Okay, one of the frequent talking points of the Christian Bible and later Christians is that they are only guided by the word of God and not the traditions of men. Now for the past two thousand years there's been an ongoing attack on the oral Torah of Judaism and on the legitimacy of any rabbinic teaching that's not firmly rooted in the text of the Hebrew scriptures. This is what Orthodox Christianity describes as Sola Scriptura. Only the scriptures, meaning for them, they insist that the only thing that they pay attention to is what the words of the Bible say and what the words of the Bible teach and if it's not there, they're not interested. They call those other teachings the traditions of men. It's only for men we only follow what God says. However, if you look at facts on the ground and facts matter, today's Messianic Jewish movement, the movement of Jews who believe in Jesus, they seem to be very inconsistent on this topic. For example, they will virtually all celebrate Chanukah. I would say, where do you find Chanukah in the Bible? Chanukah is a post biblical holiday. Right? Not biblical. Did they forget the idea that they only follow the word of God and not the traditions of men? And yet they will have Chanukah. They will light the candles. They'll have eight nights. Where did that come from? Most Messianic congregations will celebrate Bar Mitzvah. When? When the boy reaches the age of 13. Where did they get that from? The Bible never says that a boy becomes responsible for fulfilling the commandments when he reaches the age of 13. It's not in the text of the Bible and there's nothing in the Bible about having a celebration for a Bar Mitzvah and yet virtually all Messianic congregations have Bar Mitzvahs when the boy reaches 13. They also will light Shabbat candles. Where did that come from? Nothing in the Bible speaks about lighting Shabbat candles and yet that's almost always done in a Messianic congregation or Messianic family. Or at a wedding, they will invariably have a chuppah, a marriage canopy. The Bible never speaks about getting married under a chuppah, a canopy, and if you watch a Messianic Jews for Jesus wedding, you could think that, oh, that's almost a normal Jewish wedding. Where did they get all the customs from? Not the Bible. Or the wearing of seat seat. Now, the Bible does speak about wearing seat seat on the corner of your garments, but the Bible never tells you how to tie that seat seat. And just by coincidence, the Messianic Jews tie it just exactly the way normal Jews do. And we didn't get it from the text of the Bible. This is part of our oral law and rabbinic tradition. And Messianic Jews will generally have only men wearing seat seat. The Bible never says only men should wear a seat seat. It's only rabbinic tradition that Tali is a man's garment. Now, it may be possible for women to wear a seat seat. Not going to get into that tonight, but in general, it hasn't been a practice of Jewish women for the past several thousand years. And you find the exact same thing in the Messianic movement. You'll find many of the men wearing seat seat, but not their women. Or the fact that in almost every Messianic congregation, they refer to the current year as five, seven, seven, eight. Well, where did they get that from? The Bible never tells us what year it is. That's part of the oral law, part of rabbinic tradition. And yet, if you get any Messianic congregation, their website will probably have the year of the Hebrew calendar. Again, not something that they derive directly from the pages of the Bible. Also, if you ever go to a Messianic congregation, virtually all the men are wearing a kippah, a yamlka. You don't find that in the Bible. That, again, comes from the Talmud or using the title rabbi. We don't see anybody called rabbi in the Bible. And it's interesting that the rabbis are really the opponents of Jesus in the Christian Bible, and yet every Messianic congregation today. Practically, the leader is called the Messianic rabbi. They take that title or a Passover Seder. Of course, Passover appears in the Hebrew Bible, but it doesn't tell us in the Hebrew Bible to have four cups of wine. It doesn't tell us to have three pieces of matzah. It doesn't tell us about having a Seder plate or harotet or saltwater, anything like that. All of the practices, practically, are developed in the oral Torah and in the rabbinic teachings. And yet if you go to a Messianic synagogue to their model Seder or their Seder or a Jews for Jesus family, you'll find that they're celebrating Passover in a very similar way to the way rabbinic Jews do. And I can give numerous other examples. So the claim that they only follow the Word of God and not the traditions and not the traditions of men is very, very flimsy. Now, it's interesting to me that virtually all of these Messianic Jews ignore the fast days of the Hebrew calendar. We're going to have one this coming weekend, Shivar Sabah Tamuz, the 17th day in the month of Tamuz. I don't know of any Messianic congregations that will fast. And what's interesting is that this is a practice that's not just rabbinic. There is a reference of source in the Bible for it. If you go to the Prophet Zechariah, Zechariah, Chapter 8, verse 19, it speaks about the fast of the fourth month and the fifth month and the seventh month and the tenth month. And those refer to the fast. This is the fast of the fourth month. Tamuz is the fourth month. And this is the fast will be the 17th of Tamuz. The fast in the fifth month of is Tisha B'Av. The fast of the seventh month is Somgadalya. And the fast in the 10th month is Asarabah Tavit. And so here the Bible speaks about these fasts. And yet even so, the virtual, almost unanimous majority of Messianic Jews do not observe these fasts.


Hey everybody, Matt here for Layton Sports Cards are up in one box of 2022 Top Sterling Baseball. This is for Peter M. Good luck, Peter. Let's see a monster. We have 1990s MLB All-Stars and retired numbers. All right, start off the 90s MLB All-Stars. A cheater. Yeah, that'd be nice. All right, let's see what you got. This is Barry Larkin, quad relic auto, two of five. Two jerseys, two patches, two of five. Beautiful Larkin and retired numbers. Let's see something crazy here, maybe a big auto or something. All right, this is Craig Bizio, one of one. Name plate patch and his Sterling Jersey letter patch card. Craig Bizio, one of one. Well, no monsters, but a couple of very nice hits. There you go, nice Bizio. That'll do it for your break. Thank you, Peter. Appreciate it. We'll get these right out to you.


