Okay guys, here's what we're going to try to get running today. I bought this thing four years ago I'm thinking it was a 74 or something. I Had it running then I got it running, but um As you can see it's pretty ragged out. I gave $10 for this thing and I'd bought two of them I bought I gave $10 for this one $15 for another one I sold the other one a guy was going to use a motor off of it for a motorized bicycle It's got a piece missing Well, I'm not really a piece. It's right here. It goes here We'll get into this in a minute. I Thought I was missing that piece and I looked all over for that piece this piece right here and Here it was just hanging down there. So there's a little screw that goes in there holds this and this is what chokes it and Unchokes it like that and But the cables kind of froze up I don't know what happened to the bolts to it. This It's got a lot of water in it But it I Think I came up with a 70 1974 on this thing, but I can't remember now I'll go back and I'll let you know What year this is but a Lot of times I'll have a model type and code number code numbers what year it's going to be Sometimes it's a sticker and I think this one was a sticker. That's why I can't find it But anyway We're going to check it out. So it's got spark. I'm sure I'll have to pull this apart clean the the the plugs or the points on it But we're gonna see if we can get this to fire off today I Broke this that little tiny piece right there off of here Because I tapped it this was froze up and I tapped it and when I did I Broke that off there So you're gonna figure out a way to fix that.  I want to talk a little bit about the oil too. So stick around guys So the first thing I want to talk about is checking your oil on One of these that don't have the dipstick in it Dennis Hallbacker check his channel out. He texted me earlier and was asking me about this. I'll show you How you know if your oil's full on this thing if I get you this one's Hasn't been checked in four years All right, let me get a pair of pliers. Okay. Let's try to Get this off here. Sometimes these will break.  So you don't get that dirt down in your crankcase Still tight now yours probably won't be this hard to get out, but If it is just take some time with it there now See, there's no dipstick Now in here you can look inside of here and You'll see the threads Where this screws on Just fill it up until you see until you see that oil touch the bottom of the threads and That should be fine just to the bottom of the threads and probably maybe an eighth of an inch down just You'll see it. This one is low And try to have it on a level ground So I'm gonna put some oil in this thing. It is not locked up. Believe it or not So I'm gonna put some oil in here and I'll show you where to fill it to okay. We're gonna put our oil in What do I run in these I run 10 W 30 now the newer ones of course will If they have a dipstick a lot of them will tell you right on the dipstick what to run If it's not under warranty run what you want to run And if you guys have these small engines like a lawn mower or an edger if you turn them up on their side towards the Exhaust oil will leak out So make sure you know which way you're you're turning your engine Okay, I can just see it right at the bottom of them threads You're good to go if you can see that you're fine. So let's move on. I'll put the cap on Let's move on to something else now. I want to get this Little piece here put back on there. I'm gonna have JB weld it in order to do that though This will come up out the first This is our idle screw We've got to screw this in Because there's a little tab over here See if I can show you that There's a little tab right here. This has got to turn back enough for it to miss that tab and then It will come up out. That's what it looks like. So I got to get this piece If I don't lose it put back on here wherever there goes it goes on top right there so I'm gonna JB wall that that should hold it and Me back you out. He had carburetors looking bad, but We should be able to get it to run now. Yeah, I'm gonna put that get that put back on there clean that up put it back on there and then That'll be done and then we'll check for spark Okay guys, so I got this engine tilted up a little bit.  I got it cleaned up, but I'm not gonna Well glue it JB walled it. We're just wanting to see if it'll run. We're not fixing it up yet But if you know if it runs and runs as good as it did then you know This will be a revisit on just doing the engine up I won't rebuild it, but we'll clean it up and stuff Maybe put a new muffler on if I can find one Remember this this engine will be sold so I gotta watch how much I put in it I can't put $35 in it and get 35 out of it or 20. That's even worse So I'll be back with you. I'm gonna let that soak up some of that water. That's in that tank Then we're going to check for spark. So here's what I was talking about If you flip like this edge or this motor over towards this exhaust Oil can run out the exhaust also if you have one of these vent tubes Like on this old Bergs and Stratton A lot of times they'll go into the carburetor And if you flip this thing up forward too much, it'll come out that It'll come out that vent tube and go right into the carburetor So be careful which way you flip these things over if you have to flip them on their side or whatever Sorry about that. But yeah, that's what can cause oil to be in your exhaust To where it's like dripping and running out In a case like that Best thing you can do Is start it up That truck did not have a front end on it. Anyway, the best thing you can do start it up You know set it level for 10 or 15 20 minutes, whatever set it level for a little bit So that way all the oil will run if you got time let it set overnight so all the oil can run back down And You know to the crankcase start it up.  Check your plug Make sure it didn't get fouled out if it did just clean it up a little bit It's real simple, but then after that you may still get a little smoke periodically But eventually that will go away. So don't worry about it Um, it's not that big of a deal. So what we're going to do I'm going to spray this down This choke here a little bit in there a little bit in there Yeah, this thing will smoke for sure. There we go Like I said, I'm not going to hook The governor up on it today. We're just going to see if it'll start I got to make sure when I put this cover on that I don't get this Wire touching metal. So I may tape that off We're just going to see if it'll run um Right now so A lot of guys will spray oil on these spark plugs Thinking it's going to seep down in but if that spark plugs tight And you spray that you're not really doing anything until you get it loose It's not going to help you loosen it once you get it loose a half a turn or a turn preferably Then you can spray it and then it'll go down into the threads. But remember that's That's tight when that's tight. It's meant to hold compression if it's going to hold compression Any of this stuff? I don't care crude oil whatever you you Your favorite thing is is not going to creep down in there Even after months of setting because that is made to hold compression It's not going to let anything in it if it doesn't let anything out. It's not going to let anything in it especially like 90 pounder compression let sound a small engine up to 150 pound on that thing. There's no way so But so what I just did there I could let it sit there for months It's not going to do anything until once you once you get enough backed out enough To where it can get on to a thread then yes, it will work But just but to to spray them down because they're tight. That's not going to help loosen them So yeah, I'm still waiting on this to Do whatever it's going to do and see soaking wet So Yeah, it's pretty nasty down in there. I'm going to spend a little time try to clean this out a little bit This carburetor would need rebuilt And really the only thing there is to rebuild this carburetor Is uh, you got a tube That goes down to the bottom Into the tank sometimes that'll get gummed up and fall off and whatever And some of these they don't make the tubes anymore You got to make them But really all you get there's a little Like a washer here and There's a Inside of here. There's a a diaphragm That diaphragm is uh, really your fuel pump to pump it up Pump your fuel up in here and then it's got a little once the pumps fuel up in there.  Maybe if we do a revisit on this thing Um, like I said, it's never I'm never going to rebuild it but uh, we'll just play around with it and But today the main thing is just to get it running. So Let me let that sift for a little bit. I'll clean that out blow it out with some air Just to keep most of the stuff from sucking up I don't I don't look for this carburetor to make it sit here and run We'll probably have to do that with squirting gas and also this I don't have a this should have a bolt for this thing And it won't run right without that bolt. So I find something to stick in there Yeah, hopefully it doesn't come loose and fall down in there suck into the engine, but that's okay Oh, I still got to check and see what year this engine is. I'm thinking it's a 74 because like I said the uh Wherever I put it all it's something over there the sticker's gone off of it A lot of times they're stamped it actually stamped into the metal but Um, so I can't show you that another way to tell is inside this flywheel if you take this flywheel off Uh, a lot of times they're inside the flywheel will tell you and this is a cast iron flywheel It's not aluminum and I think a lot of reason they went with The aluminum flywheels Not only for for the weight reduction, but also These cast iron flywheels are heavy just called them heavy the heavy flywheels And a lot of times that will share the key just sitting there running because they were so heavy That's why you gotta make sure if you got an aluminum flywheel make sure this is very tight So, uh, yeah, let me get this cleaned out and then we'll move on all right guys, so Like I said, I'm just going to put a piece of tape over this thing for right now because It's nothing to shut these things off uh, you can just take a screwdriver short to plug out or Cover that up So let's go ahead and put this on. I got this oiled up lubricated lubricated this if you ever start something up And you hear it's like screaming really loud. This is your problem here But there's a little seal there But I shot some I turned it up and shot some uh some of this stuff in it Because I remember it doing that last time we had it running so Did I have to take this wheel off or something? That bolts loose so I'm guessing yes So let's take this wheel off Take this wheel back on Just so it's not messing with us story time back in about I don't know 2012 When I was living in Cambridge, Ohio Old cousin Kev you've heard some stories about him before him and I was working on this old weed eater that somebody gave me And it kept flooding out flooding out finally I got the carburetor to start flooding out But by then it had already filled the exhaust up with fuel We started it and It started right up then was running good and revved it up a couple times In a backfire When it did it just kind of caught on fire by the time gas was leaking everywhere.  