not—I will put my card in—fail. Some people are enjoying your misdemeanor there. The parliamentary security office does not use the definition of lethal weapon. Mr Stewart might be a bit of a lethal weapon himself, but the term knives and bladed articles is used. All knives, pen knives, scissors and other sharp objects carried by visitors are retained by security staff for the duration of their visit. The total number of such objects retained by security officers in 2017 up to and including 8 June is 841. Knives that can be carried legally in a public place in Scotland are returned to the visitor on leaving. The number of knives surrendered to Police Scotland during 2017 is 70. Alexander Stewart, please. I thank the member for the answer, Presiding Officer. It is paramount that visitors, staff and members feel safe in the building. Can I ask what additional measures have been introduced in recent months to allay any fears and tightened security? Jackson Carlaw, please. In partnership with the parliamentary authorities, Police Scotland recently undertook a comprehensive review of the Scottish Parliament building and external policing arrangements. The corporate body has now received the review report and noted its recommendations, which will be taken forward by the Parliament's head of security in collaboration with Police Scotland and other relevant agencies. It would not be appropriate to discuss any particular recommendations as they pertain to the security of the building and those who work and visit here. To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what assessment it has made of the danger of cyberattacks on its IT systems. David Stewart, please. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body recognised the danger that cyberattacks pose and our advisory audit board recently considered an independent review of our cybersecurity maturity. That review looked across the three critical security domains of technology, people and crisis management and offered assurance that sufficient and effective arrangements are in place to manage cyber threats and risks. Without going into detail for obvious reasons, we also take advice from the police, the security services and the national cyber security centre. Monica Lennon, please. Thank you. I thank David Stewart for his answer. I wonder if there is further advice available to staff and members on any actions they can take to protect themselves against online hacking. In particular, is there any advice available on the use of USB drives on parliamentary devices? David Stewart. I think that the member makes a number of excellent points. Cyber security is a critical risk area that organisations need to understand. It is a risk that continues to evolve and should not be seen solely as an information technology issue. All users of the IT systems have responsibility in this area. Could I recommend to the member and all members the information security guide that is available through IT that gives advice on actions that members should carry out? The BIT office has a number of tools to identify any irregular and unusual activity. As a requirement with the contract with the Scottish Parliament, CGI prepared monthly reports of network performance, sever capacity and certain aspects of some security-related management information, including the identification of malware, the status of anti-warrish software across the desktop state and any threats that are blocked by existing firewalls. I conclude questions to the corporate body. I look forward to the questions that John Mason receives in the canteen. I will allow a short pause while the front bench changes places.


Hey everyone, welcome to my channel. Today we're making shredded beef taco soup. Now we're making this, we're using a chuck roast, which we are going to tenderize it like crazy in a pressure cooker. And if you have an instant pot, then that'll work as well. So I'm Rockin' Robin, and I'm going to show you how to make it right after this. If you love shredded beef recipes, you are going to love this one. All right, so first up we have our Chuck roast here. This is a more inexpensive cut of meat, and it works well when you're, you know, using a pressure cooker to just tenderize it. It'll come out beautiful. We'll need some taco seasoning. Now I have my own taco seasoning that I like to use as opposed to buying it at the store. And I'll leave a link for you down in the description of the video, and right up here I'll put a link. We'll need a yellow onion, finely diced. I have quite a few cloves of garlic here. I love garlic. That's probably about three or four, and we'll need some olive oil. I'm using some extra light here that can handle a little bit higher temperatures. We have some canned kidney beans here. Organic corn. I have some tomato sauce and some fire roasted diced tomatoes. The first thing I want to do here is I've got my taco seasoning about three tablespoons sitting here on this plate kind of Spread it out, and then I'll take the roast, and we're going to just coat it with all that seasoning. So I'm just kind of dipping it all over, getting it coated. There's