10 things to know about GrantStation. So what is it? For those of you who are new to GrantStation, it is a set of tools and resources that includes both US and international funder databases to help your organization write and win more grant funding. And don't worry, I don't plan on reading all these slides to you. I just wanted to highlight that because a lot of people think GrantStation, what is this? Is this a place that writes grant proposals for me? Is this a, I just don't know what this is. So to make sure we're clear, it's a bunch of resources and databases where you can seek out funders. When is it happening today and tomorrow? So it started this morning at 9 a.m. Eastern time, ends at 5 p.m. Pacific time tomorrow. So that's 8 p.m. Eastern. You can get this one-year membership for $99 to regularly $6.99 for the general retail public. Normally through TechSoup's discount program with GrantStation, it is $2.99. But for today and tomorrow, you can get it for $99. So it's a great, great deal. If you are looking to do more funder research and look for writing grant opportunities or just expanding your own skill set and capacity internally, you've got a lot of great resources. So which words can get it? Sorry, I think that came through anyway. I tried to cover my cough. I apologize. Woodjurgs can get it. 501c3 U.S. nonprofits and public libraries. Also Canadian nonprofits can get it today and tomorrow, but it's through the TechSoup Canada website. So you don't want to request it through the U.S.-based website, which is TechSoup.org. You want to go to TechSoupCanada.ca. For libraries, it is only available for you to use for your own grant writing purposes. These are not, this membership is not for your public-facing public access computers for the general public to use. So keep that in mind. If you're brand new to TechSoup, you can register today or tomorrow. As long as you complete your registration within nine days of the promotion, you can access this special offer as well. So even if you haven't started with TechSoup yet, you can get it as long as you do it within nine days. And if you are brand new as a C3 and you need seed funding and startup funding, you can access this as well. And they have a whole section that you can use to narrow your research to just look for funders that support startup funds. And if you're an existing member, you can use this to renew your membership, and it extends it based on whatever date your membership is active. So if you have your membership from September, it would give you an additional year tacked on to September. So what's inside? We'll go through some of this in detail, but I wanted to just bullet out some of the things you can find inside of your GrantStation membership. Again, U.S. and international databases of grant makers, lots of grant strategy resources, winning grant proposal samples, and letters of interest, or LOIs as we call them internally here, or in the grant writing world, strategic calendars, and lots of resources on grant trends. What kinds of grants are being won? What kinds of funding is being approved? What kinds of new collaborations are funders looking for? You can learn a lot about what's out there. This is just a look at what their website looks like, and we will show this live in just a minute, a couple of minutes. But I just wanted to highlight on the screen, you know, they have a whole section you can see in that dropdown how deep that is that you've got U.S. Charitable, U.S. Federal, U.S. State and Government, Canadian Charitable, international, that's just in how to find grant makers. And each of those sections is just as rich and deep as that Find Grant Maker section. So if you're needing to learn how to develop your grant-seeking strategy, or how to write proposals, this is a really great resource for you to check out. What kind of funders will you find? I think one of the most important things about fundraising and grant writing in general, when you're looking to find grant funds, is that you don't want to find 50,000 funders. You want to find the three, maybe, that are going to be the right ones for your organization's needs. You want to find the ones that are active, not ones that maybe gave funds to something that's related to your cause five years ago. You want to know which ones are doing it now. So keep that in mind that these are pre-screened, vetted, and active now. They're current funders. And then we also have, you know, these U.S. Federal state-funded agencies and state departments in there. You've got the full U.S. Charitable Giving Database that includes all of your private foundations, family community foundations, corporate giving programs, faith-based grant makers, associations that may have grant making programs, international database, that's for folks who are working outside the U.S. and, again, that Canadian database. Now, if you're joining us from outside the U.S. today and you're not from Canada, keep in mind that the only organizations that can request the grant station membership today and tomorrow are U.S. or Canadian. So if you're joining us from Kenya or if you're joining us from the Philippines or wherever else, grant station is really targeting organizations who are based in the U.S. or Canada. And those international funding databases are for organizations that may be based here but may have work, you know, they may have operations in El Salvador or they may have programs in Kenya, but they aren't based in those countries. So I hope that clarifies a little bit of what kind of funder you'll be able to find in grant stations databases. And I just show here a screenshot of how you can search and we'll show this in real time in just a moment, but that you can, you know, see that there are 80 results that popped up when they searched by scope U.S. and Oregon. So they searched by different geographic regions. They searched by area of interest, music, and they searched national grant-maker database. So you can narrow this scope to find as many or as few as you think is worthwhile. But again, you don't want to be wasting your energy writing grant proposals that are really written for the wrong funder. You know, if it's not a good fit for them, they're not going to give you the funds. So your best result is not going to give you probably 80 results. It's going to give you eight maybe or 15. And then you're going to further narrow that to find the ones that are really worth your investment of time and energy so that you're getting the bang for your buck and hopefully winning those grant proposals. So number six on this list, can I find grant strategy and tips? Well, big yes with the money sign because of course that's what we're hoping that you'll be able to find all of the strategy resources and tips to help you win that money that you need to further run your programs and complete your missions and achieve your missions. And they do that in a variety of different channels and methods on their site. They have a weekly grant station insider newsletter that highlights 10 interesting grant opportunities nationwide each week that comes into your inbox. So you don't even actually have to go and do a search. You can have it come into your inbox. But hey, there are these 10 interesting things and one or two of those might be the perfect fit for your organization each week. They also have a monthly grant station international insider newsletter. So again, for those of you who maybe are based in the U.S. or Canada and have programs overseas where they're going to be highlighting, I think it's 12 that they highlight each month, interesting international grant maker opportunities. They also have a huge section called build strategy where you can find a grant seeking calendar. You can find things like a decision matrix. You can find project planning worksheets resources that you can use to help define what are your project goals? What are the resources you truly need to accomplish those goals? What kind of funding and other materials or staffing or computers or whatever it might be? Do you really need to accomplish that and in what timeframe? And to really figure out what are the right funders that match you in helping you fulfill those that mission? So that section is really deep and rich and I would recommend that people check it out. And also the monthly and weekly newsletters, you can sign up for those whether or not you're a grant station member. So I would recommend whether you plan to proceed with getting a membership