I said well now you can have it for free Hahaha True story I found some bolts Well, I found two That should be enough Should be enough to get this thing to start. There's not a lot of horsepower here guys, but Remember it's missing that muffler over there. So we got to be careful That we don't get a lot of gas around there because if we do It'll backfire Even what even if they don't backfire there's flames coming out that exhaust so Could catch on fire I don't want to do that. All right, I got a I want to go ahead Tighten this bottom bolt. It's gonna It's going to take a minute, especially if I keep dropping it like that. We'll get that tightened up Again, now we're going to check for spark. Okay. Now, let's get to the spark. I did uh I do have a spark checker in there. Well, I have several of them that'll tell me whether it's getting spark to the plug But when I had that off of there I spun that Flywheel back and forth and I could feel I could feel it so I think the points are okay. So we're going to pull this out And check it first. Let me run that across the The wire wheel real quick. Okay, so I just ran it across the Wire wheel a little bit there. Let's see If this thing's gonna have any spark You probably won't be able to see this but I can't see it Okay, it's kind of hit and miss Okay, let me check something. So I took the points out This is what it was this wire was broke off of here. So it was barely touching That's why it's getting intermittent intermittent sparks. I'm going to head and solder that back on I'm going to put the points back in Let's try it again Okay guys, so We're going to be looking at This right here. See that spark and that's the old plug. Turn it if that'll help you any See it? What are the points?  It goes in the points and there's a spring That holds it up on that holds the wire into that hole And the wire was a little bit too long It was grounding out. So it was just like Shotting it on and off All right, let me get some gas I'm going to put this in I'm going to use the old plug. I got a newer one here But since this one's sparking We're going to go ahead and I'm going to tighten that down And uh, let's get some gas. We'll put some gas in here Is it going to run? Yeah, I think it's going to run But I don't think it's going to stay running because it's carburetors In bad shape, but anyway Let's see what we can do.  I'm going to back you guys out And let's uh Try to start this thing up Raise you up here a little bit Whoa Now Let's try to start it What do you guys think? Think it'll run? I didn't put any gas in the carb or anything, but Let's try it Second crank it fired must be sucking some fuel up out of that tank, which is surprising Oh, no All right No, it's too small. Let me get that fixed. All right, let's try this again Sounds like it has a stuck valve.  It'll only take a minute Let's see if we got a stuck valve. I think we do See intake valve the one that's open there This one here It should be opening and closing. That's exhaust valve. It's working This one's not So See it's starting to work now It's working sounds a little clunky. Let's go ahead and fire it up now. I'll put that head back on real quick I'll speed you up through that And uh This thing back together All right Let's see if it'll run now No, I didn't torque them head bolts down. This is It's not a 500 horse Corvette it's It is what it is Let's try it 1970 I don't know. Let me check. Okay guys I went ahead and pulled that back off and looked at the flywheel And uh, it's 72 So Providing that's original flywheel Which I think it is because the points when I took the points out to solder that wire back on Um, it still had the briggs and stratton the diamond symbol on the points. So I'm thinking those are original points Or close to it Anyway, there it is One more time. Let's see if it'll start up It's cold down now That's a good engine. That'd be a good engine to put on a bicycle Monkey said well, why don't you do that? But I don't have parts We'll get the parts like to see how low I can get them idle before they die. This is pretty cool. I've seen you these before that's uh Gekko egg Okay, so anyway, there you go. That's pretty cool. Um I can't believe that carburetor's running with all that water I took out of it and had a bad smell and It was sitting there for four years since I've had it without being run It wasn't covered up either. I just had I just had that sitting on it just like that so Pretty cool. I should run a motor. I think we'll do a revisit on this hook the governor back up and everything and get it running To where it doesn't hesitate when you give a wide open I I think I can just run some cleaner through the tank and I think that'll take care of it But yeah, pretty cool. Thanks for watching guys. J. Bear's met the main ledger. I'm gone for now.  So They're just waiting on test results. So hopefully everything will be all right there All right guys. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend We'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye and take care It's better than that nerd to come see over there


You guys have spent the last several months just immersed in the Navy. We want to see how much you've learned. Oh, God. We're going to ask you a couple of terms that we know and use regularly and see if you can tell us what they mean. I have to ask, were they used in 1939 and 1940 because that's my specific answer. That's not something, that's unknowable. I'm not sure. Okay, good. That might get us out of it. That's right. And then we're just going to play it like this, right? So, if you know the answer, you buzz your button. Right. Whoever buzzes first, I will call on them. Okay. They'll give the answer. Okay, so no question. Okay. If you're in the Navy, what do you think the word scuttlebutt means? Scuttlebutt. It is a water fountain. Oh, right. Yes. There were none of them on the US offensive party. There wasn't really running water on the US. Okay. No scuttlebutts. If you are in the Navy, you might know the term shellback. Shellback. No this. I don't know this stuff. I'm sorry. You're intelligent. You should know this, right? That's different types. Different types. If you have crossed the equator, you might know shellback. That's what it was. Yes. What about the term? You should have said it again. Yeah, so he can answer it. Would you get shellback? What is it? Oh, shellback is when you cross the equator. Oh, good job. Let me show you when you come back. Come back. If you were on a ship, what is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? What is a pattern? If you were on a ship, what is a paddy? Gentlemen that were on a ship? Paddy. Oh, good for you. I thought you said paddy. And passing it to you. A paddy? Oh, I love a paddy. Yeah, that's good. Paddy. Do you guys know what a paddy is? No, we're not doing very well here. No, we're not. All right, it is what you tie the aircraft down to the deck of an aircraft carrier. Chains put on to the paddy. To the best of your knowledge. That wasn't our job. Yeah, but... We just got out of the planes and went and the other guys handled it. Is that it? Man. To the best of your knowledge, what is a skipper? A captain's bow? Captain's bow? Yes, Patrick. One point. Someone scored. Someone scored. Yeah. In your experience, what is a captain's mast? Oh, captain's mast? You get to send a captain's mast and it's like you're getting in trouble, right? Yes, but you didn't buzz your buzzer. Oh, yeah, yeah, you get in trouble. All right. Move gets a point. Yeah.  Is that when you're in trouble? Yes. It's a jail. It's a jail. Really? We gave that one to you. Yeah, that was... Let's talk about the word. Oh. Oh, what word? He has to answer now. It's like Jeopardy. Yeah, what word? Let's talk about the word.  In the Navy, if you hear someone talking about the head. Yes. The toilet. Good. Okay. And... We really are good around jail and toilets. Yeah, you can tell our history before acting. What about... In between jobs. What about port hole? Port hole. The port hole? Port hole? The hole? The port hole. The hole in the boat? I don't know. Looking out the port hole? Yeah, the window. The window. The windows on the lower parts of the deck, right? Should I give you that point? Yeah. All right. Lighting round, lighting round. We're going to go really fast. All right, let's do this. Now, you don't have to use your buzzers, but I want you to shout out the location of the ship, if you know it, so you can get double points at the end of this one. The location. What is the back of the ship? The stern. The stern. Good. Front of the ship. Bow. Sorry, we're not buzzing. Oh, yeah. You're right. No, you're right. Bow. And left side of the ship. No, it's not. It's not. Starboard. Port side. Left side. And the right side of the ship. Starboard. Starboard. All right. I had to go left, right, left, right in my mind. I got two points there. Great game, everyone. Your prizes will be after this. Thank you. Who won? Tell the two American guys it was the English guy. Come on. Who was it? Who won? No. I'm very competitive. See ya. Thank you so much. Thanks for playing. We've all learned something new. Yes. Now our area of expertise in the Navy expands past the 40s. You know some of the lingo. Some of it. You'll be that much more proficient tonight. Terrible. Thanks for coming today. I have one last request. Yes. I'd like to get a selfie with you guys. Please do it. Before we go. All right. Please do. We want one with you. With me. Yes. All right. Hop in. Oh, gotta go to selfie mode. Turn around. There we go.


The presidency says it has no hands in the ongoing amendment process to the Nigerian Press Council NPC Act on the National Broadcasting Commission NPC Act by the National Assembly. A lot of outcries from media stakeholders had greeted the amendment process, with some describing it as another attempt by the federal government to gag the media. And others are describing it as a reintroduction of the obnoxious decree number four, responding to questions from state house correspondents after the week's virtual federal executive council meeting presided over by President Mohammad Ibuhari. Special advisor to the president on media and publicity, Femi Adishina, said the issue of the amendment had nothing to do with the presidency, but a government matter. The attorney general of the federation is going to study that report and then he will advise government on the way forward. But the committees set up by the president to engage with Twitter is actually holding a meeting about now because it's holding a meeting this afternoon towards engaging with Twitter.


