Who's suffering in the deepest depths of hell?  Well first off if you've ever heard of Brutus and Cassius at least in the English speaking world You're probably familiar with them from Shakespeare's play Which you probably read in high school called Julius Caesar where Brutus and Cassius are sort of dramatized now Of course the Shakespeare's dramatization is not necessarily history in that particular play Brutus is depicted as being sort of an honorable Roman who although his friends with Caesar feels he must betray him because Caesar is undermining the Republic whereas Cassius is just sort of a jealous man many of the other people assassinating Caesar are Depicted as being jealous either way. That's actually Shakespeare's embellishment in actual history We don't actually know their motivations and when Dante who of course right was writing before Shakespeare When Dante depicted both of them he depicted them as being both terrible traitors and they're in the bottom most of hell now The simple reason for why they're there is that Dante considers the absolute worst Sin to be the sin of betraying a benefactor that is not just betraying family Not just betraying friends, but a benefactor someone who has done good to you with no reason For really no reason they have no obligation, but they have done their best to do good to you that is Judas Iscariot has of course betrayed his very savior But Julius Caesar also did incredibly good to Brutus and Cassius for example, he had pardoned Brutus After he sided with an enemy of him Enemy of his and Brutus and Cassius and Caesar should have all gotten along they Caesar had been very benevolent to them Nonetheless, they betrayed him. So that is the simple reason as for why they're in the bottom most reaches of hell There are only three people who have committed the sin at least that Dante depicts in its most extreme form And they are being being eaten by Satan over and over again He's constantly chewing on them and they're being regenerated and eaten that that is their punishment now What is the real reason that these people are in hell? Why does Dante actually depict them there in order to really understand why these people are in hell? You have to understand Dante's I Don't want to say ideology, but his vision of the universe his vision not just of religion, but of politics You know these particular people who betrayed Caesar Have committed a theological sin. They've gone against God's plan in a significant way and here is Dante's actual View of this. Okay, you have to look in another thing that Dante wrote not and Work of fiction, but a work called the monarchy. That's the Latin name of it. It's sometimes translate Literally, I guess you could translate it as on monarchy. It's usually translated on as on empire That might be a little more accurate in his original meaning, but in this book Dante outlines his vision of The entire plan of all of the world that is he specifically argues That there needs to be it is God's plan that there be one Universal government Empire ruling the entire known world and he argues this for multiple reasons for example, he says that The ideal state is one that ensures peace that there's no International war and that is one where the king rules and the king rules over all there's there's no division of who you know Here's a king versus there's a king and they're fighting amongst each other There's one universal rule which is analogous to the rule of heaven where God is the monarch God is the emperor of The entire world Additionally, he argues that when Jesus lived Jesus had to be born during a period of universal Empire and that's because When Jesus was crucified when Jesus was sentenced to death He was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate who of course was working on the behalf he was judging on the behalf of the universal Roman Empire and Dante's point is that in order for Jesus Jesus's Execution which in many respects is illegitimate in the view of Christians, but in order for it to have been Ruled upon it had to be legitimate in the eyes of a universal Empire It couldn't Jesus couldn't be sentenced to death in like rural Wales, you know during this period He had to be sentenced to death in a universal Empire and the coming to be of that universal Empire Was of course part of God's plan now Actually, there's a lot of interesting things we can say about Dante's specific politics here because Dante is speaking at a period where the main political conflict was that between secular authority and church authority now Dante To some things up to write to paint and generalities Dante is a proponent of secular authority That is there were many people at that period who thought the Pope who is the ruler of the church should also be a Ruler of the political realm he should rule sort of like a since he's the vicar of Christ on earth He should also be a political leader as well, and we really should be living in an Empire organized around Religious authority Dante and others disagreed with this in fact Dante was a big fan of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire Which you know people make fun of it because they say oh it's not really Roman It's not really any blah blah blah because it was centered on like Germany and stuff like that But Dante and others viewed the Holy Roman Empire as the legitimate heir of Rome and their view was that Secular authority is something different. We have to have someone who is care, you know caring for man's different material needs Making sure that there is peace and that is something different from his spiritual needs now Dante of course argues this isn't like modern Sort of secularism versus religious authority This isn't quite exactly the same because Dante's view is you know the material world exists for spiritual ends The reason we want universal peace a universal Empire is so people can have the best the optimal environment to reach Salvation okay, that is the goal of secular rule, but Dante's view is that it's a different thing It can't be the same thing as papal authority It has to be something different so in the political environment at Dante's day Dante what took the side he was Aligned with factions that took the side of the Holy Roman Emperor in most political disputes While others took the side of the Pope and the papal states and in fact Dante had been exiled in his life You know before the writing of the Divine Comedy by these The pro-papal faction of course in his Inferno he writes about many of his political enemies suffering You know as sort of a you know just to own them or whatever But anyway, this should be a little clearer why Brutus and Cassius are depicted in hell They're in hell because Dante's view is that God's plan not just for politics But also for salvation is that there needs to be a universal Roman Emperor that is part of the plan So Brutus and Cassius, although they're betraying people they're betraying their their friend and benefactor Caesar They're actually doing something they might not even realize but they they're doing something much more evil That is they're standing in the way of God's plan God's plan is that the Roman people will rule over a universal Empire and this this was actually sort of that you know, there's a view nowadays that All right, I guess we have this view of Christian, you know Christendom of Christianity as if Christianity, you know God didn't have any other plans outside of the Jews and you know the Messiah was born to the Jews and you know Everyone else was just sort of languishing and you know, there was no plan for them That is not the view that people in the medieval ages and the Renaissance and early Christians had because Dante as others He thinks for example the Romans have a unique covenant with God that they Eventually have to come to rule the world and the Greeks have a unique covenant with God and that they're given particular Philosophical approaches that prepare them for the you know the arrival of Christian theology all this kind of stuff so Dante's view is That Brutus and Cassius are fundamentally doing something theologically evil. They are standing in the way of inevitable Ability they were living at the cusp of the Roman Empire Empire a time where there was fine God's plan was finally coming to fruition there was going to be one man Julia Caesar who ruled the entire world and that was it and They stood in the way and they said no we don't want that we don't want any of that We're gonna for our own reasons maybe because we're jealous Maybe because we believe in you know the Republic or something like that But for our own reasons we are going to stand in the way of inevitability and of course God's plan in both case in the case of Judas Iscariot Betraying Jesus obviously that was sort of played into the plan of being crucified But additionally Brutus and Cassius play into the plan as well because although they killed Julia Caesar What happens the emperor the Empire starts in fact their assassination? Serves as a pretext for a civil war where eventually Octavian Augustus becomes the the original first Emperor so all these people although they stood in the way They utterly failed and that's Dante's view and when you look at Dante's inferno with this Viewpoint the idea that it is building to some kind of culmination of the Roman Empire a lot of other things make sense For example, if you read in school the Iliad and the Odyssey You know of course the hero of the Odyssey is this guy Odysseus the guy who made the Trojan horse Okay, but if you read Dante's inferno you find that this hero is reduced to actually he's pretty deep in hell You know some of the heroes they're in limbo.  Now if you're a very superficial Literary analyst you'll be like well, that's just because Dante was like, you know, he was ethnocentric and he didn't like Greeks when that is not the answer It's not the answer because Dante's vision. It's not that he doesn't like Greeks, but in Greek history Greeks constantly stand against the Roman Empire and of course the Trojan war, you know Romans you know since the time of You know Aenea or well not really since Aeneas, but since the Aeneid was written by Virgil There was the idea that Romans come from Troy So these Greeks who are fighting against Trojans in the Trojan war are depicted as sort of bad guys including Odysseus Odysseus of course comes up with the idea of the Trojan horse and So all of these Greeks are sort of thought of as villains even though in Greek literature Of course, they're you know, they're the heroes So it's not just oh, well, they're a different culture than me or something like that It's that in Dante's view all of these people are fighting against the fact that Romans will become the preeminent ruling class of the world. That is their that's their issue Okay, so and in each case the Greeks fail to extinguish the Trojans Aeneas runs away from Troy He founds wrong. He doesn't found Rome, but he his ancestors or his descendants for that found Rome So anyway that that is the point that is why Brutus and Cassius are Along with Judas Iscariot in the deepest depths of hell Hopefully you understand that you might not even might not have even heard of that, but that is why they're there


I'm going to send me a chat, a comment, not a skier, a comment, not a skier, not a skier. Asante Bakari, thank you Bakari. Natumai Wotem Kopoa, Natumai Wotem Kopoa Asana. Okay, thank you Mr. Chris, you can hear me. And other people commented on the question that they can hear me as well. Natumai Wotem Kopoa Asana, Katika, Ichikipindicia, Kudifungia, Katiana Korona. Natumai Wotem Kopoa, Napaata, Mda Waputosha. Mda Waputosha Kufanya, Analisis, Kuyagalia, Sopho, Dipikamaiko. So, Napaata, do you know how to register in Latina? No, I don't know. No, I don't know how to register in Latina. I don't know how to register in Latina. Asante Bakari, thank you. I don't know how to register in Latina. I don't know how to log in. I don't know how to log in. Yes, I don't know. Yes, I don't know. We're going to come back to you. What are your comments? I'm going to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.


