Thank you very much. Thank you. That's a reversal of what should be going on. I should be applauding all of you. Well, a warm welcome to you all. I don't know how many of you stayed up the other night to watch the Academy Awards. I broke a rule and stayed up past midnight. They never called my name. But at this luncheon today, we're holding our own version of the Academy Awards for volunteer action. And the difference is that for today's awards, the American people are the winners. And that's because thanks to the efforts and endeavors of our recipients, America's a better and a more generous land. And we're finally starting to recognize the importance of our volunteers. I'm pleased to announce today that the theme of the 1984 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade will be a salute to the volunteer. So let me congratulate Don Judson, the volunteer president of the tournament, for letting me make that announcement. The historian Daniel Borstein has explained how this continent was settled. And although he may not have realized it, he also explained the motivation behind our award winners. He wrote, Groups moving westward organized into communities in order to conquer great distances to help one another drag their wagons uphealer across streams and for a hundred other purposes, they dared not wait for government to establish its machinery. If the services that elsewhere were performed by government were to be performed at all, it would have to be by private initiative. Well, this frontier spirit made them a strong and a self-reliant people. And that's the attitude of our winners. They don't make excuses, they make headway. And I wish we had time so I could explain and detail what each of our 20 recipients has accomplished and what each has given to the nation. They are marvelous, inspiring, and unselfish stories. For example, the retired members of King County Labor Council in Seattle, Washington, provide assistance to low income elderly in the area. They repair plumbing and electrical wiring, replace faulty steps, patch leaking roofs. In fact, while they're here, I wonder, I've got a leak problem myself. Another recipient is Chicago's Dr. Hugh, who has helped over a thousand Indonese, Indochinese refugees in Illinois learn English, adjust to our culture, and find employment. These new Americans couldn't have had a better example of what being an American means than Dr. Hugh in helping them. Candy Leidner founded MAD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, after one of her own twin daughters was killed in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver. I know the award that we're bestowing today can't match the fulfillment that the members of MAD must feel in having saved lives, nor should it. But the award is the nation's way of recognizing your humanitarian contributions and all of our recipients' contributions. I'm told there's a German saying, two chambers hath the heart. Their dwelling live joy and pain apart. Well, our recipients today know both the chambers. Yes, you know the pain of the world, and that's what motivates you, but you also know the joy of helping and the deep sense of fulfillment that flows from such voluntary giving. By your generous unselfish deeds, you dwell in all our hearts. These awards are a token of our gratitude. Before I present the awards, however, let me thank the National Center for Citizen Involvement and Action Advisory Council, as well as the corporate and foundation sponsors for helping to make these honors possible. Bill Verity is sitting there at my table and was the head for a year of the task force that I think did a great deal to inspire and reinvigorate what has been for so many years a tradition of America, and that is doing things in a neighborly way, not expecting officialdom to come in and do it for you. I appreciate it, and there's another fellow there that I'd just like to have him stand for a second after I tell something. Over a year ago in Chicago, I visited a school, and it was a very unusual school. It was a school that was supposed to close its doors, but its principal lived in the school and refused to give up, and I visited that school down in one of the hardest hip areas of South Chicago, and saw these young people in that school and their spirit and their pride, even though the plaster was peeling off the walls and it was impossible to believe how they could keep it going. The teachers were giving themselves to the point that when lunchtime came, they were handing out and serving the food in addition to teaching their classes and all, and I was so carried away with what I had seen and the determination of all of them to keep this school open that I made a phone call before I left Chicago to Clemstone. One phone call, and a little less than a year later, I revisited that school. No broken plaster, board of governors that read like the who's who of the city of Chicago. Clemstone, after one phone call, had set them up. They have a scholarship fund. Every graduate of that school last year moved down to college. Clem, just let him see you for a second. He's lived in fear ever since because he thinks I might make another phone call, and this time it would have to do with the deficit. Well now, Governor George Romney and Tom Pawkin would come up here and please help in assisting in the handing out of these awards, whereas here he comes. All right, I'll relinquish this to you and I've got a chalk mark over here. We've done that before, Mr. President, with the Vietnam Veterans. Our first award winner is the Hispanic Women's Council of Los Angeles, which is dedicated to developing leadership skills and improving the quality of life of Hispanic women in Southern California. Volunteer activities include professional training, peer counseling, youth development workshops, and scholarships for older women returning to school, the Hispanic Women's Council. Although handicapped herself, Elizabeth O'Donnell teaches braille cooking and independent living skills to residents at the Illinois Visually Handicapped Institute in Chicago. Liz's positive attitude and capacity to inspire hope in others makes her a very special volunteer, Elizabeth O'Donnell. Friends of handicapped readers in Jackson, Mississippi provide talking books for the blind, visually impaired, and physically handicapped. Volunteers narrate and record religious works, books of local interest, and books by Mississippi authors. Friends of handicapped readers. Little Town Players was organized in 1975 to provide live theater to the residents of the rural area around Bedford, Virginia, where no theater existed and has become a major cultural force run entirely by volunteers throughout southwestern Virginia, Little Town Players. Thomas Dibley, a retired field geologist, uses his knowledge and skills as a volunteer mapper of California's complex geology. One set of maps he developed for the Forest Services of the Los Padres National Forest is valued at over one-half million dollars. Thomas Dibley, Jr. Alcoholics Anonymous begun in 1935 by two men diagnosed by medical specialists as incurable alcoholics, is a unique program of support example and friendship by recovering alcoholics for new members. Since AA's founding, over 650,000 men and women who have participated have overcome their alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous. Each year, over 120,000 children are born with hearing impairments, most of which can be corrected either surgically or through amplification if discovered early enough. The Infant Hearing Assessment Foundation developed its own test equipment with assistance from over 20 major U.S. corporations. The foundations, more than 2,000 volunteers, now test over 54,000 infants each year at no cost to either the participating hospitals or the parents. Infant Hearing Assessment Foundation volunteers. Frank Faree spent the last 45 years of his life until his death on March 11 of this year, helping people less fortunate than himself. Known as the Border Angel, he collected food, medicine and building supplies and delivered them to the poverty-stricken residents of southeast Texas and to two small towns in Mexico. Mr. Faree's work is now being carried on by the organization he founded, Volunteer Border Relief. Dr. Joseph Yu, a teacher of high school social studies in Chicago and an instructor at the National College of Education, is a volunteer who has helped over 1,000 Indochinese refugees to learn English, adapt to the American culture, obtain an education and acquire employment. In 1963, in Vietnam, he founded the International Association of Volunteers for Human Services and Leadership Training, and he's continued his work in America after the fall of Saigon to the communists. Dr. Joseph Nguyen Trong Yu. Jeremiah Milbank, President of the Board of Directors of Boys Clubs of America, has been instrumental in helping to encourage young people of disadvantaged backgrounds. In 1981, Mr. Milbank initiated a summer jobs program for ex-offenders and other high-risk youths in New York City. He was one of the early leaders in the major effort to combat drug abuse among the young, Mr. Jeremiah Milbank. Esther Schaefer began telecommunications for the death to provide online telephone assistance to the large population of deaf people in the Washington, D.C. area. Teddy, as it is known, is the first system in the United States that allows the deaf person to remain on the line while the volunteer makes the connection between a deaf person's equipment and a person who can hear. Esther Schaefer. Lupe and Guiano developed the National Women's Employment and Education Model Program in 1973 to assist women on welfare to become self-supporting. The program now with sites in seven locations includes skills, trainings, and scholarship and encourages local businesses to provide employment opportunities for the women in the program. Lupe and Guiano. Operation California is recognized for coordinating a major volunteer effort to provide surplus commodities from American companies to the Indochinese boat people forced from their homeland. Operation California. Oregon Food Share was formed in 1981 to meet the needs of over 152,000 unemployed Oregonians. In 1982, Oregon Food Share volunteers distributed over one million pounds of food and over 800,000 pounds of USDA surplus cheese to 225,000 state residents. An additional million pounds of food were distributed throughout the state through affiliated local programs. Oregon Food Share. For the past several years, Audrey McGregian of Cocoa Beach, Florida has been involved in virtually every aspect of providing assistance to victims of sexual assault in the Cocoa Beach, Florida area. In addition to giving thousands of speeches in the counties and the problem, she manages the hotline for the Commission against Sexual Assault and personally counsels from 70 to 90 cases annually. Audrey McGregian. Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Drivers are mad in 1980 to seek reform of California's drunk driving laws. Since then, mad has grown to 111 chapters in 36 states and now includes court watch programs, public education activities, speakers, bureaus and assistance to victims and families of victims, mothers against drunk drivers. Volunteer Align Eye Projects is the largest and most diverse student-managed volunteer organization in the nation. It involves over 900 University of Illinois students in projects in 10 different activity areas. Volunteer Align Eye Projects. Retirees of the King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, provide a resource of skilled craftsmen to assist low income elderly with home and appliance repairs. In 1982, the retirees made home and appliance repairs for over 2,000 of the Seattle area's older residents. AFL-CIO King County Labor Council of Washington Labor Agency Union retirees. Honeywell encourages employees to become involved in community volunteer activities both on their own time and through special projects sponsored or encouraged by the company. The 565 retired Honeywell employees who volunteered through their retiree volunteer program last year contributed over $1,130,000 worth of services to the community. Richard Webber, Corporate Vice President Honeywell, Inc. When Braniff International Airlines filed for bankruptcy in May 1982, the Dallas Fort Worth area was faced with providing employment for thousands of unemployed workers. Frito-Lay developed a multi-faceted program entitled the Mayor's Task Force to provide counseling, job search, assistance, and seminars. Special job fairs allowed 8,700 unemployed individuals to meet with representatives of over 200 companies. Dean Wayne Calloway, President, Frito-Lay, Inc. That concludes our award winners for 1983. Thank you, Mr. President.


103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, December, no it's not, it's January 17th, 2021. Yeah, I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us, hello Wombat. That's it. Okay, I do recognize it, I can't name it but I recognize it. And our guests today are Chad, Gred Pirate Higgs, George I and George II, and Boudreaux, welcome all. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheist, freethinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also did you know that there was a streaming call-in atheist video show broadcasting here in Knoxville? Has it been for over 10 years? Did you know that Wombat? I thought the Emmy's already happened but okay, fine, that's great. Brian Seacrest is hosting or something? I'm really looking forward to it, yeah. Let's go Queens Gambit, come on. We'll tell you more about how you can find it after the mid-show break. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and do a search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour and post a message there and we'll see it and respond. What's the topic today Wombat?  But before we get into that, let's get into our weekly invocation from our own Dred Pirate Hicks. Okay. Oh, Dred, you're on mute. He's coming in. We still got Zoom problems and it's 2021. Can you believe that? Yeah, user error. Okay, can you hear me? Yep. All right, God his true self did reveal, avoid all false gods with zeal. He made one mistake, all the others are fake, but gave us no hint, which is real. Raw. Thank you guys so much. I want to go to what some of the most exciting times of this, you know, weekly get together. And I want to know how everybody's doing. Dred Pirate, you had so much on your list from last week. You had a court case, you got classes coming up, you're in Canada. What's going on with you? How are you doing? I'm managing pretty good. I have a meeting Tuesday with a prominent retired lawyer who we've met a couple of times with respect to the court case. I've got my milk stool argument well conceived and well built. So good. I think it's a slam dunk. Just as long as the judges is open to hearing reason as opposed to whatever the human rights tribunal is trying to pass as a good argument. Class, right now I've only got one person signed up, but you know, like all things, most things happen in the 11th hour. Of course, I am looking for, I think I posted that on the SE channel, looking for some creator picks for SE arguments so that I can feature those in the class. You're asking for a best hits of SE content producers if they film in the class. You have access to all my stuff, but I can give you some links to whatever would stand out to you. It saves me scouring because I like them all. Plus we've been doing it for years now, right? Yeah. Hey, Buffalo, it's good to see you again. How you been doing it? How you been holding up? Thanks. Are you vaccinated? I am vaccinated. Nice, nice. I'm a little bit, I have some feelings about that, but as I promised myself that I would wait until all of the K through 12 teachers were vaccinated before I would take a vaccine. But of course the circumstances surrounding the vaccination is are changing constantly and and our university decided to do what apparently everybody's going to do now and just try to vaccine everybody and not subdivide folks because it sees me slowing things down. Sure. So I got the invitation actually from my daughter, Eric's wife made me aware of the fact that it was sitting on my email and signed up and got her done. Good. Good to hear it. In Kentucky, you're doing a great job getting everybody vaccinated. I mean, it's not just Buffalo, it's Eric himself too, right? Is that accurate? Yeah. Yep. My wife and I are vaccinated. And the same, same reason, even, even more, maybe more guilt attached for me. I really didn't want it until, you know, people. Did you get vaccination one and two or just one so far? Just the one. Just the one. It was Wednesday. So I mean, we're not even a week. My shoulder feels, sir, my arm feels fine now, but first couple of days, it was pretty sore. Dealing with it. Okay. If you have any side effects or anything. I was ready for it though. I was, I would have, I would have smiled to the whole thing. Yeah. Like put it in my tongue. I'll be fine with it. Yeah. Science. But Kentucky's 50%. I think among, we're like among the eight states that have actually used 50% of their doses. Just great. It's great. Yeah. Use them. George, how you been holding up? Oh, pretty good. I am signed up to get the vaccination. And I'm actually on two different lists, but one of them, I have an actual appointment. And so it's going to be a drive by. You know, I'm going to hang my arm hanging out the window to the city park. Yeah. I've seen that. And after I get the second vaccination, I am determined to go to Walmart. And when I pass somebody who's not wearing a mask, I'm going to lower my mask and cost. No, what you should do is lower their mask and confidence. No, that's a call to action. I'll take that back. I take that back. Thank you. Moving on. Moving on. Chad the impaler. It's been forever.  He's been flipping houses this whole time. Oh, they're huge. Yeah. Yeah. I'm great. I'm great yet to be vaccinated, although here in Kentucky. So it seems like the University of Kentucky is doing a better job than the state of Kentucky. Yeah. We among the common folk are not as vaccinated. I think as some of the others, I could be wrong about that. And so I'll give props to the university. And I guess, yeah, props where it's deserved. But there's a long way to go. I don't know how many millions of people we have here in Kentucky. And you said, Eric, that they were what 50% of the vaccines that were available have been distributed. What's the total number of that though? Yeah. I don't know the number, but just, just knowing that like most states are around 30% deployment. Yeah. And I will say. What impresses me is that West Virginia is the best of all. Apparently they've got, they've used all of their vaccine. And the governor there is Republican government. And he established a program that I think is called STW, a save our, save the wisdom. And he decided that it's old folks that are suffering the most from it. So they went out and actively make sure they went to all various different places in the state and got all the older people vaccinated. Nice. Very good. They're keeping up with the use of the vaccine they have very well. Very good. Yeah. Yeah, I think in those, I think in those communities, and this could be generalizing in these Appalachian communities, there are patriarchs and matriarchs that are still in play. They, they rely heavily. I think a lot of, at least the families that I know that, that live or that have come from that area, Appalachia, seems like it's usually matriarchies. It seems like the older gentlemen die before the ladies do. And they're left with these old grandmas and memos that they have to keep alive. And, and they're really holding some of these families together. Yeah. So good. That's a good move. Not to them. They use it. Yeah. Good. Dota five. How you been last week? Since last week? Oh, just fine. I haven't signed up any lists for a vaccine. I'm 70 years old. So I always think I'd probably want to be one of the first vaccinated, but I depend on the VW. I'm sorry, the VA, excuse me, the