Hei, wrth gwrs. Dwi'n gweithio yn gweithio. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio gyda'r eich eisiau ysgol ar gyfer susan, a mae'n gweithio i'r ffordd o'i gweithio'r padletau a'r sgwp i'n gweithio'r ffordd o'r hynod, ac oed o'r gweithio'r materialau o'r ddau. susan Rydw i'n gweithio'r ffordd o'r gweithio. Rydw i'n gweithio'r ffordd o'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r gweithio. I'm a teaching fellow at Strathclyde University. I teach prosthetics and orthotics, but I have my interest in using social media. It has expanded over the last few years and I use Snapchat as a tutorial tool with my students. I'll go through the forecasts of why you use social media with your students in higher education. I'm sure most of you in the room will be familiar with what Padlet is, but perhaps maybe not with how you might be able to use Snapchat in higher education. I'll also talk about how I integrated Padlet within my Snapchat tutorials as well. I'll talk a bit about the student feedback. The feedback I've got from students about using these and a brief bit about GDPR. I particularly like this quote here, and this is why I started using social media with my students. I wanted to bridge that gap between formal learning in the classroom and informal learning outwith the class. Our students have a very full timetable during 9-5, pretty much every day, apart from Wednesday afternoon, so there's limited opportunity for students to come and speak to me. So I wanted to be able to give them opportunity to communicate with me outwith these classroom settings. If you are considering using social media in higher education, you need to think about where your students are. If I decided to start using Twitter with my second year group, hardly any of them are on Twitter, so that would be a pointless thing. So I said to them, where are you? Where do you want to communicate with me? I came about because I tried to set up a forum on the university BLE. The students weren't engaging with that because it took two, three, four clicks to access the forum, and that was just too much. They weren't prepared to do that. I asked them where they are, and Snapchat was the answer, and that's why I started using Snapchat as a tutorial tool. Don't be afraid to ask your students for help. The students were very much instrumental in setting this up with me. I'll talk a bit more later about managing expectations of using social media with your students. It's important that we model good behaviour when we're utilising social media, and the students can reflect that as well. Ultimately, be brave, just give it a try. I'll just show you the padlet that I created for the students. Some of you who don't know what padlet is, but I like to describe it as an electronic whiteboard. In our course in prosthetics and orthotics, the students have to do a lot of practical patient assessment techniques, and when we demonstrate these, the students are busy taking notes. They're not watching the demonstration. When it comes to the practical sessions, they struggle. So this year I said to them, how about I take some short videos of each of these patient assessment techniques. I'll pop them on a padlet and I'll integrate that and share it with you on Snapchat. So all the videos you can see here, typically less than a minute long, each of the videos has got the specific name of the clinical test, and there's a short video describing how that's done. So essentially what this meant was the students were able to first of all concentrate in the demonstration. They weren't busy taking notes. Secondly, it meant they had a resource that they could access out with the classroom setting. They could look at these patient assessment videos on the bus on the way home. They're sitting on the couch of an evening. That information was available to them as and when they wanted to use it. If you're using padlets, I would recommend that you make it secret or password protected. One of the good things about padlet is that there's no sign up required by the students. I can either send the students a link to the padlet or what I did was I integrated it within Snapchat tutorials. The module evaluations at the end were very positive. The students really appreciated having this resource. I would say, out of the comments, what did you most like about this course? The access to the videos featured very highly in that.  I particularly liked this one here because the filter matched my top. That's exciting. So essentially it is a camera app and that's what we primarily people know is used for pictures. This may or may not be lost on you. Snapchat has got a bit of a bad reputation for being used inappropriately with people sending images of parts of the body that they shouldn't to other people. So it's got a bit of a bad reputation. We need to try and get over that. That's because typically using Snapchat, the app, the pictures disappear after 10 seconds. That's one of the misconceptions I have to deal with when I'm using Snapchat is that it can be used in different ways. Bitmojis for me are an essential part of using Snapchat as a tutorial tool. With your Bitmoji it's essentially creating an avatar. It can be condoned to the shape of your face, colour of your eyes, your hairstyle. This is my colleague Sean and I think he's got the world's best Bitmoji. Sometimes people say to me, why do you use Snapchat? Why don't you just use WhatsApp? The problem with WhatsApp for me is that in order to be in a group of someone on WhatsApp you need to provide them with your mobile phone number. As much as I love my students, I don't want them to have my mobile phone number. With Snapchat the students join your group with a SNAP code and I'll show you what that looks like a bit later. Why did I use Snapchat? I've told you previously. It's because that's where my students are. That's where they wanted me to communicate with them. Interestingly as well, 77% of those between the age of 18 and 24 are Snapchat users. So it's a large demographic of our student population are Snapchat users. Essentially the students weren't engaging in the University of LA forums so I wanted to find out how I could communicate with them more effectively. The students helped me create my Bitmoji and they said you want to be on ghost mode. I had no idea what they were talking about. When you use Snapchat, these are my students. It can tell you where you are with alarming accuracy down to the street that you live in. This was created so that when students or people are having a night out they can find out where their friends are and go and meet them. You can see me here. I'm in ghost mode. The only person that can see me on the Snapchat map is me. That's me travelling to Alts last year in Manchester. The heat maps indicate where there's a high activity of Snapchat users. You can be on ghost mode. That's something to be aware of. This is Deb Bath. When we travelled to Alts last year I did a Snapchat tutorial with some of the committee members. Deb thought it was hilarious. I could show that she was on a train and we used that to find each other. Remember I said to you, you don't need your mobile phone number to connect with each other. You can use the snap code. This is the snap code here. You can actually just have it up on the screen. As you're presenting to the students they can take a picture of it and then add you to Snapchat. This was the Snapchat tutorial I did on the way down to Alts last year. One of the things I quite like about Snapchat is you can see who's there. The little bitmojis pop up and you can see who's participating. One of the things that I particularly like about Snapchat is you can have students who participate silently in the background so silent participation. It means they don't miss out. You might have students who are asking you lots of questions but everyone benefits from the answer to that. With Snapchat how do I use it? It is optional. It's not compulsory. Students engage with this if they want to. I use the chat function which means messages can actually be saved. Typically messages are deleted after 5 or 10 seconds. If you're using the chat function you press on the message and it can be retained indefinitely. I ask questions and the students will respond to that. Sometimes the student asks questions. One thing that's particularly good is that the students can answer each other's questions and I can moderate that. If they've got something a bit wrong then I can jump in and clarify any issues that they're having with that. This is just an indication of one of the chats that we had. We talked about how to identify the tail and ovicular joints. I was able to pop up an image of the foot and identify exactly where the tail and ovicular joint is. The students find this a very positive experience. They find it easier to communicate because it's less formal. It's a more relaxed way of asking questions and importantly they can see when I'm available. I wasn't really aware that what I was doing was particularly innovative until Eric Stoller used this in the example of one of his presentations at the Open University. This was the first Snapchat message that I sent out to my students. It was an X-ray so I was doing spinal orthotics with them. I was able to zoom in on a particular aspect of the X-ray and draw their attention to that. This was on a Saturday evening. I just tried it and sent out a message. Within 10 minutes I had 10-15 responses from students and they engaged because they wanted to. That's the magic of it as well. They can communicate with you through the pub if they're sitting on the sofa. What are the pros and cons to using Snapchat? The pros are that you can communicate with lots of students at the one time. Typically students would email me a question and that one student would get the answer. With Snapchat one student emails me and the whole group can get engages with that material. It facilitates learning on the go, as I've said. The cons are the group size. It's limited to 32 people. If you've got a very large cohort then it's not going to be appropriate but perhaps you could use it in your tutorial groups. I said I would talk about managing expectations. The students can see when I'm on Snapchat. I go on to Snapchat when I want to be there and I pop up and they know that I'm there. They can ask me questions. As I said, I do communicate with them with working hours because our timetable is so full. But if that's not what you'd like to do, you can manage that and say, I'll be available between office hours so you have to manage the expectations of the students. Another downside potentially is the