should have actually looked over my shoulder, sorry. So yeah it's based on a couple of projects. One is my doctoral research over the course of the nice short nine years with James Barrett and Cambridge and it's also combined with my new project on a prosopography of the North of Ireland. So seeing as there were so many people today talking about Scotland I decided to stay on the Irish side of the North channel just in case there were a lot more people in the room that know more than I do. And as it turns out there are. Okay so look I'm keeping people from their coffee so I'll just fly through some of this stuff. What I would say is the textual narrative that we have is extremely problematic. Very. Things like the Dahl Reata, the Dahl Feetak which we associate with the power of the Dahl Narda on either side of the North channel are all at the very earliest 7th century inventions. So and even the Dahl Feetak they usually get left off that list. But the reality is you've got something a bit more like the Kenal Dibban, the Kenal Ghamran, the Kenal Kogel, the Kenal Nyaktach, the Krytna Elnya, the Ichelbad Elnya or the Ichelbad Tsargodad and the Ichakobo and they all emerge as the dominant groups around this time probably 56th century. But what I'm going to try and argue today is that there might have been other groups who were obscured by this rise because when you get yourself into a position of power you pay a genealogist to justify you being there and go well look this fellow's the great great grandson of Adam of course it is or sometimes hers. So before I go once and isn't talking about kingdoms I'll do this very briefly. What I would say is to be a kingdom you have to have a king. Okay first off now that might sometimes be a regularly rather than a Rex because this is one of the problems with the Irish reed it's not directly semantically equivalent to king it's more different grades of sort of kingship and things like that. I've got another paper that argues all it is it's complex but not that complex but just know that between any languages anyone who speaks two languages knows there are very few hundred percent correlations. So what I would argue would have to have a concentration of people to have a kingdom and you have to have a you have to have a concentration of resources ideological economic political and military resources that's from man 1986 tilly 92 and Robert Elias back in 1939. Did that go on? No. Well I think you probably used up all my batteries. It's working now of course as soon as I said something it flew on four slides. So look the textual narrative as I already said is very very complicated and for those of you familiar with Irish text basically just like we're trying to do today there were scholars in the 10th century that said all of this is really messy let's make it a bit more rational a bit more normal. If one of you had fallen I would have gotten out of it. A bit more rational yeah a bit more normalized so what they did was try and force everything into what was what they decided was to receive wisdom. Now that could be for political reasons but sometimes just for scholarly reasons and what I would argue is that there are some texts that were very very very very influential in this respect. So the Vita tripartita which unlike Paddy I would see is about 930 dating to the reign of or the absi of Yosuf of Armah who is a member of the the Canal Lorne from from Westland Scotland and I think that all that suffered the Dalry it and there is there to impress him. But there's a lot of other stuff in there and a lot of it got overwritten a lot of it got written into sets of annals that were being transcribed so you got a lot of late stuff and started in and pretending to be early stuff. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and look at some of the other stuff that's in there to see how we get on. So just before I go on here's some settlements so basically I'll just run around the map so up here you have the Krypton area possibly the Dalry is up here they're around but I don't think very early and you have the qued right here and this great big patch and no surprise that they're pretty much the second most powerful dynasty all the way through. You have the Dal Fiatok here the Iyaka Garja here possibly another branch of the Dal Fiatok here the Barca here you've got the Iyaka Kobo here and yeah that'll do that's too much information as it is. But you can see there are clusters of settlements yeah so each one of these is based on something with clusters of settlements so I kind of put superimposed the more high status settlements and you'd see that there is some kind of correlation either with the center of one of these areas or with its edges because you think about a warrior aristocracy. So then over here I've got the more iron edge and 300 to 600 300 to 700 stuff and again you get clusters here but you've also got some stuff that's hard to explain down here and of course there's the Krytna Nylja who were I would imagine a returning Federati from the Roman Empire and I think that that's what's lying behind the ladder the stuff that's going on just at the dawn of textual recording in Ireland. So just keep those in mind if you can and here's some stuff about settlement and here's a cumulative curve of all the different farms of enclosed settlement from the kingdom of Olid that's according to value of one to anything that would fall within a certain range and here's the diagrams on which they were based but what I would like you to pay attention to is this chrono here because you will need that in a minute and also the iron edge dates from Neolithic enclosures that were reoccupied in the iron edge and there's done several confactions when you've only got two little dots. What can you do? But yeah you can see a lot of the stuff is later but occasionally there's some stuff that pushes earlier. So a bit problematic. How long have I got? About nine minutes. Oh yeah Grant it's always better to just check these things you know sometimes someone turns on and is already waving the stop saying that you're... So the first group I want to talk about are the Korko Oche. Anyone ever heard of them? Yeah well. So the Korko Oche are later on they're they're bashed into the Ijakko Kain who are a very very problematic group but were probably very important but later on the Kwedelbad when they got people to rewrite their genealogies had them descended from their progenitors second family. So he had one family with a very high status queen then a second family with a lower status queen and they're from the second family and the Donardia all descended back from the first family the Laharna, the Ijakkovo. So this is all these various peoples were put together they're probably never related but it's a great way to stop killing each other going ah close stop but yeah another thing that happened today the Korko Oche so first of all they're subverted into this genealogy probably quite late actually I'm not quite sure that these genealogies are all that early but by the 11th century anyways they're being treated as a very very minor branch of one of the more dominant dynasties but you also get the law 10 synchronisms and genealogies traced back to Duftak de Alchanga who was a bit of a mixture of Loki and the Ajax who came home and killed Ali's family in Greek mythology. I can never remember whether that's Telemony and Ajax or the other one so and he did all of that so yeah you've got this classical influence that's always a play with all this mythology because it's all quite late but basically he's the biggest asshole in the Rurecht which is the main saga cycle in Ireland he is but Bricus he's still at least got some redeeming features but this guy is just a horrible human being so to have him as your progenitor when there's a lot more up for grabs seen as it's all imaginary that's already saying something but the same family are blamed for the big lake if you're familiar with Ireland there's a big massive lake up in the north and that's Loch Neah or Loch Nectar in in Irish and they're blamed for leaving a well uncapped out of their stupidity and flooding and killing thousands of people who were living on the plane that got flooded by the lake so again that's not quite a nice thing to be saying about these people um but another thing is remember I said there about the second family um so this second family a brother and a sister got drunk and uh had some incestuous sex and a baby came in and um where it happened was at Rath Mesk so they either the drunken gift if it depends on how you see Rath or Rath as either gift or enclosure but it's probably enclosure drunken enclosure enclosure of drunkenness in the middle of a plane called Mahra Mesk so the plane of the drunkenness and um this is where they get the name then because Ohia is the sister according to this um mythological genealogy and the product of that was a guy called Fergus Foga now this guy is the big loser in Northern Irish mythological politics because he basically lost what is probably complete nonsense anyways that's all it's went any further west than the ban um but he's supposed to have been the one who lost Alun Bakker and Evan Ford he's supposed to be the one that lost the over kingship with the north of Ireland to the three colors and various other members of the conupta so again not exactly painting someone in um in a good light now why would you do that why would you have your genealogy do that because your position might still be insecure but also are we looking at one powerful group from the late iron age um early medieval periods that later more powerful groups try to write out of history by denigrating them as much as possible all through resources now this is quite out there in the ether I know but let's let's have a look at some of the settlement so rat mesk is somewhere there we haven't actually identified it yet but it is somewhere in the vicinity of Trummary which is in the middle of the parish of of Mahara mesk which we know from the 1306 taxation um but near which you've got this uh pair of conjoined rats um and a top in him called listen listen to Vilja which would be the enclosure of the Vilja which is probably a yew tree often can be just a very very impressive tree but it's sometimes already my god so anyway um you do have that right there at the core um one of the things is one of the reasons I went through so much somebody paints to try and show you where the big densities of rats were this is not there so this predates it but there's still some other stuff you've got some good ecclesiastic sites in the vicinity well then you get down to Dromor which is more the core of the echa coba up here is well actually all the way up there but that's the start of it it's where the ekhedelbad were were powerful but of course they do have this association at Loch Nye so have to be pushed down here and then the story written and maybe did they have to hold it is or is there something else going on I mean this is the lagoon valley and you've got some roman stuff over about here as well um it's I don't know I think it's something that we we should think about but I'll move on to a very quick second study so the borne riga so for those of you familiar with the patrician hagiographies the two early ones here are kind of miracle both mentioned that um that patrick was the property of a guy called milchew and that he had various visions and and things like that either on scurry or on sleeve mesh both of which are adjacent to one another um but then there's some other stuff that's saying that milchew had a palace that you could see from sleeve mesh so again the borne riga pop up maybe is the maco boin for the south or the dal boon but I think they're the dal boon yeah but they might be two different groups but we'll have a look and see what we can find now one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about these is the biggest find of uh of latin objects in ireland in one group comes from a lake up here okay listen a crawl that's what that is so we said there's scary where he's supposed to have division sleeve mesh is is here on the mountain you got a trivalet rat there which might be early you've got a remember that t-shin chrono that I was showing you uh well there you go um you've also got craigie warn which has got early evidence uh you've got cullibacchi which is a problematic um size but it's mentioned in some of the patrician stuff some of the later stuff but it's also got in max town tamland adjacent it's got a share of eware so you have to start wondering but I mean you've got as you can see there um you've got hill forts you've got everton ronder but you've also got the modern town of balimena here