Veterans Administration to contact me and sign me up and get me on it, but they have not done that yet. I'm going to have to be proactive starting Monday and call them up and say, Hey, what's what? Absolutely. Absolutely. Get in there. Tuesday. I have signed up myself. Why? I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah. Martin Luther King Day. Oh, do we have another holiday coming up? Oh, okay. I got to thank you guys for helping me out with that. Those always sneak up on me. But yeah, I did sign up for my vaccine. I'm looking forward to hopefully getting it. But because I'm young, I won't, I'm likely not to be getting it until third quarter of this year. That said, I'm also fortunate enough to work at a place where we make incredible filtration media. And so I've been inundated with like, oh, this mask was really nice. 95% resistance, but the permeability could be a little bit better. This is an N95 mask, but can we make the resistance a little bit lower? I'm a little spoiled with my breathability. I want to work out what this on. And so you're just tweaking stuff all the time. And it's like, yeah, put some more nanofibers on that. It's been fun. Guys, free speech is a beautiful thing or it's a terrible thing, but it's definitely something that we're going to be talking about. The reason why I wanted to bring it up was as of last week, Trump can no longer go on Twitter. His Instagram has been canceled. His Snapchat's been closed. His YouTube's been taken off the internet. And that's just the small tip of the iceberg. As he was being impeached, we had an unprecedented silence from the president or our chief in state. And what was interesting was after he had his first time to talk about what had happened, instead of saying, yeah, I'm sorry, you know, I did these things or showing some sort of accountability, his main issues that he wanted to bring up was his free speech violations in terms of being banned by big tech. And so what I want to do is there's a really good discussion here because there's a lot of parallels between that and saying like, hey, you can pray in school now you can't do mandatory prayers in school and people used to complain that was a free speech issue. What is free speech? How are we violating it? Is these people who are decrying their free speech being taken away? Are they accurate or not? And maybe we can just start with just the definition of free speech. I know George, you like definitions. George, what do you mean? What do you think I mean by free speech? Which George? Which you know Buffalo and you know George Larry. Don't do this because when that fires on, I don't make a big deal about this. Okay. As I understand the constitutional guarantees or lack thereof, the Bill of Rights in the United States pertains to what the government can do or not do and not private parties or corporations. So my interpretation of this, I think it's pretty open and shut. Facebook, for instance, is completely within their rights to shut anybody down who they feel like. And they are not the government. The other matter I want to address is this. We have a tradition that you don't cry fire in a crowded theater. And I would add to that, you do not have the right to incite somebody else to a violent action. I hear you. I hear that. Yeah. So there's limitations there. But let's see, Chad, would you mind weighing in on what you mean or what do you think I mean by free speech or what the general public thinks they mean by free speech? Well, the general public, I'm not quite sure. I think that it's incredibly important for us to be really careful about this. Of course, the government can't. The government's not allowed to stop us from speaking freely, dissent. I don't know, John Adams, something like that. Second president, there was some, there was some dissent and I believe he made it illegal to speak out against the president. That's changed. And it should have changed. This is, I guess, why we have the amendment. So the government can't come down on people, but are they allowed to tell private organizations that they have to provide a platform for those that they disagree with? So the law in the word doesn't talk about private organizations, as I understand it. But I think it's important to, when people practice law, they talk about practicing law because the spirit of the law is actually something. And I think the spirit of the amendment is something that we're going to be talking about over the coming years. I don't necessarily, I think we'll also be talking about whether or not platforms like Facebook and Twitter are considered utilities. And we're going to likely have to have some government oversight over these platforms so that we can make sure that if this is a platform, a single entity is not able to disenfranchise a group of people from their speech. Now, you're free to go somewhere else and start your own platform, which was tried by, I think, some of the more right-leaning folks. And that platform was shut down. It was denied by Apple and, I believe, Amazon. Yeah, we don't have to go over it's name, though. Yeah, all that stuff was shut down. I don't know how I feel about it. I hate seeing anyone being denied the right to speak because I think the poorest among us who have nothing have the right to speak. And if we deny them platforms, we're disenfranchising. I think we just need to be really careful and not gather up too much of our own hubris and praise ourselves for shutting down what half the country sees as a tyrant and maybe even more than half of the country sees as someone who's incited some pretty serious violence. I'll stop. Udro, you want to fill in on that? Your best buddy just talked. Well, I kind of want to go back to how you set this up, which is kind of defining the term. Sure. I'm no expert in this field, but I kind of take it to mean the right to say whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's rights. And I think that's where the nuance comes in here. You can say whatever you want. In fact, on campus, there's a free speech area. Sure. We were there. And people go there and say things that I very much disagree with. But they have that right. And that's okay. And I actually see some of the chads talking about this cancel culture type of behavior where someone will go and preach at the free speech area on campus.  And it's like, well, I'm, yes, but we got to be careful here. Again, I think this whole thing is nuanced. And I'm really curious what the conversation is going to be about de-platforming people.  Sure. I mean, the second that it happens to us, all of a sudden now it's bad. Yeah. There's that too. I want to hear from Dred Buffalo and doubter five next. So Dred, how about you? How do you feel about this? What do you define as free speech and the topic and the general conversation today? He's still on mute, even though he muted himself. That's weird. Having some hard times. There you go. No, no, no. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with the definitions already given.  And this has just been making my public life here in this small town something of a headache. And I've taken to fighting back now, you know, to the point of civil proceedings. So I get it.  And it's nasty. And it's horrible to see that people who you walk past in other situations have the ability to do this, to be that kind of person, to be that mean, and to, you know, treat people that disagree with them with such anger and hostility. It's really nasty. What's cancel culture mean? Yeah. What are all these hip terms you're talking about, Dred? We aren't down with your jazz. Well, cancel culture is essentially is trying to erase someone from public. I mean, to, you know, to go after me and my job, to go after me and my public image based on something that someone can't even have the decency to have, you know, a debate with me in public or debate in private. Sure. It's rather than, rather than try to solve a disagreement or address a difference of an opinion, it's just we're going for the juggler, man. And we're taking you down no matter what. And that's what cancel culture is. A lot of bad hominem attacks. And I do want to head into George's perspective on free speech while we still got time. George, how do you, Buffalo, what do you feel free speech is and what do you think of the general tone of the conversation so far? Yeah. To me, it's a very sticky issue. But I just like to speak to the cancel culture aspect, which I think we used to call Machiavellian character assassination. And that, that somehow that has to be dealt with. But I guess, overall, I'm waiting to see what happens when the issue of whether or not Twitter and Facebook and so forth have the right to simply cancel out a group and how that's going to be handled in Washington by the Congress. Or is it going to be a stalemate for years to come? It's a very sticky issue. How about just on free speech? What do you think free speech is? I think free speech is within the limits of not damaging somebody else saying what you think. And having the right to do that. And having the right to do that. How do you define the limits of damaging somebody else as the sticky issue? Yeah, that's a sticky issue. It's a sticky watermelon. What do you, I don't even get that watermelon.  