or not right now that you check out those newsletters because there's a lot of really interesting stuff that comes out in those. And then the last bullet down here talks about some of their other resources like their talk 2020 podcast. It's something you can listen to while you're commuting. And it's really these people who are true experts in grant writing, who've been doing it for 40, 50 years and who really not just have done it as an individual but have helped others do it, have helped organizations develop their strategies around fundraising and grant writing and listening to them talk about what's successful, what works, what kind of partnerships are kind of in right now when it comes to seeking collaborative grants. GS Insights and the state of grant seeking report are also highlighted here. And the state of grant seeking report we always highlight on the TechSoup blog as well because it's such a great resource because from a high level they're able to see based on the thousands of organizations that are using their their databases and based on the results of those grants that are written they're able to really see and evaluate what kind of grants are getting one. How long are they? When are those grant awards delivered? You know how long does it take once you've written it to hear back? They've got this great resource that they put out so that you can learn really the ins and outs of what to expect especially if you're newer to grant writing. So these are just some great resources on strategy and tips that I would recommend checking out. Number seven, do they write grants for me? And I put this as a big no because we want to make sure that people know what they're getting. They're $99. You're not getting a grant writing team that's going to come to your office and sit down and say well what do you need money for and let me write it for you. They have lots of resources to help you learn how to assemble a great grant seeking team or a grant writing team but they are not actually going to do it for you. That really takes the hard work and thought and pre-planning from your own team whether that's your executives or your board or if you have a development team or maybe you're a party of one and you have to do it all but they will help you by providing you this rich right proposals section of their site that has sample grant proposals templates and samples of letters of inquiry. Excuse me and sorry. The letters of inquiry you know that's if you aren't ready to write a full proposal but you think this one funder seems like a really great match. You can send a letter of inquiry using their template or looking at their samples to say this is the kind of work we're doing. Are you okay with us submitting a grant proposal even if maybe we aren't in the timeframe that you had listed on your website? You know they've done all of the research for you in their database so that you know what the timeframes are when they're accepting grants or you know if it's a rolling timeframe or if they're accepting them all the time so they're there to provide those resources for you on how to get started including things like checklists like what are the actual financial documents you need to have on hand what are the program details you need to have on hand the staffing requirements who's going to be leading things you know they can give you all those checklists so that you know before you sit down to start writing whether it's you or whether it's a team that you've got what you need before you begin and then this is kind of their magic sauce of how to find the right funders and I've listed this out I know it's a wordy slide but I've detailed it out because this is really what they recommend as you know a very loose strategy I'll say you know mine is the shorthand version of you know when you're pre-planning that you really sit down with their project description worksheet which is a downloadable word document that you can use for your own projects to fill that out and really define what is this project what are the goals what are the outcomes how are we going to evaluate it how are we going to measure it what are the keywords and search terms that we need in order to really find the right fit whether it's you know a local bank that might support our work or whether it's an international grant maker or whether it's the federal government what are those things so they talk about this in their process that you've got these pre-planning steps and then you start your searching and you always want to start the search looking at the federal and state databases because even if you don't find anything you can say to those other private foundations I did my due diligence and I searched and there's not a state funded thing or there's not a federal funded thing that's specific to my region or my goals or my project so now we're coming to you corporate funder or private funder or family foundation so you go through and you search and you can search as much as you want over the course of that year of your membership you can search every day if you want to and you really do want to use different keywords and use different search terminology because you may find that you know if you're searching for you know animal animal care that it will come up with different responses than if you search for animal rescue or you know I have a friend who works in you know women's health and she said if she searches for reproductive health she gets very different results than if she searches for like breast cancer or abortion like those terms you may find nothing with some of them and you may find a lot with others so just be conscientious in your pre-planning how you search then you can search through those databases and you can narrow it so that you aren't getting a list of 80 because you're not going to find 80 funders in you know a year that are going to be the perfect fit for your specific project you may find five or seven or you might want to apply for 12 or 18 but you know you want to narrow it by geography the areas of interest what type of support are you looking for you're looking for program support are you looking for general or administrative support are you looking for seed funding those are all options that you can use in their search and you can also search by target population so you can say I work with children or youth or I'm working within you know Hispanic communities or I'm working in low-income housing communities then you can use that strategy section that they have and tools like their decision matrix to really score those funders that you've gotten results on like okay these are the ones that popped up now let's see what is the likelihood that this would be successful if I spend my time writing a grant and they have a whole little matrix that you can just plop those into pretty easily and you can rank them so that you're spending your time or your grant writer's time or your board members or volunteers whoever's actually doing it so that they're spending that time on the top four not the top 18 or not starting with number 18 without realizing it when they should be focused on one two and three so and then you put pen to pad or really fingers to keyboard and start using those samples checklist and templates to write proposals and submit them so where do you get grant station for today and tomorrow we recommend getting it through TechSoup directly so you go to the TechSoup website and I've just highlighted because it is on our home page right now and you click on that get grant station now and that will take you right to the product page where you can put it in your cart request it and have that donation fulfilled once it's once you've gotten through the process and if you're brand new like I said you have to finish your registration process with within nine days of the promo closing tomorrow but if you're already a TechSoup member this should be pretty painless and then you want to look in your organization's email so it's not going to be coming to Jenny at Youth of Tomorrow it might come to info at Youth of Tomorrow or whatever that email address is that your organization uses to receive donations through TechSoup and you'll get a fulfillment email that tells you here's where to start your membership and here's what you need to log in and get started and you can go ahead and just dive in so if you're not ready today or if you're too new if you don't have 501 3c status yet you are not eligible if you are not a c3 non-profit