This lecture is entitled, Inigo Jones and Palladianism in English Baroque Architecture, or there was a Baroque in England. Now Inigo Jones, who you see here on the left, this is a portrait of Inigo Jones, was a really important figure in English architecture, in the Baroque period, but also he had a lasting impact on the architecture of England. Now, I said here there was a Baroque in England, because you may wonder what was going on in England at the time. We're in the 17th century, right? So this is the 17th century, and you may associate this period in England with literature. And certainly literature was booming in England in the 17th century, and we really haven't looked at a lot of or really any painting in England, and a lot of the Netherlandish paintings that are famous from this period are actually of the English. So we know that in England Flemish and Dutch paintings were very much admired and patronized. Flemish and Dutch painting preferred, and in fact this portrait of Inigo Jones is created from a copy, from copying a Flemish portrait of the artist. So in terms of painting the Baroque in England really did rely heavily on Flemish and Dutch art to a large extent, but it's in architecture that the English Baroque really had its own voice. And just to get a sense of where we are in terms of English architecture at the time, let's take a look at an example of a building from the late 16th century. All right, so this building is Hardwick Hall. Hardwick Hall and it's from the 1590s. And this is a pretty representative example of the prevailing style of English architecture before the contributions of Inigo Jones and other Baroque architects in England. And you can see it's kind of a combination of medieval and Renaissance styles. I mean we have sort of this vertical emphasis that's a holdover from the medieval period, these towers. And then it's got a few kind of contemporary updates, but there's nothing really obviously classical about this. So let's sort of put it this way. Nothing really classical going on in this building. And if you consider that this was the standard of English Baroque architecture, the contributions of Inigo Jones are all the more striking. So let's take a look at his most famous building now. Okay, so this is generally considered his most famous piece of architecture. And it's known as the Banqueting House. Banqueting House. And it is at Whitehall Palace. It's in London. And it dates 1619 to 22. And keeping in mind the building we just looked at, Hardwick Hall, hopefully this will really jump out at you as a really, really classical-looking building. And I think you can see right away. We've got all of the familiar classical elements. We have pilasters. We have engaged columns. We have strong horizontal entablatures, a pronounced cornice at the top. We even have these sculptural classical garlands up at the top. So right away, immediately identifiable as a very classical building. And this is no accident as Inigo Jones was one of the first English architects who traveled to Italy. So he saw classical art in its home location and was really influenced by the classical architecture he saw there, particularly the work of one Italian Renaissance architect. And that architect is Palladio. And that is where we get the term Palladianism, which I mentioned at the beginning. Palladianism. So he was working very much in the style of Palladio, this architect that he really admired. So let's take a look at this building next to one of Palladio's most famous buildings. Okay, so here on the left again, we have the Banqueting House. And which I should mention, by the way, was part of a palace and it was an important center for royalty. It wasn't just for banquets. It was a reception hall. There were entertainments performed there. So it was an important public space, central to the royal court. So the image on the right here is by Palladio. And it's in the town of Vicenza in Italy. And it's known as the Palazzo Chiaricatti. And you don't need to remember the name of that. But just know that it was a palace in Italy and it dates from the second half of the 16th century. So I think you can see immediately some real similarities between these two buildings. There's this two-story building with a very strong dividing entablature across the center and a strong emphasis on the roof line. In Inigo Joneses, it's this Baleastrad and in Palladio's it's these sculptural features along the roof line. Notice this up here in Inigo Joneses' roof line, very similar to the railing along the entablature in Palladio's. We have alternating pointed and curved elements on top of the windows here in Inigo Jones. Same thing going on in Palladio right here. So clearly very specific things borrowed from Palladio, as well as just this overall sense of balance and harmony that you might associate with Renaissance Italy and architecture of the Italian Renaissance. So Inigo Jones, then, and again, consider this keeping in mind what was the prevailing style before Inigo Jones, he is really providing a new spark, a spark of something new to English architecture, and that spark would really continue with other English Baroque architects, most notably Christopher Wren, Sir Christopher Wren, who's the most famous English Baroque architect and you'll be learning more about him in the next subunit.


Given a specific confidence level and a desired margin of error, we're now going to practice calculating the sample size needed to predict a population proportion. You wish to estimate a proportion within a 0.015 margin of error at a 95% confidence level. With no prior knowledge, what sample size should you gather? So the key here is we're trying to predict a proportion, a population proportion. Since we have no prior knowledge, meaning we didn't do a study and calculate a sample proportion, we have to use the following formula. Our sample size will be our critical value, squared, times 0.25 divided by margin of error squared. Well since I'm dealing with a 95% confidence level, the critical value is actually going to be 1.96. And the margin of error, as I give it to you in the question, is going to be 0.015. Plug these pieces of information into our formula. You'll have 1.96 squared times 0.25 over 0.015 squared. So now you'll go through and use your calculator. Do not round until your final answer. So I got 4268.4. I will round this up. You will always round up when you're calculating sample size. You get 4269.4269. Now let's calculate the sample size needed in the instance where we have information on a sample proportion. So we went out and we did a little bit of a study, or we looked at a previous study and we found the sample proportion, p hat equals 0.225. Well when you know information such as the sample proportion, there's a different formula you can use. You still take the critical value and square it, but you now multiply by p hat and q hat, then you divide by the margin of error squared, or the error bound squared. In this instance, since I have a 95% confidence level, I know that the critical value is 1.96, probably the most common critical value that's often used in statistics. We know that p hat is 0.225, which would mean q hat, which is always 1 minus p hat is going to be 1 minus 0.225. That means 0.775. And the error bound as they gave you in the question is 0.015. Plug this information into the formula. You have 1.96 times 0.225 times 0.775, all divided by 0.015 raised to the second power. Plug all of this into your calculator. And at the end of the day, because of the fact that we had information about the sample proportion, I now only need a sample size of 2,977.24, which you always round up, because 2,977 isn't quite going to get you where you want to be. So I'm going to round up to about 2,978. That is the sample size that we'll need here. It's important that you try to wait until your final answer to do any sort of rounding, otherwise your sample size that you need could be way off. So once again, wait until your final answer to round. And honestly, the more decimal places you keep for your critical value, the more accurate your answer is going to be. Typically, you can do two to three decimal places on the critical value, but you can definitely keep more if you want. Well, that's all I have for you today. Thanks for watching.