I apologize to any of you who heard me a few months ago at the Department of Foreign Affairs, because I don't think I've changed my views that much. But I think the speech has gotten better, so you might like it a little bit more. And I'd be interested in your comparisons. I understand that my friend Peter Tuberwitz was here recently to talk about Trump. 19th of September. 19th of September, yeah.  I think mine is, you know, more relevant, because I think Clinton is likely to win the election. And I think that there are some interesting things to say about Clinton, not as interesting as Trump, which has been part of the problem. She is a very, particularly from a European perspective, from a foreign policy perspective, a very normal candidate and frankly very comprehensible, very predictable. She's been a presence in national politics in the United States for moving on 30 years. She's been First Lady, she's been Senator, she's been Secretary of State, and her foreign policy views are both very well known and they place her very firmly at the center of the American foreign policy spectrum. And I would say, particularly when it comes to the sort of transatlantic consensus which has animated American policy on Europe for the last 60 or 70 years, she's very much within that consensus. Indeed, I think it's probably fair to say that Clinton is more normal in this sense than is appropriate for the national mood. And I think you see from the extensive support that Trump and Bernie Sanders got in the primaries that a lot of the electorate are sort of disillusioned with both with establishment figures, but also that there's a sense among them that both the Bush and Obama administrations, both the Bush and Obama foreign policies got the United States too involved in the world and failed in Trumpian terms to put America first. And this was to a degree that the foreign policy critique that Sanders was making too. But you know, be that it is, as it may, it's not hard to describe Clinton's approach, that that's not going to fundamentally alter, that political rally isn't going to fundamentally alter her approach. Like every president since 1945, she will rely on the transatlantic alliance as a cornerstone of her foreign policy. And like every president for almost that long, she will, within the confines of that approach, seek to shift a lot of the burdens of global and particularly regional European security to the larger powers of Europe and the EU if it could conceivably take it up. Like Obama, she's going to be seeking to reallocate a lot of the resources that the United States spends or devotes to European security to areas of greater urgency, not necessarily greater importance, but more urgency, particularly East Asia and I guess the Middle East. Frankly, this core approach is, you know, too familiar to really merit a detailed explanation. I'm almost bored with the two minutes I gave. So I want to focus on three, frankly less important, but less commonly discussed and more interesting aspects of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy, which are at least relevant to the transatlantic alliance. But as I'm saying this, don't forget that actually the more important part is the boring thing I just said. So the first is the essential continuity in foreign policy that will pertain from Obama to Clinton, particularly including on the use of military force. There's a sort of conventional wisdom in the United States that Clinton is a lot more hawkish than Obama and will deploy force a lot more. I think that's wrong, and I'll talk a little bit about that. The second point is the role of gender in her approach to foreign policy, which I think is one of the more interesting innovations for better or for worse that Clinton will bring to foreign policy. And the third is her approach to Russia, which I think stands out as an important exception to the basic rule of continuity between Obama and Clinton's foreign policy. Okay, so essential continuity. So Clinton, as I said, has made an effort during her campaign, and it's a very normal thing to disassociate herself from the less popular aspects of Obama's foreign policy. And particularly as a Democrat and as a woman, a party and a gender which is associated in the popular mind with weakness and anti-militarism, she's been very careful to project an image of strength and a willingness to use force throughout the campaign and frankly throughout her career as a politician. And this effort, I think, as well as her past support for military interventions, including the war in Iraq, particularly, have led to a widespread view that she would resort to force much more often than Obama and particularly in Syria. But I think that this hides an essential continuity in how the two of them approach foreign policy problems. And also, and I think this is important to say, it underestimates how much Obama has used force. It is quite incredible to me that he has viewed, particularly in the United States but also to a degree abroad, as someone who has eschewed and pulled back from the use of military force. And I guess it's true that unlike his predecessor, he didn't invade countries for no reason, but that hardly makes him a dove. He has, in fact, been at war every single day of his presidency. He is the only American president to have that dubious distinction in history. He has taken military action in seven Muslim majority countries, which is more than George W. Bush, and he's dramatically expanded a new type of warfare that uses drones and special forces to project American military power abroad. But I can tell you that if the missile comes from a drone or if it comes from a force on the ground, you're just as dead. So it doesn't really change dramatically the way people in the conflict countries see that. I think this view also underestimates the view that Clinton will be more supportive of this stuff. I mean, it's just how important Clinton herself was as Secretary of State in helping to asshape Obama's approach to foreign policy. She was, frankly, there from day one, and Obama did not enter office as a president with a lot of priors about foreign policy. And frankly neither did she, but together they were very much present and they very much worked together to formulate the basis of Obama's foreign policy. She was on board with the vast majority of it. The press tends to focus on the differences there were, some differences. I would argue that most of those differences were positional. They had more to do with him being president and her being Secretary of State than any sort of fundamental philosophical difference. It's true that like Obama, Clinton has often favored the use of force. As First Lady in the 90s, she supported U.S. intervention in U.S. Lavia. As Senator, she voted for the war in Iraq in 2003. In 2009, she supported the troop surge in Afghanistan. Secretary of State, she advocated for military intervention in Libya and as well often forceful measures in Syria. And her current presidential campaign has been very active in calling for no fly zones in Syria and for a lot of her foreign policy advisors including people like Michelle Flournoy, who's often tipped as Secretary of Defense, have written very hawkish pieces about what to do in Syria during the campaign. But her record is actually, I think, a lot more nuanced than that picture and the nuance isn't appreciated. She has just as often pushed diplomatic solutions as military solutions. She has frequently complained about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy and she has just as frequently touted the virtues that she calls smart power, which is an annoying term to me because I don't know what dumb power is, but what it means is the idea that all types of national power need to be deployed to solve America's foreign policy problems and it implies that force has been overused. She started the secret negotiations with Iran in 2012 which led to the Iranian nuclear deal and avoided a war with Iran. She supported President Obama's rapprochement with Cuba. She supported and implemented the reset with Russia that began in 2009. And when China started to become aggressive in the South China Sea in 2010, she didn't reach for military tools. She created a diplomatic initiative in the region to contain that Chinese move. And I think maybe even more importantly than that, Clinton will be inclined toward diplomacy rather than forth as president because she'll find, as presidents do, as opposed to Secretary of State, as they say in bureaucracy, where you sit depends on where you stand. Let me see the other way around. The use of force abroad is going to offer precious few opportunities for making a difference in America's foreign policy problems and it's going to come at considerable political cost at home. In Syria, which we were just discussing downstairs, the idea of risking U.S. troops on the ground which is what you would have to do to really make a big difference in that war, the idea of risking them on the ground in order to possibly come in conflict with the Russians in order to support an opposition that consists largely of al-Qaeda is not any more appealing to her than it is to President Obama. These are the realities of what the people who actually wrestle with Syria policy as opposed to the Washington Post editorial board have to take into account. When it comes to fighting ISIS, she seems quite comfortable with Obama's template of sort of a light footprint, limited use of drones, special forces, airstrikes, and trying to build local capacity for ground operations and stabilization. Changing these policies would be politically risky. As recent presidents have repeatedly learned, military intervention abroad can often weaken political support at home. This is tricky, I think, because it's very easy as a president, as an American president, to start a military intervention. You can always get political support for starting a military intervention. The pattern of American military interventions is that when the question arises, the public doesn't support it, when the president decides he wants to do it, or her, he rallies them around the flag, they come around fairly easily, a couple of good speeches. He goes and does it, and if it works, they continue to support him. If six or 12 months later, it's not going well, they turn on him like Judas. And for both Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, these wars hung over their second terms and destroyed their presidencies. And I think Obama was very, very aware of that. When I was working on Syria policy in 2012, and people were talking about what the sort of administration thinking is, the conventional wisdom was that the president wouldn't do anything until after the election. Actually, within the White House, it was the exact opposite view. It wasn't that it would hurt to do something in Syria for the election. If you did something in Syria in August or July or August before the election, you would get that bump that you always get from a military intervention. And it would help you in the election, even though the public said they were opposed to it. But the problem was not November, the problem was January. And then when you started your second term, you would own the war and you had no way of solving it. You had no way of winning it. It seems very clear that despite the headlines of global disorder, neither the American public nor the Congress has a lot of appetite for a more active military policy. Yes, they'll let you get in, but they will punish you for having done it. And this became very clear in the campaign trail in both the Republican and Democratic primaries when hawkishness emerged as a political liability that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump profited from. So a recent survey, for example, from the Pew Research Center found that 57% of Americans surveyed want the U.S. to deal with its own problems while letting other countries get along as well as they can. Only 27% felt that the United States is doing too little to solve world problems. That's not a big base to build on. And Clinton, frankly, has always reserved her greatest passion for domestic issues. She wants to make her mark in domestic policy. All presidents do, sometimes they get pushed to foreign policy, but that early on, particularly, that's where she's going to be trying to spend her political capital. The second factor to consider, which I think is interesting about Clinton, is gender. This is difficult to talk to, especially given my own gender, but I'm going to risk it. I may never get a date again, but I'm not going that well anyway. So we'll see.   