or a public library but I would recommend signing up to their newsletters and TechSoup newsletters so we can let you know the next time we offer this special and it's also a great way to get resources and tips because we have quite a bit of content on our site and across theirs obviously it's all about grant writing where you can learn and grow your own organizational capacity for grant writing we usually have these special offers three times per year it depends a little bit and sometimes changes but we usually have a spring one one in the early fall and one in the middle of winter like january february so know that if you miss it this time you can look for it in the future and you can use those opportunities if you decided to go ahead with the membership today or tomorrow you can use those future promotional opportunities to renew so that you're only ever paying $100 a year or $99 a year so it's a great option and a really deep resource to help you learn how to be the best grant writer and your organization can hopefully win the best grants for your cause so with that I'm going to go ahead and show quickly so I just have a couple of minutes I wanted to go ahead and show oops let me here we go sorry about that let me get over to grant stations website and then I'll have Jim do his recap of the week but you can see on the grant station website you can click to find grand makers and I'll go ahead and click into this and let it take me to finding them a lot of the resources here I'll just go into the US charitable quickly a lot of the resources that you see on their site are behind their firewall essentially that you have to be a member so you have to log in or join to become a member now you can however start a search and see what kind of results you get regardless of whether you're a member you won't actually see the names of the funders but you can see like if I search that I want to look at national grant makers and I could select the state too I can scroll on down here and I can select areas of interest for example and I'll just pick health and wellness and it lets me continue to drill down and I'll say public health because I don't know why I'm just going to select that and it'll show me up at the top let's scroll back up here just in that initial search looking at US public health national grant makers who give across all states it's showing that there are 55 results in here and so you can do that to just get an idea of what kind of funders or what how what volume of funders you'll find in grant stations databases but again look at you've got US charitable US federal US state government Canadian charitable Canadian government international charitable and search tips which again those search tips and thinking about keywords and search terminology is really important in helping make sure that you're finding the ones that best fit your org needs all of these sections building strategy writing proposals you know you can get your full grant proposals and look at those you can look at the award-winning proposals that others have submitted and they have a contest every year where they invite people to submit proposals and then their committee of experts selects the ones that they think are best and these are ones that have already won grants so you know you've got a lot of great resources to start with to really help you get off on the right foot or to just grow your grant writing skills regardless of where you're at and what level you come into it from so with that I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing and I'm going to let Tim come on and take us away with some of the weekly roundup so thank you everybody back to you Jim okay everybody nice to see you Jim Lynch here senior writer TechSoup I'm the guy who is in charge of getting all our content up on our website and our TechSoup for libraries website as well I'm going to screen share here and show you some of the new stuff here we go all right is this coming in okay Becky all right here here's a great day this is actually from GrantStation itself it's a brand brand brand new article that they sent to us for sending to you and getting to you they publish twice a year a state of grant seeking report which is a pretty great thing as more and more organizations use GrantStation they have more and more interesting insights in the big picture of grant making and this is a is a sort of a summary of the grant seeking report and some cool things that I like in here are what are your chances are if you apply for two grants what are your chances of winning something if you do five grant proposals and so on so they've calculated a lot stuff in so you can see what the odds are in addition to that I like I like their their section down here at the bottom on collaborative approach to grant making that's when a bunch of or multiple organizations get together and they submit a proposal the jury's a little bit out on how effective those are but it's something that foundations tend to like and charities tend to find really difficult so anyway this is a very very good article I recommend that let me uh show you what else we have also in the area of fundraising we have this terrific um I would call him our columnist on fundraising his name is Michael Stein uh this is his latest seven practices to engage and retain donors donor retention is an incredibly important and difficult part of fundraising over half of donors go away every year and that's just kind of the nature of the beast Michael gives you some tips on what you can do to improve those odds and this is uh in and about individual donors by the way what else do we have there we go we have a brand new program called the tech soup ambassador program where we're asking really engaged people in our tech soup community to help us make soup make tech soup much much better so if you would like to be more involved with tech soup you'd like to be in the mix with us like crazy would love to have you this explains how you can do that wonderful new program from tech soup um lastly 20 days of adobe I uh feature this page quite a bit and by the way we'll get you all these links that I've made I'm showing you 20 days of adobe is now incredibly incredibly rich with all kinds of free things uh in terms of training and information and how to do things with any kind of and all kinds of different adobe products so there we go that's our roundup back to you Becky thanks Jim well that is it for this week thank you all for joining us for this week's uh Tuesday tech 30 we hope you'll join us again next week where we will be talking about hidden gems of adobe same time next Tuesday at 12 30 pacific 3 30 eastern we also have a whole spate of webinars coming up if you want the full 60 minutes we'll be talking about copywriting for the web this week and next week we'll be talking about avoiding nonprofit tech burnout so helping helping keep your energy up even if you're drowning in email and technology so we hope you'll join us for some of those and while you're in there feel free to check out some of our other t.s tech 30s and courses thanks so much everyone and have a great afternoon bye


The Amazon is very near a tipping point of savannization. If we continue deforestation, if we are unable to keep track or to control the global climate change, 50 to 70% of the Amazon will become a degraded savanna. We'll release over 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it almost impossible to reach the Paris Accord targets. We have to find a way to get deforestation and fertilization to zero very soon in a few years and also to restore huge areas. The potential of forest products sitting there is tremendous. It's very large. There are good examples, Açaí Berry, Cacao, Brazil Nuts, they have a much higher economic value today than with the traditional cattle, wrenches and crops. So we have to find this new way of bioeconomy, a standing forest bioeconomy, making economic use of hundreds of forest products, making those products reaching markets all over the planet. This is our great challenge we have to save the Amazon. For instance, many indigenous leaders in the Amazon today, they want to get access to modern technologies. They are open, they see the possibilities of merging their knowledge on the potential of the forest with modern technologies. To save the Amazon, we have to preserve the forest, we have to enhance the economic value of the standing forest and innovative entrepreneurs are essential to make this path possible.