My name is Louie, Louie-Opter, I'm a decent software engineer. It doesn't really matter where I am. I don't really know anything about hardware and I think that's an important part of this talk. I'm playing with hardware devices, I'm playing with IoT and I don't really know anything about this. I'm really just a software engineer. So if we're going to slide number three, agenda. So this talk is going to talk about two related projects. One is Monolite, which is an UI for devices like this one, which is basically like a matrix of buttons, like this, to control light bulbs, light bulbs like this guy here, guy, girl, I don't know actually, this bulb. So that's Monolite. It runs interface on this button array. And then LightsD, which is a demand to control the light bulbs. So this demand talks to the light bulbs, exposes a high-level API and I can control the light bulbs this way. So I'm going to first talk about Monolite, so I control the bulbs through this button array. I'm going to give you some details about the project and then I'm going to talk about LightsD, which was actually most of the work, which is a demand to talk to the bulbs. And then we're going to have maybe some time for the discussion. So if you go on slide number four, you have this high-level architecture diagram. So you can see that Monolite talks to both LightsD on the button array, so I control the bulbs. If you go next, you see that part one is going to be of Monolite, part two is going to be of LightsD. Then on slide number five, a title Monolite. So I just talked about what I said. 100 to the 8 buttons. Each button has like 16 levels of brightness. This is how I can make up a new eye by playing with the brightness levels. It's connected over serial. And then next slide. It's controlling this smart bulb, which is made by this brand called Lifix. It's about 1,000 lumens bulb, so it's pretty high brightness. It's like 70 watt light bulb. It has nice colors. You can do like all the colors. It has a nice range of whites from like 2,500 Kelvin to like 9,000 Kelvin. And both light bulbs are connected over Wi-Fi, 2.4 gigahertz. So next slide. Let's have a look at the controlling light. So you have the grid. So you have like this side should be just show like grid. Okay. And then next slide you see that the bulb row is where it's in functions. So the bulb row is dedicated to functions. So for example, you know, you'll see you have like on. I can like off. Other functions I'll show later. So yeah. Next slide that shows you like some of the functions where like they're mapped. Like how it works. You know, I could like add more things to this balance. Like for example, control like, you know, MPD, control other things. And then I have like split the array into like four control pads. Right. So this is like one control pad here. Here. Right. And like there is like four starters and I've like some function, other functions at the top. Right. So if you go to the next side, you see like what each starter is. Okay. Awesome. So can I make, make it like full screen though? Yeah. Let's do for the next talk. Maybe it's very, I don't know how to put it full screen. Okay. Perfect. Okay. So. Okay. Just, just use it here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So here. Okay.  So that's the HSBK, you know, color model, HSB. And then we add the, the temperature. So like, you know, can increment, decrement. So for example, I can show this here. So I turn this guy off again.  I'm going to change the color, which is here. Can do those two things at the same time. Okay. And so on, so on. Can I make it like less saturated? So, right. So you can all see, I could change color. All right. So like, that was kind of the demo. See. Okay. Other things. Like other things. I think this is like, it's like, ooh, like this. Okay. Small functions. What's interesting to see is that I'm going to make a smoother one. That's white. That's blue. I'm going to. So like, what's interesting is that the board shows like the, the state of the bulb in that with low light intensity. Right. That's sort of like a feature of what I did. It's like, it shows really like what the status of the bulb is. Like, you know, predicted or something intact. The real status of the light bulbs is shown on the board. So for example, if I make it like, you know, transition, we can see that the starters are moving by themselves. Right. And that's our program. It's just like showing the real status of the light bulbs. Right. One more thing I wanted to show is like, like the interface is like defined, which I think is like, pretty interesting.  Oh, there is no internet. Okay. If you wait a minute, I can put it on. Yeah. So actually, yeah, I love to do this. If you can like do this, it will be awesome. So like, because, so like the way all this is implemented is in Python. So like the, the program that controls the greatest in Python and the API I made internally are pretty high level. And the way you like set your UI element on the grid is I think pretty interesting. It's pretty high level. And that's about it for like monolight on the implementation details, which you'll find on the slides. So this is Python. I've been using Python 3.5 and 3.6 with top annotations, which are awesome.  I really encourage you to look into this if you do Python a lot. And then I use async.io. So everything is in synchronous. Awesome. Thank you so much.  So there we go. You'll even know like the repository architecture by the end. That's pretty awesome. So it's going to be UI. Layers. So it's going to be like what I'm using. No. No. OK. Yeah. Space. So it's how the UI is defined, right? So I can do, OK, I have like a root layer on line 49. And then I can insert some balance. The balance I define actions in line. So see, for example, like the alerts, you know, which is the effect I did while I was moving slowly. There is the alert, which is the flashing I did. So see, I just like define some balance, say where they are, define the actions. It's very like declarative. That's pretty cool. OK. Coming back to the presentation itself. OK. One or two actual, maybe one more thing that's interesting on the with monolite, something I'd like to do next is that I'm just going to show it on the sides. So imagine we have two functions, like timer and alert. So we could say, like, press the timer button. And then, you know, you have this at shop, which is like a timer picker, right? It's like the much time you want on your timer. And then press the target once you have selected the time. Press an effect like alert, which is the one I played and flashed the bulb with. And then I would like run automatically, right? So one thing I do with my laptops a lot is I use them as a kitchen timer. I have, like, bulbs over the house. Like, the kitchen timer thing is pretty nice.  OK. I'm going to skip this. I talk about it already. I use, oh, I'm just going to talk about, like, art and pop-ups. I'm using his library to talk to the Belongrid. It's GPR with v3. What else do I have to do? OK. I'm going to skip over, like, lightsd. I'm going to skip this demo. But basically, like, this is how I will, like, show you how to do the same thing, but come in line. So I'll show you how to talk to lightsd, the demo that controls the light bulbs, which runs directly on the Wi-Fi access point here. Like, it has very high-level API in Python. Like, you know, I will show you an example in Python again. You can just, like, you know, do a decompression.  