where the two rivers meet which I left out of the map but again are we looking at a core territory now from my from a dissertation when I mapped the uh the tuha which we're already mentioned um all the two three the two are joined here in this area so I'm thinking that the tuha my postage that these kinds of peoples are buried by the tuha system where everything was redrawn maybe five six seven centuries um because I mean I I don't know I think so many high status sites all in one place in a fairly good bit of farmland there's a reason why balimena town is there today um you know and you do have some uh plain place names which is usually uh designate in the core of the territory there was another one I was going to talk about that was in marco very very very um tentative but basically the grecaga um where the people from which the patron saint of the island man came and where he's supposed to have come from he was supposed to be up in the aekak up on a hill being a pyrus which is usually how these things describe somebody who is a farmer king who is now not a king so out of grecaga the original group in in southern uh quip before the aekak koabo came along and I mean just before I run run away um so there's drum war break which has associations with the very very very earliest stuff that we know about the oled that does not appear in the annals so carol is probably associated with here we have no idea how old how long the aekak koabo were called as such or if they were oled or crittin originally um but look you've got you've got listening aids here you've got this complex of rats all around here and you've also got yeah as I said drum war break you've got um this site tavlocht here which is associated with british saint somewhere ever you've got lach brickland which is supposed to be the capital of the aekak koabo but I can never find anything associated with it other than people from the oled the guy who got killed there by vikings was actually a member of the oled so look either these people are the original original original oled or a branch of the oled or again it's another kingdom that got subsumed in and I mean again the two are boundary this is right in the middle of it you know it's hard to tell anyway look I'll leave it at that there's some other groups that we could talk about the next time but just to know that there are loads of them thanks


Alright, this is Tara. She is becoming a pilot.  And she's going to tell you that the scariest part of being a pilot is not the fact that gravity is gravity and your plane goes down, but actually what happens with your data when it is in the other kind of cloud. Tara. There we go. Do you know, and can everybody hear me in the back?  I know how frustrating it is to not be able to hear people at the front of the room, right? Everybody good? You can hear me everywhere? Okay. Hey, folks who are way back there. You know, there are seats that are available up here and folk were crowding out of there. Come on up and have a seat. All good. If you sit next to me, I'll give you stickers. There are stickers. He's very enthusiastic and a wonderful and supportive spouse. Okay. So, getting prepped for this, please note that, you know, every bit of AV is a little bit different, just like every AVation. So I'll be doing my notes off this thing and we'll figure it out as we go. Alright. Thank you so much to the organizers of Aviation Village for putting this on. This was a wonderful idea. I wasn't sure what happened when I first decided that I thought flying was so cool. I do distinctly remember Supergirl Underoos at about the age of four and a broken ankle. So any of you who ever really wanted to be in the sky, I totally get it. It's a lovely and wonderful experience. So how did I get there and who the heck am I? My name is Tara. Hello. I do stuff in corporate information security. I do stuff. Oh, hello. There's a seat. I spend my time breaking things, figuring things out, occasionally saying things that give my certified flight instructor heartburn. And yeah, I like the stuff that I do and I post projects on my GitHub and I'm always open to comments there. I want to note throughout the course of this talk that if you want to ask a question, please raise a hand. I would love to answer questions as I'm talking, if only because I know they want to move folk out of this room to do other stuff later on today. You can always, always find me on Twitter at Tara, which is where I will talk to you if you're a cool person and nice to me.  Why do I fly? This is Friny Fisher. How many people in the room know who Friny Fisher is? One, two, several of the awesome dudes in the back, right? Friny Fisher is a 1920s flapper aviatrix detective who solves crimes in Melbourne, Australia in the 1920s. She is kind of a personal hero of mine. And once I made a list about what I wanted to do before I completely kicked the bucket. It is a bucket list like many of you have. And I started writing things down and I remember going to the first convention. I went to the fan convention from Ms. Fisher-Con in San Jose last year and talked about stuff there. People were enthusiastic about talking about costumes and historical aspects of the situation and fun stuff. For those of you that know John Callis, he spoke about cryptography in love letters at the time. For those of you that know my husband Deviant, he was a picklock and master screwsman and did a talk about classic lock picking. And I realized when I got out of that one that I talked about the history and the fun and the clothes, but one of the most inspirational elements of this character and the woman who created her, Carrie Greenwood, is that she flies a De Havilland 60 Tiger Moth. That's one of the very first planes that's ever existed. De Havilland was an airplane engine manufacturer in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. But she's actually based on a couple of real life heroes. Are you going to do a thing? Okay, fine. Doing that one live too. Flying isn't as hard as you think it is and I'm going to give you a quick spiel on why you should do this before we talk about why you should be terrified to do this. And it's not gravity, just as we all know. A lot of flight schools out there will have an equivalent of free discovery flight. Well, they'll take you up probably in a Cessna 172. It's a small single prop airplane that lets you figure out if you're good to fly or not, if you feel comfortable. This time I was up at my home field of Renton. A couple of discovery flights went out with some people figuring out if they could handle their stomach. One plane had to turn around in the pattern and come back and apparently that discovery flight didn't go so well. There are air sick bags in Cessnas as well too, just so you know. You can rent. You can do part-time flight school. You don't have to buy a plane. It's not that expensive. And by not that expensive I mean let's all understand there's some privilege involved in this. But it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars like you might have thought. So my heroines, Olive Ann Beach, Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson that the Feiny Fisher character was based on, who flew the first plane from England to Australia in 1928 in a De Havill and 60 Gypsy Moth. Beach as in Beachcraft Airlines. She was one of the founders and one of the first heroines of modern aviation. Andrea Lewis is a current hero of mine. She's both a Delta commercial flight attendant and she's a pilot in the National Guard. Things you can do with a student pilot cert include walking up to the door at the end of any flight and saying, I would love to watch your post flight. I'm a student pilot. They will scream. They'll love you. They'll let you into the front. And I super have so many selfies of me in inappropriate places in 737s. You can do this.  I just want to encourage you to give it a try if nobody has encouraged you to give it a try before. A couple of caveats. You can't be deaf. You can't be blind. But almost anything else you can figure out. An Airman third class certificate is not that hard to get. I remember the FAA medical examiner in Seattle, Washington said, well, and now we need to do a urine test. And I believe I looked at him like, for what? And he said, blood sugar. And I went, okay, cool. It's legal. All right. What did shock the ever loving hell out of me when I first started to fly planes? I'm going to pull up my notes here and make sure that I've got them all because I can't see them on my machine here. The very first thing that is a little scary, plain scary, you might say, is that your personal data is going to be released in public in a way that's going to shock you. And by the end of this talk, hopefully will cause you to lobby to have some of this changed. Your personal data is available to just about anybody. And there's one good piece of this, which is that you can find information about people flying, flying planes, and track them for one specific reason you might have in this room. Has anyone ever been on a plane before with an incredibly intoxicated passenger or been on a plane before with a really intoxicated passenger? You can, as a passenger on a plane, request that the pilot come back and personally examine the situation themselves because it is very illegal to fly with an intoxicated passenger who cannot express their own needs and wishes. This is the regulation you're looking for if you've got somebody that no one is handling in the middle of the plane before you take off. It's 9117, right? A pilot can throw anybody off the plane and they should. So, you know, don't get drunk, but this is your cheat code on that one. I am allowed to make puns that are just plain bad, but people that are drunk and belligerent aren't and you can boot them off of planes for it. Not just the bad jokes. When I started doing this talk, what I realized as I started clicking through insecure links and posting my personal information online and seeing the databases that were available is that actually this is a talk a lot more about privacy than about security. This is about understanding who has your data, where it is and what you can do with other people's data that is publicly available by compliance code on the internet. So, pilots don't get privacy and I'm going to demonstrate some of that over the course of the next couple of minutes in a way that I'm going to ask you to follow along with on the internet. We'll start with pilots don't get privacy. Do you see the URL right up there at the top? Feel free to visit it on your computers, on your laptops, on your phones right now and search for Terra Wheeler. I'm out there. Now, am I a sharp person who opted out of releasing my public address? Yes. This is a Delta pilot and that's his home address and his home information. And of course I have blocked it out here, but if you Google search for the name of any commercial pilot and search them on that database, you will come up with their home phone number, their home address. Anything you want to know about that person and we all know in this room, that's halfway to identity theft, right? That I find to be incredibly dangerous. I think we all know what this information can be used for. So when I searched Delta pilot and he came up in the top results, I blinded out, but this is medical information. It's anything that you might need and what's more, this registry for the FAA is a database full of commercial airline pilots. These are wealthy world travelers who are being trusted with the safety of hundreds of other wealthy human beings at a time and their personal information is available to anybody who wants it and anyone who grabs the name. You can search yourself and find it. Somebody who knew this, a bit more savvy. How many of you know who AeroSavvy is on Twitter? Have you ever heard of AeroSavvy before? His name is Ken Hoke and he does great tweets about what it's like to be a commercial airline pilot. He did the same thing here. He opted out of releasing his address, but this information is available on one of the top people who tweets about aviation in the world, right? So he's savvy enough, I'm going to need you to become savvy enough as well, but be aware that this information is pretty devastating. We're concerned about aviation security and I don't know about you, but I'm less worried about three ounces of lotion than I am about the fact that my pilot's home information and medical information is available to anybody that wants to look for it. So what about the plane? What about the plane itself? I happen to know that Exploding Lemur is going to talk, I think on Sunday, about specifically avionics and wireless signals that can be reached, breached, hacked. None