When Obama became the first African-American president, he seemed very determined not to rule as an African-American. He really took very few opportunities to highlight his race and didn't give any particular priority to issues of race in his policy agenda. He seemed to be saying to the American public, I'm not a black president.  And I think in doing so, he likely reduced, although clearly did not eliminate the racist backlash to his presidency. For better or for worse, Clinton seems determined to take a different approach. In the current campaign, she has been very clear that she wants to speak about gender, about the historic nature of her candidacy, and she's implied in various ways that she intends to be a female president in every sense of the word. One of the most prominent ways she's done this is through her intention, her declared intention, to ensure that half of her cabinet is female. I would add to that that she will almost certainly have the first-ever female secretary of defense. And frankly, looking back on her career, it all seems like a natural fit. She's been working for women's equality and talking about women's inclusion in political and social life, her whole life. Her first speech on the global stage was her address on women's rights at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, which she talks about all the time. And this is where she famously declared that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights. She probably also couldn't remember that stand-sit thing, so she just said them both. When she left the State Department, she assembled a group of just her longtime female aides together, and she told them that she wanted to devote herself to issues affecting women and girls in preparation for her presidential run. And that's been clear in her domestic agenda throughout her run. The New York Times calls the issue of women's rights the central cause of her career. Maybe more controversially, but certainly consistent with a lot of feminist theory, Clinton seems to believe that women bring a unique and valuable perspective to decision-making and peacemaking that men simply don't possess. Women think more holistically. They have greater attention to broad issues of social justice and economic development that men give short shrift to. And that their substantial presence in decision-making roles is essential for finding durable solutions to almost any social problem. So for her, attention to gender equity is not just a question of fairness. It's a question of effective outcomes. So this is what she said in a speech that she gave in 2011 on this subject. From Northern Ireland to Liberia to Nepal and many places in between, we have seen that when women participate in peace processes, they focus discussions on issues like human rights, justice, national reconciliation, economic renewal and economic renewal that are critical to making peace more holistic issues, but often are overlooked in formal negotiations. They build coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines and they speak up for other marginalized groups. They act as mediators and help to foster compromise. So what that paragraph doesn't say, but doesn't need to, is that men don't do those things. So what is this gendered concept of peace and reconciliation mean for Clinton's foreign policy? I don't know exactly, but I think it implies that she is only going to seek to build durable solutions or alliances with countries that allow women to be well represented in society and government. So if Ireland has a very capable female diplomat, I think you would be wise to appoint her to Washington. I'm not making any particular suggestions. We have one there at the moment. We have one. Good move. I have noticed that I'm not the only one who's picked up on this in quite a few countries have done that in the last couple of years, including unexpected countries like the United Arab Emirates. But this brings us, I think, very quickly to the last problem, which is the last issue, which is Russia, because it relates to that gender issue in rather obvious ways. I think it's maybe the least understood aspect of her foreign policy. Critics very frequently, and it's happened in this campaign a lot, in 2009, reset as evidence that Clinton is sort of soft on Russia. But actually, from my experience in the State Department, her tenure as Secretary of State really soured her on the Russian regime. And by 2011, she had accused the Russian regime of rigging the elections to the Russian parliament. And a year later, she harshly rebuked Putin for resuming the Russian presidency in 2012. In the case of Syria, she was incensed at the assistance that Russia was providing to the Assad regime well before they intervened. In a speech in June 2012, she revealed that the Russians were shipping attack helicopters to Syria and called out Russian claims that they weren't being used there as, if for the Civil War, as patently untrue. She since compared the Russian annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler's invasions of the Czech Republic, of Czechoslovakia, excuse me, and Poland in the 1930s. And this is, of course, a statement that's basically perfectly pitched to annoy a Russian regime that looks to the Second World War as the critical element of their legitimation. And I think, ironically, one reason that Clinton that Clinton has such distrust of Russia is that the country's decision makers also, like her, have a very gendered perspective on foreign policy. But they have the exact opposite gender perspective on foreign policy. The Russians maintain, maybe maintain as the wrong word, they, in practice, they demonstrate that they don't think women have a place in these discussions. And there are very, very few women in the upper echelons of the Russian foreign and security policy apparatus. It's quite noticeable. And Russia's policy stance, frankly, as sort of epitomized by its often shirtless president, Vladimir Putin, seems the epitome of a sort of macho foreign policy that Clinton deprecates. As Secretary of State, Clinton had a really bad relationship with her Russian counterparts. The delegations of old white men that they brought to the meetings with her and her team seemed oftentimes more intent on humiliating her or flustering her than on achieving any particular policy outcome. It was quite noticeable. Russian officials often referred to her with both derision and respect, I guess, as a lady with balls. I don't think she liked it. After Clinton criticized the 2011 elections, parliamentary elections, Putin personally accused her of fomenting protests against his rule. And he supposedly remains angry with her to this day about that. And, you know, even if Putin's anger against Clinton is motivated by more than just gender, and I assume that it is, treating female counterparts with disdain is very clearly a part of Russia's diplomatic playbook. I went back and looked at how Condoleezza Rice, the previous American female Secretary of State, had been treated. And she, in fact, received fairly similar treatment despite being a Russia specialist and speaking Russian. And John Kerry doesn't seem to have this problem. And also, you know, there's another sort of frequent one that comes up in Europe is that Putin has attempted this, not very successfully, but attempted the same type of diplomacy with Angela Merkel. You know, Kerry, in contrast, seems to have a great relationship with Lavrov, hasn't created any actual policy outcomes. But they bond over late night dinners and they seem to be sort of, you know, cigar and brown alcoholic-liquid relationship, which is sort of very manly, I guess. Now, at this point, after Russia has apparently been attempting to undermine Clinton's very election and hacking the Democratic National Committee to support Trump, Putin and Clinton apparently see each other as personal enemies that have actively tried to sabotage each other's rule. And so I think all of this means that under Clinton presidency, the U.S.-Russian relationship is very unlikely to improve. And I think while a lot of people in Europe, particularly in the Eastern parts, may welcome that, I think it's not necessarily going to be good news for transatlantic relations either. The essence of Obama's approach to Russia has been, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine, has been to maintain close alignment with the German position. In part, of course, because the Germans are the most influential country on the topic, but also because the Germans hold the center of the European debate on this question. And they have been able, I think, with the Americans' help, to hold together a European Union on Russia policy. I think European unions and the transatlantic unity on Russia policy since the invasion of Ukraine has been hard-won and remarkable. And so therefore it is fragile. And I think if the Americans defect from it, even to become more hawkish than the Germans, the center will fail. The center will not hold, and the unity will collapse, and that's not good for anybody except Russia. So actually I think I can just sort of end there. Those are sort of the three main, again, the sort of three main elements I think which are interesting about our foreign policy, which will have an effect on transatlantic relations. But I should return to where I started, which is the fundamental nature of Clinton's presidency will be continuity in transatlantic relations, despite what I've said. And that I should add to sort of poach on Peter's more fertile territory is that that's a big contrast with Trump. So what I just gave you is sort of half of a paper that's coming out next week on the Clinton and Trump approaches. So I'll send that to you when it comes out I think on Monday and you can sort of read the rest. Thank you.