increased use of social media. We know about the problems that that can cause. Obviously there's an investment of time that's required as well to manage these things. If I'm starting a tutorial on Snapchat, I'll let the students know, are you ready? I would have had enough. I'll tell them I'm logging off or good night. If they're not particularly engaging, I can send out a, where are you? It rarely happens because the students are very good at engaging with the tutorials. It's good for motivating before the exams. I'll send them good luck messages on Snapchat and they communicate with me using Bitmojews as well. These are just 10, there's a blog post that I've written about 10 reasons to use Snapchat as a tutorial tool with your students. The students particularly, as I said, due to the ease of communication, the rapidity of that communication as well. It was a less formal way to communicate. I said previously about being able to save the messages. When a message is sent on Snapchat, there's a fine line that appears. If you press on the message, it becomes a thick line and that's how you know that your message has been saved within that. So yeah, what about GDPR? Snapchat and Padlet are both GDPR compliant and that's something that we do need to be aware of and also to be aware of the fact that not all of our students want to use social media tools and also not to assume that our students all know how these tools work. I had one student who was very, she's quite angry actually that I was using Snapchat as a tutorial tool within a university setting and she sent me quite an extensive long email telling me why I shouldn't be doing that. But part of the reason why she misunderstood the tool, she said, what's the point of communicating in this way? The message disappears after 5 or 10 seconds, so we shouldn't assume that students know how these tools work. So I was able to explain to her that you actually can save the messages. Also there are students who don't want to engage in Snapchat and what I did do was I was transferring the relevant teaching material onto the university VLE so the students didn't miss out on that opportunity as well. So I've got a few blog posts about how and why I was using Snapchat as a tutorial tool. There's also a YouTube video that you might find quite useful and there's also some student testimonials at the end of that video as well. Alex Spears couldn't be with us today but along with a social media and higher education committee I'd like you to invite you all to Sockmade HE which is taking place in Edge Hill University in the 19th of December. So thank you very much for your time and I'd happily accept any questions. For choice of the use of Padlet, so they're asking whether you reconsidered it when it wasn't free anymore and why Padlet not a VLE. So when it wasn't free anymore I personally paid the licence for it so yeah, I took that choice because I felt it was very useful. You get five free Padlets. I could just reuse one of my old Padlets and do the same thing. But I think that the way particularly liked about Padlet is that all those patient assessment videos are in the one place where the students can access them very easily rather than having them as a series of videos perhaps stacked on the university VLE. Brilliant, thanks. The guys online would also like to know a bit more about the student view of Snapchat so whether anyone didn't want to take part and whether anyone got disadvantaged for not taking part and whether they found it easier than traditional tools. Very much so the feedback was that they found it easier to communicate with me because it was a less formal environment. As I said it was optional and I was aware of the fact that students were missing out on this communication. So all of the students are on a Facebook group and what I did do originally was I screenshoted the relevant teaching material because there was a bit of chat that was on as well and then I would then post that on the university VLE but that took me 12 steps to get there as well so that wasn't really a long term solution. So the students have agreed that if there's anything I'll ask them to take a screenshot of it and share it on their class Facebook group and they're happy to do that and everyone's on that Facebook group and everybody misses out. Brilliant, thank you. Do you have any questions in here? Yes. I know sometimes when these things are considered one of the objections is that it'll raise expectations among students that every lecturer will do this and create pressures and all that. Have you encountered that and if so how have you responded to it? Well generally the people that I work with roll their eyes when I'm using Snapchat as a tutorial tool and go what you're doing now but the first people to come to me and say you put a message out on Snapchat to the students because they know that the students will read this and I guess it's about managing expectations and the other members of staff aren't willing to do this but I've had very positive feedback from the students myself and you can't force other people to engage with social media and higher education all you can do is perhaps lead by example show the benefits to the students and hope that you might bring them along with you. Just a question on the support. Now if the students don't know how to use Snapchat are you the one that's actually telling them how to do it or is IT aware that you're using it? The university are aware that I'm using it I was invited to prevent the university learning and teaching conference by the vice dean principal of the university so the university are aware that I'm using it. Our year group sizes are quite small a maximum class size is about between depending on your group 3745 students so yes I can help them but it's more likely that their colleagues round about them will help them with that. How much extra work is this for you because it seems you put it in three different places? I just put it in one place and if I want the students to I'll ask them to screenshot something and then they'll put it on their Facebook group and it is a bit of extra work but it's valuable work I really appreciate the interactions that I'm having with the students and we've seen the positive benefit of using the patient assessment videos the students are much more proficient when they come into patient assessment sessions and it's valuable resource that they've got to go over as well so yes it's more work but it's valuable work that I appreciate and the students seem to appreciate it too. I love it. Brilliant, thank you very much. Thank you. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with notable our Jupiter Notebook servers. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning and smart campus technology.


The Commission of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States OECS, in cooperation with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNTAD, will support from the Secretariat for the Convention on Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, host statistic holder consultation and validation event for the UNTAD OECS Blue Bio-Trade Project. More from Anissa Antoine. The dual thrust of the UNTAD OECS Blue Bio-Trade Project focused on empowering small-scale coastal producers from the OECS member states to capitalise on the briskly increase in global demand for marine-based bio-resources like the Queen Conch and high-value algae-like CMOS. At the consultation and validation event, stakeholders were informed of the research findings and evidence-based policy solutions that will serve as a basis for delivering tailor-made capacity-building activities in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and St. Lucia. Chief Fisheries Officer Serita Williams-Peter highlighted one of the most important objectives of the project as increasing economic opportunities for coastal communities through the reduction of trade barriers to regional and international markets. So right now, what has been done, they've done a study to look at what the potential for trade and investment, export markets, et cetera, what the findings of that study is being displayed today and we are getting inputs from various Fisher folk and other stakeholders into that study. That's very important because as it starts with a study, it helps us understand where can we go with the industry, what are the potentials for the industry for increasing opportunities for livelihoods in the sector. One of the project's main findings is the possibility of trade with French Caribbean countries. Economic consultant and coordinator of the Blue Bio-Trade Project, Alexander Govan, emphasized the importance of continuing collaboration with the government of St. Lucia in order to maximise the value of the Queen Conch product, which includes the shells as well as the pearls found in the conch. St. Lucia is very special in terms of the Queen Conch production because you guys have very deep Queen Conch, which means it actually is of a very unique value. Unfortunately, you guys cannot legally export right now to Martinique and if you are able to legally export to Martinique, St. Lucia producers will be able to capture a much, much higher value. So we're hoping right now to be able to figure out how to legally export to the European Union so that St. Lucia producers can get the highest possible price for their very, very special product. The four agriculture, fisheries, food security and rural development, Honourable Alfred Prosper, expressed gratitude to the OECS and other stakeholders for their commitment towards implementing the Bio-Trade Project and harnessing the economic opportunities inherent in the effective stewardship of Caribbean marine resources. The participation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Rural Development of St. Lucia in the Blue Bio-Trade Project reflects our commitment to pursuing the sustainable development of our ocean and fisheries resources. Today, I hope that you as key stakeholders and constituents involved in the Conch trade share your opinion and views on how you would like this industry to move forward. We will be listening closely to what you have to say and incorporating these views into the work of the Ministry. Minister Prosper stated that whilst the project's goal is to ensure that small-scale coastal producers within and outside of the selected Caribbean countries benefit from trade opportunities in the Quincorne value chain, the importance of ensuring the sustainability of the ocean's resources should not be overlooked. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anicia-Antoine-Reporting.