some string around this just to kind of hold the pieces together. I'll take that off before putting it in the pressure cooker. This just helps keep it manageable. And whatever seasoning doesn't get on the roast, I'm just going to toss in the pan as well. And we're going to sear this in our pressure cooker, which is going to add to, of course, more flavor. Alright, let's head on over to the stove. Here at the stove, I've got my pressure cooker sitting right here, and I'm heating it up over medium heat. I want to get some oil in the pan. Hopefully you can see it okay. It's kind of a deep pan, so I'm going to pour, you know, a tablespoon or so of oil in here. Let that heat up for just a minute. Alright, so I've got myself a couple of pairs of tongs. You can see here that's going to help me control the meat. I cut that string off the meat by the way, so it's probably going to come apart a bit. So we're going to set this right down inside the pan and just let it sear. We're just a couple minutes or so. Alright, it's been a couple minutes. I'm going to flip this over. See that nice searing going on there? And we'll let that go another couple minutes. I'm going to try this point to sear the sides a little bit. I'm just going to hold the roast up on its edge, sitting up on the edge there. Let it sit there for 30 seconds to a minute and then I'll flip it on the other side. Now once I get this all seared, I'm going to just take this out and place it on a plate that I got right back here. Let that rest for a bit and then we're going to see how much oil I've got in the bottom of the pan here. And I'm going to add a little bit more oil to it and add our onions. So pour in a little bit more oil and cook our onions. We're going to saute these, stir them around. We're going to kind of pick up a lot of that brown stuff and get it into the onions there. And we're going to cook these for about five or five minutes. Alright, it's been five minutes. You can see how beautiful these onions look after they've picked up all the brown spots on the bottom of the pan. It's time to add our garlic. We'll let this go and saute the garlic for just about a minute or so.  And then we're just going to blend that up until it's nice and liquefied. And then we're going to pour that right into our pressure cooker. And we're going to toss in the tomato sauce as well. Now we're going to add another tablespoon of taco seasoning. Maybe one and a half of those. We're going to stir this up. And then we're going to place the meat back into the pressure cooker. And then we're going to pressure cook this for an hour. So I'm going to bring this up to pressure and then we'll set the timer for an hour. Our roast has been cooking now for an hour. And I'm going to take it out of the pressure cooker. So I just released the valve that releases all the pressure. And once that stops making noise, I'll remove the top. Now we're going to take the meat out of the pressure cooker here.  And then I'm going to put it back into the pot. Once all the meat is shredded and placed back into the pot, then we can add the rest of our ingredients. So now all we have to do is take our cans of corn and we're just going to toss them right in. Juice, liquid and all. Throw it all in there. And here's the kidney beans. Again, I didn't drain them. I'm just tossing them in.  What we have to do is heat this up and then it's ready to serve because the corn and the beans are already cooked. They just need to be heated up. Our taco soup is done. I poured it into a clear bowl here so that you could see it a little better than in that big, tall pressure cooker. So you can see the nice chunks of shredded beef in here. We've got the corn and the kidney beans. It looks fantastic. So now what we have to do is serve it up and take a bite. You can garnish this up or you can leave it just as it is. That's up to you. But what we like to do, as I'm serving this up here, is we like to top it with a little bit of grated cheese and some corn chips or tortilla chips. You just take a few and just break them up and place them right on top. And you've got a great meal. This is a great dish to serve if you have a party because you can do it all ahead of time and then you just let it sit out in a nice crock-pot let's say and people can serve themselves, but it's a great dish. All right, let's give it a go. It's got that great taco flavor that you would expect with the chili powder and the ground cumin. Very delicious, guys. The meat is delicious. I love shredded beef. It is very, very good when we seared it with all those spices. Delicious. You guys are going to love this. All right, that's our recipe for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it with someone you think might enjoy it. And leave me a comment. Let me know if you're going to try it. Let me know, and if you do try it, let me know how it turns out for you. If you'd like to subscribe to my channel, click that button right up there or the one down below the video next to the bell. And that bell will notify you when new videos are coming out every week. So thanks again for watching. We'll see you next time.