of them are encrypted. So what I'm going to talk about specifically is pilot aid software instead. The kind of thing that you use to fly a plane that is available for download on your iPad or iPhone. It's not the same thing as what you'd use for avionics. For instance, a Garmin 1000 avionics system. Those I know we're talking about over the course of aviation village as well. So the FAA and the Airmen's Registry and Certification are compliant, but they're not secure when it comes to taking your data and storing it on the internet. I remember when I first had to register for IACRA, and this right here is the first thing that I saw when I opened up my laptop. A whole lot of red text telling me that I needed to downgrade my security, so I got a JavaScript permit, pop-ups. And that was right, of course, after I had downloaded my Jepsen pilot training, which required that I use Flash everywhere. So these are sites that have compliance from years ago and for years at a time, but do not patch and do not update in a way that we would ever remotely consider safe. All right. The same thing happens in the FAA that happens in the medical industry. Each time you do an upgrade to the kind of software that is used for pilots to help fly planes, it must be both compliant and certified by the FAA. It is very difficult to do that in a timely fashion. And as a result, you might have this happen. You'll get wireless over-the-air upgrades to the kind of software that pilots are using to fly their plane. This is a screenshot I asked my certified flight instructor to take when she got it as we were in the middle of a flight. So you can update and upgrade. I'm sorry about the popping, I hope this, I'm trying to eat it so folk can hear me. Okay. You can get updates like this while flying the plane. And for those of us that have ever rolled to production on a Friday before, that's a little nerve-wracking. So I asked her to take that screenshot and demonstrate that we have these ongoing problems about the servicing of the kind of software that we are using for people to fly planes. Here's the one that I think is probably the biggest. I'm not dropping information here. Anybody doesn't know or that isn't publicly available. But this is the one that my offensive security brain freaks out about a little bit. Your FAA license can get doxxed. Hotline.FAA.gov, if you want to hit there, take a look at that site. You can see the kind of information that can be added here to an FAA report of an incident. Why does this matter? If you know the name of a pilot or you know the tail number of a plane or you can match those two things together to a flight plan, easily available with flight tracking apps like FlightAware, you can file false reports against someone's FAA license. Now the problem is that, as we all know, triggering automatic investigations is a great thing when you want to check up. But I don't know that the FAA has ever dealt with a case of a doxxed FAA license with multiple false reports against it because that would trigger dozens of investigations.  As you'll see here, this is me flying with my flight instructor. She's awesome. No, I won't tell you her name. But if you ever want, like, a recommendation and you live in Seattle, I'm more than happy to pass you on. I don't give her information. I don't give my flight school. I don't give the tail numbers of my planes. And the most I really ever say is that I fly Cessnas at this point. Where is the tail number on the inside of a cockpit probably going to be? Right. I'm seeing you pointed it right now. I wish I could kind of point here, but where you see the little white tab on the side over here, the avionics switch, right? Right above that is going to be a small placard with the tail number on the inside of the cockpit. I like my social media, but that information is sufficient to find me and file multiple reports of complaints of low-flying aircraft, unsafe flight, anything someone might want to do. And that makes me a little bit nervous. I don't think that there is any infrastructure right now for the FAA to handle. What I know, I and certainly many other people and women on internet have faced before, which is multiple claims of problems. I've had my Twitter account blocked before because people reported on multiple occasions that I had violated the terms of service, right? For those of you who have been here, you've seen or dealt with this problem before, it's pretty trivial what you need to do is file a ticket and they go, oh, oops, and turn it back on again. I don't think the FAA has a ticketing system like that, and I don't think that they would understand the nature of Doxy and FAA license. So be aware that this is a vector of attack. You can see the obscuration of the tail number there, but here's the deal. You can pseudonymously report someone via a tail number to the FAA and trigger that automatic investigation. What I don't know is how they handle it because they are opaque. At the same time, I am here to tell you that the NTSB, part of the incident response arm of the FAA, does things way better than we do in information security in terms of post mortems, in terms of understanding issues, in terms of providing reports and after action understanding, as well as as much bling-free investigation as possible. So for all that this one is a scary one, that's actually an organization that has figured out really well how to handle the unexpected. I don't know of any pilot that has been DDoS'd yet. I can only imagine that there must have been multiple false reports filed against pilots in the past as a result of relationship problems, issues, but what we all do know is that the advent of the internet makes it possible to spread someone's information in a dramatic way. This is a thing I think is going to happen one day and I'm not sure how to prevent it other than to give you some tips and tricks about what you can do to protect yourself. I was just going to ask you a question, ask me. I'm going to repeat the question for the folks in the room. The question was we have this NTSB which will do investigations of issues with national traffic, correct, and investigations of incidents, problems, crashes. Why is that so different than driving a car? We have those investigations on the ground. Why is the NTSB so much better? What is the unique thing that makes pilots more vulnerable than drivers to this kind of attack? Does that make sense? Did I repeat it well? I'm going to answer that question because I find it to be a really, really interesting one. I'm going to show you how you can do it and why it doesn't matter as much for drivers. Okay. I'm going to show you something fun here. This is a flight plan, or more accurately it is a flight path that I recorded on my four-flight software here, my avionics software. I have you in the room who have never touched an avionics suite before. I am more than happy to show you what four-flight looks like. This is my glass pane for avionics, okay? It's why I got to get a new iPad and it's always a good excuse to get a new iPad. Here is a flight path that if you were watching online and you knew my tail number or you didn't know anything else other than the fact that I was in the air and there were probably 20 other planes around, one of the reasons I don't share on social media. Here is one of my flight paths. All right. This is what this looked like. I left from Renton. You can see me flying to the northeast practice area after I circled out of the Bravo, out of Renton's Delta and then I avoided the Bravo, the Bravo shelves for SeaTac, right? You see the diamond-based shape right there? That's SeaTac and I'm next to it so I have to fly around it a little bit and then up and over the bridge and out into the northeast practice area. That's why I got to do things like full 180 turns and rotations. You can see me doing things like rotating around an axis and doing some ground maneuvers as I'm practicing there, right? And then I came back and it looks to me an awful lot like the east channel approach to Renton Tower. Here's a question for you. What am I practicing right here? It's a good guess. It's a super, super good guess. I'm right back here at Renton again and you can see me looping around and around and around and around again, right? What am I touching goes right there, right? You can see my airspeed dropping, my altitude dropping. I'm coming right back up to 1,000 feet, up to 1,000 feet and down again. I'm back and forth in the pattern and that's like nine more landings in my logbook, right? This information right here, if someone has it, means that they could match it to my tail number and file a credible report of me conducting myself poorly in a plane. Perhaps that I dropped a beer can out of it, right? You could do that. I could do that. I have offensive security brain. I'm thinking about all the way somebody can screw with me with this thing. And I'm pretty scared that there doesn't seem to be any pattern to report abuse of the FAA hotline system right now. Let me make sure that I've got this. Apologies. I don't have notes on this thing, so I'm just kind of going back and forth. Oh, and Face ID can tell it's me even with a microphone in my face. Imagine that. All right. Given these three points, why am I talking about this right now? The systems of systems that we all exist in are inherently related. Who remembers sneakers in that moment where they first got the black box and started figuring out how they could listen to air traffic control? And I think it was Mother said, anybody want to crash a passenger jet? It's all the same system, and we're using all of the same data. Just because we're calling it different bandwidths doesn't mean we're not exchanging data through the air. Wireless isn't magic, and this is all happening over multiple bandwidths, but accessible and hackable as I think the esteemed founders of Aviation Village would agree, as well as those of us who've been listening to these talks. The Internet is not different than Aviation, and I believe Aviation is about to start understanding some of the problems of the Internet as well as some of the conveniences of the Internet. So, understand that these attacks are a vector against you. Some of the ways you can protect yourself are. You can be cautious about how you reveal your home and attempt to shield that. Just because I show that I have opted out of displaying my address publicly doesn't mean that it's not in the FAA database. That is insecure with an outdated and or expired security certificate on a system where you've got to use Flash and Internet Explorer 11 to access information. You'll see that I'm incredibly cautious about sharing my tail numbers in public fora or on social media. Obfuscate your data, tell people you flew when you didn't, don't let them begin to build a pattern, and don't let people associate your name, as is very easy, I think, for most of us in this room, with your flight plans. Spread the word about the ease of this vector to your flight schools and your CFA and your FAA check-ride instructor. You'll go through check-rides. Getting a pilot's license is a lot like getting a driver's license, frankly. You'll have to learn how to do it. And then somebody who isn't your mom teaching you to do donuts in the parking lot is going to find out whether or not you can parallel park. Same thing will happen here. Tell your check-ride instructor and make them aware of it. The more people that know about this who opt to remove their information from that database or to obfuscate it, the more safe those people will be. The last thing you can do is lobby to have the FAA database behind a reasonable, I mean, let's not ask for miracles here, people, but a reasonable username and password for people who have some business getting this information in aviation or anybody who's requested a user account in some fashion or another. Add a barrier. We all know that adding a barrier makes it more expensive for people to attack. Just make it more expensive. Cheaply. So none of this is foolproof, but requiring the people hide the information that half of what it would take to steal their identity is a good first step. All right. I'm going to take questions after this if anybody wants it, but yeah, thank you so much for this. It's been a while since I've done this and been nervous in front of a crowd, but this is a whole new thing for me to talk about and I'm excited about it. Come hang out with me. I post pictures and goofy stuff about me flying on Instagram. Talk to me on Twitter anytime you want to. I am super, super enthusiastic to be here. And if anybody's in Seattle, I will totally take you on a ride. It's so cool up there. Thanks so much.