Okay, we've been working on form submits with PHP and submitting stuff with HTML to PHP. But you need to be careful whenever you're allowing users to submit information to your site. Now, the example we've been doing just basically re-displays what they input back out to themselves, which can be dangerous in some cases if you're not careful. But in most cases, that's not a huge deal. Becomes a little more of a threat in my opinion when it's throwing something that other people are gonna view or just stuff that's gonna be stored on your site for later use. And here's an example. I mean, it can be useful in some ways. So we have our basic form here that does a post submit. We got entering the username and a phone number and we click submit and it says Chris's phone number is 555-5512. That's fine, but if the user was to input something like this, which is a basic, a very simple HTML tag, we'll make that a little bigger so you can see, of B for bold. When I submit, you can see, what did I do? That should be a forward slash submit. You can see that the name is bold. And of course, if I left off that tail one, it makes everything bold. So it looks a little more bold, I think, when I minimize it. That's why I made it a little bit smaller there. But here's another example. It can throw off the formatting of your site if they were to put in HTML tags for headers. So header one, header one, submit, and now it's throwing it off like that. And so if this is gonna be saved, maybe a database or something, and then later on displayed for other users, it could screw up the whole look of your website. So you may not want them to submit tags. They could also submit some malicious stuff that causes popups, alert boxes, redirects, or just links to sites that you may not want them to go to. So a simple way of fixing this is PHP has a built-in function for removing HTML tags. So let me go down here into my terminal here, and I'm going to use Vim once again. I'm going to edit the PHP file that we are submitting to. So post.php in this particular case. Once again, I'm using Vim as my text editor. Use whatever text that you're comfortable with. And right here you can see that we're using, we're saying set a variable of user and set equals whatever post and user is. And saying a new variable, phone, whatever the post submit of phone is. And in this case, user equals this with the HTML tags. You could one by one go and remove all of the HTML tags using strip, but you can very conveniently replace all of them in one simple command. So in this case, we're going to do post, but you do the same exact thing with get. You just change the word post to get. So we're going to say dollar sign underscore post. So we're setting post, which is an array, to whatever we're going to equal over here. So we're going to say dollar, sorry, array underscore map, whoops, map. And then in parentheses here and ending our command with a semicolon, we're going to say strip tags, comma, and then we're comma. And then we're going to give it the input of the array that already exists. So what we're doing here is, once again, we're going to create an array called post. Now there already is an array called post, which is the submitted information. Each variable is part of that array. What we're gonna do is we're gonna map that array and use the strip tags command and we're gonna strip it from the existing posts. So basically looking at this backwards, we're gonna say, okay, look at all the submitted posts. Strip those any HTML tags from there and then remap that array into this array, which is replacing the old array. So that's all we have to do. And from here on out, it's going to work the same except for all the HTML tags have already been stripped. So if I save that and submit this form again, you can see it no longer has that issue with the header tags screwing up the page or possible malicious HTML or maybe some JavaScript or something in there that could redirect pop-ups, that sort of stuff. So this is a good idea. Anytime you're doing a form submit, I usually do this as my first line, whether it's a post or get it. Once again, if it's a get submit, you're just gonna change this to be get and this to be get. And it's just replacing every variable with itself but without HTML tags. So that's it for this little tutorial. I hope you found that useful. Definitely very important thing to do. Another thing we're gonna be looking at soon is special HTML characters that can screw up your page. And there's a special command for that as well. So look forward to that tutorial. I hope you're enjoying these tutorials. Once again, always like, comment, subscribe so you don't miss anything. Be sure to check out this entire playlist if you haven't. Hopefully there's an annotation somewhere. And visit my site, filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris with a K. There should be a link in the description. You can search through my playlists and videos there. So once again, thank you for watching and I hope that you have a great day.


Motherfuckin' Jailin' Hertz won 18 out of his last 19, nigga.   He won 18 out of his last 19, nigga.     Soon as y'all get down here in this 23 degree weather, you niggas gonna be frozen.      He be bitchin'. Oh, it's freezing out here, man. It's cold, man. God damn, give me to some heat, man. God damn. That's exactly what them niggas gonna do. That's exactly what them niggas gonna do.    Ooh. Talk to me next week, nigga. Talk to me when it's game time, nigga.


Hi, I'm Zor. Welcome to Inizor Education. Today we continue talking about waves and in this particular case we will talk about pressure waves. Well, pressure waves is primarily, it's about how sound actually propagates through air because the air molecules are changing the pressure in certain areas and that's exactly the most important example of pressure waves. Now, I will explain it slightly differently on a more kind of elementary level but nevertheless it's basically about how sound distributes in the air. Now, this lecture is part of the course called Physics Proteins presented on Unisor.com. I suggest you to watch this lecture from the website because if you are going through the website you have the menu because it's a course which means there are certain topics which are logically related to each other and obviously I would encourage you to go through topics in sequence as it is presented on the website, not because you just found it somewhere on YouTube or somewhere else. And also there is a prerequisite course called Mass Proteins, the same website. Now, the website is completely free, there are no advertisements, no strings attached so that's definitely more preferable way to systematically learn the subject. So, pressure waves. First of all, there is a word which I would like actually to use but it's a very long word and I really don't like it quite frankly. It's called Longitudinal, Longitudinal Oscillations. Now, Longitudinal, well, it implies that there is a length actually, right? Long means something in length. So, that's the oscillation which are propagating through a direction and the waves are also propagating into this direction which is different let's say from the surface of the water when water goes up and down but waves go across. In this particular case waves of pressure go into the same direction as the propagation of waves and molecules are moving in exactly the same direction. Molecules are moving along this line direction and the waves are going through the same direction. So, it's a higher pressure, low pressure, higher pressure, low pressure and the molecules are moving this way. Well, they are not exactly moving that way because molecules of let's say air are chaotically moving in all directions. However, we can always talk about the probability of moving into certain directions and if in the air where there are no oscillations, no sounds all the molecules are moving in all directions with basically the same probabilities but whenever there is a sound which means there are certain pressure waves which are going through the air then the probability to go into this direction of the propagation of the air is slightly greater and then the molecule goes back and goes back to its own chaotical movement until the next move of the pressure comes. And that's what I will be explaining in a simple example. Now, my simple example is consider you have a cylinder, a long one, with a piston on the top. We are in control of this piston, we can move it up and down. Now, there is air inside of this cylinder. Now, the length is sufficiently long so we don't really take length into consideration and the diameter is not really very big because the bigger diameter means there is some distortions from the one direction. I would like to concentrate only on the vertical direction in this particular case, in this example. So, as the piston is moving up and down, I would like to investigate how the air molecules will move inside that cylinder. That's what's important. So, that's why I don't want to have a bigger diameter. It's a relatively small diameter of a cylinder, but long one so I don't really take the length into consideration right now. So, what happens right now under the piston? The piston is in the top position. What happens? All the molecules of air are chaotically moving. Their chaotic brown movements actually sometimes it's called. So, this chaotic movement actually means that you don't really have any kind of notion about where exactly each molecule moves, but you can just consider that the direction every molecule moves has certain probability and the probabilities in all directions are the same. So, they're going chaotically inside the cylinder in all directions. They bump into each other obviously, they reflect. So, that's what chaotic actually means. Now, what happens if I slowly, very slowly move the piston down? Well, that actually reduces the volume. Now, you know the Boyle's law that the volume times the pressure is a constant. Whenever you increase the volume by factor of two, let's say, pressure decreases. If you decrease the volume, the pressure increases, but their product is constant if amount of air and the temperature are the same. Because if there is a temperature, there is a more universal law, but this is the Kelvin temperature. So, this is the constant. But right now, our temperature we're assuming is the same. So, we are talking about basically increasing the pressure if decreasing the volume and decreasing the pressure if increasing the volume. Okay, proportion, inversely proportional to each other. Okay, now, that's what happens if we are slowly moving it down. When we're slowly moving down, the molecules will redistribute in a smaller volume again evenly because we are doing it slowly. They have the time to redistribute among the whole volume and the pressure will be increasing proportionally to decreasing of the volume, obviously, here. If I move it in such a way that I will reduce the volume by half, my pressure will double, obviously. So, that's what happens if we do it slowly. What happens if we are maybe moving a short abrupt push down? Very short, but very quick. Boom, like this. Well, let's just consider now the molecules. They have mass, which means they have certain inertia. Because of that inertia, the molecules immediately under the piston, these molecules, will be compressed, but they will not have time to redistribute down the volume. So, you can consider that there is a small volume here under this volume, under the piston, which basically contains the same amount of molecules. Molecules are not escaping down. But this volume, when we're short and abruptly move the piston down the cylinder, this volume is reduced. So, the same molecules under the thin layer, under the piston, will be squeezed, really squeezed. And what it means? Well, it means that the pressure of these molecules will increase. So, whenever we start moving, basically, we are moving this immediate layer under the piston, we are squeezing it, which creates a higher pressure. Well, what happens when this higher pressure actually develops? Well, higher pressure means that the molecules are moving more intensely under the piston than the rest of the molecules.  