The coffin carrying the body of Archbishop Desmond Tutu has departed St George's Cathedral in Cape Town this first day evening. Details in this report. In a simple pine coffin, the mortal remains of Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived at his final resting place on Thursday. The anti-apartheid icon will lie in state at Cape Town St George's Cathedral, ahead of his funeral at the weekend. South Africans formed long queues outside the church from the early hours, for their chance to bid farewell to the man known as Tata, or father. Among them was Cape Town resident Mamello Letsuper. Tutu always used his voice to the benefit of others, to the benefit that, you know, on the sidelines of society. So I'm here to commemorate that, to pay my respect. Tutu died on Sunday aged 90. Nobel laureate had requested the cheapest coffin and did not want any lavish funeral expense. A requiem mass funeral service will be held on Saturday, where President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to deliver a eulogy. The cathedral, where Tutu served as the first black Archbishop of Cape Town, was a safe haven for anti-apartheid activists during repressive white minority rule. Tutu will be cremated and his remains interred behind the pulpit, from which he often preached against racial injustice.


So I was a philosophy major by background and so what oh that explains it exactly exactly so the new data mix of that's right disciplines and like an intelligence analysis a lot of people are in liberal arts area that also do good math if you will and so those two skill sets allow for creativity and then computation to come together so for us what's underneath the covers if you will the fundamental difference is we look at a way a word is used in context a symbol so like toothbrush and you can figure out what toothbrush means without having an ontology of toothbrush you know being under hygiene or some other because look where do you really put toothbrush right is it a stick you know is it is it basically something that's under you know human hygiene so where do you fit it well it's known by how it's used so it tends to be associated with toothpaste and teeth and generally mornings and hopefully evenings if you're you know very hygienic so what the system does it looks at patterns of the way a word is used in context to ground a word in terms of its surrounding material and that's how a human baby does it too right I mean they're exposed to here's the taxonomy that came down from Aristotle and now we know what this means they're exposed to invariant patterns and what we do is we build that from the ground up which allows us to handle data that's traditionally defy knowledge engineering and that those algorithms have been now ported to work on Hadoop and work at scale and on some of the hardest data sets you know in the world that are inside certain agencies so it's is it of is it a sort of modern form of what I think of as classification which is a brute force miserable exercise it's sort of an automated approach toward drawing inferences for this large corpus of data is that fair description I think the way I would classify it is it's yeah it was a bad pun if it was one is as a clustering algorithm so you look at the similarity of things and you build hierarchical similarity from the bottom up so that you can make things relate to other things with no a priori set of categories right and so we do have the capability to do entity extraction and sort of pattern recognition type approaches classification approaches through training but we see that technology while we would say we're comparable to the best in the world at that especially one that runs on Hadoop we think that technology you know is very useful at the high level but it gets really hard at the details right because a massive human investment is necessary to apply that at low granularity categories so we try to do the the hard low-end stuff the bottom of the ontology wheel from the bottom up algorithmically through clustering and do the top down through classification yeah okay so now


Novak Djokovic vs Holger Runa is the first quarter final for the men's roam open for 2023. And both guys have had different paths to get to this stage. Runa started the tournament off as the number 7 seed and we're going to buy in the first round. In the second round he take on the qualifier feasts. There's no problem for Runa getting through in straight sets. 6-3, 6-3. In the third round he take on the wild cut for Nini who had taken out Murray and catch Menevich along the way. But even with the crowd against him, Runa would get through in straights. 6-4, 6-2. In the fourth round he take on another qualifier Poprin who had taken out Felix Ozealia seam along the way. And after dropping the second set he would fight back to win 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to advance to the quarter finals. Djokovic entered the tournament as the number one seed and we're going to buy in the first round. In the second round he take on Etcher Vary and after a tough first set, but after a tough first set he'd get through in straights 7-6, 6-2. In the third round he take on the 26 seed Demetrov and after what looked like a straight sets win Demetrov came alive in the second forcing it to a third where Djokovic would win easily 6-3, 4-6, 6-1. In the fourth round he take on the 13 seed Nori but for the first time this week a straightforward win for Djokovic 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the quarter finals. These guys have played twice before with the record it split down the middle at 1-1 and of course their last meeting being the Paris Final on the indoor hardcores last year with Runa coming back to win in dramatic fashion but it'll be the first time they play on the clay. If Runa is going to win this one he needs to try and get the crowd on his side. For some reason all week the crowd has just been booing him even when he's not playing so he's going to try and get the crowd on his side because eventually because with Djokovic getting that crowd on his side it's going to help Djokovic more so he needs to try and get the crowd and win over the crowd against Nole. If Djokovic is going to win this one he needs to be a little bit more aggressive and not let Runa push him around like he did in Paris last year. In the indoor tournament last year in Paris Runa was kind of being really aggressive Djokovic was kind of going side to side and Runa was taking over. Djokovic needs to get on the front foot and dominate this match from the baseline. This is going to be a very fun match up and we've been hanging out for this match for over six months now. I didn't think we're going to get it on the clay courts but I reckon Djokovic is going to win this one. I think he's just had a little bit of a tougher road to get to this stage and play tougher opponents whereas you know a couple of qualifiers along the way for Runa so I think Djokovic will get through this one probably in three sets. Let me know down in the comments below who do you think is going to win this blockbuster.