Should I put it in the bag? I don't know. I can always wash it at home. Is it on discount? Doubter five, I want to hear what you think on free speech because I can feel you ruminating over here. Can you see this team coming off? Yeah. No, Trump was given every opportunity to use his media and he used it extensively for four years. It's when he started calling for seditious acts. And revolt against the country is when they put a stop to it and dropped him as a client. First of all, these are corporations that are doing it. These are privately owned or publicly dealt corporations. And as of the most recent laws, the corporations are people and they have their own rights. So, you know, you can't get on there. And one, it's a call to action when you tell people to go storm the capital to it's an action against the government. They have every right to drop this guy from their platform or do away with the platform altogether if they want to. Sure. It's not an issue of free speech. If they were given other people platforms to do things like that but not given him platform to do things like that, then it would be discrimination. But that's not the case either. So we have to pull back from that. We have to realize that he doesn't have any special rights in that area. He's just a citizen as well. He is just a citizen as well. I'd like to have the ability to address the nation should he choose to, which would likely be covered heavily. Yeah. I want to weigh in myself and then let's do roundtables to figure out like how we're all going to settle on this. In my opinion, it's kind of cut and dry. Like Eric says, there's free speech areas. You can say whatever you want in a free speech area. You can say whatever you want outside. But my bathroom, you are not allowed to go into my bathroom and say whatever you want. That's where I cut the lines. And if you say, you're violating my free speech but not letting me get into your bathroom tie and give this speech about iguanas. It's like, you don't have, it's my bathroom. You can't be in here. And that's how I feel about the same way with Twitter. It's like, hey, that's some guy's bathroom. And like, he's been nice to, you know, some guy for like the last four years and he has a terms of policy and it's a TOS that he made with his own team of lawyers. There's things you can and can't say on Twitter. And if you violate those terms of conditions, you are kicked off the platform. It's not, it's not an ambiguous thing. It's a cut and dry contract. And I feel like when you have someone who is inciting violence, as we had seen just last week, that's a call to action for people to say, we need to hold someone accountable. This is the person that did this. What's the best course of action and what kind of conduct do you want to set as an example for the other people who share this platform?  One last point, one last point. I think also we elect people to represent all of America, not just private groups or small sections of America. And I feel like what was being said by the president, particularly towards the point where it was already obviously was losing the election, was not in the benefit of all Americans and was in fact just benefit to himself. And I feel like at that point, we have to start asking ourselves, is the person that we were putting, that we have in charge, who is voicing his opinion to the public, is what he's saying harmful beyond just the violence that we saw last week, but in terms of like our nation's national security and our ability to conduct ourselves with reason and respect on a daily basis, or is that actually going to be hurtful? And I think at that point, it's OK to pull the plug on someone who's actively working out of our mutual interest or mutual benefit. Doubter five, you want to say something? Oh, just a quick thing. We do have laws against some types of free speech like liability, not liable, not liability, liable. And one of the things that Trump has opened himself up to is when he called, well, it was a private conversation, but he did eventually go public with it, is that when he called the Georgia certification administration, yeah, and then accused him of malfeasance and accused him of not properly vetting his job, that's liable. Yeah, also threatening him with legal action if they did it privately. Exactly. And he has recourse. He has legal recourse. He can take him to court on a private lawsuit and maybe even a state lawsuit to challenge him on that and maybe get punitive damages from it. I do want to add, I think Chad has a good point in the idea of, well, it's OK to draw the line here, but it's a slippery slip on both sides, right? Most things tend to be. And what do you do when there's a big interest that doesn't want to hear what you want to say? And I think we can point at Google, YouTube, and Twitter and say, these guys work cooperatively to stop one voice. But we can see very similar things happening with like religion on the ideas of even vaccinations, even really honestly. But like evolution, how women's rights, should churches and states be separated? If that's the case, why do we have clergy in the Senate? Things like this. And I feel like the voices that are like, hey, church state separation, we shouldn't have our elected officials be peddling more or less false hope on a weekly basis for tithed money. I say that kind of hardcore, but it's the fact of the matter. I also say like, hey, small voices like, you know, secular points of views tend to be drowned out by big religion in the same sense that people can complain about big tech. Like I think there's a credence to the implication that we can easily, this silencing or cancel culture can easily be used for bad as well as good. And I think that's something we should be aware of. And what can we do to get out of that? And like it's the crying free speech, the best way to go about it. I guess we have some time. Chad, I'm going to throw something out at you. I'd like to see if you can maybe address that. Do you think there's parallels between what we had seen with big tech and maybe like big religion and like, how will we go about addressing that in an honest conversation? It's difficult. I think everybody should maybe skip a cup of coffee in the morning and actually sit down and speak to each other since we're talking about speech without bringing baggage to the table. The parallels between what big tech has done and what the religion argument, I think they're there. Yeah, big thought, sure.  I feel like I have the right to hear these people. So I feel like it's almost an infringement on my right to not be able to hear some of these dissenting opinions. Now, I don't agree with what Trump did. I am not a Trump supporter. I'm even less of a supporter of what he's done at the Capitol or what he did at the Capitol. But man, go try to find what he said. You know, I should be allowed to make my own decisions about what is good and what isn't good information. And if we're telling people that they, we know what's best for you to hear, you can't be trusted with this information, that's where I think we need to draw the line. So to tell someone that they can't practice religion or non-religion because they couldn't possibly, your little mind can't possibly grasp the importance of what information we hold. We're going to have to make these decisions for you. I just, I hate that. I hate it. I feel like I should be able to usher my consciousness around as I see fit to the one shot I get at this life. And I don't want anyone in my way. And I won't get in anyone else's way if I can help. Can I throw something out? George, let me get ready for the break. I want to throw out one thing. Chad, I'd like to talk about this more in the second half of the show. Something I like for us to ruminate during the break is the difference between the idea of here's a platform that you have to agree to the terms of service before you even join. There's a little box that even President Trump has to click before. He's allowed to post anything on there. So there's a compromise of rules of engagement beforehand before you join the platform. Whereas with the religious section, it's we are going to tell you how to raise your kid. We are going to tell you how this baby's going to be born.  Like before this kid's even raised in this family, religion's already there and deciding and making points and saying you should have this, you shouldn't have this. And there's no consent to begin with. I feel like those might be radically different institutions and what we might be blaming Twitter for, we should be really directing towards religion because I feel like we walk into a Twitter situation with consent. Whereas with religion, we don't have that. Maybe that's something we consider. Larry, why don't you take us out? We're at the bottom of the half hour. Sure. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here. In Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM, WZO Radio. Knoxville! Hello and welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. With us today on the show are Wombat, Boudreaux, Chad, Dred Pirate Higgs, and George I and George II, or Buffalo as we call it. Where do we want to pick up there, Wombat? So we're going over our latest purchases on Amazon and I got a lot of really cool things. I even got myself a really, really nice, tiny little fan and it's such a fan! What a fan! What a fan! What a fan! What a mighty good fan! What a mighty, mighty good fan! Hey, guess what? We're going over a listener feedback today. We got a lot of comments on last week's show which was called, Done with Trump's Gaslighting and we're going to go over some of them today. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over them on next week's show. Addison 369 says, Hey, Gaslighting, by the way, is done with the intent to make the victim feel less confident or more confused and therefore be less of a challenge or easier to control for the gaslighter. Just FYI. I think we can see some examples of that. There's definitely a history of news editorialism that's become more prevalent and has made people a bit more skeptical of what our leaders are saying or makes it harder for people to get true information. And that's always been an issue, especially since 24-hour news has been around. Ashley Williams says, Lo, I love the ending, guys. Thank you. Keep it up. Thank you, Ashley. Comparative reasoning says, Hey, that was a great episode. At the opening, I was a little annoyed with the talk about the DC Coupe. I think it's... I think the overlooked thing was that it was more of privileged versus privileged in DC. I see this Coupe as people more or less trying to do the right thing, but for the wrong reasons and that for it made it not well at all. What do you think about the Coupe attempt being mainly privileged versus the non-privileged? And if this comment is good enough, I will make a video where I scream, where's the love, where's the love, where's the love? Yes, I know where that song came from. It was a highly political and social commentary song that sadly led to nothing beyond head nodding. Well, you know what? Elephant was a jam. It's still either way. And I think it's always cool to have songs that aren't love songs.  