So, the higher pressure obviously pushes them. Now, the molecules in this thin layer, since they are more energetic, they are moving faster or whatever, or they're in a shorter distance between them, so they're kind of bumping into each other more oftenly. It means that they will push the next layer. Well, I am basically separating the whole area of the cylinder into the area. Obviously, in the real life, it's a gradual modification of the pressure. But in any case, it's really helpful to explain that there is a layer and then there is the next layer and the next layer. So, the layer of the higher pressure, since it bumps into each other much more often than down, it will bump into the next layer and actually pushes the next layer. Now, as soon as it pushes the next layer, the layer immediately under the piston will expand because it pushes the other layer down and the pressure basically evens as it was before.  Well, the second layer, getting a push from the upper layer will also be squeezed a little bit. As soon as it squeezes, the pressure is increasing and it pushes down the same thing. The same thing as the first to the second, the same thing from the second to the third. So, this particular pushing will go down, down, down, down. The speed of this distribution of energy, we are talking about energy distribution, right? The energy of the piston is distributed down the line. Well, it will distribute with certain speed. Now, what speed depends on? Well, there are many factors. For instance, initial temperature, initial pressure, amount of air, the quality of the air itself, I mean how molecules interact with each other. So, any kind of a medium, and I'm talking about air in this case, but it can be any gas or liquid, it has its own properties. So, the speed of this distribution of the energy is very much dependent on what exactly kind of a medium is here. And there is a very important and I think very understandable analogy to explain this process. Consider you have a train with cars. Now, if this is a locomotive which is supposed to go this way. Now, there are links here in between, obviously. All these cars are linked into some kind of mechanism, link mechanism. Now, there is always a small gap. So, it's like this. And there is some kind of a gap between the link, part of the link which goes to this car and to this car. Why do we need this gap? Well, because if the locomotive is trying to start, for instance, if there are no gaps here, it has to really overcome the friction of all the cars against the rails. If there is a gap here and here, then the locomotive will start and it will move only the first car. When it moves the first car, since there is a gap here, the first car will map, will go after the locomotive. This gap will close and then it will start with a little delay, the second car and then the third car, etc. So, the cars will not be moving at the same moment, all the cars will not be moving at the same moment. The first locomotive moves, then with a slight delay will be the second car, then with a slight delay, the third, etc. So, the efforts, the energy of the locomotive is transferred gradually to the very last car as a wave. This is exactly the same mechanism as the waves of the pressure go through the layers of the air. So, these gaps play exactly the same role as gaps between the molecules and every car is like a molecule. So, whenever you have certain push, now it can be either beginning of the movement or it can be, for instance, when you are slowing down. When you are slowing down, the locomotive slows, this car goes by inertia with the old speed, which means it will gradually close this gap between these two, then this thing will close gap and then this will close gap and that's how the whole cars stop one by one with this wave of stopping really propagating through the train of the cars with certain speed, which depends on many factors. Again, that's exactly the same mechanism. Now, let me just continue. Now, when we are moving the piston down, we are initiating the wave of pressure which goes from layer to layer. Now, what happens when we stop? So, the pistons made a short motion and stopped. Well, at that particular moment, the molecules immediately under it by inertia will go slightly down, which means what? Which means that the volume of these molecules in this layer, in the first layer under the piston, the volume will increase. The same molecules will move further, which means there will be rarity in this particular case. So, there will be low pressure. Okay, as soon as there is a low pressure, the molecules under the first layer, the molecules of the second layer, which have the old, higher pressure, will start moving into the upper part immediately under the piston. The piston stopped, right? So, the low pressure which immediately developed under it will be compensated by higher pressure from underneath. The molecules will go more to the upper, will push basically upwards, which means that they will decrease the number of molecules in the next layer. And the next layer will have a lower pressure. So, my point is that as soon as the piston stops, the low pressure will start propagating in exactly the same way as the higher pressure. Same thing as the train. When you start, you're moving from one to another, from the first wagon to the last one. And when you stop, again, the first one stops the first one, so the stop really propagates down. Same thing here. The higher pressure propagates down, and as soon as it stops, the low pressure propagates down. Okay. So, that's basically an explanation of how high and low pressure are distributing down whenever we are moving this piston in a short move down and stop. Okay. First, when it moves, you will have a higher pressure going down. When it stops, there is a low pressure going down. So, obviously, the next step in our logical explanation of how sound propagates means that we will probably have to make this piston making the reciprocal back and forth up and down, actually, movements with a relatively high speed. Whenever we are moving down, we initiate the higher pressure, and the higher pressure goes down the cylinder. Whenever we move the piston up, the low pressure, well, the stop and moving it up. Same thing, actually. Whenever we're moving up, the whole thing goes to that direction again, and waves will be propagating all the way down. Low pressure, high pressure, low pressure, high pressure. And that's what actually makes the sound. Because whenever we have something like I'm talking right now, it means the air around my mouth starts basically vibrating, and then it goes to all the direction. Now, why I chose this cylinder and the piston? Because it's easier to explain we have only one direction of distribution. Whenever something is sounding in the room, obviously, the sound goes into all directions, so it's kind of a spherical distribution of energy. It's a little bit more difficult, but it doesn't really matter. The whole thing is basically the same. So, I have chosen this to have basically a flat waves. So, the flat waves are layers of high pressure, low pressure, high pressure, low pressure. Okay, now we have to really talk about some terminology. So, if you have areas of high pressure and low pressure, then there is always a distance between the areas of the peak pressure. And this distance is called wavelength. Usually, the Greek letter lambda is used for this. So, lambda is the distance, well, in meters, centimeters in whatever unit you choose, the distance between the crests of the pressure. So, the high pressure has a peak at this point, and at the same time there is a peak here. And obviously it depends on the oscillations of our piston in this particular case. So, this is the wavelength. Now, if you are standing in one particular point, let's say in this point, you can measure a time between crests of the pressure pass by. So, the time is called a period. Now, obviously the distribution of the waves has a certain speed, and if this particular distance is covered by this particular time, then you have a speed B of distribution of the wave. This is the speed of the wave. Now, sometimes people are using frequency. That's number of periods basically in one second. So, that's 1 over T, that's frequency. Sometimes there is an angular frequency or angular speed, which is actually 2 pi over T omega. That's the number of full cycles per minute. So, one full cycle per time that goes to angular frequency or angular speed, whatever. So, these are terminologies. Now, I wanted to express how the whole air oscillations are looking graphically. And I put the graph inside the description for this lecture on unidisor.com. Now, the graph in this particular case, I would like to represent it as a two-dimensional, two arguments. So, it's a three-dimensional graph with two arguments. One argument is time, and another argument is position. How far from the piston my point is. So, let's say this is x. Now, at any particular x as time goes by, we have high pressure passing or lower pressure. So, how this function P of x and T looks like. Well, let's just think about it. Let's talk about layers again. So, let's consider a thin layer where this particular point x is. Now, if