During his Monday afternoon COVID-19 briefing, Governor Andy Beshear pointed to signs that the latest surge of the virus may be leveling off or even beginning to fall. Cases have fallen over the past two weeks, although last week's drop was discounted because it was believed to be due to the Labor Day holiday. But now, hospitalizations are showing a slight drop, while ICU admissions are mostly holding steady. And the state's positivity rate is now just above 12% down from nearly 14% last week. But while the governor says he is hopeful the state is beginning to turn the corner on the latest surge, he said that cases need to drop significantly more to move the state out of the danger zone. So while we hope that this is a trend and or a plateau, we cannot sustain a plateau at this level with the number of people it would put in the hospital. It's simply too many cases. Those glimmers of hope come the same day Beshear reported 88 new deaths from over the weekend, bringing the total in Kentucky to 8,339. The governor also noted there is a chance for more trouble as one effective treatment, monoclonal antibodies, begins to be rationed due to short supply. This week, we gave out over 5,000 monoclonal antibody treatments. And as you remember, that number has gone up significantly week over week. We'll be doing 5,500 or more this next week. We're only going to receive 4,960 this week, and it's going to go down from there. We were able to allocate them to 79 sites around Kentucky, and those were based on back ordered requests reported on hand inventory. So if you had enough to get through the week, we were sending it elsewhere and reported previous week utilization. The governor also reported that more than 104,000 Kentuckians tested positive for the virus during the month of August, the most of any month since the pandemic began.


Well, I had lived and traveled in Latin America mostly before coming back to the United States for graduate school, and I decided during that time that my background in literature and history wasn't going to really give me the tools that I needed to find meaningful work in the developing world, which was one of the aspirations I had. So I returned to the United States with a kind of mixture of interest in agriculture, in nutrition and food supply, and in health, not necessarily in medicine, but in health. And that range of interest converged on the field of agriculture, specifically the field of rice, as a staple food that was the understory for a lot of the nutritional, both problems and deficiencies that we see in the developing world. I actually didn't know that I would be able to study anything so specifically. I came to graduate school at Cornell after my first child was born. I entered as an older person because I had actually transitioned through my husband's career preparation first. And we were thinking very hard about how we could architect a life that would get us back into working in the developing world, and I met Ronnie Kaufman when I was a staff technician here at Cornell on a trip for International Ag 602, which is a very well-known course taught here at Cornell. That takes you with a group of interdisciplinary people out into the field to see agricultural problems and production and economics and health all mixed up with a group of students. And during that time you get to interact and think a lot about what type of preparation might actually prepare you to contribute to some of the processes that were taking place elsewhere. And it was through conversations during that course that I came to the conclusion that I wanted to study plant breeding. It had not occurred to me before that, but it fit very well with some of the interests and preparation that I had in plant pathology and other things coming in. So I applied to the field of plant breeding, and I should just tell this anecdote because I think it's historical. I was the first applicant to the field of plant breeding here at Cornell, where a female with a young baby was applying to become a graduate student. And several of the professors found that hard to believe that I would ever work in the field. I think they felt that maybe I was going to come in, get an education, and never work. So I was not accepted to the field of plant breeding initially. I was accepted on probation. I had to prove myself, despite the fact that many of the men in the field had young babies at home. That was not considered to be a condemnation of their professional aspirations. But anyway, that was in 1985. And I entered the department, and I worked through very diligently, and I think I demonstrated a serious commitment. But I was really fortunate because the Rockefeller Foundation's program on rice biotechnology had started in 1985. And Ray Wu, Ronnie Kaufman, and Steve Tanksley here at Cornell had put forward a proposal to do some molecular biology on rice. And Steve Tanksley and Ronnie had put forward a proposal to develop a molecular map. In those days, it was an RFLP map. And so as I entered the department and found my way through the various opportunities that presented themselves for PhD projects, this was the one that stood out in my mind. And I was told I didn't have the qualifications to take on that project at the beginning, but I slowly worked my way into it and was eventually selected for a fellowship. So my PhD program was largely funded by Rockefeller Foundation under that program. And I became a full-fledged graduate student in 1986. And during that time, worked very closely with two Chinese colleagues who were also Rockefeller-funded scholars that the threesome, those two scholars and myself, really put together that first RFLP map of rice, which we published in 1988. And it was a great achievement. It was a great achievement of a teamwork. We learned a lot from Steve Tanksley. This was his first foray into rice and into cereals because he was a tomato geneticist. The RFLP technology was, as many of you know, is cumbersome. It's really tedious. It involved a lot of radioactive work. It involved almost a 24-hour routine that we took on in this lab. We worked day and night, and we developed this map. And it consisted of what looked like a great accomplishment in its day, 135 markers when we published it in 1988. Anyway, it was the first, and that was historic, and we were very excited. And I think my first trip to Erie was when I went to present the results of that map. And that first set of experiments. And I remember going to Erie and thinking I was stunned by the number of people in diverse fields, all of whom concentrated on rice. I guess I had known that's the way it was, but I couldn't have imagined it. So I was excited by it, and I think people were equally excited by the work we were doing here, and there was a very good synergy. And I think that first visit was the thing that cemented the relationship that would then evolve into a job opportunity when I finished in 1990. So in 1990, I got my PhD degree here at Cornell. And I had just given birth to my second child, and we moved when my second child was about six or eight weeks old. And my family moved to the Philippines to take up a position, a staff position as an internationally recruited staff at Erie, to set up a marker lab, a molecular marker lab. And that was the first, so that was quite historic. We were moving the edge of the technology from what we developed here at Cornell, trying to implement it at Erie and put the molecular marker work into action in the context of plant breeding and in the context of rice improvement for the developing world. And so for me, it was sort of this wonderful dream of combining science and the excitement of the new kind of science that was just emerging in its day with the frontier of trying to actually develop new varieties that would encourage better utilization of the resources that people had in the developing world. And would, of course, the other underlying theme was could we use genetics to minimize the amount of pesticide, minimize or improve the fertilizer efficiency. And now we're much more interested in water use efficiency as well. But all of this came together in that wonderful career opportunity that I had. And I think my family really appreciated what it meant to me after four years in the PhD program to have that chance to go to Erie and try to implement what was here only. Really, it was a thought process here and there it was something that required as much interpersonal and political will as it was scientific. Because there was a lot of resistance in the early days to spending time and money on using molecular markers to do something that the breeders thought they already did very well. And so there's a period of time where new technology is both embraced but resisted and a little bit resented. And I was right at that edge. So I interacted and did my best to try to introduce the technology in ways that would bring others into the excitement that I felt. And to create the excitement of the discovery that was possible using these markers to identify genes that themselves controlled the traits that breeders selected on. And so really throughout the last 20 years that's what I've spent my life doing. And we've continued to use a participatory approach. We've tried to bring people from diverse backgrounds into the process and share the excitement with them of what the science has meant to me. And at the same time to try to learn from others where the most pressing problems lie and to try to then take up those problems and use the germplasm that's of most interest to them in a combined effort to use genetics wisely for plant improvement. I think the greatest achievement was really developing that first marker lab. I think it's called the Genome Mapping Laboratory still. It's been modified and it's been enlarged and now it has a very central place in the breeding program. But just thinking back to what it was to pioneer a program, I remember the very first look I had at what the space would be. There were no windows. It was just brick building and it was underneath was just a garage. And this building was offered, this space was offered to me. And the first thing I said was at Cornell I had to work in a brick building with no windows. I think the first thing we need to do at Erie is open a window so we can look out on this beautiful volcanic mountains in the background and see the rice paddies. And indeed we insisted on that and I still walk into that laboratory and remember the decision to put in the windows and build that lab and design that lab and to see it functioning and working and booting out good science and good products today is probably the biggest reward. The other is I think the joy, the biggest joy is really the interaction with the Filipino staff and the people that I train and the many international scholars that came to my lab or that I've known through this collaboration for many years. And training people then enables you to sort of keep extending the sense of family because people go back to their countries or they continue to work in the international arena and having participated especially in those early days in an emerging program was really a source of a kind of family bonding that we still have today. I mean the hardest thing for me was that my spouse was unable to acquire a work visa. In 1990 spouses didn't have work visas and my husband was a veterinarian and he had a practice here and he had expected, I think, to be able to work. He was paying back his student loans and foregoing a normal salary line and yet he was a skilled person with