But what I think generally about the Coupe is there was the idea of, hey, you know, compared to the summer protests where there were peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park saying, hey, our lives matter. We're being subjugated by the government. And the government responded with, you know, intimidation tactics with helicopters flying over them, national guard troops being out, pepper sprayed with, you know, rubber bullets, arrests, zip ties, and then flipped just last week and you have 30,000 white people storming the Capitol and there's officers taking selfies with them on the first floor where they're chasing black officers or Capitol police officers up flights of stairs just two up and forth above that. They're helping people out of the building. They're escorting them down the stairs. There's just a very big disparity between how people are treated based on how they look in America. And I feel like if anything, this Coupe has been a magnifying glass on what's already been an issue with U.S. in terms of like international outcry of like, hey, we call ourselves number one, but that's only if you look a certain way and if you, if when you live here and I think it's, I think it's an important thing to consider. Just going over the last comment we got from Dallas Trading Room, hmm, if the president has the power to use the military to take over the country and the law allows for this, then you guys are toying with fire. I hear this before every U.S. presidential election. If something can happen, it will happen sooner or later unless people can prevent it. I want to lead off with this. I think the idea of if we have a guy who's willing to post things on Twitter, how long will it be before we have a guy that uses more established red tape and means of power to enact their power? Because we were lucky that Trump did not have military support, but he could have easily been a bit more persuasive, bit more suave and use back channels instead of this public platform to try to maintain his power.  You can look at Venezuela, you can look at many other successful dictatorships who would never take a chapter from Trump's book, but who Trump has taken many chapters from other people's books and just was not as successful. George, I want to weigh on you, going ahead and say the thing you were trying to say beforehand and then what do you think of the idea of, like, you know, was the ban a good thing or not a good thing on social medias? So I think what we're going to find from this is some legal definitions to apply to social media platforms because we've never had them before. You know, we have the question, and this has come up already in other contexts, is Facebook, for instance, a common carrier or are they a publisher? And my answer to that would be they are neither. You know, there has to be a third category created for this type of a platform, you know? I think in my own case, I view Facebook as a de facto common carrier because it is an essential factor of society now. You say that even though you don't even have a Facebook account. You're... I'm okay. We're on radio. I'm not going to say... George is very anti-Facebook. He's like, don't put me on that Facebook. Forget about it. No, because I am anti-surveillance and Facebook is a surveillance business. Absolutely. Yeah. And I will not have a Facebook account for that reason. I have worked in high tech and I know how easy it is for a website to adopt a surveillance methodology on its users. And so I'm very sensitive to this. And for me, to not be on Facebook is to be isolated. It's to be expunged from the culture around me. So I've paid a very dear price for this. I would say Facebook is a de facto common carrier. But let me go on to my second issue here, which had to do with what Chad said about free speech and being unable to hear opposing voices and, you know, I brought up earlier the fact that inciting somebody else toward violence is an abuse of free speech and should not be permitted. Chad wants to hear those voices, I think.  And this is the method of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And they have brought successful civil court cases against fascists who have incited violence and, you know, made them responsible for their words. They've drained the bank accounts of some very bad fascist people. They've been successful. So that's the route. Jordan's going to say it's the wrong one. They've also been unsuccessful, too. They've gone after the wrong people like Majid Nawaz, Southern Poverty Law Center went after him, and he ended up suing them and winning. Because, yeah, they were trying to call him a bigot. Chad, go ahead and weigh in on this. I want to hear what you want to say. Yeah, I think I probably, when I say those things that I was saying earlier, it was really just a word of caution. It was tread lightly. This is not something that we want to just say, yeah, Hurrah, let's get rid of as much of this free speech as possible because I think Rogan just had the former head of the ACLU on anyway. And he was talking about this exact thing. And I agreed with much of what he said. I haven't listened to the entire podcast. It's over on Spotify. Go get it. It's good. But what you've got to be careful with is, yes, you may be successful in silencing these people that are saying the things that you hate. But we flip-flop. This country is constantly in a power struggle. And the people that are in power flip-flop quite a bit.  We create these horrible things and we wind up becoming victims of them on occasion. And we just have to be careful. That's all. And I do want to hear dissenting opinion. I do not want to be in a silo. I cannot parse... I cannot make sense of a situation with limited data and I need more data. I need to know why. When I see people acting the way they acted at the Capitol and just before the Capitol when they were all gathered, I want to know why we're able to whip people up like that. I don't want to push them underground where they become more dangerous. I want to see it. I want to know who these people are. I want a list. I'm not asking for a list. I want to talk to these people. I want a list of them. I'm terrified of lists because I don't want to end up on one. I want them to get arrested. I think that was definitely something that, like, you know, for every military member in my family who sacrificed, got shot, died, I think they deserve to be recorded. But I would say this. Chad, this is a question for you. I'm wondering, have you given thought about what was mentioned in the first half of the show and the idea of if I come to a platform with an agreement with what the platform's rules are. For example, if I said, hey, I have a cookie, if you take this cookie off this plate, I won't let you, we can't play basketball anymore. And there's like, well, I have free rights to cookies and you eat the cookie. I'm like, you just ate the cookie. You can't play basketball with me. It's like, oh, that's a violation of who I can play basketball with. It's like, no, we had this agreement ahead of time. You broke it and we can't play basketball anymore.  Versus like the religious mindset where it's like, I'm taking everybody's cookies. I'm taking 10% of your cookie.   Like I've already got your grandparents. I got your parents and I got you. I feel like there's a difference there. And there there is. There is. I don't want the implication to be Twitter and Google and Amazon on a throne said, we don't like this guy and we're going to take them off. It's very clear what their agreements are and their TOS is. And it's very extraordinary. The event that happened that allowed that to happen for four years. They were fine making money off of the ads that he was bringing by having people funnel to his site and subscribers. But when the capital got attacked, they said, that is an obvious violation of what we had set up as a contract. And I think we can look at this list in black and white, see he breaks it and cut terms with this person as we would anyone who would do the same thing. There's the there's the rub. Just as long as we're making sure we're doing it with everyone that makes the violation. Sure. That's that we're going to exercise that we're going to we're going to put these laws in place so that we can choose to exercise our authority. Oh, when we want to. I want to I want to interject here needs to be done. And I'll just say one last thing. If Barack Obama had probably inside of the government, he would have handled this way faster. So I think it's an obvious thing that in my head. I'm wondering why did this take so long? Because I can point at many other things that Trump had said and be like, this is a violation in terms of service. Right. Get rid of this guy. Right. But here's where here's where my argument of I mean, I break the right to hear. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. George, you got to raise your hand. We can't everybody talking at the same time. What's up? My my connection. Can you guys hear me right now? Yes. Okay. I've lost my video. I've lost everything else. So anyway, what I wanted to say about terms of service. Again, this comes back to whether these platforms are common carriers or not or publishers for me. When I first got internet service was in 1996. And I was working for the telephone company. They provided very good service in the office. I signed up for my internet carrier with them. And the terms of service said that I was not allowed to say anything bad about the telephone company. My, my carrier. That's crazy. My internet provider was right there in the terms of service. They could, they could cancel my account if I did. You can't have no pirated software. That's part of terms of service. Yeah. Well, if they cancel your account, then you have legal contracts. And that's probably why that, that's probably why that doesn't occur now to the same extent. Yeah. I once applied for a job. And matter of fact, I've seen this on more than one employment application where it said, you by signing, by applying for this position. And that's probably why that, that's probably why that doesn't occur now to the same extent. Yeah. I once applied for a job. And by applying for this position application where you've already done all of this work to fill out all these apps and it's hard work. It's, it's not easy stuff to do. You get to the bottom of it says by signing this application you, you agree to give up your right to a jury trial. Whoa. Yeah. That's nuts. That's crazy. And you agree to arbitrary arbitration, a third party arbitration. But I mean, you're giving up a basic right and they're just asking you to, but it's a condition of employment. Now you could take that to court and say, you know, they don't have the right to, to ask me to do that, but who's going to do it?  It's an attempt to intimidate. Yeah, it is. I also think it's a good point. I'm going to go to Dredd and George, but like the idea of if we all had $10 on our pockets and just $10 on our pockets, then yes, everyone should be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want to, or maybe if that's, could be the case. But when you have billionaires and people who aren't billionaires in the same world, then we obviously have different volumes that we can all speak at. And at that point, what's really the best way to go about making sure that people who have the most money and will continue to have the most money don't speak for us. Like how do we make sure that Joe Rogan's don't incept our opinions of the world because they just have the largest microphone compared to what we might have. We all have nuanced worth hearing. And I can agree with it's important to hear dissenting opinions. All right. Dr. Fife, what did you want to go through? Well, yeah. I started to say, don't get me started on the cash basis of justice in America. Sure. Speeding tickets. I'm there. So now one of the most recent problems that they or laws that they've enacted at the Capitol is that after this insurrection, you know, they passed a rule saying that if you bring a gun into the chamber, you know, we're talking about even lawmakers now. Sure. The first offense will be $5,000 fine. The second offense will be $10,000 fine. Half of the people who serve in Congress are millionaires. You know, this is a fine that's going to affect some of them, very few of them. But, you know, it's just a slap on the wrist. It's hardly even that. They don't care. They're going to carry that gun in there against the rules, against the law. You know, and pay the fine. Who cares? But poor people or people who are just barely squeaking by cannot afford to do that. So their right to do that has been infringed, where the millionaires' rights have not been infringed hardly at all. Dredpire, we've got to get to you. What have you been thinking about? Well, we were talking about the condition of employment and that some people are required to sign off on things. I have a security license. I also have a firearms license, which is a federal identification. If you see there, I've got my tricorner on, which is my religious head gear. This is my security license, which they would not allow me to wear and threatened not to give me this license, which of course I am required to have in order to work. And so essentially under duress, they've coerced me to take a picture without my religious head gear as a condition of employment. So there you have it. I mean, here I'm going to the, you know, I'm going to court here in February against ICBC. And it could be argue, of course, that a driver's license as a privilege is absolutely necessary for certain types of employment as a realtor. It's absolutely necessary for me. And yet I'm being bullied and coerced into not wearing it or, you know, giving up my right to pursue my freedom of expression in order to accommodate whatever their beliefs are with respect to it.   You're in Lake Flint. If I have argued, and this is part of my milk stool argument here for court, is if I came in to ICBC with a turban that had been, you know, put on me by someone who's been a Sikh, a practicing Sikh, and I just proclaimed I'm here to get my photo taken. I am a Sikh. I'm a believer in Sikhism. Take my picture. I do seriously wonder if they would have a pause to challenge me on that. Right. And then by what test of faith would they be able to test that? Cool. So there you go. That's my bit. Buffalo, back on free speech. What do you think about what we've been talking about? Yeah, I think this is the basis of a lot of our problems. Dark money? Dark money. I thought that was the sweetest guy, like dark money. Jane Mayer, and she talks about, well, she talks about the Koch foundations, all 259 of them that exist, that are nonprofit organizations and pay no taxes, but right legislature, right bills to and pass them around to state legislators to determine what they want. And they've got the money to back it up. Adelman's gone now, but and one of the Koch brothers is gone, but we still have one more of them. So it's these people that have the clout and basically have a lot to do with money and justice in this country. In my opinion. Cool. I want to bring up some salient points. We still have some time. So how about this? The Bill of Rights, in my opinion, is a document that protects us from the government. It gives us rights so that we don't have to have repercussions from the government. It's not a tool for the government to say we should have more rights to do what we want against private companies, which because we are the private company, we are the people that make businesses. And it's an easy thing to forget, especially when there's a disproportionate amount of people in in positions of power that might look like like white men. It's an easy thing to forget that, but if you don't look like them, if you don't look like the government that, you know, controls a very poignant thing to always remember that your interests need to be protected and you should be aware of them because when the government wants those interests or tries to twist those interests into a narrative that protects them against you, that's a problem because that's not what the Bill of Rights is for. That's not what free speech is for. It's for people, not the government. And so if my personal government says this is a violation of my free right, I should be able to do this. I have my rights, but I don't want them to just leave the groundwork running to get these institutions. We can do what we want, and we give you the power to rule over us. It's not the other way around. What—let's see, Chad, what do you think about that? We'll just go, Chad you like to go along? Let's go for it. I like to go along too. I'm going for you, first. Well, yeah, yeah, so the rights I think the government protects all of these powerful groups were protected down to the level of the individual. So I think I am focused generally on the power in the hands of the individual. Earlier you were talking about platforms and how in at least I read it like it was important to you that even the smallest person would have the same amount of voice even though they don't in this country and I think the internet and as much as I have trouble with some social media not platform specific I think we as a species weren't ready for this but I really don't. I think it's important to protect everyone's right down to the individual and not break up into groups because never has the individual had more ability or more power over their own voice and where it goes and how many people can hear that voice and I think it's time to pull some of that power back away from the groups and ensure that our government doesn't infringe on our right to be loud outspoken individuals. Sure it's fine to break up into groups that that's one thing we're able to do because of social media but understand that you are still an individual and you have your rights and the rights are given to you as an individual. Cool. Boudre. Can I underscore a point that you were trying to make Walmart to chat what chat statement there. Yes the individual does everything you're saying makes perfect sense but when that individual is operating as the president of the United States that we're no longer talking about an individual. Now we're talking about someone who was hired elected to do a job and that's where I think that the argument falls apart. It's a president doing it. It's not an individual. He's just acting like an individual. I don't disagree. Yeah I don't disagree that the president has a lot more platform than I will ever have. Yeah it's very rare you can be blocked on Twitter and then to be like I got 14 other news media outlets. I'll carry this video for me. It's all good. I do want to wrap up. I think we had a really good conversation. This is so good man. I wish I could talk to you guys for so much longer when we did. Maybe we'll do some off time but Chad you need to come back. You are great. You really need to come back for sure. Yeah sorry I went long on all this but enjoy it. Buffalo. Buffalo we'd love to have you back too. What was that book? You mind plugging that book one more time? Dark Money. Whenever I see it. Dark Money by Jane Mayer talks about the history of big money in this country all the way through to how they write bills and literally pass them on sometimes to be used verbatim in state legislatures around the country and it's all based upon protection of individuals or politicians and being successful in their primaries and that whole thing. Very cool. It's really quite good. Nice. Jerry Parrot where can we find your stuff at? So I broadcast this every Sunday morning. For me it starts at 8 a.m. PST and we do the whole hour live. We had well we had four viewers today so that's kind of good. Yeah that's good. What are you talking about? That's four times better than we've ever had. Actually Loma has been pretty good. He comes on quite regularly. What's up? Dada's trading room. He's been on too. But you can find me on YouTube at MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E and since we were since George's era plugged a book I want to plug this book. It's called Empire of Illusion the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle by Chris Hedges. I'm sorry I can always put that in the chat. George you got anything you want to plug? I do not. Totally fine. Eric do you got any music? I'll make a little plug at the end. I'll make a little plug at the very end of the show. Okay okay. You got any music you want to recommend for anybody to listen to? Well we're putting the finishing touches on a original song that I'm working on with a buddy. He's actually writing it for his terminally ill wife and I played bass on it and we got all that recorded. He's got it and I'm just doing the drums now and it's nice stuff because it's punk rock and I'm going to get in trouble on the comments for calling Majid Nawad's an ex-Muslim. I know it. Apologies. I misspoke. It's fine. We welcome fire to handle it. Apis don't burn. We all know that. Chad the impaler, do you have a recommendation for tips for people who want to flip a home? What's the best way for them? Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah this is taking a lot longer than that. I anticipate vet your contractors and then vet them again and have at least three, have a bench at least three contractors deep or be ready to eat up all or much of your profit. I've spent a lot of time waiting for contractors to call me or show up and it's brutal. This house I'm doing is right next door so it's difficult for me to not just go over there and try to do it all and it's overwhelming. There's too much. So no, no, just don't do it. I did also want to mention Boudreau and I, we've made it a solemn vow to finally kick off our own series of podcasts which we're going to record another one right after this. Yeah, give you a mic coming soon. Yeah, like hope the mic turns out well. Okay, so I'm let's chat on YouTube. You can find me on YouTube. Larry, why don't you take us out? Hey, my own content is on digitalfreethought.com. You can find our blog there, the radio show archives, Atheist songs, many articles on the subject of atheism. My book is called Atheism, What's It All About? It's available on Amazon. If you have questions for the show, send them to askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been digital free thought radio hour.  The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't worry about it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week at seven o'clock on WOZO radio at Knoxville. Take care everybody and say bye-bye.  Not me. See ya. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.


Russia, preparing to seize Avdeevka chemical plant, Russian troops have crossed the railway line north of Avdeevka and could position their forces for an assault on the local coke and chemical plant, located on the northern edge of the city and then threatened the city itself. The Kiev Post publication said this. According to a Ukrainian military observer Yuri Butosov, Russian troops were seen next to a railway line near Stepov, a village 3 km north of Avdeevka and have continued their assaults on the village. The observer said Russian troops are entrenched behind the railway line and they are in a good position to launch attacks on the chemical plant, which is essentially the northern gate to Avdeevka. There was a real threat of losing the city. The observer stated in his report. Head of Avdeevka City Military Administration Vitaly Barabash said that Russia had intensified its attacks on the northern and southern flank to encircle the city and the chemical plant had become a new target for its troops. Infantry is advancing on the city, both from the south and the north, without yet employing their heavy equipment. The Russians are making concerted efforts to encircle the city, said Barabash. Avdeevka, a Ukrainian stronghold located 22 km north of Donetsk City, has seen some of the heaviest combat in the ongoing war, with Russia aiming to capture the city for a symbolic victory.


Okay, so in today's video I'm going to be talking about a very important stoic concept which has influenced me greatly and has helped many people that have shown this to in life and that is this idea of the decorum of control as proposed by Epictetus. But before I get into that let me let me tell you guys a story.  Now the problem arose when I had to wait for the results. We had to wait three weeks to see our results to see how well we did. If we failed we would have to do the subject again, pay something like a thousand dollars for the course and it would just be hell. So during these three weeks during the holiday break before we got results I used to stress out I used to be miserable every day I'll be thinking about the outcome thinking about the exam and brought a lot of negativity in my life a lot of clutter to my mind. Now this carried on until I understood this topic of dichotomy of control, this concept dichotomy of control. Now basically the dichotomy control is being able to distinguish what is within our control and what is not within our control and focusing only on what is in our control. Now Epictetus writes in his opening lines of his handbook The Incaridian. Some things are in our control and others are not. Things in our control our opinion, pursuit, desire, a version and in a word whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control our body, property, reputation, command and in a word whatever are not our actions. Basically Epictetus is saying we need to focus on what we have influence over. So for me as I finished that exam my influence on that exam was over. There is no point on focusing on that and envisioning the future. I should have focused on other things and enjoyed my time because I did all I could until the results came out. In the same way that people that are in a rush to get to a certain location will get stopped by red light and it will get frustrated and angry and will remove that piece of my life because the red light. The red light is not in your control. That is something outside of your control so you shouldn't focus on that. Remember when you were a kid you probably wanted to fly. You probably wanted to jump into the sky and fly. Maybe you still want to do that but you understood very quickly that what's stopping you from being able to do that is gravity which pulls you to the ground. Now gravity is something that's not within your control so you've accepted this fact and forgot about your dreams about flying. So why then do you still have trouble accepting this fact in other areas of your life? Perhaps it's because other things in life are not as easily understood as fundamental laws such as gravity. Always ask yourself is this in my control? Is there something I can do about this? If not disregard it. If you can do the action. There are a few things that people always always worry too much about that are not in their control. One is trying to please everybody. Trying to make everybody like you. That is definitely not within your control.   So a good mentality to have is to disregard that as a goal. Instead focus your goal on something that is in your control. Be more likeable. Having those characteristics that we talked about. Be more charismatic. Be perhaps more funny. Be more kind. That's within your control and that's something you can focus. Not the result. The result will come as a by-product of you focusing on what's in your control. Another area that people always beat themselves down over is their genetic gifts. Some people are born 6 feet 5. Some people are born 5 foot 5. A lot of guys I see are always stressing about their height. They're always stressing about how they're too short and how it would be better if they were better. Being short is not in your control. That is what you're born with. So the quicker you can accept that the better. Being 6 foot 5 is not within your control. The quicker you can accept how tall you are the better. Don't worry about these things. Worry about what you can do. Worry about how those genetic gifts can help you. Worry about how you can overcome certain adversities. Don't worry about the adversity if you can't do anything about it. If you have a disability don't worry about the disability because there's nothing you can do about it. Sure you can feel sorry for yourself but that's not your control. It's feeling sorry for yourself gonna make you happier or is seeing what you can do and taking that route gonna make you happy. Human beings will like control. Once you focus on what you can control you'll be far happier than what you are. Now this concept is really good in regards to goal-setting and this is how you apply the dichotomy of control into goal setting. A lot of people kind of mistake this dichotomy of control into taking kind of a passive approach to life. When in reality it still is a very active approach because you're seeing what you can do and you're going in that direction so you're being more effective. When you're setting the goal let's say you're playing the game of tennis as is a famous example. Instead of focusing on the end outcome of winning the game which is not in your control.  Focus instead on playing to the best of your ability. Focus on what you can do because those things are in your control or let's say you want to see at a bar and you want to talk to this girl you want to go up and talk to this girl right you want to say hi how's going. Her being receptive to you is not fully in your control.  In conclusion many things are not within our control but a few things are and those things are what we need to focus on. Those two things are our actions and our response to events. If we can master these things we can master life itself.