my piston is making harmonic oscillations, which means its position actually is changing by something like A times sine of omega T. Omega is some kind of angular frequency of oscillation. So, we are assuming this is harmonic oscillation of piston. So, delta y is going a little bit down, a little bit up, a little bit down from the initial position. That's the move from the initial position. Whatever the initial position is, doesn't matter. Now, when it moves this way, it changes the layer. We are assuming that the same layer is here, and then gradually it goes down. So, we are assuming that this thin layer is changing in volume, obviously. Because it's a cylinder, which means the diameter is the same. So, if this is my thin layer and I'm still changing it down and up, my volume is changing proportionally to the height. So, that value, delta value, would be equal to also some kind of a coefficient, which is actually the cross-section of the cylinder times exactly the same sine of omega T. So, the volume of this thin layer is changing proportionally to the movement of the piston, obviously. Now, if the volume is changing this way, you remember this. It means that the pressure inside this particular thin layer would also be changing. So, if this thin layer initially has volume v0 and delta v is a change up and down, then the pressure inside would be equal to, again, some kind of a constant, c divided by volume, which is c divided by v0 plus delta v. So, what is my final formula? V0xg is equal to some kind of a constant divided by v0 plus delta v, which is b sine omega T. So, we started with harmonic oscillations of the piston and we ended with a pressure which looks like this. It doesn't look harmonic. However, number one, it's periodic because sine is periodic, so this function is periodic. So, it moves up and down, up and down, right? There is a period, the same period as this one. There is also maximum and minimum, obviously. The maximum is when the sine is equal to plus one. So, the maximum, I mean, that's the maximum of denominator. So, it's a minimum of function. So, function is between its minimum, which is c over v0 plus b and c v0 minus b. c and b are some constant which depends on cylinder, air pressure, etc. So, it's a periodic function. There is a minimum and maximum. And then I basically draw this function using some tool available online. And I present this graph, which I definitely cannot represent it here because it's three-dimensional waves. And this graph represents actually how the pressure is changing at any point x at any time t. Now, why it's different for different axes? I didn't put x here, right? Yet. So, let's just think about how it depends. Now, as we know, the wave propagates with certain speed, which depends basically on the qualities of the air, initial pressure, and whatever it is. So, what does it mean? It means that into the point x, this wave will come. This is a good actually, this is a good formula for x is equal to zero, immediately under the piston. Now, what happens in any other point at distance x? Well, the wave goes with certain speed, which we don't know, but basically, I mean, in this particular case we don't know. But it exists. It's some kind of a constant, which basically depends on the cylinder and the temperature and the initial pressure, number of molecules, etc. So, it introduces certain delay because the same wave, which is here, will go down and to the point x, it will reach later on. Now, how late? Well, the time shift would be equal to x divided by v. x is a distance, v is the speed of propagation. So, this would be a time delay. How can I introduce the time delay into the formula? Very simple. Omega times t plus tau. That's it. And instead of tau, I can put x divided by v. So, this is basically a formula, which gives you two arguments, x and t. v is a constant, which depends on the qualities of air inside. Omega is the frequency of how we manipulate with the piston, hopefully with harmonic oscillations, as I was saying. B and C are, again, constants, which depend on different factors, temperature, etc., obviously as initial pressure in the air. So, with certain numerical values of these variables, there is a graph in the notes for this lecture, which actually looks like waves on the surface of the water, actually, but it does not represent the water. It actually represents, there are two arguments, c. This is t and this is x and this is p. So, this is a time, this is a distance, and this is the pressure. So, there is a wave surface here. It's drawn, not by me, I can draw it like this, by some software, which represents this formula. Well, basically, that's the end of it. This is the graph of the surface, which represents pressure at any point, at any time. Okay, so that's all I wanted to talk about, how the air propagates inside this cylinder. Now, what I didn't really talk about is what happens if it reaches the end of this cylinder. Actually, it will reflect back, but we will talk about this in the next lecture. Also, another important factor, if you are, let's say, producing certain sound in the room, like I'm talking right now, it goes not along one direction, but in all three directions, which means energy is dissipating. So, that's why the air is, well, that's why the sound in the air is getting lower and lower the farther you are from the distance, because the energy of the oscillations are distributed among greater and greater sphere, so to speak. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you very much. I recommend you to read the notes for this lecture. It's basically the same thing as I was explaining. Plus, there are some pictures, much nicer than I'm doing right now. And that's it. Thanks and good luck.


Good morning everybody. I would like to thank first of all the ABS for giving me the honor of speaking to you. When I was first asked to speak and they asked what I wanted to talk about, I said I wanted to give a talk about science and religion. And they said thank you, but Dr. Arbaub will be covering that subject. So could you talk about your experiences as a translator of the Baha'i writings? So I would like to open by begging your forgiveness in advance if I shoehorn a little bit of science talk anyway in towards the beginning and present as well some of my own meandering thoughts about words both of the lower case and upper case variety. But it's all connected to the topic of translation and I hope to make this case by the end. I believe the case was made a little bit more difficult by the opening prayer with emphasizing the complete impotence of words in the absence of action. But then I felt like my case was made a little bit easier by the beautiful song that followed. Thank you to the singer that caused our hearts to soar. What a marvelous and mystical thing a word is. I think Carl Sagan evoked their mystery the best and I paraphrase translated into dark squiggles on a page, words take on an astonishing permanence, one glance and you're inside the mind of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years across the millennia and author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people that never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs, words break the shackles of time, they are proof that humans are capable of working magic. Words are proof as well that spirit and matter are intimately related. They are the matrix of human social existence, the fashioners of our social reality. To borrow a metaphor from Bahá'u'lláh we are like fish in the sea and words are the waters in which we swim all the while unaware of that which sustains us. Most of the time without giving a thought about their holy, curious, quasi-magical nature and our utter dependence upon them for our collective life. Some words of course matter more than others. Some words divide others unite. Most words are spoken in casual conversation and pass away as soon as they are said like the foam on the surface of the sea. Some put to music cause our hearts to soar as it did this morning. Some are lovingly, painstakingly crafted by their authors but read only by a few as many of us in this room know all too well in the case of academic papers and books. Some are parceled out in 140 character allotments and broadcasts to the world in a quest for social capital or perhaps simply to assert one's existence. A very few were spoken long ago and partially remembered but take on an influence far in excess of expectation. Who would have guessed that the one or two thousand recollected words of an obscure Jewish itinerant preacher would go on to shape the lives of countless millions for 2,000 years? In the end, we hope like the words of Jesus, the best words will be remembered and translated into enduring action. How indeed could we have enduring action without words to guide and shape it? What is the connection between words and reality? Do they in the words of Socrates carve nature at its joints? Can mere words be so assembled as to construct a faithful map of reality? We don't know sitting in our armchairs and tossing them back and forth as we have no access to ultimate reality. We have access only to our experience of it. We can make the grandest claims about ultimate reality. God exists. God is dead. There is an overarching purpose in creation. The purpose of existence is what you make of it. The real test of these propositions is not what we can say or prove from the comfort of our armchair, or we can offer classical proofs about, say, the existence of God, as Abdu'bahá did many times, but to Laura Clifford Barney over lunch, he said, these theoretical arguments are for weak souls. The real proof is what kind of world results when we construct our social reality around the one proposition or the other, by their fruits, ye shall know them. The litmus test of words then, whether fiction or nonfiction, is their effect in the world. The question of the relationship of words to reality becomes the practical matter of testing them by putting them into action. The proof lies not behind the words in the realm of the undiscoverable intention of their author, but in front of them in the minds and actions of the readers. Now, if the words of a particular language are the sea in which its speakers swim and the medium through which they communicate, then there are other seas and other waters, other languages. They may differ in some ways. One sea is more temperate than another. One is saltier than the other. But there's a deep structural similarity between one sea and another. It is this similarity that makes the work of the translator possible. It is also the basis for its fundamental limitation because language encodes our essential embodiedness. The metaphors we use in