What I hope to explain a little bit is how people make decisions in the economy and how individual decisions get translated into the big picture in the market and then how markets, in turn, influence people's behavior. So what I'll try to do with each topic is to start with a couple of basic ideas and then see how we can apply the ideas to the world. So economics starts with the simple idea that scarcity exists. Human beings have wants, but we don't have enough resources to be able to realize all those wants.  So we can't satisfy every last want that we have. And because of this, in order to make ourselves better off, people have to make choices. Choice is another one of the fundamentals of economics. And understanding the choices people make, why they make those choices, and the implications of them, that's what economics is really all about. There's also one other very important aspect of choice that I'll come back to later, and that's the idea of cost. Every time we choose something, we also have to choose not to do something. The example Professor has always used is that in order to be here, you have to give up being somewhere else. So that's the cost you have, although that's probably not a great example, because my guess is that some of you maybe didn't have a choice about whether or not you wanted to be here. But the point is that for everything we get, we have to give up something else. So there's no such thing as a free lunch. But in order to make choices, we look around at all the different possibilities available to us. And then we do that thing, which seems like it would give us the most benefit. This is another one of the basic insights of economics that all people are constantly trying to improve their situation in the way that they think is the most important. And that's where incentives come in. Incentives are basically a way of talking about how people make choices. At every moment of our lives, we have a whole array of choices of what we can do. And incentives are sort of the results of the choices that we make, the rewards, the benefits, or costs of different actions. So when I work, I get paid a wage. And the wage is supposed to be my incentive to do the work. And if you read in economics, especially mainstream economics, you'll hear a lot about incentives. This is catchphrase economists like to repeat. Incentives matter. And it's kind of like a mantra economists use. It's almost like they're actually trying to cast a spell or something. Like incentives matter, incentives matter. And they just repeat it endlessly. But what they mean is that it is actually quite simple. Incentives just mean that people do those things which they believe will make them better off. So incentives are all those different things out there in the world that people want, the things which influence people's behavior. And as we'll see, this is a very simple idea, but it has an enormous impact on the way the world works. So I'll start with good incentives, and then gradually I'll work my way to the bad and the ugly ones. So probably the best example of a good incentive is the institution of property rights. Private property provides a huge list of good incentives, and not just for individuals, as Dr. Thorin was pointing out, but for society as a whole. And this is one of the places where costs come in. I mentioned the costs before, because one of the important things about owning property is that owning means that you have to pay a certain cost. That might sound strange, because you think, well, I don't like having to pay a cost. I always want the least amount of costs possible. But why it's important is that the cost of ownership is responsibility. If the thing you own increases or decreases in value, you're the one who gains or loses from that.   And I'll come back to this again in a minute when I talk about bad incentives. But property is one example of a good incentive. So even subtle changes in benefits and costs can change people's behavior in a big way. An example I'm using now, and maybe you won't relate to this, but I'll give it a shot anyway, although it does sort of relate to our flip-flop discussion. But the example I'm using now relates to the behavior of myself and some friends of mine. Every Monday night, we play trivia at one of the local bars. And in the trivia game, there are various rewards if you win. But recently, they added a new rule to the game, which is that every week, the team with the cleverest team name wins free beer. Now, before this happened, the teams had the same team names for years at a time. And it was kind of like a point of pride that you've got to be a part of this great intellectual trivia tradition. But starting immediately after the new rule appeared, every team started changing their name every single week because there's this new motivation. And so it seems kind of obvious to say that if you change people's incentives, if you change the rewards and the benefits of behavior, that you can change people's decisions. But this very simple fact is usually lost on employees of the government. And so there are literally thousands of laws and regulations which provide bad or maybe even ugly incentives. And so I'll give you a few examples so you can see this at work. The first example is a popular one I like to use. It relates to safety, which is one of those issues that people take very seriously, usually. And often, people believe that really, people just can't be trusted to behave responsibly and safely in society. So we need people out there like policemen and so on to force us to be responsible, and not just to prevent us from robbing and beating each other, but to make us do things like wear our seatbelts and keep us safe from car accidents. So we might think that intuitively a law that requires people to wear their seatbelts, for example, is a good thing because everyone wants to be safe. There's nothing wrong with being safe. But seatbelts laws are actually a great example of terrible incentives at work. So a few years ago, an economist did a very famous study of this problem, and he showed quite clearly that actually the total amount of deaths were the same after the passage of seatbelt laws as before. So there was no gain in safety in that way.  So why would that be? Well, because of the law, more people wore their seatbelts. And also, more people believed that other people are wearing their seatbelts. So in general, people feel safer than they were without the law. But the trick is that when people feel safer, they behave less responsibly. They tend to take less care than they otherwise would. So they tend to get in more accidents because they drive more carelessly. And I think pretty much anyone can see the logic behind this. I mean, if I say something like, look, just hand me that glass of water over there. Well, you might reach out and grab it and toss it to me kind of carelessly. But if I say, pass me the water and you reach out and around the glass of water, it's like barbed wire and chainsaws. And they're like knives poking at you and stuff. You would behave differently in that situation. You would take a great deal more care. And it's because the incentives are different in the two situations. The rewards and benefits are different. But again, this logic is completely lost on most government regulators. So in the case of seatbelt laws, the law that was designed to help people actually hurts them. And what economists who studied this problem discovered was that, as I said, the number of accidents actually went up after seatbelt legislation was introduced. Because when people wear seatbelts, they feel safer. And when they feel safer, they behave less responsibly. Now, I think examples like this are important because they show that with a little economic reasoning and research, we can see that a lot of these economic regulations which might seem very completely insignificant actually have a profound effect on our behavior and even on our very lives. Coming back to the issue of property rights, you may have realized before that bad incentives often arise when there are no property rights or when property rights are violated in some way. And as usual, the biggest bad incentive problems happen with public ownership. As I said, when you're responsible for property, you tend to take good care of it. But the flip side of that is that when people use resources without having to be responsible for them, without paying any cost and without bearing any sort of responsibility, they tend to take relatively little care of those resources. And in the case of government, you have an institution which taxes people to gain resources, which it then uses for various things. But the spending of money doesn't actually affect the people in government, the people who are doing the spending. If they put money into some program and then the program fails, nobody in government really loses anything. And the money that's taxed is taxed whether they spend it or not and whether they succeed or not. So because they're using other people's resources, they have very little reason to spend those resources wisely. So this is a textbook example of bad incentives at work when there are no effective property rights. Another good example that I like to use comes from natural resource economics. And I'm sure everyone at one time or another has heard someone say something like, look, governments need to regulate the use of natural resources so that we don't exploit this natural heritage that we have, which can't be replaced. If you allow markets in important areas like natural resources, you're inviting greed and exploitation. And personal motives will just lead everyone to make a quick buck and exploit the environment and completely destroy it because everyone in the market has a short run view. And it's only government that can take the long run approach to things. But of course, that's exactly the opposite of the case. It's because of private property. It's because of personal motives that markets provide the greatest incentive to responsible, sustainable decisions about what to do with resources. And this is because if you have a resource, say, a forest. I think forests are really good examples. Sure, you might want to just cut down all your trees and sell them, make a profit, and then just turn the place into a wasteland. Yeah, you might want to do that. But the value of your property then disappears because your resource is gone. But if you want profits over a long period of time, which most people do, then you have to take care and only use a part of your resources at any given time. And you have to take care to do things like regrow your forest and so on. And if you do that, you can earn more profits over time than you could if you just took everything all at once. And because of reasons like this, that private ownership of natural resources creates wonderful incentives and wonderful motivation for people to be responsible stewards of the environment. Of course, people can always do things which defy logic. I mean, it's always possible that some crazy capitalist somewhere just burns down his forest for kicks. But the point is that private property and free markets provide the greatest reasons not to do things like that. And if you look at the data in essentially all countries, you see this principle at work. Private reforestation stewardship of the environment and so on levels are up here and government levels are down here. And this relates to what Dr. Thornton was saying about the invisible hand. Private foresters are mindful of the present and the future because they care about their own welfare. And that leads them to care also about the environment that they use. Governments, on the other hand, have little or no stake in the long run effects of their policies. So they engage in practices like leasing out natural resource reserves for a period of years to some firm that pays the government for the temporary use of the resources. But by lending land to, say, forestry firms to use for harvesting for a short period of time without transferring ownership, they created an incentive to overuse the resource. And what happens is that the foresters just clear cut everything and then don't look back. And this kind of incentive problem was behind practically all the famous examples of environmental destruction that we hear about. The rainforest, for example, are destroyed and not replanted and all the wildlife is killed off because the people who use them have no incentive to use their own resources to improve them at all or to try and maintain them. Any kind of reinvestment for them is just a loss because they don't own the land. The government does. And now the same thing is true for other famous examples. The American buffalo and endangered species, which have been hunted to extinction or near extinction. Historically, nobody owned them or the land they inhabited. Hunters had everything to gain and nothing to lose by killing them without regard for the size of the population. Since nobody bore the cost directly, it seemed like there was no cost. This is a very famous problem in environmental economics called the tragedy of the commons. And it's a direct result of having a lack of property rights and thus a lack of positive incentives. Moving on to ugly incentives. I actually had some really good examples of this, but they were really morbid, so I'm going to have to stick to something that's kind of tame. Going back to government spending, as I said, government employees have little incentives to spend resources carefully. But when you add into the fact that they have no profits or losses to guide their decisions, I'll talk more about profits in a second. But when you add the fact that government has no profits or losses, it's almost impossible for them to even know whether they're succeeding or failing or