So this is my third GPS launch, and I'm extremely humbled and proud to be here. I'm 2nd Lieutenant Anthony Bacani. I'm a GPS-3 launch integration engineer, and I'm from Los Angeles, California. In my position, I'm here to integrate the launch vehicle provider to the satellite. So in this case, I'm working with SpaceX, identifying their needs and working with them to help integrate to our space vehicle so that we can safely launch our GPS satellite and get it to its target orbit. With GPS-3 SVO-5, we're delivering the 24th M-Code-capable satellite to orbit. This will provide secure, resilient signals for our warfighters in theater. Our Lockheed Martin-built satellites provide three times greater accuracy, eight times greater anti-jamming capability, and a 15-year design life. GPS is a warfighting system. It enables our troops to do their missions and bring some home safely. Right now the U.S. launch industry is the envy of the world, and it's bringing innovation across the board, and one of the big places SpaceX has been innovative is the use of reusable launch vehicles. Having the option to be able to reuse the first stage is very exciting. You're saving on material costs, you're saving on time. There is a certain amount of time that it takes to rebuild or to build something. It really allows us to meet our more stressing requirements, but do it at a much, much lower cost point to the taxpayers than we've been able to achieve in the past. Loving the SpaceX, they're a great partner to work with. They understand our mission, and they know that they want to get GPS into space. With GPS-3, we're modernizing the GPS constellation. When we talk about GPS as part of our critical national infrastructure, it's not just the tactical value, but it's the financial impacts. It's estimated that each year GPS enables $300 billion of economic impact. That's $1.4 trillion since its inception. It's important to recognize that this is a one-team effort. Even though we have multiple organizations in play, the beautiful thing is we have diversification here. That allows us to come to a new method of getting to our target orbits faster, getting more accurate satellites out there, and providing greater service to people around the world.


I'm a PhD student from University of Warsaw and today I'm going to present some issues connected with Aztec rock art temples, rock art architecture and today I will focus mainly on preliminary results of the studies on especially these rock art temples on two different archaeological sites but starting from scratch something about rock art architecture studies in Mexico actually there is still a lack of information still lack of complex studies about this kind of structures in central Mexico very often researchers omitted this type of construction in their publications and almost all of architectural publications about the Aztecs says that there is only one archaeological site with this kind of architecture and it is Marinalco so that's why they can't do some some complex studies analysis because they have no analogies they have still no information about this kind of architecture and today I'm going to show you that along with our studies on other sites we can see that the Aztecs also use this rock art architecture in different places than Marinalco but starting with Marinalco the famous Aztec site this archaeological zone is located in near to the town of the same name Marinalco and is located on on top of the mountain in Ixtapan area so more or less 100 kilometers on the south from Mexico City the whole place Marinalco also this this place on on top of the mountain and the town was created in the pre Aztec pre Aztec times by the one local community but in the 15th century the Aztecs conquested this this place and changed the changed this town of Marinalco to some kind of garrison some kind of town for their army in the same 15th century the Aztecs probably the Aztecs created also this part of of Marinalco which is actually or probably mainly ceremonial place that consists on seven or more structures almost all of them are full or partially made with a rock art architecture but it's still and but we still need to to make some excavations on the other in this area to look for some other structures uh this ceremonial site is above the the town as I said on on top of the mountain and more or less 200 meters above the city and today I'm going to focus on this construction so the main temple of Marinalco as I said for for the for researchers of the Aztec architecture is the only example of rock art architecture and they are trying to connect the the function of this ceremonial site with the cult of war or cult of warriors but with with our studies on different side of on the side of Tetskotsinko we can see that there are some more examples of that kind of of constructions so I think that it's necessarily to to make some comparative studies to to to look for these analogies that that we need to to make some um um technical or uh I or or interpret the technical analysis or some interpretations of the significance of rock art architecture in Mexico so Tetskotsinko is is the site archaeological site located on the eastern east east from Mexico City uh today the archaeological zone is expanded on two small hills Tetskotsinko and Menteca and this site consists of numerous numerous structures both rock art or partially rock art or rock cut or uh and uh and structures made with this traditional architectural techniques of the Aztecs and we can't we can differentiate here for example uh expanded hydraulic system some temples residential buildings etc is still unknown the function of this site there are plenty of of ideas what was the actual function of of Tetskotsinko but this place was probably also connected with some ceremonial issues so what kind of rock art architecture we have in Tetskotsinko for sure we have uh uh two temples actually they're not full rock cut they have uh they have some some parts made with these traditional techniques that completed the temples also we have uh residential buildings uh that that was made with by combining the rock cut and traditional type of architecture some other elements such as stairs or parts carved in in the rock and this hydraulic system such as channels or the small pools but to to make some comparative studies I will uh I will focus today on these temples two two main temples of Tetskotsinko for uh for see some differences and analogies between Malinalko and Tetskotsinko so a few words about this main temple in Malinalko this is actually the most famous structure in this site it's right after the after entering this site whole structure is was made in in this rocky wall of the mountain the front of the temple is oriented almost perfectly to the south uh and this temple consists of two basic elements uh of first uh we have this pyramidal platform that is very typical for the Aztecs for the Aztec temples and then under this roof we have uh the the main temple the main chamber uh um carved in the uh rock so the platform as I said is very typical because it's uh some kind of of a pyramid but it's probably the only one in the whole uh whole uh central Mexico that is fully made in in rock it consists of this of stairs two two ramps we can see here that the Aztecs refilled the displaces of the rock architecture that was destroyed and it was refilled with the traditional technique so with the stones and lion mortar and also this platform was decorated with three sculptures two on the left and right probably the sculptures of sitting jaguar so war symbol and one today uh today very destroyed uh sculpture on in the center of the stairs these stairs uh with these stairs we can go to the top of the of the platform and here is some kind of also rock cut uh small altar