a skill set that would have been useful. I think the greatest frustration was that he couldn't work and that over the time we were there, the family integrity, we didn't live on the compound we chose not to because we wanted to actually get more involved with the community around us. And that was a very good thing, I think, but the frustration was mostly that he found it very difficult to break into a meaningful professional relationship and that is in fact why the family moved into the shuttle research relationship that we had for the last three years of that five-year contract was because there was no work opportunity for my husband. Well, one of the stories that I have always enjoyed is the fact that there were only two female internationally recruited staff or IRS at the time at Erie. So it was rare to be female in the scientific arena and my colleague Rebecca Nelson and I were the two females. Well, Rebecca is, other than the fact that I suppose we both are Caucasian, she has dark brown eyes, I have blue eyes, she has very curly hair, I have very long straight hair and during one of those entire years she was pregnant. So about the time that she was nine months pregnant walking around with a big belly with her curly hair and her brown eyes and me with my long straight hair and no belly, I can remember that numbers of people would see me passing and say, hi Rebecca, and they'd see her passing and say, hi Susan, because I think to them we look very much the same and we laugh about that even today. I would wager that people still ask me when I go visit, how is my husband Johnny, who was of course, Johnny was Rebecca's husband because they still confuse us. So that just strikes me as something that we always found very human. So I worked with a number of wonderful colleagues. The plant breeding department was of course all male, except for me and I can remember very fondly many of my colleagues sitting around the table in the plant breeding meetings but I want to just acknowledge Dr. Sanadira who's no longer with us. I was very fond of him because he lived up near the Syracca housing near where my family lived. And so we actually, as people who didn't live on the compound, we had a bit of a bond. I had a very dear friend, Riyoshi Keita, Dr. Keita from Japan, who became a dear friend and I see him now occasionally, most recently at WADA, he's been at WADA for the last four or five years. So he's a man with whom I've maintained loyalty and friendship over many years. There were many wonderful colleagues. I worked with Dave McKill, of course Girdiff Kush, Darshan Braher, many people that have become long-term colleagues and friends. But I also want to mention the wonderful array of postdocs and technicians that made the lab such a joyful place. I think we had four or five marriages out of my lab and I was only there less than two years. So there was a lot of romance and goodwill and fun. And I remember all of those people so fondly, Nanette and Taka, who now live in Japan. Ben Juan Gina, who live in Belgium. Olivier and Edna, who live in France. I saw Marco Woparais, who's now the Director-General for Research at WADA. And Myra, his wife, I saw them recently at Erie. Many of the people that I knew there have sort of are part of this wonderful sense of joy. And one of my very dear friends, Lleva Abenes, who's now in San Francisco and has been there for quite some time. And when I go back, I see Ruthie, who's now married to Ken McNally. I see Tita Miao occasionally. And there were a group of us that, and Ben Albano, we all had September birthdays. And so we used to gather in September and have all kinds of celebrations. They seemed to go on and on. So every time my birthday rolls around, we exchange greetings and remember fondly all those good times in the genome mapping room. I think the national staff is what really makes Erie tick. I think that we have had a number of people who came through various programs. They're now PhDs and professors in the United States. I saw Benny de Los Reyes recently. He's now a professor in the University of Maine. I, of course, want to acknowledge Yoli Yanguren, who is my secretary, who's recently passed away. I feel very blessed, actually, to have started my career in an organization that had such a talented group and a dedicated group of very loyal and very, very competent people, because the PI, or the IRS, is only as good as the staff that work with them and make everything happen. So of course, my learning curve, when I first went to Erie, learning curve about Asia and learning curve about rice and learning curve about many of the things that I now do professionally, started with the knowledge that was transmitted to me by the national staff. Yeah, my situation is a little bit unusual in that I came into the scientific career quite late in life. And as I say, I already had a child when I started my PhD and I had a second one before I took the job at Erie. So although I was a recently minted PhD, I had these two children. And I think that made it both easier in some ways and more difficult in others. Easier in the sense that I never had that kind of univision luxury of just being a graduate student and thinking only about my graduate work. From the days I first started graduate school, I was always juggling family and career. And I never questioned that I had the children to care for at the same time that I was trying to pursue this career. So I think in my own way, I had to really get in shape mentally and emotionally to be able to handle both. And when I went to Erie, as I had mentioned earlier, the hardest thing for my family was that the spousal employment opportunities were so limited. And I think maybe it's not that that's any more important if you're female and your spouse is male. But in those days, it was taken for granted that the scientist worked and the spouse was somehow able to make do in an environment that did not involve professional employment. And I think as more and more women have come into the field, it's become more and more apparent, not just to Erie, but to many overseas organizations, that the employment of the second partner in the relationship is equally important to the well-being of the whole. And I know that Bob Chandler as the first DG recognized this. But clearly, the living environment is most conducive to the well-being of a family if both spouses are happy. And so in my case, the upheaval was that my spouse was not well accommodated in that environment. And that eventually caused us to leave Erie. But I do think that on the other hand, the challenges of being female in science are really just in finding the right blend for that complex little society that is your family. And it's the same whether you're in the United States looking for a job where the two of you are trying to accommodate two different sets of interests or whether you're going into the international arena. The questions are usually different for females where it comes to child rearing and child birth. But there you just have to pick your partner, I think. And that's a negotiation between you and your partner, how you're going to handle that. Giving credit to the incredible changes that have happened, I think both socially and in the professional climate, there are more and more women in these fields. And so there's less of a feeling that you're a pioneer now. You're not that unusual.  You're just now an individual. And that makes it a lot easier. I think it's much more difficult when the entire culture is only one gender and you're the odd person because you do stand out. On the other hand, sometimes it's an advantage. You enjoy it. You're special. You're automatically noticed. You get a lot more obligations sometimes because people want the female representation on their committees. And I think I did serve on a lot more committees at Erie in my day than maybe I would have to if I were there now. But on the other hand, I never felt that I was overlooked. I always felt that people really took notice and tried their best to make an arrangement that would work. So I have not experienced, I've experienced difficulties and challenges, and I think we all do. But mine haven't really been oriented around the gender issue.  That was such a rating success. And we thought about the fact that this course was no longer offered. So four years ago, I was at Erie for the strategic planning session. And Bob Ziegler had invited me up to his house for coffee one Sunday morning.  And we got fired up about what we could do in the here and now to interact more closely and bring my program and some of the people I knew in the United States that were interested in rice, bring Erie more into focus for them and perhaps allow Erie to access some of this intellectual talent more directly. And I asked Bob why the rice production course had been suspended because I thought that would be a big draw. And he said that they'd already felt that they'd trained so many people now that the national programs had taken over that responsibility. And I said, you know, it's funny. All these years, you've spent so much time and attention on your national program partners that it stands out that the people in the developed world who are now very interested in rice because we have genome sequence, we have a lot more money flowing into the field in terms of science, many people know rice as a series of A's and C's and G's and T's, but they have no idea of rice in the field. And certainly none of its cultural significance, economic significance. And for me, one of the more interesting things is the sort of anthropological and historical significance of this particular crop, even its religious significance. And so I said, well, how about we resuscitate the rice production course, but we allow, we open it now to students from the developed world since you've done such a good job training all of the people in the developing world. And he said, you know, that's a good idea. So he said, if you can go forward and work with some of the scientists at Erie and come up with a plan and fund it, we'll be happy to host such a thing. And so that was really the germ of the idea. And we took the project forward, I interacted intensively with Helion about how we might bring that course back, but also put it into the context of something that would allow people coming from the molecular biology and genomic side to learn something more about the history of rice culture in its environment, about genetic diversity, about Erie, but also just about the rice growing peoples of the world and what rice meant to them. And so from that, the proposal that we drafted went to the NSF and was funded as part of a developing country collaboration, as it's called, program that's affiliated with my large NSF project on rice diversity. And so for three years we've run that course at Erie and it's hosted, it's accommodated 10 US citizens from diverse fields, recruited nationally from all over the United States, three people from the EU who've been funded by the Gatsby Foundation, and then 12 or 13 people from the developing world, including Asia and Africa. Don't think we've had any Latin Americans yet, but we've had a number of people from all kinds of different countries throughout Asia and Africa and they've blended together the group from the EU and the US and the group from Asia and Africa into one course that now seeks to network the students as much as to expose them to the different components of rice research and rice field production. And so we call this the rice research to production course. It