not. And it's because of this that government programs, even the ones which have failed by every available measure, never really go away. Because without a clear way to determine whether money is being wasted and without an incentive to control spending, then even if governments can be convinced somehow that there is a problem, they tend to assume that the problem must be that there isn't enough spending. And so the conclusion is always that, well, if we can tax and spend more, then everything will be OK. And this is an important part of the explanation of why government budgets always grow and why spending problems tend to get worse over time. And it's all due to this incentive structure that exists within government. So just as a way of wrapping up this topic, I would point out that you can learn a lot about economics and about the world by drinking beer with me at trivia. No. You can learn a lot about the world by just thinking about rules, regulations, and laws in terms of incentives. What kind of behavior does a law reward? Or what kind of behavior does it punish? How does it change the situation from what it was before? What kind of choices might it now encourage, which were not encouraged before? OK, so that's incentive. So the next big topic is competition. And competition is related to incentives, as I'll point out as we go. But competition tends to be understood even less than incentives, I think. And part of the reason for this is that people often don't think enough about what makes market competition unique. They often think about competition in other terms. Now, Ludwig von Bises made a very important distinction between what he called the two kinds of competition. The first kind of competition is what he called biological competition. And this is the kind of competition that we see in nature, for example, where the means to survive are very scarce and there's no cooperation. And because of this, you have all sorts of lions and tigers and oysters and shrimps and things that are constantly locked in this life or death struggle with each other. And this is how people often think of the market as a survival of the fittest situation, where one person ends up on top and everyone else serves him or gets eaten. Or sports competitions are less dramatic, but they're the same way. In that case, too, there are winners and losers.  This is how people think of the market as a place where there are a very limited amount of goods that everyone wants. And so someone gets them and someone doesn't. But this is the wrong way to think about competition in the economy. When economists talk about competition, they mean something quite different, as Mises pointed out. The life or death, everything or nothing situation is not the situation of human beings in society. What Mises was so brilliant to point out was that the meaning of competition in the market is completely different from the biological idea of competition. In the economy, we engage in peaceful exchange with each other. And we have made a decision to move away from biological competition. Because by producing and exchanging together, we produce much more for ourselves and for others than we could by constantly trying to kill each other off or steal what the other guy has. Cooperation is more beneficial than violence. If we specialize in doing what we do best and then exchange with each other, we can produce so much more than if we simply fought over everything. So instead of a contest where somebody loses, competition in the market is a process of improving everyone's satisfaction. So how exactly does it work? Well, competition is mainly a competition between entrepreneurs, the people who produce things. Entrepreneurs produce, and then they try to sell what they produce to consumers. But because consumers are notoriously fickle, entrepreneurs have to compete for their business. And that means they have to find ways of making what they produce attractive consumers. They have to give people an incentive to buy. And as Dr. Thornton pointed out, the result is that when entrepreneurs compete, they're forced to offer more service of a higher quality at a lower price. Being more productive and expanding the range of things available to the public, while at the same time lowering the price benefits everyone. So there simply aren't winners and losers in the ordinary sense. In fact, market competition is really a form of cooperation, because it depends on voluntary exchanges and interactions, voluntary agreements. If there's one thing you should take away from this, it's that the market economy is the most productive and useful form of cooperation that's ever been despised by human beings. Even the so-called losers, the entrepreneurs who go out of business, for example, can benefit from market competition. And now as far as consumers go, it is true that, for example, if I take a pair of those flip flops off the shelf at the store, they're not there for the next guy who comes along. There is competition in that sense. But by buying shoes, I have not eliminated the next guy's opportunity to find a pair of shoes of flip flops or whatever, because entrepreneurs are constantly attempting to anticipate this demand. And if it's ever the case that the supply runs out while people are still waiting to buy, that means that an entrepreneur can make a profit by producing more shoes. There's an opportunity and an incentive to produce more. The possibility of earning profit is a powerful incentive that motivates entrepreneurs to provide this amazing stream of goods and services to society. And when entrepreneurs can't do that, when they fail at providing what people want, or they provided at prices which people think are too high, then it's these bad entrepreneurs who get eliminated from the market and the successful ones who get to go on. So even when entrepreneurs fail, it's only because somebody else has succeeded better than they did. It's only because people have simply chosen to buy one thing and not to buy another. And so in this sense, there is a kind of survival of the fittest in the market. But it's the survival of those entrepreneurs who do the best job of serving consumers. In a free market, the only way to accumulate wealth is to do a better job of giving people what they want. And that's what market competition is. It's a battle between entrepreneurs over who gets to make consumers happier. I wanna keep going with this idea of winners and losers and just go over one or two other arguments that people make against competition. People are often horrified when economists recommend competition in certain areas of the economy like education and healthcare. And I think it's because of this mistaken idea of winners and losers. That idea is very persistent.  A few weeks ago, in fact, Judge Napolitano, who's a friend of the Mises Institute, was on the Daily Show with John Stuart and Stuart posed this question to the judge and he asked, but what about the losers in the market? What happens to them? And what he implied was that economic losers just kind of have to starve and that that's unfair. But the point he missed in asking that question is the point Mises makes, which is that everyone in society benefits from competition between entrepreneurs. There are no losers in the sense of a sports competition. And there's another important way to think about this competition issue as well. And that is that when people make losses in the market, it tells us that resources are being misused. Whether we're talking about factories and equipment or human beings with special skills, losses show that there are more urgent needs for the resources that the entrepreneurs are using. And seen in that light, so-called losing is actually an extremely important and necessary aspect of the economy because it allows people and resources to move from less to more productive employment. And this brings us to the next step, which is to think about what happens when government forcibly intervenes in this competitive process. And I may not surprise you to learn that the results are not pretty. And that's because competition performs this absolutely vital function by weeding out entrepreneurs who don't do a good job of producing things that people like. And if you prevent that from happening, you also prevent this very important form of competition. In fact, this gets back to the problem of incentives. When you prevent competition, you actually end up rewarding the losers and punishing the winners. The great example of this, of course, is government bailouts. What bailouts do is allow failed entrepreneurs to keep using scarce resources, which would otherwise be going to the entrepreneurs who have actually demonstrated the ability to produce things people want. So bailouts create a tremendous waste of resources right now in that sense. But they also encourage waste in the future because of the incentive problem, because if people believe that if they fail, well, they'll just be rescued, they behave more recklessly. And they are just encouraged to make more bad decisions in the future. And so the incentive scheme is actually quite similar to the seatbelt problem I talked about before. So you can see how the problem of individual incentives can get translated into very big economic problems. Now I think many people would acknowledge the point about bailouts to some extent. And most people understand on some level that you just can't mindlessly support this too big to fail argument. You can't just keep bailing out the losers. But a common counter argument goes something like this. Well, sure, it's good for entrepreneurs and capitalists to go bankrupt. It's not good for them to waste resources. It's good to let those people fail. But what about all the workers they employ?  The workers aren't the ones making these crazy decisions. So why should they be punished for someone else's mistakes? And this is basically what happened with the American auto industry. And the answer here relates to what I was saying earlier about how failure moves resources to their most productive uses. Because if you artificially support workers by, say, bailing out the company but only replacing the management, you keep people trapped in employments which aren't productive. You are preventing them from getting stable employment in an industry which could make a better use of their labor. Or, and this is actually more commonly the case these days, you prevent people from seeking out the skills which will enable them to find lasting employment. So for example, you discourage workers from going back to school to learn alternative skills. And you're really just postponing the inevitable while at the same time, you're actively wasting human resources and human potential. And you're doing the work as a great disservice by enticing them to keep doing unproductive work. And the list of problems which arise when you stifle competition just goes on and on. Another important effect is that when you regulate competitive industries, you encourage a different kind of competition, sometimes called political competition that has many names. But this kind of competition encourages firms not to compete to produce things for consumers, but to compete for opportunities to take advantage of government regulations. Because in many cases, it's easier to profit from an appeal to government than it is to profit from actually producing in the market. And then there are many ways this can happen. The most common is for firms to lobby for special regulations to help suppress the market competition to give them a step up. And typically it starts with something which seems like it might be well-intentioned, like again, an additional safety regulation. Say companies are required to install new machinery that meets a certain safety standard. But of course, complying with this regulation imposes costs on everyone in the industry. And if you have very deep pockets as many firms that lobby do, that's maybe not a problem for you.  And so this is a very sneaky way that large companies often use to eliminate their smaller competition. One of the reasons that this is significant is that this kind of political competition actually transforms the market competition into a kind of biological competition by forcing people out of business, by finding ways to avoid producing things for consumers. Government and the firms it colludes with actually do create winners and losers. Because instead of producing new things, firms have an incentive to use the government simply to redistribute what everybody else is producing. All government intervention, no matter how well-intentioned it might be, involves redistributing resources. And once you do that, once you establish that someone will be rewarded through regulation, you encourage people to try and capture those rewards to win those favors from government. And so firms spend billions of dollars trying to do just that, trying to win friends and influence people in government. And that money that they spend doing that is money that is diverted from the production of real wealth in the economy. Okay, so what you should take away from all this is that human motivations, human goals are at the core of everything that goes on in society and in the economy. Every person from politicians to consumers to entrepreneurs is trying to improve the quality of their lives. And the question that we all have to answer and that I'll leave you with is this. What process do we wanna rely on to help people to do this? Do we want a system of free exchange and market competition? A system of invisible hands where in order to make ourselves better off, we're obliged to help other people as well? Or do we want a system where our interests are pitted against each other, where success is achieved through political competition and political manipulations? So thank you.