the language, all are drawn from our experience in the world. How could it be otherwise? The primordial origin of language is in conveying the very concrete things that were necessary for survival, the location of food or the existence of a threat. The deepest structures of language, subjects and objects, nouns, verbs and adjectives all carry the genealogical trace of their humble origins as they are part of the structure of language so they inescapably become a part of the structure of our thinking. So much so that we can hardly imagine otherwise, it takes a great act of will to transcend the confines of the language into which we were born. The reason I make this observation is that there is no law or principle that says that words are the best and most accurate way of representing and communicating reality. So I return to the question, do words carve nature at its joints or does the structure of reality transcend the lineaments of subject and object of noun, verb and adjective? There are to be sure many elements of human reality and experience that human languages are unable to express. And for this there are other kinds of languages, other media for the transmission of ideas, other seas, a symphony, a sculpture, a building facade, art music and architecture can convey realms of meaning which words are often at a loss to capture. They are rooted in a vocabulary and follow a grammar which is uniquely theirs. If there is a case to be made to single out one special language, one special medium of communication above others as being most suited to represent reality, surely one could argue it is the language of mathematics. The realization of this was a long time coming. It was first foreseen over 2500 years ago by Pythagoras who saw the geometry and ratio in the humming of strings. But it was not until the lifetimes of Galileo, of Kepler and Newton around the 17th century that it was fully appreciated that nature is written in the language of mathematics and that the secret inner workings of nature began to gradually be exposed. Why is mathematics so effective? It has a quantitative precision that natural human language lacks, yes? Perhaps as well its different vocabulary and grammar helps us to escape our own embodiedness. The equations of Schrodinger and of Einstein capture the outlines of a reality, of quantized matter, of curving space times, of events without identifiable cause or effect, of higher dimensions and parallel universes which our language bound brains cannot reach. But even do even these symbols and equations of such concision and power carve nature at its joints. We need only briefly refer to the transition between Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity to see how a theory that is almost perfectly right can be almost perfectly wrong in describing the ultimate components of reality. The thing in itself, what the Platonists call the realm of ideas, what the Baha'i writings refer to as the realm of the eternal archetypes, it seems is forever unknown to us. All we can hope to do is find better and better approximations. Never knowing whether the next approximation will throw the metaphysical foundations of the previous approximation into complete disarray. And the whole theoretical edifice of science is now at a crisis point, a dangling contraption, arbitrary and asymmetrical with the essential elements necessary to restore the harmony either unobservable or worse non-existent. For the moment the quest to find the grand theory of matter and energy has never seen more distant. But these are topics for another time. The other speech I was going to write. There is another category of communication, another language for the transmission of ideas. This category is easily overlooked by the modern secular mindset because to the casual observer it looks just like natural language. Only the eye which sees and the ear which hears can perceive its utterly unique character. Here we return paradoxically to the limited realm of human language as the vehicle for the expression of the highest truths. Not the truths of the natural world to which the language of mathematics is so well-fitted. But for the truths still higher on the chain of being, truths of the human spirit and of its relationship to others and to the divine. To distinguish it from other words and to assign it a category apart, we designate it in writing in the uppercase. We refer to it as divine revelation.  And in Bahá'u'lláh's tablet of wisdom, the word of God exalted be as glory as higher and far superior to that which the senses can perceive for it is sanctified from every property or substance. This invisible word becomes flesh and dwells among us for a few years, leaving behind a faint reflection, a mere emblem of its reality in the form of visible words but words of unusual and unexpected creative power. The words, these words come rapidly as though pouring down from a great height and overflowing the confined boundaries of conventional language. Like the sage in Plato's Republic who after breaking his chains and seeing the world as it really is, returns to the subterranean cave where his fellows remain chained and strives to communicate to them in the language of the flickering shadows on the wall, what he saw in the real world. The Bob's ecstatic highly unconventional style is a testimony to this journey of the sage. To be sure he could write in pristine and correct Arabic and Persian when he chose but more often he shunned the traditional forms and forged a new linguistic space in which infinite meanings are spun out, not from the sentences or even the words but from the very letters comprising them. The exploded commentaries of the Bob as one scholar has called them stretch the boundaries of language as a medium for communication. As though making the point in the most challenging terms possible that language and reality are only imperfectly correlated, that the universe is overflowing with meaning and that language can capture only a few droplets thereof. But despite their limitations in the end we are a certain kind of creature suited to the waters in which we swim. We are fish and not birds. We will have to make do with words and their essential aquatic nature. And should a bird of the spirit wish to tell us of the atmosphere in which it soars, it must translate its melodies into the medium in which we swim. How many infinite truths lie within a drop, Bahá'u'lláh says, of which not even the barest reference can be made. It is possible to imagine the contact point between the human and the divine being expressed through means other than words. We have already mentioned art, architecture and music. Are there other alternatives? A suggestive hint can be found in a prophecy of Bahá'u'lláh about the next revelation. He does not give many clues in his writings about who or when as far as we know, but he does say something significant about the what, that words will not be its proof. Are this manifestation, Bahá'u'lláh writes, verses alone had been the proof unto all. Since in all the previous scriptures we had sent down this decree, hereafter the matter rests in the hand of God. It is for him to determine what to assign as proof in the succeeding manifestations. For in this manifestation, God had willed that most of the believers and the sincere ones should give utterance to verses, whence in the next dispensation we shall ordain a different matter as proof, lest all who speak in this fashion should show pride towards God. But to take us back to the present, our community, our community is a community of action. We are transforming neighborhoods, we are uniting hearts, we are building the framework of a new kind of social existence. We are also the caretakers, the transmitters, the heirs of an excellent and priceless heritage to future generations. This heritage is a collection of words of unusual origin and significance. Of the Bob's writings, some 2,000 works have been preserved comprising around 5 million words. Of Bahá'u'lláh's writings, perhaps 20,000 works, mainly very short letters or tablets comprising 6 million words. This is apart from the works of Abdu'l-Bahá'u'lláh and Sharia Fendi, also a roughly similar word count. It is a large collection, by no means record-breaking. The English author Charles Hamilton, perhaps the most prolific author in history, wrote some 100 million words, but these 11 million words that we're talking about, the words of Bahá'u'lláh and the Bob, these words are infinitely precious to the community that is their keeper. They are pondered, memorized, treasured, raged at, wept over, talked to our children from their earliest years. Collectively, they delineate not just the precepts of a new faith community, but the outline of a world-embracing spiritual revolution destined to transform our notion of religion itself and to sweep all humanity into its orbit. In one common faith, a statement prepared at the direction of the House of Justice, we read, Bahá'u'lláh has not brought into existence a new religion to stand beside the present multiplicity of sectarian organizations. Rather, has he recast the whole conception of religion as the principal force impelling the development of consciousness. So, the skeptic asks, that's a big claim. What's so special about these words that impel the development of consciousness more than all others? What makes these 11 million odd words unique above all others? On the surface, it's the same set of words, the same vocabulary put together according to the same rules of grammar. They've just been remixed. Saying the difference comes down to the source while these are from God and those are man-made, is a chicken and egg problem for those who haven't already come to a conclusion about their origin. Something else has to distinguish it when set side by side with other words and with no prior knowledge. But Bahá'u'lláh assures us indeed that they are unique. He says, no breeze can compare with the breezes of divine revelation, whilst the word which is uttered by God shineth and flasheth as the sun emits the books of men. And the one, the word which the one true God uttereth in this day. Though that word be the most familiar and common place of terms is invested with supreme, with unique distinction. There are two potential criteria of uniqueness of the word, the capital W word, that I would like to suggest we can eliminate at the start. The first is that they don't have to be masterpieces in the literary sense of the word. I think here actually St. Augustine says it best as he, as a young man began his exploration of the Christian scriptures coming from a Neoplatonic background. He says, this is around the year 400 AD. He says, I applied my mind therefore to the holy scriptures to see