Welcome to today's session of the Command Ceremony. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the invitation to give about bringing more genuine devotion to the Marines, sailors, civilians, and family members of Marine Forces from the U.S. Africa with all the new challenges and new opportunities that responsibility will bring to him. Lord, we... Transferring the colors during the ceremony symbolizes Lieutenant General Langley succeeding command and by accepting the colors to Lieutenant General Michael E. Langley, subject of relinquishment of command. Effective 0900 for August 2022. You stand ready to... ...passions are centered around Marines and their families. It is the example we need to emulate and that's the thing that I admire the most in the Marines admire most about General Michael E. Langley. When I... ...transformation, naval immigration, all the things that will support the fulfillment of force design. The term readiness and the term readiness is the long term readiness. If following your vision and your kind of intent for you to conduct this command, it should be an out of the blue.


In this video, we provide the solution in question number six for practice exam three for math 1030 in which case we're given a quota as if like from a apportionment method q equals 11.499. And we're asked which is that what is the geometric mean between 11 and 12 because you'll notice q sits between 11 and 12. So very interested in what's the geometric mean of 1112 as it relates to q. And then once you've calculated that geometric mean, how should q be geometrically rounded should we round it up or down depending on the geometric mean. So the first thing to do is to compute the square root of 11 times 12, which 11 times 12 is 132. So we want to take the square root of 132 for which you want to utilize a calculator in this situation. This is going to give you 11.489. So the geometric mean is either option E or F A B C and D are have the incorrect geometric means we're not going to consider them. So then when it comes to rounding if our quota is larger than the geometric mean we round up if our quota is smaller than the geometric mean we round it down 11.499 which was in the danger zone is bigger than 11.489. So the correct answer would be F we would round this number up using geometric rounding.


What's good y'all she brought us back again with another video and man Shout out to everyone that was able to be a part of the smackdown live stream reaction Tonight was fantastic show was exciting So many things happen shout out to Doug Being able to find a way to join us on the live stream reaction. He's out of town right now You know trying to make sure his future track star You know Mariah his daughter Be you know be the best track star possible shout out to Mariah, man She's going to nationals for track and she just started a few months ago going to nationals Top I believe from one of her team is like top eight in the nation So it's that's a beautiful moment and Doug definitely had to be there for his family for his daughter for that So for him to take time to join us on the live stream That was awesome amazing shout out to you Doug shout out to Mariah shout out to the whole family And y'all you guys are great at amazing and we root for you Mariah make it. You know, so you are the future Olympian Future track star Olympian, but enough of that We got to talk about just this show man Mastin Square Garden. You guys were lit. It was a show sold-out show You guys showed up for sure exciting show They started off with the bloodline Storyline continuing from money in the bank the the the meeting the tribal council meeting and I was not expecting them to start off the show like this, but they did they gave us about a 30 minute almost 40 minute segment of this Epic saga they've been doing with the bloodline. Alright, so let's get into the meat and potatoes or what happened on the show, man So the usos come out Obviously crowd was loving them shout out to Mastin Square Garden You guys were amazing the night showed out sold out arena or I believe over 15,000 When the usos came out crowd was loving it They were just loving, you know, what the usos were, you know, what they had to say or whatever And it was it was it was you know pretty much them just reliving what happened in money in the bank and letting people know We did the impossible J pin Roman Reigns for the one two three, you know, and the crowd was loving them man It was it was a good little vibe Then Paul Heyman and solo come out now Paul Heyman's talking solo's walking with them. You don't see Roman yet they come out and Paul is you know doing his normal stuff solo standing next to him and They pretty much the usos just tell Paul a shut up We ain't we ain't trying to hear what you say Paul say they ain't nobody that can tell me to shut up unless it's Roman Reigns and then solo takes covers his mic and takes the mic from him and The people start chanting solo and I like what they've been doing with solo as of late been planting seeds of him maybe Wanting to truly be the next tribal chief and maybe potentially turn it on Roman pardon Paul Heyman didn't know what was going on Solo gets the microphone and he pretty much throws it out the ring Roller Reigns music it he comes out there. They cut some a commercial break Roman gets in the ring or what not And he's he's he's confused. He's wondering why Have you guys Requested this meeting only the tribal chief should be able to request this type of meeting.  