has a life of its own. It's now, we've got a lot more applicants these days than we did at the beginning. We have aspirations to continue the course but it's been funded now on a year by year basis by the NSF and we are looking for a longer term source of funding to continue it because I think it's one of the really remarkable blends of the old Erie and the new science that Erie embraces but where Erie doesn't engender that new science. And it allows us to bring together the sort of ancient history of rice in its center of diversity with high tech science where people are actually interested in understanding that diversity and how we can use it and how we can learn from it. And then understanding what people in rice growing parts of the world aspire to in terms of variety development, in terms of grain quality, in terms of not just the varieties that they might use but what participation they want in the production systems and in the evolution of a more sustainable future for themselves and their families. So I think it's been a wonderful opportunity to participate in the dialogue of what is the future of rice research and how will it affect rice production especially in terms of addressing the needs of the world's poorest people but also it introduces a large number of people to the environment at Erie and to the potential that Erie represents and I hope it gives it a sense that Erie is an institution that doesn't exist just as an institution where you get invited to come for a three week course but Erie is at some level a part of a spirit of international collaboration that people can actually make Erie's future by envisioning that and participating in creating that future. So it's not something that belongs to somebody else it's something that belongs to the people that want to participate in the development of how we use research wisely to address the needs of the world's poor. Yeah so Erie's reaching its 50th year. I think the great challenge is whether Erie is going to persist as an institution as we've known it or whether it's going to be transformed into something more virtual. That's how I envision the great challenges that lie ahead. The reason I say that is because I think that we have a reason to hold on to much of the infrastructure that's there but part of the infrastructure that's there has given way in other parts of the world and in other institutions to a kind of networking approach to research because the expertise that we need is not often we're not able to attract the expertise necessarily into a given physical location for the period of time at which we need to interact. And so I see Erie's future as becoming more and more that of a network of collaborators rather than a mortar and bricks place where you go and you are only Erie staff because you're there. I think that part of what I experienced during the last three years of my contract with Erie which was I was a shuttle researcher with a responsibility to Erie but a lab here at Cornell and a thought process that encompassed a larger perspective on how we could utilize molecular markers effectively in plant breeding. And when my contract ended with Erie and I became a Cornell professor the fact that my program did not change and in fact my loyalties never changed suggests that there are people like me out there for whom an inter-institutional working relationship might be a very productive way to envision a future. I also believe that we need to hold on to the mortar and the bricks and the seeds that are in that gene bank and that is a precious resource that we really have to have in one place that we can actually access. That's a living resource that needs to be looked after. But a lot of the computational work, a lot of the electronic communication, even a lot of the networking and scientific efforts that I participate in are done now in a much more virtual way. And I think that the Institute is looking forward to a future of increased movement of ideas and resources and also a very different relationship between the public and the private sector as funding changes the ways in which funding happens are changing. And I think we have to reinvent our institutions. It's not just theory that we'll have to reinvent itself. I think our university systems in the United States are undergoing an enforced reinvention. And I hope that maybe we can come together and think about who we train as university people or people in the international sector and how we're training the next generation of scientists and which problems we need to come together to address and then use a new institutional framework that includes colleagues in the private sector as well to try to address those needs. So I think Erie's not alone in facing these challenges. I think it's just that it would be nice to see our institutions get together and come up with something novel that would work and that would engage the world's most dedicated and brightest people and help work through some of the bottlenecks and some of the backlog that we've been unable to break through due to institutional barriers in the past. Yeah, so I was at Erie for a relatively short time and really just under two years with my family. But I've spent a number of weeks on end there since that time. But what I think of is there was really the foundation of my career. It allowed me to join that extended family that Erie has created over its 50 years and to be a participant both from within and from without. So I think that that cemented that identity. Another thing is that I really learned a lot about how difficult it is to envision what we used to call technology transfer. And I became a much more committed proponent of a truly participatory approach to research, to technology development, and to training. I think that when we want something to, when we wanna change the way we do business that that change I've learned over the many years, that change will not occur quickly if it's a profound change. When I went to Erie I was young and foolish and I thought that there was something called technology transfer where you had a good idea and you brought it essentially to people they would welcome you with open arms, take up that idea and then that would continue the process. And I see that it doesn't work that way. That was naive. I think Erie taught me that much of the resistance to new ideas that is just simply, a feature of a large, multi-pronged, multi-disciplinary institution is the buffer that's required to ensure that ideas are vetted. On the other hand, I think that one of the other things I learned about Erie was that it's very, very, it tends to be a very conservative place intellectually. It is resting on a series of relationships that have worked well in the past but that as I said in my previous comments, I think we're at the point where some of the new ideas are not able to find their way into the parlance of the institution as rapidly as they might because of maybe some structural, some structural or some organizational components that I may not understand myself what needs to be changed but I did learn that if you wanna do innovative science, Erie is probably not the actually, at least to the type of science I do is not set up for that. Erie is set up to take innovative ideas and try to transform them into very complex sociological and political realities and it is very well suited to that. So it has a place where you can vet ideas, you can bring ideas, they may be rejected for a while and accepted 10 years later but it will vet a lot of things that are brought to it and it will be very careful about how it then implements those things. It taught me that, it also taught me that we really need an international institution that does allow us to bring ideas into a forum, propose things and not expect them to be acted on immediately. We need that kind of forum and we also need these connections with the fast-paced scientific institutions where everything that's new is valued and things that are older are less valued. There's a place for each. It's the interaction and the connection between them that I've grown actually to value more and more over time. I also think that Erie does a superb job of this kind of participatory training, bringing people into the institute from many different walks of life, giving them short-term or longer-term opportunities and trying their best to create that sense of extended family over time that keeps people loyal to the cause, whether they disagree with particular decisions at any moment in time or not. I think people are very loyal to the vision and to the ideal that Erie represents. So even if I feel that we need to reinvent ourselves and we really need to reinvent many of our international organizations, I think we all keep somewhere deep within us the vision that we need the organization, even as it evolves to become something new. Well, I could just say that looking back on my career, when I first went to Erie, we were working with something we called RFLP technology, stands for Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Technology, and it was a really encumbered technology. It was slow, it was technically demanding. We had to use radioactive substances. We had to have a whole lot of safety precautions and things in place. And the dream was that one day we would have molecular markers that would tell you in real time where the genetic differences lay that ultimately determined whether variety was able to perform well under drought stress or under high levels of aluminum or whether you got Basmati grain quality and aroma or whether you got the short sticky grains of sushi rice. We really, as geneticists and as plant breeders, have always aspired to better understand the genetics underlying the traits or the phenotypes that people actually desire and need when they're trying to produce rice to feed their families. And we've come a long way. We, in my laboratory and in others like mine, we've now got technology that we're transferring almost immediately and participating in the development of this along with our eerie colleagues that gives us no radiation, turnaround times of days rather than weeks or months, technically much easier because now it's handled by robots. So it's actually technically very complex but it's under the hood and that's now an engineering problem rather than a genetics problem. These markers are being used in medicine, they're being used in agriculture, they're being used in all kinds of biology today and by being able to look at natural variation with as much of a magnifying lens as we can now do in real time. I think my dream and maybe the most exciting thing for me is that our work is finally enabling us to better utilize the natural variation that nature has given us. The wild, the weedy accessions of rice, they are very valuable sources of genes that give us a range of opportunities to address the changes in climate and the changes in production system and the population pressures that we're gonna face in the future. So I for one am very excited about what it is, what the genetic side of the equation has enabled us to do and what I think in combination with colleagues in the social sciences, in economics, in agronomy and in a range of other disciplines are going to enable us to do to better package varieties of rice for the production systems of the future and I think if we can do that, my very small contribution will have been to enable us to do that more quickly and to better utilize the natural resources that exist both in the Erie Germ Plasm Bank and in farmers fields.