probably used for some public ceremonies for public sacrifices then we can look on the main temple as we see as we can see the temple is forged in the rock in the in the circular form uh this is today's temple's surface but with these ramps and sculptures we can uh we can see that the original surface of the of the rock of the wall was moved by the Aztecs to to create this deeper effect of the temple the the the facade of the the front of the temple was decorated not not so much but but because it was decorated but two simple sculptures it is unusual for the Aztec because normally the ceremonial traditional when we have traditional architecture the ceremonial places where were decorated more than than this type of temple so we can see these two rock cut sculptures one the left one is in the form of war drum the right one is in the form of sipakli so the mythical crocodile-like earth monster and both of the sculptures was the basis of the of other sculpture of seating probably warriors and it's also super untypical because in other temples in traditional temples we we have no such a thing like let's say the guardians of the temple uh on the reconstruction we can also uh let's see that the entrance was uh was carved in the form of serpent-like face uh it was the face of the the earth goddess squad lique and it's very famous and very popular mesoamerican symbol of of the entrance to the cave to the underworld but i will i will go back to this cave symbolism later how how the temple looks is also untypical because normally the normally Aztec temples was rectangular this is circular it is actually really small the diameter is about 16 meters it's also very dark we have no no source of light except of this small doorway whole temple has no rock cut roof it was it was actually open to the to the sky but excavations showed that that probably there there were some kind of organic organic roof that that closed this temple this pretty simple temple consists on this circular bench decorated with some kind of thrones in a form of jaguar and eagles uh in the center a central part we have also uh this eagle-like altar carved in the same rock we can also see these little niches these little holes uh that was probably used for uh lighting the fire to to to make more light inside this temple and as i said before for more more most of the researchers this temple is is uh was was the temple of the celebration of the warriors or the the war because also this jaguar and eagles was this symbol of war there are actually no no complex or deeper technical studies on this temple because most of the researchers said that that this is the only one rock cut temple in central Mexico but with our studies with our project on documentation of other sites the scotzingo we can see that there are some kind of structures some kind of temples that is also made in this kind of with this type of architecture this rock cut architecture so now we can see this main temple that is in the top of the hill uh whole temple you consist on two uh elements one is uh that is uh this upper rock art uh temple probably probably some kind of chamber that now is very destroyed and then we have uh and then we have these two platforms that is made with this traditional traditional stone mortar uh technique that the whole temple was probably made with that uh rock cut walls which and then we can enter to the this flat wall with some kind of anthropogenic cave probably there were also some kind of of sculpture guardians of the entrance of this temple we can see on this side also the other partially rock cut temple it also consists of this of these traditional platforms and uh upper on the top of this platform we have small rectangular chamber very very simple and as we can see very destroyed today carved in the natural rock so what is the differences and similarities or what is the similarities actually between these two sites um i will skip technical issues because i have no time so so i will i will focus sorry i will focus on some interpretation stuff uh because it's more visible so for sure one of the most important feature uh in the rock art architecture of the Aztec was the was um was the place where it was made uh both malinar context was made on the top of the hills a slope of the hills so there is a clear um clear connection between uh between these temples and the symbol is on of the mountain of the Axis Mundi uh so uh with this location uh both temples can can be um symbolically uh uh that this this world pyramids uh also when we connect some features such as this cut liquid air of god's face or this anthropogenic cave and obviously the mountain location we can uh make a mesoamerican semantic complex of cave uh it was one of the most important uh symbol in in the the Aztec worldview or mesoamerican worldview because uh the cave was considered as source of water source of food uh the interest to the underworld are so a fertility symbol and place of human origin and it's interesting that such a strong uh with with the structure some such a strong symbol in the Aztec area that there was no temples in inside the uh natural caves inside uh real caves so probably in these two uh two place malinar that scotsinko uh can be considered as the as artificial caves so uh it will be the maybe the only two uh temples uh that can that it's uh um symbolically represented the cave because it's in uh natural rock it's inside the inside the mountain so then we have these two small chambers when we can when the priest can connect it with the underworld so maybe uh this interpretation of the malinarco of the rock arc um as uh something associated with the war could be wrong because uh we can clearly see that uh that it has to be something deeper something with more level and uh the levels of symbolism and uh we can omit this uh cave symbolism here uh so to finish I will also say that uh in malinarco there was no studies on the hydraulic system but as we can see the caves in the uh in the mesoamerica was the source of water but actually there are some remains of rock art hydraulic system or rock art channels in malinarco but still not uh not analyzed but at the same time in the scotsinko we we have this huge hydraulic system still well preserved uh consists both on the traditional channels and these rock art channels and whole and this whole system in uh in uh scotsinko is connected with this lower rock art temple so probably at the same time uh these cave-like uh uh temples was uh considered as the source of water because we know that uh that people in the scotsinko use this water from this sacred place also to some pragmatic reason so um we still need more analyzes on this uh on these two uh sites to to obtain whole the information about about the rock art significance and also technical studies because now we can try to to make some analyzes uh with the comparison of malinarco with some other places so thank you and sorry for