You may have beat me.  So what what's going on here? And I like what the usos did here Because they wanted to prove a point. It was like Let's let me show you what you really been doing and they pulled a Paul Heyman if you guys remember when Paul Heyman had the exhibit a B and C for Sami Zayn and trying to expose him. They did the same thing For Roman and they show nothing but Romans disrespect to Jay Disrespect to Jimmy over these past few years how he's just been all about making sure they fall in line He doesn't really need like the the package didn't show him in a good like like he actually cares about the family Like he's actually a tribal chief there to lead more so to control and Roman sold this so good.  You know I'm saying shout out once again master square garden. You guys were amazing tonight crowd chatting you effed up Come back to Roman Roman was like So good That's not no y'all forced me to be that way.  I do this for you so like you're forced to me so Good at this point Roman has enough gaslighting fuel it fluid Yeah, fluid to fill up MSG tonight because he was gaslighting Both of them trying to manipulate them in and pretty much Jimmy and Jay the reason they show that packages like you can't manipulate us No, more. This is who you are. You don't care about us. That's the point. They were trying to make Roman That's not me. No, I I have to do that because I had to get you guys in line And then this is when Roman starts putting on some great acting He's like, you know what he starts to now try to switch it as if you know I'm saying Everyone else Jimmy and Jay. They're the bad guys here. They don't understand. I do all this for for For our family. I you know I'm saying I've been made of it before The bloodline. I don't need the bloodline. I don't need none of this. I'm good on money He's talking about all the kids he got he got like five kids. That's what he said I ain't trying to take you to your kids, too. Like I'm good. You know what? I'm done.  It's like he's giving up the tribal chief moniker So he walks up to Jay. He's like miss what you want.  He takes it off But what not he looks at Jay like this is what you want and he puts it on Jay crowd goes crazy as if he's the new tribal chief and then he starts to do something that we never thought was gonna happen Mumbo and Roman Proceeds to Neil as if he's acknowledging his tribal chief. He's like, I'm done. You can deal with it I don't want this no more and I'm like, oh, they're setting this up They're setting this up Roman is about to hit Jay with the look you knew it was coming And he was suckering them in to make them care. That's all he's always ever done suckering them in Roman even pulled out the one Single tear he was in this acting bad this whole segment what they did they were in they bag And of course as predictable as Jay went to pat Roman on the shoulder like it's okay Hit him with the Kirk Patrick, right? Right in the jewels the low blow saw it coming and of course, man crowd was booing Jimmy saws it and he proceeds to give Roman the beat. He's giving them the beats. Oh what not not this point He's fighting them stumping them in the corner and then that's when solo comes up from behind them And uh, I want to say he hit him with a I don't think it was a Samoan spike. I think it was a No, it wasn't so much like he didn't want a small spike. Whatever Jimmy falls now Now this is where once again, they started planting some seeds with solo once again.  I'm not sure exactly what the name is I'm sure you guys will let me know but Roman solo picks it up And he's looking at it like with intent like, huh, this will look good on me and the crowd's chanting solo solo solo And he's looking at Roman Roman's looking at him like give it to me, but he's looking like hmm this is This this could be something this this can definitely be something What not and I love that tease but ultimately he ends up putting it on Roman and then that's when Jay gets into the mix of what not starts attacking solo. I believe he ends up getting You're a nagging and then they go for they they go rogue as we expected Roman was gonna sucker them in to try to take them take them off the map So what they do which I which was very you know, it made sense that they did it like this They put Jay in the ropes solo has them tied up in the road So he can't do anything his arms are restrained.   They put him in back in the ambulance or whatnot And that's the end of that segment at the beginning of the show right 30 almost 40 minutes entertaining But I had a feeling they're gonna start to show off like that Not gonna end it on another segment. It only makes sense for the end it ended with some bloodline shenanigans so During I want to say was Grayson Waller's and edge match, which is actually a pretty good match Grayson Waller's debut match on the main roster definitely good enjoyed that They announced during the match that Jay is on his way back He's gonna confront them which I loved loved it Cut to them after the edge in Grayson Waller match You cut to Roman and solo in the back with Paul Haman Paul Haman letting them know Jay's on his way back Roman said That's fine. You can meet me in the ring. So we go This is the last segment of the show come back from commercial break Roman we don't even need the intro to his intro. He's in the ring pretty much like finally, you know, I'm you know Trying to adjust and get this done earlier But a master's degree garden and knowledge me whatever Usos music hit they're looking for me doesn't come down from the entrance way he comes through the crowd come through the crowd a Much talking or what not solo gets on the ring and he attacks solo jumps through the barricade through the crowd Starts giving him the beats whatever Then he picks up a steel chair We should what came down there was steel chair picks up a steel chair goes inside the ring Ducks the attack from Roman hits him with the steel chair And he was about to send him to the upper room with that second steel chair He was holding it for a long time, but solo was able to stop it and break Break it up. Roman was able to roll out the ring. Oh what not and that's when uh Beautiful sight beautiful sight.  