What's up everybody jason from jazby's case breaks calm 2020 pinini prism first off the line football one box break random divisions number Two just sold out and again guys a total spots every biggest around a division NFL all-cart ship number two first off the line Exclusive prisons per box one exclusive shimmer auto per box two autographs per box 24 ruggies per box and hunt rare stained glass and color blasts from this product So good luck guys here you go. Here's a dice earlier because we're named so Clint Matt Clint and Brian bought those straight up And then Brandon from sell a pack nine won all four of those so they will congrats Brandon. Good luck to everybody Rollets Four and a one five times One Two three four and five five times Brandon down to Brandon five times One two three four Isn't it always been till 2022 Rex? We're in 2021. I thought we'll start it next year NFC north down to the AFC South NFC North for Brandon NFC East for Brandon Brian Ferguson. You have a FC West Clint with the NFC South now with the AFC East Clint with the NFC West and brown with the AFC North and AFC South So if you guys want to trade Boom, no, I don't think so Rex. That was supposed always supposed to be last year I literally seen the flyer that went before you tag me and it's the next year 2022 Because the reason why I know it's supposed to start in April next year was because of Coachella I think that was gonna be one of the first concerts and then it was gonna ride off But I could be mistaken, but I knew it wasn't gonna start this year I mean because they still haven't even allowed a lot of places to have full arenas like that yet Yeah, they posted it April 8th. When was that? That was like the day you tagged me They tweeted out the store the store when I'll start March 2022 and all tickets will be honored for the shows that were postponed refunds available at original point of purchase for 30 days And then they also just put any mom any the moment any further torn news is confirmed. It will be posted here first That's always It's all good. That gives us more time though Rex because if for some reason they were gonna start touring like this month I would have been like, what? I think I'm just gonna close it right. I Don't think anybody else is chatting about this. Yeah, I think last year when they first saying that They were thinking You know, the world will be better by 2021 come April again, right? But obviously Burley people are still Still getting vaccines and you know, etc. So I think yeah 2022 for sure Yeah, so you would get a FC north which would be Bangles Brown Steelers Ravens and then a FC south You would get a FC south actually is I think the Indianapolis Colts Tennessee Titans, I think a FC east Which is Matt should be the Dolphins Patriots bills, etc. Etc. I'll pull up the divisions right now just to be safe though So yeah a FC south Be that So if you need to look at the divisions here you go. All right, there you go. All righty First off the line Yeah, so chase them will be watching a football team, which would be MSE. Good luck everybody. Let's get some nice players here Minka Fitzpatrick Steelers and we got Melvin Ingram for the Chargers at a 249 Joe Montanion little hyper One at a 175 little Joey B base Excuse me Out of 35 little red shimmer Noah from the Dolphins So that would be like I said NFC I'm sorry ASC East Which would be going to Matt CD lamb Ricky Corlin son At a 149 Zack Moss We have at a 75. Oops Brian Edwards that is a A green scope when I see a blue shimmer looks like DK Mac has nice little color match Seattle Seahawks with that one that'll be NFC What are the NFC West One out of 25 Clint Ross Blacklock silver Houston Texans and Deondre Hopkins Out of 99 T Higgins Ricky What I think I see a purple power Collin Johnson For the Jaguars Very nice purple power to 49 Chase Claypool The viscous Chanel Junior And I believe Jaguars is part of the AFC South April Davis rookie CJ Moseley to 49 for the Jets out of the AFC East James Morgan for the Jets Jets Jets AFC East Toa Togo by Loa and Kenny Clark red shimmer Green Bay Packers to 35. That's NFC North when a Brandon and a little Justin Herbert base as well nicely centered Sweet I know the crazies autographs, but we did get some nice colors and we did hit Top three rookie quarterback base Again, we could post up another one of these first off the lines And of course I could put them up all straight up first if you guys like you know to do a filler if anything Nice color there Burl to a You came back half So pretty sure you guys this break number two number three be posted up soon


I had to do it. That was just such dirty pocket. Oh my god. Oh my god Let's go the Sean Watson and my man J. Okay, let's go man CFM week two play my man a step in I played a step in a lot a lot of Madden's in a row He's been around forever tough little player. Oh rain game. Nice. This is why I love CFM CFM is connected franchise mode This means you pick a team and you play amongst your friends 31 other users you control one team for the whole year This is week two.  Let's go. Let's go That's gold chub. God damn Jok Chub Chub Bro, we're gonna turn chub into the best running back of all time. That is I'm telling you watch chat We're gonna turn Nick chub into the best running back of all time here.  Oh Let's go Muka mora. Come on. Let's we could grip this to W's W's that who? Elijah Moore Gigi Gigi Gigi Gigi chub had a good game.  Let's go. I'm gonna play CFM I'm gonna play my man drag old-school drag on the CFM You guys don't know we got the Browns. I won the first week you guys watch the video Second week I blew the guy out so bad. I didn't make a video because we've been a waste It was like 42 to 0 and then I went away to play the live event and look at that We have three losses since then let me know YouTube. Let me know chat. Do we keep grinding the CFM? I feel like it's dead. I feel like it's not worth it right now. What do you guys think? What's the philosophy on the CFM? Let me know as we get into this season game right now There we go, baby. Oh, we got a run with him Denzel.  I don't got fearless. I'll go get a miles here. This is you all day That's Denzel. You tried Denzel? Two-man under is like OP and I can't lie. Two-man under is like really good on this mode Well, you can't really run cover zero on this mode.  Let's go man. That's what I need you to do I mean, what happened there, dude? My right tackle is on the ground I mean dog how in the world like just Okay, there's just no way Denzel that you're giving that up. No, sir My region is not top tier right now Let's go good one Fry out then kid. I'm just trying it.  My new.  You guys just panic Like I don't know.  I will tell you this right now I'm not getting screamed at at all.  I'll talk you that much. I wish it was better route combinations, but Oh, you like that? Okay. Okay.  You gotta be better right there What's your heart beating for you skin?   Why are we trolling right now, dude? Get the job make a play job Make a play job for the boys 44 54 I don't know who my kicker is. Can we make this 61 yard or cage York? He got a boot. We got like 97 power Why is there a wind in a dome? Nailed it. Ah, that's big.  He switched up his game plan in the second quarter Trang's been playing madden for a long time.   We're eating.  Oh my god, man.     I'm having a blast right now.  We'll go to make a 24 to 7 lead.  We fumbled.  We still burnt them though. Let's go Swartz Let's go what a monster. Oh, I can't have that other streak there though I can't have that other streak. That was bad never gets in real life But luckily we're training him. We didn't give up on him Now I'm in shambles though because if he wants to stay in this Denzel oh my god, it's so baggy.  Okay is going to be the best player on my team. He really is Uh, that's all ahead. So just like I ain't no way you did all that milking yourself Just a quick snap the ball.  I'll be honest.  Don't try to get a quick snap off