Hello, so this is another in this series of videos when I'm talking to our staff members about their career paths and their careers. And today we're talking to Zara Monteseri. Zara, hello, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us when and where you did your PhD. Sure. Thank you. I'm Zara Monteseri, a lecturer here at the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, and I joined this past January, so still brand new. And I'm also a consultant at business research at the same time, and my field of research is computer graphics. I received my PhD from University of California, Irvine, last year. Okay, thank you. Can you tell us a bit about the career path you've had to get to this point? Sure. So before joining University of Manchester, I had accepted an industry position back in San Francisco at Disney ILM. Then I transferred to London because of my husband's job. Before that, I was a researcher at a graphics company called Bloxian, working with Professor Henrik Jensen for almost two years. Also during my PhD, I interned at Pixar Animation, Studio Dreamworks Animation, and XEU. So in total, I had more than three years of industry experience before joining academia. And yes, I am one of the few examples coming from industry, while the other way is more common. Okay, thank you. That sounds like an amazing career path so far. So can you tell us a bit more about your role in the department, and what do you do day to day? Right, so I'm a research and teaching lecturer, which is the equivalent to assistant professor, meaning that I would get to do research as well as teaching proportionally. As a junior lecturer, we get to teach one module in a year related to my field of research, and that's even paired up with an honors senior academic. A relatively low load of teaching for junior academics gives us the opportunity to focus more on research and build up a good group in early stage. On the research side, I'm currently involved in five projects, three of them, I'm the main driver, so honestly hasn't been much progress recently. And the other two I'm just leaving. I admitted to PhDs joining in September, which is a pleasure because not all the schools fancy supporting this for early academics. Other than teaching and research, grant writing is another side of the story, which for me has been the most challenging bit so far. Okay, thank you. And, you know, following on from that, you know, what are the best parts of your job and what are the less good parts. All right, so what I like the most about my job, or academia in general is there. There is no limit, upper limit, and you can always grow, learn and stretch your potentials. Basically, every day is different and full of surprises. There is no cliche routine or so that makes it less prone to get bored. I would compare this with my experience in industry. Well, I potentially couldn't be more challenged, but I do like to always step outside of my comfort zone and challenge myself. Now I can reach out to any expert in the world and propose a joint project while industry is way more restricted in that area. The second part I greatly enjoy is the opportunity to teach, train and supervise students which I wouldn't get outside of school. It's very rewarding, and I would be honored to repay the debt of gratitude of my own teachers whom inspired me back in school and I would always own them my success. So yeah, it's very impactful and very big deal to me if I could contribute to someone's future. Now about less good parts. Well, the easy one is money. I moved from industry in California to academia in the UK so clearly I couldn't care less, but it's a well known fact and anywhere in industry we could make more, but that's not necessarily true as well. I'm now consulting with industry and that comes with compensation. So there would be always some sort of opportunity if someone cares enough to attempt. So another less good part is I would say the bureaucracy and all the unnecessarily paperwork we get to do in a day to day job, which I found a little annoying and kind of a waste of time. It's new to me comparing to my previous job at industry. And also, yeah, another not so good side is that I feel rather alone in my own success and the only person responsible for the outcomes, while in companies, everything is about teamwork and I always thought it would be very depressing, because I like to live in a dynamic and a more active industry group. But this was honestly the main concern that I had chose industry, but now I can change my mind, because I recently realized it's actually the opposite. I get to interact with my collaborators for every project. Besides, I get a lot of interactions with students in daily basis, which I absolutely love. So it's not me sitting lonely in my office with no social interactions, as I used to think. So now I get to work in a very social interactive environment, which I wouldn't ever know about back in my PhD. And I always think of, you know, following up on that you work in lots of different small, small and larger teams, different size teams.  But, you know, there's smaller teams say to do with PhD supervision because there's often co supervisors and other people involved in those things. So yeah, lots of interacting small teams is how I view it too. And, okay, so you mentioned earlier on your other career I think Disney was definitely one of the places that you'd worked at. What did you do at Disney day to day or pick one of your other jobs. Sure. So I have the pleasure experience you're working at major animation studios like Disney Pixar ILM Dreamworks, and each taught me something and prepared me better for this my current job. I don't regret any single moment. My answer to the previous question was mostly my reflection on academia and I guess this question is more about the pros and cons and industry my point of view. So let me put it that way, which might be very helpful for PhDs in this stage of reclining on one side or another after graduation. Again, the easy one is money, especially in computer science honestly not part at all to find opportunities, especially in California. Second, a clear and well established day to day tasks you would get an industry, because there would be always superiors to you to help you out you wouldn't ever stop. And everyone is trying for a same goal. So it's a team effort very dynamic very motivating. It's usually a nine to five job and a clear cut between your work and home, which you wouldn't get much in academia. Well, with the exception of startup companies actually I did try once opening up my own business with a friend of mine, after our PhD, and it failed. So I can talk about my experience about having our own business as well. I think that would be really as a fail example, because the third option for graduates apart from academia and industry is starting their own startup right so that would be also something that they could consider. And, but I'm pretty happy honestly I got the chance to try everything before settling down in academia, and I would always feel confident about my current job and it helped out me to truly enjoy what I'm now doing. So yeah, let's get back to the last part. Yeah, the first thing comes to my mind is the job insecurity compared to academia. You may gain more money but you may also easily use your job. At least in the US most contracts are at will employment. So, you can never feel secure. The other part I found out. I'm not enjoying the most in industry is, and I wasn't aware before working there as a full time. It was, you're essentially working for someone else at the end. And there is less belongingness toward the achievements that you're acquiring right, rather than academia your work is yours and will be always yours. So you benefit most if you get to work harder, and you would less complain about the load of work, because you're not working for someone else in academia right so no one else is benefiting, such that you would get in a company and there is no one else. So you would compare yourself with so you wouldn't get that kind of very competitive culture. Following this matter in industry you may experience the ceiling effect which I don't enjoy the most. Soon after working in a company, you reach to the upper limit of your potentials and not much more room for growing and that's why you tend to see a lot of people change their companies after a while or jump into new roles because we would like to challenge ourselves. And at least I do. And that's not concerning me in academia because I can work always with whomever I want. And that's the beauty of my job which I appreciate because at the moment