It was beautiful. Love to see it He picks up a microphone And he picks up the championship as we expected them to build toys as he picks up Roman range championship. He's like You've gone too far now You took my brother away you injured you hurt my brother Going too far now We ain't we in the tribal court I'm judge jury an extra Executioner and I'm coming for you Roman We don't need nobody else. We don't need my brother in this. We don't need my brothers in this We don't need no no extra stuff. We don't need the wise man just me and you and I'm Me and you one-on-one I'm gonna take this title from you and I'm gonna kick your ass and it was great It was great Roman seeding at the top of the ramp and we pretty much knew that's no way They're taking the story, but it's it's pretty much almost almost confirmed. We're gonna have us a match at At a summer slam the question is will it be a regular wrestling match? Will it be something else? Will it will it will it be some type of stipulation? I don't know but anyway this segment was fantastic Both segments were fantastic The show was really good as well And I am looking forward to seeing what these guys are gonna do leading up to summer slam because the war is not over We just getting started. I can't wait and maybe they do add a stipulation to this Maybe they so when I mentioned it, maybe they do bring back Helen to sell Cuz these definitely got heated with Roman and Jay if you guys remember a few years back at Helen to sell I want to say It was it was a situation where Roman pretty much wanted Jay to acknowledge him or would not and it was it was It was getting good. Even Jimmy was involved in that he Jimmy was interested at the time or whatnot. So I Don't know man. It's gonna be interesting Maybe we do got a Helen to sell match at summer slam for the title. I don't know if it's needed I don't think anyone would trip over it, but we'll see. We'll see it may just be a regular match Or maybe a stipulation match. We'll see either way I'm looking forward to seeing where things go. So comment down below. Let me know are you guys Hiked as much as I am to see where they take Jay versus Roman and how the things are gonna play up Play out leading up to summer stuff because I ain't gonna lie to you They definitely even after money in the bank and how it ended They definitely even turned it up that much more on a smack down And I am looking forward to seeing what they do and what they have going to go forward next But I appreciate all love and support go to 150k and I'm still young speedy YouTube wrestling champion world Appreciate you. I can't even be seen on next one. Peace


Dragonboats aren't the only racing action you can take in this weekend. Tomorrow on the Mississippi between Lake Irving and Lake Bemidji will be the annual First City Duck Race. At 3 o'clock Saturday over 1200 numbered rubber ducks will take the plunge into the river and will travel about 100 yards from Lake Irving to Lake Bemidji. Participants purchased their ducks for $5 apiece. Over the past 11 years, the duck race has raised thousands for programs offered at adult day services. We've taken in over $55,000 for the participants that utilize the program and we've been able to give away $21,000 in cash prizes to individuals supporting us throughout the years. Now there's still a chance if you want to get in on the duck racing action, ducks are available to purchase at the Bemidji Eagles Club and the First National Bank self-location until noon tomorrow. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the Most Merciful. Dear respected viewers, thank you for joining us once more on this, your show, broadcast from the holy city of Karbala, back to the basics in which I, your host, Yahya Seymour, am discussing certain key principles in our dialogue with those who happen to not agree with or not follow the particular religious doctrines that we happen to follow. Of course, there is much to be said about engaging others with disagreements and differences that they have with you. And throughout the past, well, dare I say, since the start of this series, we have attempted to offer a slightly more conducive, respectful method of dialogue and engagement. And we've focused upon the framework of comparing our packages of belief and presuppositions and assumptions about man life in the universe, our beliefs about various things, as collectively what we could call world views. Now, of course, I have stated that everyone, of course, believes or adopts a certain world view even if they claim they don't necessarily do so. Over the past few episodes, we have, of course, tied in the concept of veneration of the Imam, alaihi salatu wa salam, that whoever knows his self knows his Lord. And of course, the narration of the Holy Prophet, salallahu alaihi wa aleh, whoever knows most about himself knows most about his Lord. Now, of course, there are those who would have issue with these particular narrations, but I have, of course, interpreted them in light of our widely spread, widely transmitted traditions and authentic sayings of the Holy Imams. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them. And so, in light of this, we had tied our conversation about the world view of atheism into the conversation about how there is this degree of self-deception in the affirmation of certain beliefs which are acknowledged according to the intellectual and intelligent proponents, advances, and dare I say, founding fathers or ideologues of the atheist world view. We've noted that amongst our intellectuals, there is a tendency to admit certain of the consequences which we would say naturally arise from blanking out the existence of God, blanking out the existence of Allah as a wajam. And what do I mean by this? Dear respected viewers, what I mean by this is that whilst some would love to tell you that atheism is merely the absence of a belief in the deity, it is merely the rejection of the belief in God and nothing else, in the same way that I, as you see more, reject the existence of Thor or Zeus, they would say, I reject the existence of your God and all other gods. Of course, there's a slight difference here, because in reality there is a massive difference between the concept of God that I and the vast majority of monotheistic religions happen to espouse and of course demigods with massive limitations like Zeus and Thor and all the other pre-monotheistic, well, dare I say animalistic or pantheistic beliefs which once existed within the regionalised cults of the world. That is not to argue that they existed prior to monotheism. This is of course something which the Western world and particularly the School of Anthropology of Religion would like to impose upon us, but it's something which we entirely reject. Back to the topic at hand, we had been discussing of course how this particular concept of how when a person knows himself, when a person studies the human self and the self, he would come to a firmer knowledge of Allah if he was truly sincere and of course we've likened this to the concept of the Aql, the intellect spoken about by Imam al-Sadaq, al-Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and indeed his forefathers and successors from the Ahl al-Bait. This narration which states that the Aql, the intellect is that by which ar-Rahman, the merciful, namely Allah Az-Bajal, is worshipped. Now of course we have spoken about the numerous different ways to know and have an understanding of this particular narration and it is of course important for us to understand how this ties in to our discussion on atheism. As I've stated, many a time you will hear from your atheist colleagues and friends, well I just don't see enough evidence for a god. It's not that I have a worldview, it's just that I reject your conception of god and indeed every other conception of god and I don't understand why you're imposing a worldview onto me. Of course we've seen that this is the argument of some of the more simplistic thinkers out there but as for those who are the ideological proponents and giants of the new atheist worldview and those who really roll and run with the philosophical assumptions and consequences of modern day atheism we would understand that the situation is quite different. You can't expect to black out the sun and continue to live under its warmth and its radiance. Likewise we find that the atheist in doing so affirms for himself what we have called playing Russian roulette with all six bullets loaded or essentially decapacitating yourself and completely rendering your intellect as useless. Now of course there are some who are willing to do this and I'm not stating by any means that we are more intelligent than them rather these people have very high IQs. Sometimes we really wonder what is going on when we see that they adopt such beliefs. Now we've already looked at the fact that being an atheist has led such intelligent men as Dr. Alex Rosenberg to reject the concept of thought and essentially say that the concept of a human thinking is essentially a giant illusion similar to watching a film and assuming that it's real. Now of course this is done because in Alex Rosenberg's physicalist materialist worldview there is no room for the non-material non-physical concept known as a thought and indeed there's no such room as for things such as free will or morality and it is of course morality that we had moved on to in last night's discussion. We quoted a very renowned atheist and indeed a very important figurehead in the school known as existentialism his name is Jean-Paul Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre he acknowledges that of course when it comes to the abandonment or the throwing out the rejection of the belief in God there are several consequences and it's as if he's affirming what the believing proponents of this particular argument have always stated. He states and I quote, when we speak of abandonment a favorite word of Heidegger, Heidegger of course being another German influential proponent of the existentialist school of philosophy, we only mean to say that God does not exist and it is necessary to draw the consequences of His absence right to the end. I like this. This is a man that's willing to apply Qa'idat al-Ilzam upon himself. The Qa'idah given to us the rule and principle given to us