what manner of books they were. There I saw a thing, not discovered by the wise, nor revealed to the little ones. Low is the entrance to it. But where it issues, it is lofty and veiled in mysteries. And I was not such as could enter it or bend my neck to its path. For when I first turned my mind to the scriptures, I did not think what I am saying now. They seemed to me unworthy of comparison with the majesty of the rhetoric of Cicero. My pride shunned their modest style and my eyes could not penetrate their inner secrets. It was the same scripture which grows up with the little children, but I disdained to be a little child and swollen with my pride, fancied myself and adult. I would also like to suggest, secondly, that the criteria of uniqueness of divine revelation is not that it's magical or supernatural. There's an interesting story that we've read in the Donbreakers of the Bob's first encounter with the clergy in the Vakil Mosque in Shiraz in 1844 when he was forced at the pulpit to disclaim his cause. And we read the actual words that he spoke in Arabic, and it's very curious what he says. He disclaims to be the possessor of a cause of supernatural origin, and further states that if any word streamed from his pen, it was due solely to his innate nature, mas e fetrat, phrase in Persian. The cleric satisfied at his supposed recantation and let him go. What they did not understand was that the Bob was inaugurating a new way of thinking about the nature of divine revelation far from their superstitious imaginations. Fifty years later, to Laura Clifford Barney, Abdu'l-Baha would clarify this new concept of revelation, answering a question about whence the manifestations get their knowledge, he replied, religion consists in the necessary relationships deriving from the realities of things. If the manifestation of God, the divine lawgiver, were not informed of the realities of things, if he did not understand the necessary relationships deriving from these realities, he would assuredly be incapable of establishing a religion consonant with the needs and conditions of the time. So if it's not that they're literary masterpieces in a classical sense, if it's not that they're magical or supernatural, what are some of the criteria by which we distinguish these capital W words from the lower case W words? I'd like to highlight four and then talk about their implications for the translation work. The first is their penetrative power. The great poet Andalib, a contemporary of Baha'u'llah, had the following to say about this. It is the divine word which is the token and sign of a prophet. The convincing proof to all men and all ages, the everlasting miracle. Do not misunderstand the matter. When the prophet of God, Muhammad, called his verses signs ayat and declared the Quran to be his witness and proof, he did not intend to imply, as some vainly suppose, that the eloquence of the words was a proof. No, the essential characteristic of the divine word is the penetrative power. Nofuz in Persian. It is not spoken in vain. It compels. It constrains. It creates. It rules. It works in men's hearts. It lives and dies not. Georgetown's and the Hand of the Cause heard that same penetrative power in the voice of Baha'u'llah. In those English translations which were then available to him, this is before the time of the Guardian's translations, he could nevertheless hear that note, and here's how he describes it, writing to Shoghi Effendi. He says there is a note, a music, a voice, in the writings of Baha'u'llah, even in translations which never was heard in English literature before, and which has such power that it seems to shake the air as one reads. If other proof were lacking, this mighty voice would be sufficient. In the letter to Nellie Roche, Georgetown's and writes, the vibrations of Baha'u'llah's writings are so intense, they shiver me with an exaltation and a power I can hardly stand. Like standing out in a great storm with the winds roaring and the waves raging and the trees shrieking and crashing and the whole scene uplifting one with its tremendous power and energy and beauty till one is transported and feels part of the titanic drama. I think men will have to develop a lot before they can react rhythmically to Baha'u'llah's writings. Perhaps we're not meant to. The infinite has come among us nearer than ever before, and we are stunned by its presence. A second aspect of the word is its transformative nature. It can transform us personally. Many words inspire, but how many words induce people to utterly change their lives? Baha'u'llah writes in the Katabi Ghan, is it not the object of every revelation to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind? A transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions, for if the character of mankind be not changed, the futility of God's universal manifestation would be apparent. By their fruits, ye shall know them. A third aspect of revelation is its multivalence. It contains multiple meanings within itself, sometimes simultaneously. The prophet uniquely above scientists, philosophers, poets is able to address different audiences simultaneously as such their words can be endlessly interpreted. In the Katabi Ghan, he writes, the birds of heaven and doves of eternity speak a twofold language. One language, the outward language, is devoid of illusions, unconcealed and unenveiled. The other language is veiled and concealed. In such utterances, the literal meaning, as generally understood by the people, is not what hath been intended. He writes in another tablet, know assuredly that just as thou firmly believeest that the word of God exalted be his glory, endureth forever, thou must likewise believe with undoubting faith that its meaning can never be exhausted. But there are more meanings than just these two, the outward and the inward. The Bob writes regarding the meanings. He says, verily each letter of the Quran is invested with as many manifest meanings as the number of atoms of all things. And each one of these manifest meanings hath and hidden meaning. And each of these hidden meanings possesseth an inward meaning. And each inward meaning containeth an inner inward meaning and so on as God willeth. Bahá'u'lláh helpfully gives us a round number. Quoting Hadeeth, we speak one word and by it we intend one and 70 meanings. Each one of these meanings we can explain. Abdu'l-Bahá ups the ante. The words of God have innumerable significance and mysteries of meanings, each one a thousand and more. This is a job for the reader as well as the translator. So that's the fourth area of uniqueness in the word of God. We can't avoid and we don't want to avoid although we might not have time to talk about how their content is unique and distinguishes it above all other words. Not that we read the equations of nature from Bahá'u'lláh's tablets or parse them to find the next grand unified theory of physics. They come from afar and have elsewhere their setting. Their content rather concerns matters higher on the chain of being. Social relationships and the individual relationship with the divine befitting the current stage of our evolution. And this it has recreated all things. It has instilled new life into old ideas. Bahá'u'lláh writes through the movement of our pen of glory. We have at the bidding of the omnipotent ordainer breezed a new life into every human frame and instilled into every word a fresh potency. What are some of the fundamental ideas that have been redefined in Bahá'u'lláh's writings? We could doubtless produce a long list but we'll mention just a few. The idea of God, a radically unknowable God whose unity excludeth all attributes. A reality that shatters the crystalline sphere, the final crystalline sphere of subject and object. A God as much a transcendent creator of the universe as an intimate light shining within the heart both and neither at the same time. A God whom the Bob provocatively tells us if we address in worship as object of our worship in prayer the Bob says that we have joined partners with God and have never worshiped God. How do we think about God if he's so far beyond even being an object of thought becomes a reality about which nothing at all can be said? And here we start to see the other side of the sphere. We start to see the more eastern side of the phenomenon of religion. At first alien to the Judeo-Christian Islamic conception of the divine that we're used to hearing about. The concept of spirit seen as red as a dualistic thing. Spirit and matter being two separate kinds of substances. Abduba says in one place that spirit that to the vegetable the animal is the spiritual reality. Taking the idea out of the realm of Cartesian dualism into something very different. Something fundamentally redefined. Something in which spirit and matter are seen as relative to one's position on the circle of existence. The idea of revelation which we've already discussed as supernatural as top down versus bottom up. As something emerging from the interconnected realities of things versus something that is sent down as though from above. The concept of religion also redefined in Bahá'u'lláh's writings. Is the Bahá'í faith properly categorized as a religion? I venture to ask. For certain practical purposes, such as registering our institutions with the authorities, managing community finances, the answer must clearly be yes. But Shoghi Effendi generally avoided the word, preferring the phrase the cause, the faith, the Bahá'í world faith. And in the early years of his ministry, the movement. So in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. The Bahá'í faith is in some ways a meta-religion, the apotheosis of religion. As Bahá'u'lláh says, the changeless faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future. A fundamentally different way of thinking about this social reality. What is the common element in these various redefinitions, any one of which would really require a whole talk to discuss appropriately? What they have in common is a melting and dissolving of dualistic categories hardened by centuries of theological hair splitting, permitting for the first time the union of the religious traditions of the East and the West. Every issue has multiple perspectives which derive from the perspective of the seeker. No single perspective, no single approach can be correct at all times for all people. The sheer diversity of the human race, both individually and culturally precludes it. The relativity of religious truth extends not just across time, but across space. All of these above thoughts, as you can imagine, pose special challenges for every student of the revelation. For the translators of the writings, these challenges can seem intractable. When are old words being used in new ways? And should this somehow be reflected in the translation? If there are a range of possible meanings in the original, are any being excluded in the translation? What about the aesthetic dimensions of the original? If rhyme or alliteration is being used, can some equivalent be found in English? What if two different central figures write in two different styles? Should the translation try to preserve the difference? Or will they sound like the same person in translation? This is a particular problem in translating the writings of the Bob. Above all, what does it mean to translate the revelation if it's true content so far surpasses the mechanics of vocabulary and grammar? What about translating their penetrative power, their transformative influence, their multivalent meanings? To what extent is it the job of the translator to worry about these questions? An early Baha'i translator of the book Baha'i Scriptures in 1923 apologized in the introduction for presenting a king in rags. Perhaps that's just it. We have to have faith that though the brilliant image passed through a glass darkly, the reader will still recognize the sun as though face to face. There are a couple of directions one could go, approaches in translation in light of this. The first option would be don't overthink it.  