You get the set of the bulbs.  Very simple. No discovery delay. Very high level. OK. That's the current project, actually. Like, you know, what I should do so far on the grid is be, like, a small amount of the work. Most of the work was in lightsd, the other project. It's in C. Once everywhere, details here. The original ideas behind lightsd were to remove, like, discovery delays, glitches that comes with what the LFX manufacturer delivered to you with the light bulbs. Basically, like, the bulbs are nice. But the software stack is sort of, like, not so good. It got a lot better in, like, three years. But, like, in the beginning, it was really, really bad, and that's why I started the project. So original ideas, like, you know, reduce, like, issues, improve the user experience. Also, I had, like, security in mind, right? I don't want to have light bulbs on my, like, you know, home network. I want light bulbs to be on a separate, dedicated, closed network. I don't want them to have access to internet. I don't want them to access anything, really. Right? And lightsd by acting as a proxy allows you to do this, right? You can isolate the bulb on the network and use that as a gateway to the bulbs, right? So no cloud, no internet required, no nothing. Like, NGPW3. And, like, something I had in mind with this project is also, like, to make it accessible to people, right? This is a personal project. I'm not doing this for, like, profit. I'm not doing this as part of my company. I'm not doing this entirely personal. And I want it to make it accessible. So, like, have good code, show good practices.  So, like, you know, that's an opportunity to do this, right? Good docs. On the implementation details for lightsd, it uses, so, Lightfix has two APIs. One is HTTP. It goes over the cloud. And one is, like, on the local network. It's UDP. It's much faster. It's so much harder to use. So I put all the communications to the bulbs. You know, I use sampling to keep track of the bulbs, right? Everything is, like, the bulbs themselves, you can, like, ask their state, set their state. They're like, you know, the protocol is completely stateless, right? I need to, like, do sampling to, like, know what the state of the bulbs are, right? So I just, like, pull them all the time, right? And that's how I get to have low latency. You can talk to my high-level API over TCP, unique sockets. Basically, like, my API offers you, like, the same kind of functionality you have with your call API, except there is no cloud, right? It's all on your local network. On this project, I have, like, some fun parts and some, like, you know, more, like, headbanging parts. One part I like to talk about, especially, is, like, what I call, like, stack position, right? Right Z is actually, like, sort of in the middle in the stack, right? On the left, it's what I call, like, lower-level stuff, which are, like, the bulb. It's hardware. It's embedded. On the right, you have, like, monolite, which is a user interface. It's in Python. It's high-level. It's a GUI. It's, like, you know, there is not much, you know, system-level programming stuff. The light is in the middle. It's in C. I find it's pretty interesting because it's up and up. It opens up to, like, a wide range of topics, right? By working, and, like, I didn't know it would go this way when I would start working on lights, do you? But, like, it really opened up to a lot of things. I can, like, either go really deep down and start doing reverse engineering, start writing, like, a few more bits and, like, on the light bulbs and, like, do, like, more hardware-related things, or I can go very high-level or, like, writing GUIs in, like, very high-level code, right? And I find this pretty interesting. Some lights on the light-fix bulbs I wanted to share with you. If you, like, if you want to get them, get them on sale. They're pretty expensive. I think that you'll have the best brightness and colors on the market as of today and the bit, like, you know, there are competitors in this. You have to keep in mind their standby power consumption, which is still pretty high.   They have a cool NAPI, and I think they're the only vendor to do this. And it's pretty cool. Like, I mean, like, I hope they keep it. It's pretty nice. They're not super mega-hopin' about it, but they're not really close about it either, right? One thing, though, is only the first generation of bulbs doesn't crash for me, right? Everything they made after this, and they're in generation three, basically crashes, right? They have, like, I could go into the details of this, but there's some Wi-Fi conditions which always happened to me, which always happened for me, the bulb crashes, unfortunately. So really, what I wanted to say about this is, like, binary blobs suck, really. I love to be able to get access to the firmware source code and, like, be able to, like, have something more up under so I could, like, debug and eventually fix what's going on, like, fix debug, add the opportunity to take action on this, right? Or replace their stuff with my own stuff like this, right? So really, again, like, you know, free software convention, binary blobs suck, still the case. Really? Thank you.  So basically, like, in LightZ, maintain two versions of the light bulbs, one which is the reality and one which is what I want. And because it's, like, all very janky, you know, LightZ will, like, always try to make what's supposed to be the reality, right? So, like, I have two views and I apply one on top of each other. And then, with this, be able to do a real cool, like, effects API, add effects plugin. They're, like, really reliable, right? And stuff like this. Other things I like to do, but, you know, I will never do in enough time. But, however, like, if other people want to, like, you know, firmware, like, something I love to do is, like, be able to, like, debug the firmware. And I have access to the firmware. Just make it easier for me to, like, reverse engineer the API. Stuff like this. That would be awesome. Yeah, that's about it. We have, like, a minute left for discussion. And questions. So, like, please go ahead. Don't be shy. Otherwise, I have, like, a slide. Okay, one question here. Yeah, so have you been in contact with the supplier of the light? Yes, I've been in contact with the supplier. Can you repeat the question? Yes. So have I been in contact with the supplier about my project? Yes. Actually, yes. And they've recognized that, for example, the crashes and they say it only affects a small amount of people. But it certainly affects me. They've been pretty nice. They don't really care about the project because I'm doing something which is, like, completely different from, like, their product, right? Their product is cloud. It works in, like, mobile. I'm doing a demand and see that you have to install somewhere. Right? I'm making it as easy as possible, but at some point you're going to have to run an app get or you're going to have to, like, use appendability and, like, you can put it somewhere in a Raspberry Pi, whatever you want. But you'll have to open a Hutu and type some comments. Right? So they're not something that I've been interested in, right, I believe. And, like, I totally understand this. They're not interested to open the firmware? No, they're not interested. I also ask these questions. They're clearly not interested in opening their firmware. Any other questions? No? Okay. Well, thank you so much.


The laws of quantum physics, which govern how molecules interact with one another, have helped us develop technologies that we now take for granted, like lasers, MRI machines and semiconductors. But we are now at the dawn of a new era of quantum computing. This is a very big leap forward for humanity. It's a transformative technology. Today's quantum computers are still quite crude, but some believe they have already achieved quantum supremacy. The ability to crack problems that conventional computers could never hope to solve. The biggest supercomputer on the planet Earth today might take maybe 15 billion years to crack the kind of keys we use to have secret communication. A quantum computer can crack that in under a millisecond. But this new era of computing could make the digital security systems that underpin much of the global economy obsolete, posing a massive worldwide cybersecurity threat. You have billions of laptops and servers. You have billions of IoT devices. Every little camera that you see, that needs a software upgrade if it's going to remain secure. So how can we reap the benefits of quantum tech while staying ahead of the risks it poses? We ask Jack Hadari, the CEO of Sandbox AQ and author of a best-selling guide to quantum computing. The word quantum was coined by Max Planck in 1900 to identify a series of interactions that we see from experimental data that could not be explained by the old physics that we had.  They interact not in a deterministic way, but in a probabilistic way. Quantum explains the fundamental nature of our universe that we don't have a fixed sense. If this happens, then this exact thing will happen after that. In fact, no, we now understand that our world is probabilistic. So how does this apply to computers? Conventional computers use the set-cause-and-effect logic of classical or deterministic physics, while quantum computers rely on the rules of probability, which means they can explore the gray areas of uncertain outcomes. But to do that, these computers need to be built very differently. Most of us know that today's computers run on bits. Bits is a short word for binary digits. It's a flip, on or off. But a quantum computer works in a very different way. In a quantum computer, the core logical unit is a qubit, a quantum bit. Just like a bit, a qubit can take on the value of zero and one, but can also take on what we call the superposition of zero and one. What exactly does that mean? Well, from a math point of view, all it means is that we might have a 50-50 scenario where we put the qubit in a superposition of zero and one, such that when we take a measurement of that qubit, it has a 50% chance of being a one and a 50% chance of being a zero. That is one kind of superposition. But you can also have a superposition that's 75 and 25, or 80 and 20. And because we can have a number of qubits and put them all into superposition and then, in fact, entangle some qubits together, we can have a very, very powerful computational engine. If superposition means that qubits can hold the value of one and zero at the same time and in different proportions, then what is entanglement exactly? Picture a jumble of electrical cords. The basic idea is that while two cords are individual objects, two entangled cords are in a state that connects them to one another. Inside a quantum computer, individual qubits can also be entangled. But because qubits obey the laws of quantum mechanics, entanglement doesn't just connect them. It brings the qubits into sync with one another. As a result, if you were to measure the superposition of one entangled qubit, you could instantly know the superposition of other qubits it is entangled with, opening up a whole new world of computational possibilities. This is the magic of quantum entanglement. One qubit added to a quantum computer doubles the representational power of the computer. This is a very, very powerful thing that we don't have in the old world. Ultimately, we'll all be able to access these kinds of quantum computers on the cloud. That's what's very different about this computing revolution. In previous times, over the last 30 years, you had to buy the new kinds of machines. But the quantum revolution is mainly happening in the cloud. And all the major cloud providers now, they're all starting to provide easy access to quantum computers. Most quantum computers of today are quite primitive, quite early. But what that means is that as they scale over time, you will get access. Students are getting access right now for free, and corporations are getting access for pretty inexpensive prices. Through quantum computers, a concept once confined to theoretical physics is making strides towards becoming part of our everyday lives. We stand on the threshold of unimaginable computational power. What will this power be used for? If you want to develop new drugs faster, you need to think about quantum. Right now, it takes 10 to 15 years to get a drug from molecule to medicine. Quantum equations in simulation, that is, simulating the molecule, can accelerate drug discovery very significantly. Each time we run the simulation, we can change the molecule just a little bit. We then synthesize it in a real lab. We test it. And only then do we go into human trials. This will not only speed up, but will improve the nature of how we develop drugs. In a world of quantum, I think we're going to have massive innovation in clean tech. One way of doing that is to improve the chemistry of the kind of batteries that we need for electric vehicles. Elements like cobalt, for example, are hard to get at in many parts of the world. Instead of tinkering in the lab day after day with different possible chemistries, we can accelerate this process. We can simulate these different ions in a battery in a quantum simulation. Then we can prototype those in the real world and test those on actual cars and test them in large buildings. Today, almost no home anywhere in the world and almost no office building or factory has a big battery. But by having quantum technology, we can have widespread storage in the electric grid. While quantum computing has huge potential upsides, we also need to prepare for the challenges it will pose. One priority is something called post-quantum cryptography, the development of an entirely new cybersecurity system strong enough for the quantum age. One of the most important existential threats to our cybersecurity, to our data, is the quantum computer itself. Quantum computers will break the encryption that we use today. That encryption, known as RSA, has been with us for a long time. When you send a credit card over the internet and buy something, that is using RSA technology. The biggest supercomputer on the planet Earth today might take maybe 15 billion years to crack one of these keys. But a quantum computer, not one of today but one that is scaled, will crack that RSA key in under a millisecond. Quantum computers are so powerful in this area. We will eventually have to upgrade the software on 20 billion devices around the world. So this is a major undertaking. It's going to take years to move to the new standards. One of the reasons why this transition to post-RSA security is so urgent is an attack known as STORNOW Decryplator, which is SNDL. It means that adversaries, hackers, be it state-sponsored or independent, are hacking into other networks, corporate networks, government networks, personal networks, and they're grabbing information that is encrypted with today's technology, RSA. And they're storing that information for the day that they have more advanced computing to read that. And even if it's years from now, that information is very valuable. The good news is that 40 of the leading governments got together and they said, this crisis is coming. We need to have a standard that we can use for confidential information that will take us beyond the RSA standard. And so we're going to get these standards, these new protocols that allow us to communicate and protect against the quantum attack. And that is why all 8 billion people on this planet eventually will upgrade to this new technology.


Welcome to ongoing Town Meeting Day election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of a series of forums we are bringing you in advance of Town Meeting Day on March 7th, 2023. Town Meeting TV hosts forums with all candidates and covers all ballot items you will see on your ballot. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with issues that shape your local community. If you are tuning in live, we welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom Channels 17 and 217, as well as online at youtube.com. My name is Elaine Haney and this forum is for candidates for the South Burlington School Board, a single three-year seat. Our candidates tonight are Lisa Hickey and incumbent Alex McHenry. We're going to begin by having an opening statement from each of you. You each have one minute. If you would please tell us why you are running and what would be different for South Burlington if you are elected and how do you rate public participation in school activities and politics. Let's start with you, Lisa. Hi, my name is Lisa Hickey. I moved to South Burlington about two years ago. I grew up in Danville, Vermont in the Kingdom and I left the state for many years and came back and we moved to South Burlington particularly for the schools. I've been really impressed with what I've seen so far for my three children who were in the public schools. I am running for school board because what prompted it is I was on the hiring committee for the new superintendent and after the interim appointment was made the process sort of disintegrated and departed from the expectations that had been set about what would happen next. So I started paying more attention to school board meetings and I saw a need for greater transparency, a better attention to creating procedures and following through with them and improved communication. Sorry. No, that's fine. I feel like public participation in the school board meetings could be improved. I think in terms of public participation in school activities, I feel like I see a lot of parent involvement in the schools that my children are in and I do feel like if I was elected, I would hope that the school board would be able to do what I expressed I felt that they needed and improve their communication with the community. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Alex. I'm Alex McHenry. I'm running for another three-year term on the school board. I'm running for school board because I enjoy doing the work that needs doing. I enjoy contributing to our community and I feel like I have some good skills for it. I've enjoyed negotiating with our bargaining groups such as the teachers union and the administrators union and I feel like I've gotten some good progress on that in terms of getting quality people in our schools as well as getting something that the voters want to are willing to afford. So there are many other things that I like doing and I like monitoring policies, making sure that we keep our budgets under control and that's why I'm running for another three-year term. I just generally like doing the work. Thank you both for your opening statements. So I'm going to hop around with some different questions. First question is about capital improvements and bonding. So what role does school infrastructure play in a healthy community and what is next for the city of South Burlington in school expenditures and improvements? Alex, let's start with you. Sure. I believe that having a good structure for our learning environments is important. We need to have buildings that have roofs that don't leak. We need to have buildings that have the capacity for the number of kids that we have and we need to have the physical plant in good working order. This year we have a bond on the ballot for 15 million including eight mobile classrooms that are going to be used at the Marcot and the Orchard schools. If the bond passes, we will use that to lessen the overcrowding situation at those schools and there is also a roof to replace at the Tuttle Middle School, some bathrooms that are in very poor condition as well as some kitchen issues. So those are certainly going to help the environment at the schools and keep South Burlington schools going well. Okay, thank you. Lisa? Yeah, so my understanding about the role that school infrastructure plays in a healthy community is similar to Alex's. I think it's vital to have buildings that are conducive to conducting educational activities inside of them where the roofs are not leaking and the bathrooms are in good shape. And I do think that I'm in favor of the ZEMs. I think they're a great solution for the long term because they can be moved around to different buildings as the need changes in different areas. I do think that South Burlington is probably going to need to do either a massive investment in capital, in repairs of the infrastructure, in maintenance above and beyond what we're doing this year or potentially going to have to build something new as we continue to grow. So I think those are real things. I know that Rick Marcotte is being tested now for PCBs and we can expect those results sometime this spring. That may shift this entire conversation. But that's what I think I see on the horizon. Thank you. Teacher, well-being and retention. What do you understand as the current level of morale among South Burlington teachers and is South Burlington doing enough to retain good teaching and support staff? Lisa, why don't you take that one first? Sure. I think teachers across the country and South Burlington is no exception are exhausted. I think COVID has been exhausting for everybody, especially for teachers who have done an amazing job of supporting kids remotely in combination of remote and in-person, sometimes shifting things on a dime about what expectations were depending on how many people were in had COVID at a certain time, what policies, how policies shifted about opening and closing over time. So I think in general, I would imagine that just like teachers around the country, most South Burlington school teachers are exhausted. I think that the new negotiations that Alex has been engaged in with a pay increase probably has, you know, doing something to alleviate feelings of exhaustion and stress. And I think everybody is struggling to retain good teaching and support staff because the profession probably is just, it's having a hard time because of the last few years have really worn everybody out. But I do think they're doing the best that they can. I also want to say that I think Alex's insistence on improving or lessening the pay disparity between support staff and teachers in South Burlington has probably helped morale with the support staff. I think there's potentially room for improvement with bus drivers. I know other districts are not struggling with bus drivers the way we are and I understand from some reading that that potentially is due to salaries. But I think in general that whatever South Burlington needs to do to increase and retain good staff is probably a national issue. Thank you. Alex. Yeah, and okay, thank you, Lisa, for echoing that. This is more of a forum than a debate. So I will say that yeah, it is important that we have good teachers and I think as far as our retention has gone it's been excellent and it has gotten to the point where we have a lot of our teachers are very experienced. They have advanced degrees. They have years of experience there at the top of their pay scale and it's gotten to the point where South Burlington is paying a lot for their teachers more than other districts as well. So what we've done recently in the negotiations is we've had some, we've been able to convince the union for the teachers that the support staff union needs a little help and that's where we're losing employees. We're losing bus drivers, we're losing paraeducators and so forth and we're in the middle of negotiating for that contract. I'm not going to talk about it right now because it's not settled but I'm really hoping that it will make a difference whether I'm on the board in two weeks or not. I don't know but at least I feel like I've gotten things started with that and I'm hoping to keep it going. Thank you. What is your current understanding of the work around the issue of racial justice in schools and how would you support leadership efforts and initiatives to meet the challenges of creating an equitable and thriving environment for all students? Lisa? Sure. I am relatively new to this district and I see what my children are being taught and the sort of attitudes of inclusiveness and equity-based teaching that they are receiving and I feel like those are really important steps. I think that whatever equity work is going on needs to be ongoing and should be strengthened. I think the fact that we have an equity policy and have hired an equity director who I know is getting into classrooms and getting into schools on a regular basis is really important and I think that whatever she needs in terms of support to create a leadership structure within schools should definitely be supported and I think that there's challenges. This is a majority white state and I think equity work is really, really important. It's important to create a safe space for all children to feel like they can learn in but I do see that South Burlington is taking this issue seriously and moving forward with it and I think working with Dee Dee Lofton, the director of equity to make sure that she is receiving the supports that she needs is probably the important role of the school board in this area. Okay, thank you. Alex? Yeah, I'm also very supportive of Dee Dee Lofton in her equity work and she's been with us for most of the entire school year so far and things are taking shape well and I think it's very important to have a good part of the curriculum focused towards equity and inclusion. When I was in high school I read the book To Kill a Mockingbird which certainly highlights some very unjust situations in our history and I think in general that everybody does well when everybody is respected and treated well and it's very important that we all understand that other people experience the world differently and are treated by other people differently sometimes and that's not something good but I think it's something that we can learn about and use towards teaching people to be more empathetic and work better with one another. All right, thank you so much. Let's stay on that theme for a little bit and talk about language access. What important initiatives are underway and what more needs to be done to meet the needs of students and families who are proficient in languages other than English? Alex, why don't you pick that one back up? Sure, yeah. English as a second language is not a very controversial subject in South Burlington simply because we don't have too many English language learners but it is something that's being addressed and I think successfully. I've heard no complaints and certainly helping people integrate with our school system is crucial and I believe that we're doing the job and it's a short answer, but go ahead. Okay, thank you. Lisa, your thoughts? Sure, this is an area I don't know much about yet but I do and I know that we do have a certain population of new Americans in South Burlington, smaller than in other school districts. The one thing that I think we could improve on is helping to find non-local translators potentially for school meetings, IEP meetings, 504 meetings with families, the communities here are small, everybody knows each other and now that Zoom with the advent of COVID, Zoom has sort of just become a new tool that we could potentially use to find translators in other communities around the country to sort of strengthen those families' access to school in a way that feels like it's retaining their privacy. But that's really the only sort of area of this that I've been exposed to as something that could use improvement. It's something I need to learn more about. Great, okay, thank you. Thank you. So, a new question and you each have two minutes to answer these questions so take your time, okay? Schools and school funding. So, what is your take on the efforts in Montpelier to address school funding and how that relates to South Burlington? Lisa? I'm not really familiar with what is happening in Montpelier to address school funding. I know that there is a bill up for removing funding of private education with public funds. But my understanding in Vermont is that that is really focused in communities where they don't have their own schools and doesn't necessarily affect South Burlington. So, I could be misinformed about that but that's my sense of that bill. I don't know what's happening in Montpelier. I know that at the last forum that we had one of the other board members, Laura Williams, talked about the need to lobby the state to return state funding for infrastructure needs of schools or building maintenance and construction and I think that makes a lot of sense. I haven't been here long enough to know the history of why that was removed and when it was, but I think that's worth investigating. I also know there's a bill that I've been trying to get feedback about introducing that idea that we have mandatory full day public pre-K on a statewide level which I think is a great idea. I think it really would increase, it's an equity issue. Also, in addition to being an equity issue, relieve a lot of childcare struggles in this community, I know finding daycare is really, really hard and if you took an entire year of children and put them in public school, that would be really great. The question is, I don't know how that bill is proposed to be funded and in South Burlington there is definitely also an infrastructure issue. They don't have to be housed in school buildings, I'm aware, but I don't know what that would look like and I think that is the funding questions and the time required to put that in place are questions I have, but I don't know what is happening in Montpelier besides those two things. Thank you. Alex. Thank you. The school funding in Vermont is confusing. People, it can be bewildering