by our holy imams. He says what? The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. What does he mean by that? He says that his school, the existentialist school, is opposed to that type of secular moralist, the one that removes God from the picture but wishes to dampen the wounds by doing the least damage possible by removing the concept of God. Towards 1880 when the French professors endeavored to formulate a secular morality they said nothing will be changed if God does not exist. We shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist on the contrary finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist for there disappears with him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that the good exists that one must be honest or one must not lie since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky the Russian novelist once wrote if God did not exist everything would be permitted and that for existentialism is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist and man is in consequence forlorn for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. Now this is of course Jean-Paul Sartre embracing the consequences of the rejection of God namely that once you remove that concept which provides the explanatory scope the explanatory power for many of the transcendent beliefs we hold today such as morality the ability to trust our minds good and evil we would find that once you do so there is no longer a grounding for such concepts such concepts must go entirely out and down the drain. Is Jean-Paul Sartre unique in affirming this particular view? Absolutely not. Allow me to continue citing numerous respectable atheist authorities in philosophy and other fields who have stated exactly the same thing. Now I cross reference between people in other fields too because it is important to note that these are not just people within the realm of philosophy. I know that there is a new atheist tendency to say that philosophy is dead so inshallah ta'ala we will also throw in several citations from scientists as well. Paul Kurz he states the following the central question about moral and ethical principles concerns very ontological that is to say existential foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground transcendent means that which goes above and beyond ourselves above and beyond the physical world they are purely ephemeral ephemeral of course means they're purely conceptual they're purely things that we have of course conceptualized subjectively. Julian Bagini a great popular writer of philosophy in the United Kingdom he states the following in fact dear viewers we're going to go for a very short break and I'll cite what he states after the break please join me then. Asalaamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh Asalaamu alaikum dear viewers thank you for joining us after that very short break and I pray that you're all still awake inshallah ta'ala despite the dryness and coarseness of the topic involved. I understand this very dry course but for those of you who do understand it it's a great starting point in dialogue with those who affirm the worldview of atheism even if they would deny that it's a worldview it's still a very interesting conversation to have and one which you find very very few solutions or attempted plausible decent responses too. Julian Bagini as I was saying in my citations of renowned non-believing scholars of both philosophy and science have stated Julian Bagini of course being a philosopher from from the UK who is not a believer in God he states the following if there is no single moral authority that is to say brackets i.e. no God we have to in some sense create values for ourselves the quotation goes on to state and that means that moral claims are not true or false you may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error that is to say what in summary of what Julian Bagini has just said he's stating that if there is no single moral authority a transcendent one God we have to in some sense create values for ourselves so we as a society would have to get together sit down negotiate talk about which things are better for us and of course as we'll see in the next few episodes and shall I tell you there are massive problems with that concept and that means that moral claims are not true or false you may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error that's essentially the understanding and reasoning that would be utilized in such a world where there is no transcendent authority why because at the end of the day if there is no transcendent objective non-subjective standard for morality and human beings get together and decide in a council to form a council which decides for us which actions are correct and non-correct at the end of the day their opinion it might become legally binding upon me in society but they certainly can't tell me what to do other than telling me that we'll put you in prison they couldn't in any way should perform claim that their opinion was any more valid than anyone else's opinion because at the end of the day it would remain very subjective view Richard Dawkins course no stranger to the modern day world he states the following the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design no purpose i.e. no god no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference he has stated elsewhere it is pretty hard to defend absolutist that is to say absolute black and white morals on grounds other than religious ones so Richard