Translate it as it was written word for word. A safe, literal translation is the most likely path we would take. Were it not for Baha'u'llah's own advice? In one of his well-known works, the Hurufate Al-Leen, the Exalted Letters, perhaps best described as an elegy on mortality. It's a very long tablet, it's found in the opening section of Adiyah Hazarate Mahbub, the popular prayer book of Baha'u'llah's writings. Baha'u'llah says the following in the opening pages, in the opening pages, sort of heading postscript of this work because it was originally revealed in Arabic and some of the believers asked him to translate it into Persian and Baha'u'llah ceded to the request and what we have in this tablet of the Exalted Letters is alternating paragraphs of Arabic and Persian where the Persian is Baha'u'llah's own translation of his writing from Arabic. And Baha'u'llah explains himself in the opening with a little sort of superscript at the beginning of this tablet. And this is what he says, this work was originally written in commemoration of the Exalted Letters but hath in these days been dedicated to a certain individual. Some of them requested an explanation and exegesis to be provided in the Persian tongue which was thus written and manifested in gem-like utterances. Yet, since a word-for-word translation after the pattern of the original would have been devoid of grace what so ever flowed from the pen was recorded. Though the possessors of insight grasped from every letter thereof a myriad mystical truths by way of spiritual subtleties and heavenly meanings, yet since some who dwell in the realm of human frailties may gaze thereon with the eye of objection, this explanation was provided that it may be placed above these pages. So, if a literal translation is not what Bahá'u'lláh himself recommends, what is to be done? Fortunately, we have option B, we have a guardian of the Bahá'í faith. Very, very fortunately for us, we have Shoghi Effendi who was appointed by Abdu'l-Baha not only as the center of the cause but as the authorized interpreter of his writings. And since all translation is word-for-word and active interpretation, that was very convenient for us. Shoghi Effendi suggests in the very front of the Qatabi y'Gon, and to my knowledge, he doesn't suggest this anywhere else, that his translations be used as a model for others. So humble, he only sort of slips it in here. He says the hope is that it may assist others in their efforts to approach what must be always regarded as the unattainable goal of the fitting rendering of Bahá'u'lláh's matchless utterance. So we have the guardians' translations to guide us. And there are a couple of aspects, two enormous aspects of the guardians' translations, each of which more important than the other. First of all, the style. Some people have problems with the guardian style, but the style was chosen very wisely. He chose a slightly archaic form of English. What does this do? This does a couple of things. First of all, it maintains an equivalent distance in register between spoken English as there is in the original texts. The distance, the original language, the original words are revealed at a higher register in a loftier language than everyday spoken Persian. So it's appropriate to find in English a register that is also loftier than that of everyday spoken English to find a dynamic equivalence of the tone and style of the work in the original. Secondly, what it does is it helps create for the reader a sense of sacred space. Sense that when you open these books and read these translations, you're entering onto sacred ground. One is reminded of when Moses on Mount Sinai enters into the presence of the burning bush and the voice of God says to him cast off thy sandals for thou art standing upon sacred ground. There's a sense of entering into this presence of the divine and this lofty style, this slightly archaic, slightly distant style in English translation helps immeasurable being creating that sense of sacred space. So there's the style of the Guardian's translations. There's secondly, obviously the content of the Guardian's translations that every word of his translations constitute and bring together and present for us authoritative interpretations. Bahá'u'lláh, Shogifin gives us essentially a vocabulary of translation for the writings, particularly of Bahá'u'lláh and secondarily of the Bob and of Abdu'l-Bahá. Of course, we can't follow the Guardian all the way. There are places he went as authorized interpreter of the text that we can't go. When Bahá'u'lláh says in the Katabi actas, had the Dean of law, mean qablu wa min ba'ad, safely translated as, this is the religion of God from a foretime and unto hereafter. It becomes under the inspired hand of the Guardian, this is the changeless faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future. So I'm running out of time, so I'm only gonna be able to briefly touch on the question of modern translation, how translations are done at the World Center. And the particular reason I wanna go through this is partly to issue a call for help. And I don't wanna scare anyone off by listing what the ideal essential skill set is for the translation of the Bahá'u'lláh writings. One must be bilingual, trilingual is better. Deeply familiar with the writings in the original languages as well as the English translations of the Guardian must have a deep knowledge of literature, English literature, Persian literature and of the arts and sciences must have a deep understanding of the history of the English language. These are practically impossible, admittedly, in a single person. There's a solution, the solution is translation teams. The first translation team in fact, little known fact of my history was Shoghi Fendi in George Townsend. We attribute these beautiful translations to Shoghi Fendi and George Townsend, at his own insistence, his name does not appear in any of the translations of the Guardian, but George Townsend was there on every page. For all of Shoghi Fendi's mastery of English, proceeding in part from his education at Oxford, English was his third language. And George Townsend was immersed in the liturgical and sacred language of the English Bible, of the English Book of Common Prayer. He found words and phrases that really complete and polish these translations. Of course Shoghi Fendi in all cases, in the case of this particular partnership was the final arbiter on matters of accuracy and meaning. Another great translation pair was Marzia Gale and Ali Kuli Khan. As a very brief personal aside, my first Persian teacher was Marzia Gale. I was very lucky in my last years at Stanford to be able to study at her feet, as it were, go and have dinner with her every Wednesday, and she would teach me some Persian hidden words in a little grammar lesson. Her translations really have not been matched since. Shoghi Fendi's are the set the golden standards, but those of Marzia Gale really I think we can only look at in wonder. Abdu'l-Bahá gives us a solution specifically, that there are teams, and these teams must be comprised of two English speakers and two Persian speakers. He says, in the future, when you seek to translate the sacred writings, the task must be undertaken by a committee comprised of two Persian translators and two accomplished English writers. The Persian should translate and the two should cast, the Persian should translate and the English writer should cast the meaning in the mold of graceful expression so that the sweetness of the original may not be lost. They should then forward them to me for consideration and approval for publication. And that basic guidance is essentially what is being used today at the world center. It captures most of the main elements in the process used today. That the process is highly collaborative. Many eyes see these translations before they're authorized. It draws on diverse specializations across a wide spectrum of individuals. It always has the final approval of the authoritative center of the faith, but they're never final. Not necessarily correct. Even though the House of Justice approves these translations, it's only saying this is the best the community can do at this point in time. The translations, as I mentioned, are heavily based on the Guardian's own translation choices and they evolve over the course of many, many iterations, a dozen or more easily, with every single comment by every reviewer painstakingly collected and discussed. I'm being told that I'm completely out of time, so I'm gonna have to cut the remainder of this short with great apologies. I was gonna tell you all about the new writing, the new translations, and the new volumes. What was in them? But I'm sorry, friends. So I think we're gonna have to leave it at that. Please, if you have any interest, let me just end with this call, if you have any interest in this work, please contact the world center because there is a pipeline to ease you into the process. Volunteers are asked to translate little things just to fill the file with provisional translations that can be referred to as necessary. Individual translators can then form teams with other people. There's a process in place that I encourage you, if you have any interest, email researchatbwc.org or encourage your children to study the languages and get interested, or your grandchildren. All right, I'm being ushered off the stage, so thank you very much.