Good morning, YouTube. Here we are. We are in Aspen, Colorado, a place called Aspen. A place called Aspen. This is 8,000 feet above sea level, so 2,400 meters. I looked it up ahead of time. This is a true vertical K running route, and they do races here. Actually, this is gonna be my first race of 2019, and my brother's Joseph. He's over there getting ready. It's basically to be a vertical K race. It needs to be 1,000 meters of climbing in less than three miles of distance. So we're talking straight up the mountain, and yes, when we do the race, we will be racing against skiers. So people that are skinning up the mountain, and we will be running, but people will be skiing up, and it actually, depending on the snow conditions, can determine who has the advantage. So anyway, that'll be March 9th, and we're here just doing a little course preview, and it tops out at 11, what does it top out at? 11, 212 is the top, so 3,400 meters, so that 1,000 meters of climbing, and it's like 22 degrees, it's perfect out, and we're just gonna go get a nice morning workout.  Oh yeah, and I'll bring the GoPro. Oh man, can you see it behind me? All right, here we go. Butter my bread, butter my bread. These guys, I'm telling you, I think I'm almost getting to 40 miles in these shoes, so four of you coming very soon for the SpeedCross 5s. Oh, let's go climbing. They came in sections. All right, we're at the bottom of the mountain. This is the America's uphill course, straight up. Straight up. Oh my goodness, look at this. Yeah, it doesn't get much more straight up. This is Joseph's stomping ground, so how's the snow? What are you thinking? It's gonna be hard. He's all man-made, and yes, it's gonna be hard. So, yeah, it's gonna be hard not having skis on. Ooh, there's a skinner, somebody's skinning. Is that what you, as I you say it? Yep. Skinning up. All right, folks, 1,000 meters up, right? Yep. 1,000 meters up, and this is the starting line of the America's uphill, which we will be doing in about six weeks, and all right, shall we? Oh, man, yeah. Holy schnikeys, quads, baby. Frankly, frankly, YouTube, I gotta put you away. I gotta use both arms. This is gonna be way, way too hard with one arm. We'll see you about halfway up the mountain. All right, we're approaching the halfway point. This is a doozy. I'd say this is a lot harder than running greys and tories, you know? It feels, we're talking about a quad burn. Why take the chairlift when you can run? I think I've seen you take a few insta, yeah, photos here. I've been up to 400 meters in a line. That looks pretty sweet. There's a sun coming through. Oh, is that what it is? There's coffee on top. Here it is on the map, you wanna point it out? Yeah. The orange there. So we will be doing America's uphill. We're gonna give it a shot in the snow, but I think we're definitely, what are we gonna use during the race? Definitely poles. Yeah. Yeah, maybe micro-spice should definitely poles. Yeah, poles would help, so, yeah. So, anyway, I'm gonna give you a thought on the speed cross fives back at the house, break down how they did in the snow. So, let's see, let's flip this over.  Holy smokes, all right. And we're back in Denver, we're back in Denver. All right, something arrived in the mail today. I don't remember ordering anything. Let's just see what this might be. Oh, sticky dots. Definitely not, nothing running related. Actually, you know what sticky dots are? I use sticky dots, it is running related. I use the sticky dots to hang up the shoe boxes on the wall. So, I'm actually very happy these arrived. I was like, wait a minute, I didn't order anything. So, anyway, thank you, thank you, Amazon. Appreciate it, appreciate it. All right, let's dive into today's run in Aspen. And yes, you better believe it. The key word is Aspen for the Aspen trees. And I've already said this before on the vlog, but what is the largest living organism in the entire world as far as mass? It's an Aspen Grove. It's an Aspen Grove, that's right. All of those Aspins, when you see a huge Aspen Grove, they are all connected underneath, like with the same root system. Isn't that amazing? And I actually, I think they have found the largest Aspen Grove somewhere. I don't know where it's at. I think it's in Colorado. I could be wrong if somebody knows. Let me know down in the comments. But anyway, that is the largest living organism in the world, the Aspen Grove trees. Kinda cool, kinda cool. Okay, today's run started at 8,000 feet. I already mentioned that, 2,400 meters. We did 1,000 meters of climbing. So 3,200 feet of climbing ended up at 11,200 feet above sea level. So 4,200, no, 3,400 meters above sea level. And you're testing my math here. You're testing my math here. Okay, and I just have a quick note here about what is a vertical K race? Because even though I grew up running cross country, training in the mountains as a teenager, and then even growing up pretty close to the Leadville 100 course, I had never heard of a vertical K race. And I think it's really, really, it's a fascinating concept for trail racing. It's very challenging, very difficult, but just like I had never known about these types of races until about three years ago. So if you are strong like at speed and climbing and you're just like a strong runner, like almost like an 800 meter runner that has that aerobic development, like that good endurance, that's like a good combo, like good strength. So the vertical K is 1,000 meters of climbing or one kilometer of elevation gain in less than basically 5K of total distance. So today we went two and a half miles of distance, but 1,000 meters of climbing. So that was technically a vertical K race. And in fact, that's what we will be doing on March 9th back there at that course. And so anyway, that's my little tidbit for your, because running and racing is so diverse. You can go run through the Gobi Desert or maybe it's the Sahara. Like you can go run the Boston Marathon.  All I'm saying is like, if you are feeling maybe a little like burned out at a certain type of racing or a certain distance, I would like, there's so many opportunities out there to diversify your racing lineup. And anyway, it just gets me excited because I was all in on like ultra running. And listen, ran up against some brick walls in 2018, trying to run a 50 mile race, DNF, tried to run a 100 mile race, DNF. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's change it up a little bit in 2019. Boom, Cleveland Marathon, Cleveland Marathon and this vertical K race. Like I've actually never raced a vertical K. So I digress. Oh my goodness. And in that vertical K race in Aspen on March 9th, I will, I was probably wrong. I told you last week that you should not race in this shoe. You should not race in this shoe unless you're doing a vertical K race in snow. This shoe probably is going to be the best bet unless, unless Innovate sends me some mud claws, unless Innovate sends me some mud claws. But for now, this is probably going to be the best option because of the log action on the bottom is just deeper and a better grip compared to the Solomon S lab since seven SG.  And so it'll actually provide just a little bit of support when you're starting to get tired toward the top of the mountain. So there's a really, it performed well today. We slipped a little bit at certain points where it got really steep or the snow got really soft. And on that note, if it snows the night before the race, like we are, we are going to be in for a tough, tough situation. But we will do our best in these shoes and it'll be interesting to see the percentage, the percentage of skiers versus the percentage of runners. And we'll definitely be using poles and going up that mountain. So they performed well today. Ah, love these shoes, love these shoes. And last point, I'm almost, I'm getting close to like 35 miles in the shoes already. So I expect to get you a full review in the next week. So if you are a big fan of Solomon and the speed cross lineup and mountain running, that's coming very soon. Okay. And lastly, the question of the day, here we go. It's actually, I'm going back to the archive thanks to all of you for asking questions. I think it was six days ago and this is from Robert and I love this and this is where we're going to lean into the wisdom of the marathon community, especially. So all the veteran marathon runners out there, we need your help. This is what Robert asked and this is the question of the day. Shout out to Robert. Thank you for this. He asked, one related question would be to marathon vets. What's the one thing you wish you had known before running your first marathon? Just one thing that you wish you would have known that's the question of the day. And if you are not racing a marathon in 2019, if you're in high school or college or maybe you're, you know, in your 60s, it's like maybe you have aspirations to run a marathon, go down into the comments and just start chiming in and asking questions back because I know I will be, because yeah, this is it. This is like, I'm trying to figure out what's the marathon experience, like what's the best way to run a marathon without making, you know, those teeny tiny little mistakes that actually can turn into big mistakes, as you well know, in long distance running. All right, what a great day. Up at the Vertical K, experience in Aspen in the Solomon Speedcross Fives. Shout out to Joseph for leading the charge up the mountain and can't wait to get back up there for a little racing, a little snow racing.  Let's see beauty, work hard, and love each other. Let's do this. Sticky dots. See you tomorrow.