while I work with Disney research I also collaborate with wet unity. They are the creators of Game of Thrones, and some projects from IKEA so I kept my industry relationships but now I also have the opportunity to work with all of them at the same time, which would be very unheard of with the unrestricted with the restrictions in a company. So honestly, if I knew this, this possibility is back in my PhD I could have been more clear about my future path about academia I wouldn't know that could be an option to stay in academia while having collaborations with industry as much. Okay, thank you that sounds good so give us an idea on what you did day to day in, in, you know, one of these industrial jobs what did you when you arrived in the morning what did you do. So it depends if it was a research job or a software engineer as a as a research and development which was mostly what I did. It was mostly involve routine cliche work and we need to we had like a screw in the morning as a like a morning meeting so everyone would tell what they are going to work on. And, and it was pretty clear that this is the task and this is a ticket attached to this blog or whatever that we need to resolve. So it was much clear and a more focused on what we want to do. And of course we would get more variety of what once this product is released or whatever we get to do another very different kind of test so it's not quite boring, but still compared to what you do in academia with all different varieties of things. I feel that now it's more, more different the other day to day job. Okay, I understand a bit better and have you got chance in academia to keep up your software engineering skills. Of course it's very important because that's like the coding every day, what else we can do in computer science department and that definitely helped me on a skill set that I needed to grow back in school was implementation and now in academia you would still need to closely implement at least for junior academics. Okay, thank you. And you touched on this earlier on but coming back to this is, you mentioned transfer of skills between one role or one job to another so what skills have been useful in your previous careers that have been useful now or vice versa. Oh sure. So in my previous roles, what I learned the most was communication skill and playing a good team member, because then you could always learn from peers what we need to learn and that would be the secret to success. So I picked this up in industry, and now I enjoy collaborating with my peers, with collaborators, and this collaborative culture that I learned because it definitely now helps me to better perform in my joint research projects. I think that management skill is another bit that I definitely recommend to pick it up as soon as possible because it hugely helped me to lead a research group, which to me, it's now not less important than learning technical skills. I found that honestly missing any school curriculum, unless students voluntarily work in extra curriculum activities, which I usually recommend by the way. Actually, back in my PhD, I was very active in different organizations and we were repeatedly told by the school that we graduate hundreds of scientists every year, while we need more managers. That's very true. Learning management skill is another bit helped me a lot for my current job and I owe it to my industry experience. I think that's really good advice that you know often think graduating as a scientist you think the science is the key I think it is very important but there's a lot of other skills around that you know communication and soft skills but you know management as well certainly that we need to get our science across and into the right places so so yeah. Okay, so what advice would you give to students in the last stages of their PhDs to help them finish off. Or get the most out of your PhD. Try for first class research, because your thesis would stick to your forehead forever until the end of your life. And this would might be the last opportunity to gain and build up resume before you would bury it under much more responsibilities and commitments. That would be my first advice this is a very, very valuable time I wish I would get even more if I go back to school. Second, be motivated and keep reminding yourself that it's going to pay off soon. I'm going to be depressing at some point with tons of rejections be proud of what you did and remember, you're now among a very tiny top community in that have mastered in that particular field. So be confident when reaching out to job opportunities about what you've done and try to kind of make it a good fit. Thank you and any particular career advice. Yeah, they may already know that the obvious ones but let me share one, one that I found less common in the UK educational system, but I myself benefited most studying in the US system, which I appreciate and that's about internships during during PhD. I started to do five internships during my six year of internship, sorry, six year of PhD, basically means one internship every summer. I would get to work on different research related projects so they all ended up in my thesis, but still a different environment a different team. I can be more grateful of the opportunities because I got offer from all of them after my graduating, and I was already integrated in the community so that saved me a lot of time compared to those were focused in at a school. So I definitely recommend it but I haven't found very easy way to do it I tried to work it out for my own group now. And also another part from the experience is also the financial support. So I remember we would get the three month of salary usually would be twice as more as the rest of the nine months so I definitely recommend if you have the opportunity. Oh, the other less obvious one is to attend important conferences, even if you're not presenting. So I know about the financial restrictions that you may have given that the funding you're on, but even self funding for going for a conference the network you will get is essential it definitely worth the money and time to me, at least like once in a two year something at once a year, which I haven't seen that comment and have been so far in the UK. Yeah, and just networking networking networking during your PhD because you get, you need to do that you need to have the visibility of your work and all of yourself so you would have much more opportunities open to you. You know, where you graduate and conferences will bring those all to you for free. So, I would definitely advise on that about both finding a position for after PhD, and also all the experience and technical stuff that we would learn by attending conference. Yeah. But very good advice. Is there any other things you'd like to say that we haven't covered. So one thing is that maybe think of your future plan in advance so clear up, do you want to go for academia do you want to go for industry do you want to start your own business, because that would help you to be well equipped in that particular direction because each needs its own resume.  Another thing is to finish unfinished projects before you graduate because once you graduate you would have a pipeline of pretty impressive work but never got published so if you if you can finish whatever you have in the pipeline before you kind of start your new journey that would be always a bonus. And yeah, yeah that's it. I think that comes to the end of our Q&A Zara thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts your advice and your experiences. Really interesting journey you've had and you know sort of keen to see more what happens in in the future in the department so thank you so much Zara. Thank you so much it was pleasure. Thanks for having me.