The Armacran variant of SARS-CoV-2 is a highly mutated strain of the virus that has caused a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases worldwide. It contains 15 mutations in its RBD which is responsible for binding to host cells and shares many similarities with other VOC strains such as alpha, beta and gamma. These mutations have led to increased virulence and transmissibility as well as immunovasion. To combat this strain it is important to understand how these mutations affect the virus's ability to infect and spread and develop effective countermeasures accordingly. This article was authored by Gazumahi, Waikihong, Siongyu Pan and others.


The Unfinished Step Pyramid, also known as the Buried Pyramid, was found by Zacharia Goniam, an Egyptian archaeologist in 1951. Goniam noticed its odd rectangular shape in the desert while excavating the nearby Unius complex. A three-part rubble-courced enclosure was initially discovered, and by digging to its bottom, it was found to be 5 meters tall and 18 meters thick. However, he later discovered that the wall further extended on both sides to dimensions of 520 meters on its north-south axis, and 180 meters to the east-west. Predictably, the site is full of false doors and niches, yet what no one predicted was the unique sarcophagi which was soon discovered thereafter. Built with a sliding door and largely believed to predate the Egyptian civilization, indeed the construction of the Great Pyramids themselves, due to the current condition of the site, Zacharia purportedly opened the sarcophagus in front of the world press. Yet unfortunately, or rather predictably, like the many other sites discovered in the modern day in this most mysterious of areas, was completely empty. Presumably looted, though it is indeed possible that a cover-up of its contents had occurred just prior to the announcement of its discovery. Regardless of this absence of contents, it is thought to have been the burial chamber of Sikkemket. This pharaoh, known as the second of the Third Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, has been claimed as having reigned over Egypt circa 2686 to 2613 BC, and is placed at the beginning of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. What makes the find all the more intriguing, however, along with its claimed predating of the height of the Egyptian Empire, is the unique style of the tomb itself. Clearly, an out-of-place artifact, or possibly a sarcophagi of the original builders of the pyramids themselves, with the embalming technique later adopted and continued by later inhabitants of the Giza Plateau. A clear strategic power move by those who have claimed to have built the pyramids, yet also completely absent of any explanation of how, with its seemingly impossibly-sized megalithic blocks found within the constructions. Furthermore, to support the accusation of a modern looting of this tomb, is the fact that nearby, Sikeriogonium also found 21 solid gold bracelets, small muscle shells, and feyens corals covered with gold leaf. It would seem these items, although priceless, were less important than hiding the contents of the tomb. The question is, if this was indeed a looted tomb of the past, why were these now-priceless relics seemingly left undiscovered, while the incredibly well-hidden sarcophagi was completely ransacked? It is a find which we find highly compelling. The Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible, due to the large illustration of the devil on the inside of the giant book, it is also connected to the legend surrounding its creation. It is largely thought to have been created in the early 12th century in the Benedictine monastery of Bodlegesa in Bohemia. According to legend, the Codex was created by a character known as Herman the Recluse in the Benedictine monastery near Cherdim in the Czech Republic. The monastery was destroyed sometime in the 15th century during the Hussite Revolution. The Codex was thankfully rescued and taken to the Benedictine monastery in Brezhivnov. From 1477 to 1593, it was kept in the library of a monastery until it was taken to Prague in 1594 to form part of the collections of the Empire Rudolf II. In 1648, it was taken as war booty by the Swedish army. In 1697, it would escape destruction again when a fierce fire broke out at the royal castle in Stockholm, subsequently destroying the royal library. The Codex was rescued from the flames by being thrown from a window. According to the vicar, Johann Ericsons, the Codex landed on a bystander, injuring him quite badly. In September 2007, after 359 years of changing hands in numerous ways, the Codex Gigas was returned to the National Library in Stockholm. But what makes the Codex particularly special and worthy of further investigation are the characteristics within the writings of this enormous book, which, astonishingly, supports the story of it being created in just one sitting. A National Geographic documentary included interviews with manuscript experts who argued that certain evidence, in particular, the handwriting analysis and the long-standing credit to Herman Inclusus, aka Herman the Recluse, indicate the manuscript was indeed, somehow, the work of just one scribe. According to the historical legend, which was already academically recorded by the Middle Age, the scribe was a monk who broke his monastic vows and was sentenced to be walled up alive. In order to avoid this harsh penalty, he promised to create, in one night, a book to glorify the monastery forever. This book would include all human knowledge. Near midnight, he became sure that he could not complete this task alone, so he made a special prayer, not addressed to God, but to the fallen angel Lucifer, asking him to help finish the book in exchange for the monk's soul. The devil would accept this deal, completing the rest of the manuscript. The monk would add the devil's picture out of gratitude for his help. Many specialists within the area of writing, forensic analysis, and also numerous replication attempts have indicated that the level of uniformity within the writings lean towards the impossible. Not only does it strongly indicate that the book was created in just one sitting, but is perfectly scribe throughout, a feat considered to be beyond that of human capabilities. The analysis also shown that the writings alone, if written by one person, would take over five years to complete, with the additional illustrations adding another 20. Yet it must be noted, it has been concluded on many occasions that no mere mortal is capable of such uniform writings within this time period. There would have inevitably been some form of evolution within the style. Of course it must be remembered, although there is a highly compelling story attached to the origins of this giant book, its creation still largely remains a mystery. How big would you have to be for it to comfortably rest in one's lab? What sort of person, if of course it was a person, could have written the Codex Gigas, and how did they write it? It is most certainly one of the world's most mysterious books. In 1988, while in Egypt, hunting for ancient relics, Swiss archaeologist, Gregor Spree, would stumble across a once-in-a-lifetime find. After paying a handsome fee of $300 to be allowed to inspect a grave robber's collection, he would be handed a package, wrapped in rags, and apparently with quite a muskiota. Within, he would discover an enormous mummified finger. It measured an amazing 16 inches in length, resulting in high estimates of 16 plus feet, for the original owner of such a monstrous digit. Spree recounted the moment he laid eyes on the finger to a local press newspaper, when he released the photos to the public. Quote, I was allowed to take it in hand and also to take pictures. A bill was put next to it to get an idea of its enormous size. The bent finger was split open and covered with dried mold. It was surprisingly light, maybe a few hundred grams, my heart was in my throat. I don't believe the finger may have belonged to an extinct prehistoric giant ape, but alas, like so many other artifacts of this nature, subsequently vanished, shortly after it gained public attention. Also the aping question died out hundreds of thousands of years ago, and a digit of this ancient animal has never been found, we have only ever found small bone fragments and teeth. Imagine then the odds of finding a fully mummified finger from the animal, within a tomb raider's collections in Egypt. They are probably quite slim. Also leaving the question as to how it ended up mummified in Egypt a tough one to answer. He returned to Egypt in 2009 compelled to learn more about it, but unfortunately, by then, the old man who allowed Spurry to take the pictures had vanished, and with him all traces of the mysterious finger. If there was found to indeed have been a race of giant, highly intelligent humans, that colonized ancient Egypt, it would help tremendously in explaining the construction of the pyramids.