and when your taxes increase, it can be very frustrating and it's hard especially when you don't understand it but the very basic one-sentence summary of it is the more you spend on your budget, the more your property taxes are going to be and it's up to the school boards of Vermont to find out what the right balance is between what the needs are for the kids and what the needs are and what the taxpayers are willing to pay so that's what we've been doing in South Burlington to try to make sure that we get the right budget that is willing that it's going to support education but also is going to be affordable. There's not a whole lot going on in the legislature lately. There is a little bit of COVID relief fund left over for this current year or excuse me, this upcoming year and that has helped make the impact on our tax, upcoming property tax bills a little less. However, there is certainly a very big need statewide for infrastructure in not just in South Burlington but as you can see, Burlington High School is being demolished completely and they've decided to go ahead and pay for it all on their own. Good for them if they want to but there are many, many other buildings in Vermont that are in much worse condition than South Burlington's if you can actually believe that. Overcrowding is not the problem but leaky roofs, falling apart walls, mold, some very serious issues that are a problem and I really hope the state legislature will bring back school construction aid for soon. We miss it. Alright, thank you. What educational reforms are most important to you and to your constituents over the next five to ten years? Alex? Educational reforms. That's a good question because this is something that is certainly something that educators work on. This is something that our curriculum director does. We just turned our curriculum director from interim to full-time. That's Alisa and congratulations to her. That is something that I'm not so certain that a school board wants to get too deep into the weeds. I hear on national news some other states will have legislatures and school boards saying we don't want this book being taught. We don't want that book being taught and I think it's important that school boards let educators, let the experts do their job. They're the ones that have the degrees in education that know the kids, that see them every day and they understand what their needs are. I work at a computer. I work on data all day. I don't read education weekly and so I do read some of the trade journals actually because I'm an incumbent but I think this is a good thing for administration to help decide on and if the school board raises some objection to it that might be okay but I think this is more of a delegation of authority role for the school board. Thank you. Lisa. Yeah, so I think that that is partly true and that it is not necessarily the school board's job to dictate educational practices as long as they're in line with our ends policy but I do think that there are a few areas that would be helpful to see some changes and one is I have been really impressed by the social-emotional component of my children's schools here, the access to counselors, the incorporation of those things into their learning, into their curriculum but I also think that post-COVID we're talking a lot about returning staffing to pre-COVID levels but I think it might be we're having a crisis for children in mental health especially in middle and high school and I think it might be worth re-examining what is the role of the school with social-emotional learning do we want to revamp the way that we do things do we want to assess what the mental health needs of our students are and think about a way to frame the work that the schools are doing in a forward-looking manner instead of just getting back to where we were because I think there are different issues that have arisen and are now more prevalent than perhaps pre-COVID and the other thing that I do feel pretty strongly about is I would like to see the district adopt an evidence-based literacy curriculum that's grounded in evidence-based teaching practices there's a big push across this country to do that I think some states have enacted legislation that that's required for any curriculum that's adopted and I feel like literacy is an equity issue it is the foundation of all learning in this culture that you first learn how to read and if we are not teaching reading in the correct way in a, you know, evidence-based way that is proven to work for most students then I think we're failing to provide that foundation for a lot of kids and that's something that I'd like to see South Burlington adopt reforms in Great, thank you Okay Let's talk about the budget Do you support this year's school budget of $62.5 million and an increase of 7% from last year's budget and can you explain your understanding of the budget and the impact on schools and voters Lisa, why don't we start with you Sure, so I do support this year's budget I see that there is a 7% increase I think a lot of that a huge amount of it, about $800,000 is in property and infrastructure purchases or debt servicing for the ZEMS and I think that we need to do those things I think there's no question that years of deferred maintenance have had an effect and it's time to make sure that our schools are having some of the repairs that they need and also that we can you know, address overcrowding I know there's a lot of people a lot of conversation in some areas of this community about how the schools are not overcrowded and they used to have more children in them but I would urge people to think about the way that we teach what that means for what the infrastructure requirements for a certain number of children are when I was a kid there was no free kindergarten now there's kindergarten so there may have been the same number of students in the building at a earlier time but maybe some of those rooms weren't required for kindergarten maybe they weren't required for literacy computer literacy or other kinds of things that we now offer as a standard part of curriculum so I think it's important that we do pay attention to the infrastructure needs of the community even if I know some people feel like overcrowding is not an issue so that's one thing about the budget and I think that that's part of the reason a big part of the reason that there has been an increase and my understanding of the budget and its impact on schools and voters is that it affects voters when the budget goes up as Alex said, your property but we just, I understand that South Burlington last year did the first tax reassessment that they'd done in a very long time and so that hopefully will be somewhat in line with the budgetary needs as moving forward Great, thank you Alex. Thank you I also support the budget it's something that I worked on and I think it's a sound budget but it's not everything that I would have not that I would have liked to have but there were a lot of things that were left off the table Other districts our size do not have a an assistant superintendent South Burlington does not have an assistant superintendent so our superintendent may have a little bit more overtime going on we are also letting go of about 20 positions because the pandemic recovery funds have gone away so we are hoping that we can reduce our staff through attrition not through layoffs so this budget is it's quite a bit leaner than