Dawkins himself concedes that it's difficult if you're not religious to defend the view of absolutist morals why is this why is it that with a religion it would be slightly easier because a religion holds the concept of a god and that god you found you find within that god the ability to ground ontologically certain moral values which transcend our human minds so this is interesting in the sense that you will understand quite clearly that those who reject the concept of god have no decent way of firmly grounding moral values allow me to break down the argument slightly further in my own words in charlatan what is morality what are ethics ethics are essentially laws and what are laws laws are essentially commands there are a set of commands and prohibitions do and do not do commands emulate from a commander if there's no commander where does the command come from now if someone wants to tell me that the commander would therefore be the collective intelligence of humanity that's not objective it remains subjective because humanity could agree upon something so grotesque that all of us would completely completely renounce that view now it is interesting in the sense that there are those who today would claim that morality is something which we all need to move towards and that we need to hunt down those who hold backwards religious mindsets if they want to argue that society judges that which is good and bad then they have to argue that their view that for example transgender or homosexuality is allowed is just as subjective as the view that homosexuality and transgender behavior is bad essentially we're at an equal footing because one is subjectively decided in one part of the world and the other is subjectively decided in another part of the world and in doing so they revoke and lose the right to judge others as the moral police of today because they're essentially claiming that the world got it all wrong until the modern day era essentially suggesting once more that the world is prone to subjective morality and if they wish to argue that while we in the west have now come to the conclusion that these things are allowed and we're far more enlightened well i'm sure that Nazi Germany once also considered itself fairly enlightened it considered itself the peak of the noble Aryan race bringing a light to the rest of the world in terms of a work ethic and in terms of a sustainable education system which would provide a torch light of guidance for Aryans all over the world to see an example of scientific progression and advancements but of course in Nazi Germany what we saw was what a vast majority of people coming to the conclusion that it was fine to persecute another race on the basis of a false understanding of eugenics a false understanding of humanity and that there were superiority and levels of advancement between the races themselves so we see that this level of accepting subjective morality is of course something extremely dangerous now of course there are those who wish to go one step further and try to bring in principles such as well let's look at those things which cause the least harm to humanity so if you try and ask the average atheist or the average human being in fact who doesn't hold a particular system of morality why is it wrong to kill babies or eat other human beings they would tell you that it's wrong to for example eat your children because if everyone did that then there would be no children around yet at the same time if they were to take that very principle they would also have to apply it to the concept of homosexual marriage and this would lead to them saying that that's not allowed either so of course what we see is the opening of a giant can of worms in which people in order to try and be rational to vindicate their own subjective form of morality they essentially create rules and then break them because they're never applicable to the same case in other cases now it's extremely interesting that those who don't believe in a god would not understand the concept of the fact that commands require a commander and that therefore these very issued orders and prohibitions do not require someone who transcends the human race and who in every case we could say that even if all of humanity were to agree upon one thing it would be wrong if that commander states so these individuals have basically reduced morality to nothing more than our subjective choice of which soda tastes better or which football team happens to play the best these subjectivists have essentially rendered every facet of human experience to be meaningless if our classical conception of morality if that anger that you and I feel at the murder of innocent children is merely subjective then essentially we shouldn't be able to really get angry at anything in the world you see there's of course numerous examples which history will condemn as some of the worst examples in history that which adult Hitler did in 1930s and 1940s Germany the world looks back at it as one of the worst things to have happened and plagued human history likewise the transatlantic slave trade another phenomenon which is a black stain on the pages of human history religious people can of course find grounding to condemn that on the other hand those who reject the concept of god have no objective grounding to say that it is either wrong nor right and it is that which i wish to appeal to the viewer to appeal to their friends to discuss wassalaamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh