Rwy'n c nhw i'r gwineithio cymhwytaethion y ryeiddiadau hwnnw i ddwynd i'r mewn cymorth, i ddweithio bod y cyfnod oherwydd sefydliadau i'r ddechrau eu gwirioneddau, yn strategiaeth mwy o'r unrhyw gyffredigau, chi'n hynny i'r wneud eu cymddiadau a ddych yn cyflwgr cwnio i g spreadidau, ei wneud. Rwy'n молosod yn ddwygen yn â'w pwyllydd ym mwy o ddwyndiaeth. Gweithio'r yswedd iawn yn ymdw i atoffgoi i ddweithio llawer o iddynau, of interest and that is to allow committee members to declare any interests they have that are relevant to the work of the committee. You have been provided with background information in a note from the clerk on this issue. Let me start off by firstly declaring that I jointly own a registered agricultural holding of under two hectares from which I derive absolutely no income. I will now go round the table and turn starting with the community and then deputy convener asking each of you in turn to declare a relevant interest. I have an interest in a farming partnership with an ancillary residential property letting business. I also have an interest in a rodden line fishery on the river Spay. Full details are disclosed in the register. I am a member of the Scottish Rural Parliament and I am also a member of the board of directors of North Highland College. I am vice convener of the friends of the North Highland line. I am a co-op party member and unison member as well, which might have some bearing at some point, but I do not think that they have a huge bearing on the work of the committee. Mike, I have no irritable interest to declare. I have nothing. I have to declare on a voluntary basis that I am a chartered accountant and a member of ICAS. Richard? I wish to register that I visited Taiwan last year, paid for by the Taiwanese Government. I am the only president of the Orberson bowling club and I am the member of the showman's guild. Yesterday I had to register a badge that I have received from Scottish Racing, which entitles me to enter any race course in Scotland. That badge is worth between 1,000 and £1,500. Lucky you, chairman. I have no formal decoration. However, I did voluntary register and participation in internet business at owning domains. I have a strong background in the connectivity area. Emma? I have no financial register of interest. It might be something that comes up in the future, but I am a partner in a bed and breakfast, which is part of the tourism industry in Dumfries and Galloway. John? I have an extensive list on the register, but none are relevant to this committee, I would say. Peter? I am a partner in the farming business, Peter Chapman and Co. I am also a director of wind turbine business, Red Boker renewables. I am a member of NFUS. I am a director of the A&M group, Alvarino North and Marts Group, and everything is declared in the register of interests. Thank you very much, colleagues. Of course, you will need to make declarations at the appropriate point in future meetings when things come up. We now move to agenda item 2, which is the choice of convener. The procedure has been explained in the paper 2 that has been provided to members. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Conservative Union is part of the eligible for nomination as convener of the committee, and I invite Peter Chapman to nominate a member for the convenership. I have great delight in nominating Edward Mountain for this position. I know that Edward will be an excellent chair of this committee, and I have no problem in putting his name forward. Are there any other nominations for the position? Are we agreed then that Edward Mountain is our convener? We are agreed. Congratulations, Edward. I will now swap desks with Edward so that he can convene the rest of our meeting. First of all, I would like to thank you all for making me convener of this committee, and I look forward to working with you all closely over the term of this Parliament. The committee's next task, I understand, is to choose a deputy convener. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener. I believe that John Mason has proposed that Gail Ross should be our deputy convener. Is that correct? Do we all agree that Gail Ross should be our deputy convener? I agree. Good. I would like to congratulate Gail on her appointment, and again, I look forward to working with you closely over the course of this committee. The fourth item on this agenda is the consideration of a negative instrument, and that is the common agricultural policy direct payment, Scotland amendment number two, regulation 2016. Paper three that we have had as a committee summarised the purposes of that instrument, which is to extend the deadline in Scotland in which farmers can apply to the common agricultural policy subsidies 2016. I should also advise members that the instrument was considered yesterday by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. In its report, that committee draws to the attention of the Parliament that the instrument had come into force on the 18th of May, the day after it was laid in the Scottish Parliament, and that this breached the required 28-day period between laying of an instrument and it coming into force. However, the DPLR committee found the failure to comply with the requirement to be acceptable in the circumstances. The reason for doing so are outlined by the Minister for Parliamentary Business in his letter to the Presiding Officer, which you have seen dated 17 May, which is at Alex A to the paper three that he received. The committee will now consider any issues that it wishes to raise in reporting to the Parliament this instrument. Members should note that there have been no motions to a null have been received in relation to the instrument. Do members have any comments in relation to the instrument? Just simply, in relation to the 28 days, I think that it's always slightly uncomfortable when a piece of secondary legislation has to be tabled and come into operation almost at once. However, in the circumstances that the Government found itself in, it was necessary in those circumstances. Just as the DPLR has indicated that it accepts, there were good reasons for it. I think that we might similarly find that that is the case also. We don't want to see that statutory instrument run on and on. It needs to come to a conclusion and we know where we are. I think that we are discussing the instrument and we can come on to maybe how it works later, but thank you for that comment. Are there any other comments? Does the committee agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument? The final agenda item 5 is in consideration of the approach to be taken to the development of the committee's work programme. Members will see from the papers provided that it's proposed that we invite Fergus Ewing, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity, to give evidence on the issues that are relevant to his portfolio and the committee's remit on 29 June. We have had an informal briefing from Spice in advance of that meeting. I'd also like to add that it appears that responsibility for certain major transport projects such as the fourth replacement crossing will be the responsibility of Keith Brown, the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work, as opposed to Mr Ewing. Given the recent announcement that the completion of the fourth replacement crossing is to be delayed, the committee may therefore wish to consider inviting Keith Brown to give evidence on 29 June. At this stage, it is also proposed that we hold a business planning meeting towards the end of the summer recess to allow detailed discussion of our approach of priorities and work programme. To help inform this approach, I would like to hold a brief discussion with members on 29 June after we have given evidence taken from the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity to obtain their individual views on areas of work that they would like to be pursued by the committee. Can I invite comments on those proposals? I don't think that there's any point in us wasting Mr Brown's time. We heard a statement from him recently. I think that we were assured that there would be updates, but apart from that, I think that the plan of approach is appropriate. Can I maybe disagree with that? I think that it's one of the biggest infrastructure projects going on. If we're going to have responsibility for transport, I think that we need to start the way that we mean to go on and at least get an update ahead of the summer recess. There will be two months when no questions can be asked on this at all, so I think that it would be a good idea to have them there. I'm relatively neutral on the subject of the bridge, which will still be delivered a month ahead of the plan schedule. However, if members wish to hear from Keith Brown, more fundamentally, I'd like to support the approach in developing a work programme that you're proposing. I think that that makes sense. I would urge that the clerks communicate with us all individually about the date that we might have for our day. Speaking personally, the diary is filling up. I've got two away days in the last week before we come back, and I suspect that that's probably the week that we're looking at. I won't be alone looking around the table in that regard, so I think that it's important, even though we don't know what we're going to do. However, I might like to suggest that we consider, not necessarily decide today, linking it to a visit that's relevant to the business of the committee. I'm not—this is not meant to be an exhaustive list or even a list of suggestions—a visit to a farm, a visit to a rural business. There are quite a range of options. I have no fixed views on the matter, but I think that if we're going to spend a day sitting in a darkened room, it might be a lightened to some extent if we actually touch the real world as well, if we can. Can I just say that I absolutely share that opinion? I share the opinion that we need to get it in the dairy sooner rather than later, and I also share the opinion that we need to make sure that it's an equitable travel distance for all of us to make sure that it's relatively easy, but to see an item that would be of interest to us all would be very useful, I think. I agree with Rhoda. I would like to see that Keith Brown comes to the committee. I think that it's an important issue. It's the biggest transport project that we face in Scotland, and there are lots of questions that we need to ask them. I've got lots of questions that I'd like to ask them, certainly. Just from a personal point of view, I agree with Stuart. I booked my holidays for the last 10 days of August, so I won't be around for that. Okay. Let's see how you mean to go on. I think that that was excellent. You were telling us in advance, nothing else. I think that it's important that we have all of our ideas, probably, as well as what the ministers might say. Presumably, we can ask the ministers anything we want, but rather than us starting to raise ideas today, we'll do that in a fortnight's time, if we have. Is that what you want us to do? My idea was to spend some time with the clerks, with each of you, to find out what issues you would like to raise, so I'm fully aware of them, and then to make that known to the rest of the committee as well. That's fine. I'd like to hear from Keith Brown not just about the fourth crossing, but about lots of other transport, because I'm particularly interested in that. We can ask him about all his responsibilities. Yes, because we've got rail links, and although I live in the city, I do like going out of the city, and I've got a lot of issues that I can start raising with them. I think that it would be wider than just the bridge itself. If we are going away during recess, I, as somebody who lives in the central bell, am more than happy to spend two or three days away if we want to go to a more remote place, because I think that we should get out of the central bell, and this is an opportunity if it's during recess. Thank you, convener. I agree with much that's been said. I think that it is important that we get Keith Brown in front of this committee, because the rail link, for instance, from Aberdeen to Edinburgh is an important issue that we need some answers on, as well as the bridge, and, obviously, Fergus Ewing needs to come and speak to us, and we need an update on where we are and the CAP payments, for instance. I also think that it's a good idea to get out and about, so I reflect that as well. Much of what's been said, I think, is the correct way forward, and I agree with what you're saying that we need to get our own thoughts into the clack of the committee, and then we can move forward. Sorry. I thought you were going down the line. I didn't know when I was caught my eye. If they want to speak, just catch my eye. I certainly agree with John Mason, and I think that Keith has come along to talk about the bridge, but I also have a major infrastructure situation in the MA M74 in my constituency, so I've got quite a number of questions that I'd like to ask in regards to that also. Perfect. That's within his responsibility, so that would be fine. As I'm thinking about declarations of interest, I am now Fergus Ewing's parliamentary liaison officer, so I suppose that it's relevant that I declare that. I just remember that. In my area, we have major connectivity that needs to be looked at, roads, rail, broadband. It's everything that a rural area needs help with, so I would urge us to explore that. Thank you. Sorry if I can go to Jamie. I think I'll echo what Emma said. It may be helpful if we were able to define what areas the committee will cover specifically. Connectivity is more than just broadband, roads, rail, ferries. It could encompass a whole wide range of subject matters, and for that reason that may encroach in a wide range of ministers, or cabinet secretary. I think that it may be mapping up those areas of responsibility that the committee will have with the relevant ministers. That would be a nice exercise to have. Around the room, each of us will have interests in one or more areas of that, so I think that I would find that very helpful if we were able to define what the objectives of the committee would be over the course of the session. Okay. John. Just for the buoyance of doubt, convener, of course I'm not suggesting that the largest infrastructure project isn't the subject of detailed scrutiny by this committee. What I was suggesting was that I doubt we're going to learn terribly much in the fortnight between having had a full ministerial statement with the opportunity at everyone, but I think it's very important that we do hear from Mr Brown. Like John, I'm very keen that we have a focus on rail and the opportunities that associate with particularly the limitations, as Peter alludes to with some of the infrastructure there, but also our ferry infrastructure as well. Yeah, I mean I broadly agree with everything that's been said so far. We've all got different interests and that's what makes this committee so interesting. I think that we definitely do need to define the role and the remit of what we're actually responsible for, because not only will we cross over ministers, there's also some crossover with other committees as well, so I think that we also need to discuss how we're going to interact with those other committees and how we're all going to work together in that. Do you want any other comments? Can I just say on that that I actually agree totally that the remit of this committee could be so big that we could be completely lost in it, and I think it'd be a very good opportunity for the clerks to get together and draw out a map of all our responsibilities. I think then that at a later date the committee should actually consider where we're going to react with other committees and look to see if there's some joint working that we can do with other committees to make sure that the specific areas that are relevant to us but also relevant to them are covered. So that would be something that I think we could legitimately ask the clerks to do for us and to bring it up. I very much take the point that you've all made about getting out, about early planning and also about making sure that we take note of everyone's interests and those very much will be on the work agenda and we will be back in touch with the clerking team and myself to try and make that work for everyone. I think that there is broad agreement that calling both the Cabinet Secretary and both Cabinet Secretaries in relation to the infrastructure project of the Forthbridge and any other questions that want to be raised and also focusing on farm payments and any other business that wants to be raised would be appropriate at the next committee meeting. So I believe that we're agreed on that unless I hear any—oh well, are we agreed on that? If the—given that it's in two weeks' time, what your process—what you'd like the process to be for submission of questions in advance to the ministers to give them time to adequately research and respond or—so for example, you may have a very specific issue about a piece patch of road or a specific rail line or a specific bridge. I think that each of us may have individual points to asking on the day what the process should be for submitting those. Sorry, can I just slightly help you with that? My understanding is that—and it's right that members of the committee can ask any question that they specifically want—but the clerks will help with some questions on topical issues that they think may assist us in putting questions to the minister, but it shouldn't be limited to that. It should be—the members should ask the questions that they think are important and relevant. Sorry. No, I was just on the other side here. Just rather, obviously, if it's a relatively local issue, it may be helpful to a member who wishes to raise it if the minister is aware that it's going to be raised. But that, I think, is a matter between the member and the minister rather than the minister for the committee. We can—if you want an answer—on a local issue. The one thing that I would say is that we're going to be quite short of time on that committee day. So I think that the bigger issues are the ones that we should be concentrating on, but you will determine what the big issues are. Have you mentioned, convener, given that we've now concluded that we wish two cabinet secretaries here, and I assume that if it's possible for them to be here, it would be two separate sessions, will we be considering an earlier start then? We're still to actually work out timings that they're available, so once we've got timings that they're available, what we'll do is we will come back to you and let you know the timings, and we want to have a pre-meeting prior to them coming in, so we'll come back to you as soon as we know. I think that concludes the business of today's committee meeting, so I'd like to close the first meeting and look forward to seeing you at the next meeting on 29 May. Thank you very much everyone for being here.


Listen, if you clicked on this video right here, that means you're looking for an alternative to just making regular baked chicken, right? So today I'm gonna show you just how easy it is to make a spicy Mexican chicken thigh. Let's get it. All right, so look, the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna inspect my chicken, right? Obviously we doing thighs. Look at this. They leave this piece on here. I'm not getting ready to sear none of this. Like, you know, on the stove or nothing like that. So I take that and I just cut this off, right? So I'm just gonna clean up some of this chicken if it needs to be cleaned up. Okay, so now that I got it all trimmed up to my liking, let me just check this last little piece right here. Oh, yes, fine. All right, so look, this is all that I cut off of there.  Now you guys trimming how you want to, you know what I mean? Because we are gonna be doing this on the grill. So how it looks now, we wanted to have the best presentation, you know, at the end, right? So let me get this cleaned up and now we move on to the next step. All right, so now we getting ready to make that marinade, right?  So we gonna use about a third cup of dip. Look, this is that infused olive oil.  You know, this is a garlic infused. Let's go ahead and get this up to one third cup. That's good right there.  Now everybody not gonna have one of these zip quickers, which is the actual apparatus that I use to hold my bags open. You know what I mean? If you don't have that, putting it in a bowl is great. But this right here, I just love this. This keeps my footprint smaller in my refrigerator whenever I'm marinating or even when I have leftovers, right?   So the zipper quicker is like the way to go for me. Now we're getting ready. Let me just bring this over here like this. Right, so let me cut these. We gonna put two lines. We gonna juice two of these lines in there, right? Okay, so we say Mexican, you know what I mean? And when I say that, you know what I mean? You know, you gotta have lime, stuff like that. You don't have to have, but that's like signature and like the dishes that they make. And it gives great flavor, right? And along with that, you gotta have some cilantro, right? So one thing about this cilantro here, I don't have to like do it, you know, too fine. We just gonna like chop it up. We just wanna get some of the flavor. I know some of y'all say, hey, you don't like cilantro, but it's the combination of everything that's in here. You know what I mean? That makes it great, right? So we wanna have about a third cup. I'm gonna need a little bit more. So looking at this right here, we can go a little further. It doesn't have to be fine, you know what I mean? But to me, this is what you're looking for. So if I tell you rough chop, that's it right there. All right, so now we add our dry ingredients in here. You know what I mean? We'll just go ahead and put them in here. Now listen, you gotta go through my website to get the full ingredient list, right? I just been doing this for a while and I know what one teaspoon looks like. I wanna ask you guys a question, right? When it comes to oregano, when in a grocery store, they have it a Mexican oregano and then they got a traditional oregano. Somebody please tell me what the difference is. All right, now we add a little garlic powder. You gotta put a little bit of that in there. Like I said, I've been making it for a minute and you guys can adjust the measurements that I give you anyway. You know what I mean? Garlic and onion, come on y'all. Now we're gonna use this chipotle, right? These peppers. So I only need like a couple teaspoons of this right here. Look at the size of these chipotle peppers, right? So I'm gonna put this here. I'm gonna probably take three of them out. That's really about all that you need, you know what I mean? Is that right there? The rest of this, I'm gonna put this back. I'm actually get some Tupperware and save it and use it for future cooks. And I'm gonna get ready to mix all of this together even inside this bag right here, right?  So it depends on, I guess your ingredients, right? But what I wanna do is I'm gonna add just a little bit more of this extra virgin olive oil. And don't forget, this is infused olive oil. You guys don't have that. You can use your regular, you know what I mean? Vegetable works too. All right, so once we got everything mixed up, it's looking right. Only thing left to do is just to add, you know, add our chicken. Now, I know some people are gonna ask, can they use boneless skinless? Yes, you can, you know what I mean? But I wanted some skin on this right here. So this is the way we're gonna do that. And then I wanted to get outside on the grill, not that I couldn't do it with the boneless skinless. I don't always do it that way. So I just wanna show everybody just about to what we have in here. Here go one that I missed. But guess what folks, it's going in anyway. All right, so we'll get that in there. This one's done. All right, move this. Now you guys get to see it up close. Now, oh yeah. All right, folks. Now I don't let the air out now. How to massage this. You've got the marinade to move around. Remember it's gonna be a little bit on the pasty side, right? So you gotta work with it for a minute. But you see that right there? Y'all tell me that's not gonna be great. Now I'm gonna go ahead and marinate this for about four hours. You know what I mean? Overnight would be the best. It could take four hours up to overnight. Now with that being said, I'm gonna show you one last thing. See how it's flat? If you have multiple things in here, whether they were leftovers, you could just stack them like that. And if you're putting them in the freezer, same thing. Imagine how many of you can get on the shelf. See you in four hours. Okay, folks. So listen, I got everything set, put the lid on, set my vents. And I want you guys to tell me down in the comment section below. If you guys want me to teach you how to set up a Weber kettle for success, let me know. You know what, I want you to type these words in there. Let's see, let's come up with a word. Just type in outdoor certify. If I see that, I get enough people to say that. I'm gonna show you guys how to set up any of these type of grills. Tell you how it worked, the whole shebang. Now, got that open. You know what I mean? I'm letting all my heat out. I got it, but I got it vented and set up for success, right? So I'm gonna grab my set, my tongs. Right, and we'll grab them. And listen, I'm gonna put these down, skin side down. I'm gonna start off over here. Right, look at this right here. Cause I want to get a little color, get it to cook right on top of the fire. Now those of you guys already know what do we call that when we cook right over the heat? That's right, direct. This process cooking right over the, what we're doing is we're searing it a little bit, right? Putting some color on it. And no, I got a spin grate, so it allows me to just take it. If I feel like it's doing too much, I can just take it and move it over here to indirect, right? But once I got a little color, that's why you guys keep seeing me take a look at it. That's what I do. I don't want to have them too burnt. You know, so I'll take a look. You know what I mean? So this one over here, I'll just put over here. That's good for now. That one, we put this over here. And this one, that's good, right? And then those is not getting enough. We just move them over, right? This is the same process that we do when we put it in the cast iron skillet and we brown what? We brown aside. I'm gonna let this fire over here settle down. I got everything on the indirect side, right? So I got it vented so that they keep me at a temperature of between 375 and 400 degrees. Excuse me, you know, a lot of smoke. And plus where I got it positioned, it's not getting a whole lot of air but running this way and running right into my eyes. So we got it vented. We close this up just a little bit. I just been doing this so long I know when I get about what I need to get to. So we're gonna let this build up a little temp. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna flip it over and then we're gonna continue it. You know, continue to cook it. Now what I'm gonna say is we want to reach a temperature of about 160 degrees. 162 then we take them off that'll keep them nice and juicy. Don't forget it's gonna rise about five degrees afterward. So 165, 175, I mean 167 and that'll be great. So I let them go just for about 15, 20 minutes. Nice heat. If I bring this back, which I should have showed you already. Notice the coals on the other side and the thermometer obviously is right here, right underneath here, right? So it's still reading the temperature that's over this side. And I got my chicken over here. That's how you do it. I've seen people put this over the heat. I mean, you do it how you want to do it. But if you want to do it where it makes sense and it look right, then let's do it that way. So now I'm gonna take these and just turn these over here. I'll just start them over here on the direct side. Oh man, look at that. This is a whole lot of flavor right here, folks. Look at that. Okay, folks, look, I don't want to fake nothing for you. I want you guys to pay attention to this. Look, if you come around here, I'll spin it over this way just a little bit so you can see. See, listen, this is the way I have it vented. I'm gonna always have these results. And if I just wanted to stay there, I close it up just a little bit more. All right, so we take this off and tell me right there that don't look gorgeous. You know what I'm saying? But look, I'm gonna go ahead and hit it. Let's go ahead and just see what we come up with. That's a little bit on the high side for myself, but it's nice. I mean, this is telling you right now that these is right. Look, 160 and it's holding.  You know what I mean? I just hit the little bone. Let me see. Get down into the, oh yeah, this is, all of this is ready. 67. So listen, if you want to insure and make sure your chicken come out juicy, and don't forget that's that dark meat. When I bite that, that's, it's gonna just do its thing. Hey, so let me hurry up and get that off. Let's cut it up. Let's eat it. And don't forget, we put that Mexican flavor on there. Ooh, wee. Okay, folks, so look, after looking at this beauty right here, listen, and then, you know what? We just getting away from just always having it, just always smoke. There's certain flavors we can put on there that are just enhancing along with the smoke, right? And this right here is refreshing. I'm gonna give you guys one idea. Listen, you could have just did this with boneless, skinless, and then put this over some, hey, you know what? This would have made a cold, spicy Mexican chicken salad. All right, so with that being said, look, I'm finna get in here and just, you know, you see it try to rip on its own. But you see that right there? You see that little pinkish color right there? That's from the smoke from the grill. But I ain't gotta tell y'all, y'all already know. Hey, so listen, we wanna taste this flavor. Check it out. I'm not finna overtalk. Cheers, y'all. Man, this is good. Hey, check it out. Before I wipe my mouth, I snuck another little bite in there. And look, I got people behind the camera saying they ready to eat. You know what I mean? Listen, nice, refreshing. Does it immediately say something as far as being on the Spanish side? Like a Mexican, no. It just tastes like some great tasting or marinated chicken. And the spiciness of this right here is just, it's okay. Now, if you guys wanna like step it up a little bit, we can add like a teaspoon of cayenne pepper or something like that. But this right here is just right, especially for my palate. Now, listen, I'm not finna overtalk it. I want you guys to let me know down in the comment section below. Don't forget, if you guys wanna learn how to set up the grill and wanna know how it works and how to have success, and we gonna use the word outdoor certified, when I see that, that's gonna go ahead and make me do it. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take your time to say, hey, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button. And I don't mean this loosely. I want you guys to tell everybody out here. Check this out. There's a channel out here to simplify these recipes and taking a mystery out of cooking. Guess what, folks? Happy spring and let's get it. I'm out. Peace.


Hetman Uneraser a Hetman software tool to help you and delete files. Hetman Uneraser will successfully recover files removed from the recycle bin are permanently deleted. The tool can easily recover files accidentally overwritten after coping operations, software faults, hardware failures and virus attacks. Click on a disk containing the deleted files to begin. You can choose a logical drive letter or a physical device to look up the files. Quick scan helps recover data using information collected from the file system that or NTFS. The tool can recover the original file names and paths and restore the original file attributes such as creation and last modification time. In deep scan mode, the tool analyzes the entire disk surface, locating known types of files by their characteristic signatures. Select desired analysis type and click next. After completing the analysis, the tool will display the original folder structure. Deleted files and folders will be mocked with a red X and will be available in the same folder they were originally located. You can select and preview files before recovering them. In order to save the files, select everything you are about to recover and click recover. The tool can save files to the hard drive burned to a CD-DVD media, create an ISO image or upload onto a remote server via the FTP protocol. Make sure you are not using the same disk containing the deleted files to save them. If you do, you'll be risking the permanently overwriting the content of the deleted files. The tool hides the complex and highly sophisticated recovery process by introducing an intuitive step-by-step wizard. When recovering from unreliable, heavily worn and physically damaged media, minimizing the number of red operations is essential. Hetman Uneraser can create a virtual drive image containing a bit precise snapshot of the device using a single long red operation. You can use the virtual image to safely recover information. You can search for deleted files or preview their content using the built-in Hax editor. Of course, a fully visual live preview mode is also available. Download Hetman Uneraser from HetmanRecovery.com and recover deleted files right away.


by Dominic Huro. Dominic is giving the talk. Hello everyone. So this talk is again about commitments but in a somewhat different setting. So we will look at the number of different properties. So let me first tell you about the scope of which talk. So what kind what properties and variants of commitments do we intend to investigate here? So the first question is well commitments have two properties. One is called hiding and the other binding. Hiding means you can't tell what I'm committing to and binding is I can't change my mind. And both are important if you lose one it's pointless. But in this talk we will be focusing on the binding property. Not because hiding is unimportant but because hiding seems well understood. So there isn't so much to talk at least if we ask ourselves what the good definitions are. But everything that I show you their binding works out fine. So don't worry about that but we will only think about binding. Then the next question is with the commitment do we want statistically or computationally binding commitments? So do we want the binding property to hold against unlimited adversaries or under computational assumptions? In the talk just before we wanted statistically binding commitments while here we will look at computationally binding commitments. Why is this interesting? Well there can be two reasons why you would want computationally binding commitments. Either because you might need weaker I mean if you want if you are willing to make both directions hiding and binding computational then you may need weaker assumptions possibly than if you want to or simpler protocols then if you want to make one of them statistical. Or the other thing is you might want to make the protocol computationally binding because you want to make it statistically hiding and you don't get both at the same time.  Because 10 years later someone might want to break your commitment it's pointless to break the binding property but they may still want to extract the data. So this is why computationally binding statistically hiding probably better than the other way around in many applications. Then you can ask interactive versus non-interactive. Well we study non-interactive ones not because it's a necessity but because it's a simpler so for now any commitment I will talk about will be implicitly assumed to be non-interactive. And then the crucial point here is that we will look at security against quantum attacks. So we want that our protocols are not just secure if the adversary has a classical computer but we want to be sure secure in the future when there may be quantum computers available and we want that our protocol will not be broken by the presence of a quantum computer. However we do consider only classical protocols here again because it's a bit simpler so the protocol we talk about will be classical but we assume that the adversary is quantum. So this is kind of the background on which the rest of the talk will take place and now let's have a look since we want to invest we want computational binding as I said let's have a look at the definition. So how is computationally binding usually defined in a purely classical setting as a warm-up? So you have a commitment the sender sends a commitment C in the commit phase and then later when he reveals he will send some message M and some opening information U. This was called the randomness in the talk before doesn't really make a big difference whether we talk about randomness or some arbitrary information here and usually when we talk about computational binding the binding property is formulated as follows we require that it is hard to find for an adversary for a polynomial time adversary a single commitment C that he sends here and two different messages M and M prime and opening informations for M and M prime respectively so that he opens the commitment both as M and as M prime successfully so if the adversary finds such values here he has obviously broken the commitment because he can open into two values and we call it computationally binding if the adversary cannot do that and intuitively this means that the adversary cannot change his mind if he cannot find two different values M to which he could open the commitment it seems pretty obvious that he will be stuck with one value M from the very start and that's why this definition is actually a good definition and in classical cryptography it has turned out to be a good definition it's pretty commonly used and this is why I call it classical style computationally binding so I can say how to find for quantum adversaries which gives me a definition in the quantum realm but I will call it then classical style computationally binding against quantum adversaries because as we'll show you this definition is not a good idea in the quantum setting so what's bad about it in the quantum setting well this we can show it's far from trivial and I will not tell you how but we can show that there is a collision-resistant hash function h so a hash function where we cannot computationally find two inputs with the same output which is even securing one's quantum adversaries so even quantum adversaries cannot find a collision for that function the construction is relative to an oracle would be nicer if it weren't but it's enough to show that there are problems so there is such a collision-resistant hash function and then we can build a very simple commitment protocol from it we pick some random value u and then to commit to a message m we send the hash of m concatenated u and that is easy to see that it's classical style binding because if you could find two openings you would have a collision for the hash function so it's classical style binding and we're even against quantum adversaries and we think that would be fine however in this particular setting for this weird hash function it is possible possible to construct an adversary that achieves the following the adversary first sends some commitment c some fake value that he makes up in a complex way using a quantum algorithm then we tell him a random message and say please open as this particular message and then the adversary says oh yeah I have a u so that hash of m u is c and this we don't want I mean this means he commits to something and then later he changes in his mind what should be inside now we can be very surprised about this because don't we say that he can find only one m that does this so how can he do it for a random one it will probably be not the one well actually the classical style binding definition guarantees that he cannot find two m's and valid opening information at the same time but this adversary may have some quantum state inside uh so he creates a c together with a quantum state and then for any m he can find the corresponding u but this will ruin his quantum state and he cannot do it twice so he can't pick any m but he cannot pick two of them and the existence of such an adversary even though the scheme is classical style binding shows us that classical style binding is pretty useless in the quantum setting so the question is what do we do instead we seem to need new definitions and this is what my talk will be mainly about so what definition could we use for computationally binding commitments in the quantum setting because it's not sufficient to just replace adversary by quantum adversary in existing definitions so we have seen the classical definition of computationally binding is not useful if we want to do post quantum cryptography we also have seen by this example that collision resistance in a quantum setting seems to be not as good as as we would have expected so i'm not saying collision resistance is useless so for example if we make a signature scheme hashing the message before signing it seems to be still a reasonable thing but it seems to be a weaker property than expected doesn't have this property that if i have a hash i cannot change my mind about what is the input to the hash function so collision resistance might also need an update so perhaps we should expect something stronger from hash functions and since there is supposed to be some nist post quantum competition upcoming um perhaps we should also wonder whether collision resistance is too weak a property that we should require from um the hash functions there and because of that i propose two new definitions first i will propose one which is called collapse binding commitments i will mention later why they have this funny name um and that's a strengthening of the computational binding property in the quantum setting and very similarly i will define collapsing hash functions and those are a strengthening of collision resistant hash functions that seems to be more more to capture the what hash functions should do in the quantum setting before i come to that let me say a little word about existing definitions um if i would tell you all the approaches that have been in the literature so far on uh dealing with the question why we do find them in the um quantum setting uh i would not do anything else in this talk so i just listed alphabetically ordered uh the names of all the authors of the papers that i would have cited here uh but all the definitions i can't go in detail have at least one of the following problems uh either they need some kind of trap door in in their construction somewhere in there or they even need to be universally composable commitments once you have them they're fine but it comes as a price at the price of having more complex protocols having more complex more stronger definitions needing a common reference string etc many of the definitions do not support parallel composition so committing to two values in parallel we may not have a guarantee that those two values are well that it is a the same as committing on the pair of those values not all definitions have that problem but some um then it seems to be common to also most of them not the uc style ones um that proves that involve rewinding are very problematic so if you want to use those definitions for example in the construction of a zero knowledge protocol then you run into trouble because once you rewind today behave you don't get any guarantees rewinding in the quantum case is very difficult and also many of them do not imply the knowledge of the message in a certain sense so although you can show that you cannot change your mind about what message to do there is no well often for in classically with commitments we have this fact that in certain sense you know what the commitment is because by rewinding you i could get out of your mind what the messages you're committed to so they usually capture in some way that the message i'm committing to is already there in the beginning when i commit to it and this property is also lacking with many of the existing definitions so all these problems i would like to solve and preferably simultaneously so without further ado let me tell you the uh definition and then i will discuss why this is a good definition so um i define this by a certain game that a quantum adversary plays so the definition is only makes sense with quantum adversaries but it implies classical definitions also so if we satisfy this we also have that it's secure in classical crypto so what the adversary does is the adversary outputs some commitment given by this arrow c and this commitment is a classical value so that's so far and surprising he just commits to a message by outputting a classical value and additionally he outputs an open a message and a corresponding opening information but the crucial point is he doesn't just output one message m and one opening u he puts these messages on quantum registers so these two wires could be in a superposition of many different pairs of message and opening so he could for example if he manages uh output like a message zero with a corresponding opening and a message one with a corresponding opening in superposition which does not directly contradict the classical binding property because it doesn't mean that he could do both at the same time so that's the i mean he it doesn't mean that he could put them on two wires as classical values he can only put them possibly as a position so that's the game he plays he outputs a classical commitment and in super a superposition between different possible values that he would open it to and he promises and we trust him on that that whatever is on this wire is a valid opening we don't know what it is it may be many openings at the same time but it's certainly valid openings and then we give this message back to the adversary that's one game and now we make a little variation of that game the adversary does the same thing but before we give the state back to the adversary we measure what the message is so classically this doesn't make any sense i mean whether we give it to him or whether we give it to him after looking at it doesn't make a difference but quantumly there's a big difference namely if there's a superposition of many messages here and i measure it this will change the message so this game and this game are not the same unless the adversary has only one message here if there's only one possible message then measuring would certainly not uh open it and the goal of the adversary is to tell whether he's in this game and or this game and recall a commitment to collapse binding if the adversary cannot guess whether he's in this game or in this game so why is this so why what does this have to do with binding let's see so the intuition is roughly that here's the picture just for remembering that the adversary cannot produce several openings openings to different messages i mean in superposition why well if he would produce several openings in superposition then he would notice that we are measuring which one he did and if there are several openings and we measure which then they are afterwards not several anymore and when he gets the state back he just looks whether there are several openings and that's that means in a sense that there can be only for every commitment there can be only one message m on this wire that's the intuition and it's kind of true but not really because technically speaking he can very easily produce superpositions here he could for example just perform all his operate like commit to a random message but doing all his operations quantumly in superposition and just measuring what the resulting commitment is and then he will be in a superposition of many possible messages that give that commitment at least if the commitment is statistically hiding but the point is it still kind of holds because he can't tell that there are many many messages on it so this thing holds but only in a certain kind in the sense that perhaps there is a superposition of many messages but not one that the adversary would actually notice in having that means if we try to make formal where this definition likes we can only say it is weaker than saying there are no possible two openings yeah so the perfect binding definition says there are no two openings it is clearly weaker because if there are no two openings then certainly he cannot tell the difference because there can be only one message here and he will notice if we are not noticing measure and it is stronger than just requiring that it's hard to find two openings because well if he finds two openings he can just put them here in superposition and like I checked whether these two values are still there so it's somewhere in between which shows already the definition at least makes some sense it is between two definitions that make at least classically sense so that's a good sign but that's not enough to endear this definition to us but fortunately this definition has a lot of nice properties so well this I kind of already implied it is between perfect binding and classical style binding so that's good probably um what's more important is that the problem we had with classical style binding that the adversary can change his mind after committing is not there anymore so this definition we can prove avoids the I commit to something and later I open it to ever to whatever I want so fortunately that problem is solved which already makes it a definition well it seems to be a reasonable definition then also it composes in parallel that's nice it's not so easy to achieve with commitment definitions um what's even nicer is it is rewinding friendly what do I mean by that well I mean I took an existing proof of zero knowledge arguments of knowledge uh no of zero knowledge proofs of knowledge replaced all this perfectly binding commitments that were in that construction by uh class uh by collapse binding months and the proof goes through almost unmodified so I'm not saying that rewinding proofs are simple in the quantum case but they don't seem to get harder by using these commitments and that's uh very good news because you can then just replace one by uh you can just do this plug and play um I had a perfectly binding commitment now I replace it by weaker one my proofs still go through etc so that's good but all of this doesn't really help us much if there might be no such schemes could it be that collapse binding commitments are just impossible well they can't be impossible because we kind of even bind construct perfectly binding once and they would be collapsed binding but of course we would like to have collapsed binding commitments that are for example at the same time statistically hiding and that's not something we could do if we just go for perfectly binding and use this error and it turns out um yes we can bind collapse we can construct construct collapse binding commitments from something like from collapsing hash functions that's good we will see in a moment what they actually are but that's a good start and actually the constructions are very simple we I didn't need to make up new constructions actually the the most simple natural constructions that you would want to use with collision resistant hash functions they also work then with collapsing hash functions and then give us collapse binding commitments uh yes so there are so the one called construction was the one I had uh uh on this picture that's not guaranteed to be statistically hiding but slightly more complex ones uh Halivi um Mikali commitments uh they go through and they are statistically hiding okay so what are collapsing hash functions collapsing hash functions are a strengthening of collision resistance in the quantum setting and the way we define them is actually very similar to collapse binding commitments actually I never said why I call them collapse binding uh it's because when we do this measurement it's kind of just committing or in this case hashing is already kind of collapsing the state so it doesn't get further collapsed by measuring that is why we call it that way so the definition of collapsing hash functions is very similar we say the adversary outputs a hash it's supposed to output a hash value h like this classically and pre-images of that hash in superposition and intuitively we want that he cannot find two pre-images but again we have seen that not being able to find two pre-images is not sufficient instead we do the same game he can put a superposition of pre-images here and she should not be able to tell whether we measure this pre-image in this case we measure which one it is or we leave it in superposition and then we define it's yeah it's collapsing if the adversary cannot tell whether we measure the pre-image as he suggests or not and we get the following effects about collapsing hash functions we can make simple commitment schemes once we have a collapsing hash function so they are statistically hiding we use the existing simple constructions so this gives some indication that collapse collapsing hash function is kind of a drop in replacement for collision resistant hash functions when we go to the quantum setting and collision resistance is not enough I mean it's a weak I mean having one case where it works is a weak indication but it's something now we have just shifted the question because we may still ask do collapsing hash functions actually exist and the answer is well at least in the random oracle model they do exist so the random oracle itself is a hash function and it turns out it is collapsing so all this thing is possible and that gives us well depending on how much you like the random oracle it either says either solves the problem or you can see it at least as some indication that real world hash functions that are pretty random might have that property so if it wouldn't hold for the random oracle we certainly wouldn't want to make us an assumption that existing hash functions like char three or something are collapsing so that's a kind of a minimal check I have further work now which also can explicitly construct collapsing hashes based on let us assumption but that's not part of this work and not fully written up yet so because of this because they are these kind of drop in replacement and they are property that at least the random oracle has my suggestion is that collapsing should actually be a property that we expect from hash function so if we are asking like shall we let's find a new hash function that is post quantum secure a post yeah post quantum secure then we should put on the list of required properties also the collapsing property so for example for the up plant nist post quantum crypto competition would be cool if this would be in the list of properties that a hash function should satisfy um yeah and let me conclude with um some open problems so one interesting question is what are the minimal assumptions for building collapse binding commitments can we do it with one way functions I have no indication pro contra so far um I mean let us assumptions are pretty strong one but perhaps we can weaken this perhaps by making it non-jective so that's from my view the most interesting one also implications between the different definitions we have some of the definitions that exist I implied but for some it's not clear so I have some results now but um there's still open questions then a good question is our chart two and chart three and other existing hash functions collapsing so let's assuming the round the compression function for each round is collapsing do Merkel-Dumgaard or sponge construction give us collapsing hash functions uh well Merkel-Dumgaard does I uh sponge I don't know yet and then more protocols where we actually use these commitments to show what they can do and where they fail and that's it thank you be time for one quick does your does your definition handle non-uniform attackers yes you can use both variant works the same so it always uses the all reductions and all proofs are kind of black boxish so if the attacker has like non-uniform quantum advice is still your suggestion is still could remain secure because the reason I think the first attack that you showed yeah so the guy kind of given a random thing it can open into that challenge yes so if he has like two copies of the current state even if it's quantum he can then open into zero and one both well the thing is that it depends which commitment I mean the definitions you can certainly state that way very easily the question is the existing result existence result because if he had I mean even classically if you make a commitment scheme and you have an auxiliary input that may depend on the commitment scheme then you can always just give the interaction so non-interactive commitment cannot perfectly binding yeah but but if you but if you have for example an auxiliary input that cannot depend on some random choices done either by in some public parameter or something then non-uniform is no problem so basically non-uniformity here has the same problems and non-problems as in the classical setting and which ones that are we could discuss on each specific case but probably not right now take it offline okay let's thanks speaker again


I think the book has a funny way of talking to me. Every time I read it, I find something new. Some story that seemed to be previously hidden away, as if the pages are just rooms whose inhabitants walk freely between them. When I opened the book, I'd already seen a hint of the story within, although I hadn't quite worked that out yet. A couple of days ago, I'd seen an article, read the headline, and then scrolled on something about a Scottish festival in the Highlands, an old archaic festival only held by one village that celebrates something to do with the full moon. Like I said, I didn't pay much attention, although I wish I had now because after reading this story, I tried to find it again and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find the article. I don't believe it's gone completely. I just think it must have sunk back into the muck. Maybe you'll know what I'm talking about. If you do, please let me know. Regardless, here's the story I found in the book this morning. Kelpie, or why you should never trust a man in the moonlight. He knew the first time he saw her that they were bound together. He knew in the same way you know about a bruise or an open wound. He knew and said nothing. Instead he watched in silence as she left a trail of wet footprints on the bone dry pavement and the seaweed glistened in her hair. He was just a boy then and would not see her properly again until he was almost a man. He would see parts of her in his dreams and now when again he'd think that he saw her in the village center picking up on that familiar smell driftwood and mud and spying wet footprints on the stone. He would wait for her sometimes and when once a year the town would almost double in population to celebrate the first full moon after the winter solstice. He would ignore the dozens of young women and men who streamed in who drank cheap beer and sang in the streets who would call to him to come and join when they saw him who were drunk and young and only wanted company. It was Martin who found him a few weeks after his 18th birthday alone. Martin sprawled beside him stinking of whiskey and oil his hands calloused and massive and looked to him eyes glazed not joining the fun boy. He wanted to correct Martin to tell him that he was a man now not a boy but he stayed silent he stayed silent and glared lots of pretty girls a hiccup boys too if that's your thing he spoke up it was the first time he would ever speak about her and he was terrified for a moment that in actually putting it into words he would realize how insane it all was and Martin would laugh at him call him crazy and the whole thing would crash down around his ears a girl Martin grunted a noise that said go on I've I've only seen her once at the sound of this fact Martin sat up rested his elbow on his knees his face gained a sudden seriousness that put years on him and cut through the alcohol induced glaze Martin looked at him long and hard as if working out some elaborate and dangerous puzzle what did she look like this girl he did not want to admit what he'd seen didn't want to be exposed as a fool laughed out of town by a man three times his age Martin passed him the bottle in silence waiting he realized then taking a sip and wincing that this was the only time Martin had ever treated him as an equal as a man and not a boy and that Martin was really listening and so he told the truth he told the truth about the seaweed in her hair and the trail of wet footprints and that he knew they were bound together Martin stayed silent biting his lower lip and rubbing the grain stubble on his jaw he could suddenly see Martin's age the bags under his eyes the slouch in his posture the gnarled fingers and something else a gravity that lay behind Martin's jolly exterior a sense that whatever they were sharing now was not only real but important Martin asked him how he knew they were bound together he said he knew the same way you know about a