we are used to in recent years and also we have looked pretty good compared to other school districts our tax rate is the second or third lowest in Chittenden County our spending per pupil is similar and we also have let me try and say this our administrative personnel is one of the leanest in Chittenden County so I'm not quite sure why that is because our administrative office gets good work done and I'm very pleased with them the superintendent of course the business office curriculum and a lot of operating things so those are the reasons I support the budget I think it's lean, I've looked at it it's lean but it gets done what we need to be done at the very most and while we're talking about the budget I'm also going to say that I support the bond as well. There's two valid items that we're voting on in two weeks and I'm going to vote for both of those for the schools. Thank you. We have time for one more question and then we'll do a closing statement from each of you. So what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the school system and how would you use your seat on the school board to affect those issues and what's your vision for South Burlington's educational future? Lisa? Sure. I think the biggest challenges facing the school district are infrastructure needs equity work and the communication of the needs of the schools to the community at large and I think one of the things I would like to bring to the board is an emphasis on creating greater transparency and greater communication with the community that I think is more visible. I don't think anybody is not making things visible now but I feel like outreach may be something that the board could work on in communicating the needs of the schools. So that's one thing that I think is important and in terms of a vision for the schools I think South Burlington schools do a really wonderful job of educating our children. I would like to see that continue I think reassessing sort of some of the things like the social emotional and learning component post COVID is important to make sure that students are really able to be present and learn in the ways that they need to and I see an opportunity for the community to make strides in its approaches to inclusivity and equity and I think that the schools potentially have a role to play in helping to drive that. Okay, thank you. So I have to pick one issue that is a challenge but certainly well when I ran for school board originally I mentioned that I wanted to continue our tradition of excellence and in our high school we call it building a proud tradition and I want to keep on building on that. I know the issues are going to change here and there certainly the infrastructure issue is something that is going to have to be we're doing what's I call a short-term fixed fix maybe for the next five or ten years with the bond if that passes we'll have given ourselves some breathing room but in another ten or fifteen years we're going to have more to deal with in infrastructure and I think just keep on working with quality people make it such that we can hire them and give them the room to do their jobs and I think that's what we've been doing lately and certainly you know we haven't talked much about pandemic recovery but certainly our kids have suffered a lot through the pandemic and it's heartbreaking and we need to keep doing that we need to keep on trying to get to where we were back in 2019 and on an upward trajectory with that. Well thank you both very much we have time for each of you to give a thirty second closing statement so Alex why don't we start with you? Sure thank you I really like working on the school board I enjoy serving you I'm very thankful for the support that I've gotten in the past and I work really hard at it I like getting into the weeds and doing all the work that needs doing I enjoy working with the people I enjoy listening to you taxpayers and you voters and your parents bringing your concerns to me and it really does help me you know change focus towards what you're asking for and what you want I work hard for you and I'd like to keep on doing it so thank you very much Lisa? So I'm running for school board because I want to secure a solid educational future for all the students in south Burlington I want to bring families and educators together and I think that there is room for a more I think that creating better policies and procedures in the school board will help retain institutional knowledge it's an organization that changes a lot over time out of necessity and I hope to be able to contribute to making it stronger so thank you Thank you both So that is it for our forum tonight on the seats for south Burlington school board Thank you very much to our candidates Alex McHenry and Lisa Hickey for tuning into town meeting television's ongoing coverage of local candidates local budgets and ballot items you can find this and more forums on www.ch17.tv don't forget to vote on or before March 7 ballots are not mailed automatically so you should reach out to your town clerk to request a ballot or to make sure that you vote at the polls on March 7 Thank you for watching and sharing town meeting TV If you are not already please subscribe to our town meeting TV YouTube channel and have a good evening


When you really want to get into doing something creative, you sort of step outside the academic definition of your profession, whatever it is, and you find sources that are... that can invade and make it more interesting. I love Duchamp, and that statement he made, well, I'm non-retinal. He didn't mean you couldn't see it. He just meant that he was rejecting a lot of the kind of tactile, painterly, you know, traditional qualities to associate with that profession. And so, over the years, we've done things that obviously abandoned what the formalist architect or the stylist architect would do. I think of all works of art I really love, that I really admire. And it's really kind of not so much what it is, but what it makes you think about.  It says, finally, all else failing, they try to bury you with honors. So, there you have it, that phase here. They're trying to bury you one more time.


Putin can be overthrown by Yeltsin scenario, taking into account that the Russian presidential election is scheduled for March, the Russian elite who do not like war and have a lot to lose from it will remove Putin from his office one way or another by the end of the year. However, this does not mean that he will be physically removed. This was said by Ukrainian political scientist and political strategist Abbas Galiamov. He noted that the election is a very important factor in Russian politics, therefore, if there are elite groups that are preparing to overthrow Putin, they will, of course, take the election into account. Galiamov also mentioned that Putin managed to scare the Russian elite. Still, the Russian elite are cowards. Putin has scared them a lot. So it's very difficult for me to imagine that they are preparing for a real assassination. Obviously, Putin himself is confused. He also understands that he is at a dead end and there is no way out. The elite can take advantage of this and convince him to hand over power to his successor. After nominating an objectively adequate successor, it will be more profitable for him to leave so that the successor would preserve the system. Maintain the law enforcement system. This would be Yeltsin's scenario.