Bruce or an open wound Martin nodded right answer the movement was more towards himself than anything else but while he stood up he beckoned the boy to follow they retrieved a rabbit from a large hutch in the back of Martin's garden first picking one that was huge and gray and that went limp with fear when they shown a torch in its face they walked in silence away from the village for an hour perhaps more until they took a route through a thin strip of woods they emerged in the moonlight only the shore of a vast and still lake the moonlight illuminated the stretch of shore around them and he could see the light like a white tongue upon the lake surface they were surrounded by silence a silence that seemed to be a question as opposed to a response as if it was asking them what now Martin chose to answer he turned and spoke softly but firmly you do not stay in the water for long you put the prey maybe two three feet out of most then you sit by the shore and wait under no circumstances do you get in the lake this is the closest you'll ever get he did not entirely understand but the tone had shifted in Martin's voice these were less like instructions and more like commandments Martin's tone reminded him of the vicar in church when he spoke about fire and brimstone it was the same grave certainty the same notes of apprehension and awe Martin stuck a small needle in the rabbit and handed it to him he followed Martin's instructions to the letter and push the rabbit out the thing had just enough energy to thrash as it half sank he waited the ripples the rabbit made seemed to attract something larger something that moved from the center of the lake underwater only just disturbing the surface a swell that grew and grew as it approached the rabbit he almost couldn't believe his eyes except dear reader he could because he'd known this all along the same way you know about a broken bone a dark horse came from the depths black and huge and dripping with lake water with eyes as red as embers a horse that had weeds for a mane and sharp teeth that glinted in the light the horse seemed to form itself from the water instead of emerging from under it as if its very dna was liquid and it swallowed the rabbit in two bites there was the crunch of bone and the wet sound of the beast swallowing and then as if the horse form was water the horse melted away and revealed the girl pale and naked in the moonlight her mouth and chin wet with the blood of the rabbit but she was a woman now and when she looked at him he ached like he'd never ached before and every inch of her skin made him breathless and try as he might he couldn't take his eyes off her and he knew he would do whatever it took to see her again he watched her from the shore studied her as she studied him he knew he loved her knew he always had and i must make it clear at this point dear reader that she loved him she who was made from water and who had only been a horse thing a second ago loved him but she loved him the way wild beasts love with teeth and claws and in the dark when she finally slipped back into the water he heard martin speak up in all honesty he'd entirely forgotten martin was there but as martin spoke he could hear the words slur and shake and realize that martin had been drinking the entire time martin warned him that a rabbit wouldn't work next time warned him that she'd be hungrier he laughed and said he'd bring whatever it took no matter if it was a deer or a goat or a cow martin said nothing stared ahead looked to him eyes wet with tears he understood then he knew what it would take and why it could not be said and why martin had made sure that he really loved her from that day on his life took two separate paths he married young perhaps to distract himself from her or perhaps because he thought he should they married in a village on the other side of the country as far away from the lake as possible but the lake and the horse and the girl lurked in his mind like an itch he couldn't scratch every year he'd return to the village make excuses as to why he couldn't bring his wife with his heart in his mouth he'd use whatever he had to old-fashioned dating sites ads and magazines he would meet young men and drink with them dance with them eat with them during the height of the festival before taking them to the lake he would tell them he was going to show them something that would change their lives and in his own way he was right he did not enjoy it if you'd have asked he would have said he was a good man who was made to do bad things i'll leave it up to you to decide he knew vets and doctors and it wasn't hard to create a solution ketamine infused just enough to render his victims able to move an inch just enough to send those ripples into the center of the lake ripples that he would watch with a dry mouth and his heart going so fast it felt like it was vibrating and without fail she would come she came first as the horse thing the thing that he began to call kelpie a scottish legend that he now knew was real in the way only myths can be that would bear its teeth its teeth that grew larger year on year with its black body and glistening and huge in the moonlight that would make short work of whatever he brought for it that twitching body in the shallows and then once it was full her the water would fall away retreating like sea spray from cliff face and it would reveal her naked and pale in the moonlight weeds in her hair and those eyes that would lock with his the light cast strange shadows over her body over her thighs and stomach and arms and he would watch with baited breath as she walked closer and closer to shore he would watch her chest rise and fall as she took deep breaths perhaps the only breath she would take each year he did not know and watch as the blood mixed with water dark and then clear and then joined the lake those moments just the two of them separate but together made it all worth it at this point in the story you would have every right to call him a murderer or the worst kind of criminal and i would be inclined to agree with you the difficulty is dear reader that he cannot hear either of us even if he could he would not have listened he was alone with his love and his lust and that vast still lake his double life continued pretty much unchanged murderer and husband until the birth of his first child the birth was about a month before the festival and he made his excuses in advance how he'd be only gone for a night and that it was important and that he'd be back with both of them before they knew it that night the night of the festival there was a storm it was a storm so huge that the air seemed to crackle with static and the rain lash the soil in waves and lightning forked in the distance at this point he would sometimes even forget their names and simply drag them to the lake with offers of sex or drugs this time as he watched the twitching body out into the shallows and waited he noticed that the lightning was growing closer so close in fact that every time it struck the ground it would illuminate the whole world in a blanket of light this would last just long enough for him to see as far as the horizon clear as day and in me's flashes of light that would break the sky only a second or two after the thunder he saw something that changed him forever something that if he'd really thought about he should have known all along along the shore of the lake as far as he could see were hundreds and hundreds of tiny figures and in front of each of these tiny figures was a shape bobbing in the shallows and as he saw her appear from the lake the horse thing the kelpie and he saw those eyes like embers he saw the same scene happening hundreds and hundreds of times over along the shore of the lake and he realized that he wasn't alone and never had been and that every man in the village was out tonight with their own offering their own prey and they were all feeding their own horse things their own kelpies that they didn't own that they couldn't touch but only see feeding the very lake itself when she turned into a woman and squatted by the edge of the lake he grew closer than he'd ever been filled with a new found courage a courage found in the knowledge that he wasn't alone close enough to see things he'd never seen before the slight webbing of her fingers and toes the sharp hooks on the back of her feet from then on his life became easier the festival still filled him with a strange sense of apprehension but it was soothed by the knowing looks of the men of the village the nods that said so much and the way the men would slowly filter out from the bars and pubs and parks all with a partner headed towards the vast and still lake with one thing on their minds years passed and every year he'd shuffle a little closer to the water a little closer to her but his victims faces all began to blur into one and this blurred vague face would keep him up at night he'd hear it speaking in the static on the radio and watch its lips move in the mirror sometimes when he hadn't slept he would even see the blurred thing stretched across the face of his son he was in his 40s when he decided he couldn't take it anymore i don't know what drove him to it and i'm not sure he did either perhaps the weight of what he'd done finally dawned on him perhaps it was an argument with his now ex-wife perhaps it was the knowledge that soon his son would discover the lake one way or another and he wasn't sure which was worse his son crouched by the shore holding a syringe and shaking with lust or his son as a body twitching and dead eyed in the shallows whatever it was that year he did not contact anymore he did not reach out on any dating sites or addict forums or try and meet anyone at the bar he attended the festival alone with a grim look in his eyes the men of the village that he saw knew that look well and did not try and talk him out of it he made the walk to the lake alone and stood by the shore for a while breathing in the smell one last time the smell of driftwood and mud he took off his clothes folded them into a small pile which he slipped under a fallen log he took off his boots his underwear and stood naked in the moonlight then he started to walk out into the lake he loved her more than he could put into words and that love weighed on him and pulled him deeper and deeper into the lake i do not know what he was expecting but she loved him too and when she found him she loved him the only way she knew how with teeth and claws and in the dark and when his wife pleaded with the local policeman to check the lake stating that this village was the last place he'd mentioned and that she knew he walked to that lake even though he tried to hide it she was met with silence when his wife asked men in the town men that ran the pubs and the bars and who worked at the shops the men who had wives and husbands and sons and daughters the men who prayed at church and who taught at the school the men who drank and swore and spat the men who loved and laughed and cried she was always met with the same stony silence they knew where he was the same way you know about a bruise or an open wound i wish i could say i entirely believed this story the fact that the festival occurs every year and every man in the village manages to bring someone for their kelpie just doesn't seem likely to me surely that amount of disappearances so localized would be noticed by someone but then again maybe the story isn't there to be believed or maybe only parts of it are i'm still figuring this book out i suppose i wonder if he's with her now at the bottom of that vast and still lake or if he died in the shallows like the rest of them


Good morning everyone, happy Monday. It's January 14th. I just dropped the kids off at specials and then I made a couple copies and now I'm back in my room and I have a whole new to-do list to tackle this week. But it is conference week, so we do have short days. I do have a few conferences each day but Thursday and Friday I don't have any conferences and Wednesday I have conferences until about six p.m. which is gonna be really fun. But that's okay because the rest of the week I'm done at like 3.30 so it's normal. I was really behind this week on my plans because of so many meetings I had last week, so many other things that I had to do. So my plans for this week were really like super lame. But it is a spiral review week for reading and for math so the planning was pretty easy. Right now I'm just gonna start tackling my to-do list. I need to plan for next week. I have a sub on Tuesday. But next week is a four day week so that should be fine. I just have to make sure that my sub plans are great. But because next week is Martin Luther King week they're gonna do Martin Luther King stuff all day on Tuesday with the substitute. So that will be nice and it will be like just something that I can just print out, give the sub and they can just deal with that. I'm also teaching area next week so that is pretty much, I have everything printed for that. I just have to type up the plans. And then everything else from here on out is pretty much test prep and review. There are a couple of newer standards that I need to cover before testing begins but none of it is like super difficult. So anyway, I'm gonna get this started. This week is another busy week for the Valdez family. Tonight we have a birthday party at four and then tomorrow we have swim lessons, Wednesday we have swim lessons and then Sunday night I'm gonna be headed off to the get your teach on conference here in Phoenix. If you guys are planning to attend, I'm hoping you are. Please let me know on my Instagram I'm going to be posting every day asking who is going because I believe we're gonna be doing a meetup. I am gonna be hanging around with Jennifer from genuine teaching, Ashley from lipstick and littles and then a couple of other people. So keep your eyes peeled on all of our Instagrams because we are planning on doing a meetup if you are gonna be at the Phoenix conference. And if you are not already following my Instagram make sure that you do. It is at apples and tiaras so that you can get real time updates about meetups and stuff like that. So I'm probably gonna do a shorter vlog this week. I won't be vlogging Thursday and Friday unless I decide to pick up the camera. It'll probably be a totally separate vlog just because I do wanna get this posted in time so that everyone can plan for that conference. So I'm gonna go ahead and tackle my to-do list. Also, I have until about 10 a.m. to finish what's in my cup right now and then I need to get a hot to trot on this bottle. However, I do have to say that I did have a cup of coffee and I did have a protein shake. So I've got a lot of liquids going through me right now. So the water has been a challenge this morning. But I'm gonna get started on this to-do list and I'll check in with you guys later. Good morning, everyone. Happy Tuesday. I just got in the door and I have my to-do list set up ready to go. So I did a bunch of stuff yesterday. Pretty much the majority of my to-do list other than planning for next week and prepping and then finishing up our field trip stuff. So it is conference week so I have another round of parent-teacher conferences today. However, I think I only have like three of them. Let me check. Yeah, so I only have four conferences and my last one is at 3.15. So I should be up and out of here by 3.30 today. So I'm gonna do my best to do as much planning this morning as I can and get things prepped and ready for next week. Most important thing is prepped for my sub on Tuesday. Now I was gonna teach my students area next week but because there's gonna be a sub, I'm gonna push that to Wednesday. I won't start it on Tuesday because I don't wanna substitute starting a new skill. So I'm gonna actually do a review day for them for that and then I will start teaching area on Wednesday. So I'm just gonna sit down and get through this stuff, plan out next week and then I also got an email regarding my second observation because I'm new to the district. I do have to have two observations per school year. So this time my principal, sorry, there's a landscaper out front. I have to do, so my last observation was for math and this second one is gonna be for ELA. So I think I'm gonna do a reading lesson and I think I might do a jigsaw in there because we are trying to do collaborative structures daily in the classroom and I've been really trying to get my students doing more of that. So I'm gonna try to figure out which standard I'm supposed to be teaching that week and then kind of pre-plan ahead for that week. It's in a few weeks but it would be nice to already know kind of where I'm going with it so that I can do a really nice lesson plan. Okay, so I'm gonna get started and I'll see you guys in a sec. Hey guys, so it is afternoon recess time. It is 1.40, I pick up my kids in about 10 minutes. Oh, it has been a crazy day. We have been busy, just go, go, go, go, go. I've gotten almost everything done on my to-do list today. All I have left to do is plan for writing next week and plan for reading next week. I've already started doing that so I'm pretty much on a roll and then I'm done. The last thing on my to-do list is to finish all of the field trip documentation and get that submitted. So I will be planned for next week and hopefully prepped for next week by tomorrow at release time. So I should be able to finish my plans today and then tomorrow prep everything during lunch and specials and in the morning and then I'll be done. So then I can spend Thursday and Friday grading, which this is my new thing. So I'm gonna try and do Monday through Wednesday as planning and prepping and then Thursday and Friday is grading. So Marie from the caffeinated class does this where she grades every Thursday and Friday and I'm gonna try it out to see if I can just create like a schedule for myself. So I also did a little bit of cleaning up around the room and I really want to declutter and just kind of get rid of some stuff. I haven't been using these table caddies recently and I feel like I need to get them back out on the table groups, but here's my thing. I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I have these desks that are uneven. So like this one's way taller than this one. These are shorter. Now I could rearrange the desks by height but then I would have to make those students move their stuff from their desk into another desk. So I don't really feel like doing that right now. If I came across some like extra boxes, I could do that. I would really like to next year have all the tables organized by size, by like height and make them all one size and then I could put my table tubs back on but I really don't think that that's gonna work this year. So I think next year I'm gonna try that. So I think what I'm gonna do with my supplies, all the stuff that's in those bins, those bins, I'm going to put the supplies into these bins. Down here you guys can see them. They were my center bins. But then I switched my centers up. So now I think I might make those supply bins and do like one for crayons, one for color pencils, one for scissors, one for glue, one for highlighters, whatever else and have those sitting up there instead of those. And I am also not using the book bins anymore so I'm thinking I might stack those up and put them away. However, I really like the way that they look right here but I think that I could use these cubbies in a better way. I think I could store other things in them and just make them more useful instead of having things out. I also moved all of my plants because they were on table groups but because again the unevenness of the tables that kind of just drives me bananas. So I put one there, I put one on my front desk, I put one on that little table up there, I put one over here, right there. And then I have one on my desk and then I have one back here at my tall table. So I have my little plants around the room which still make it super homey and comfortable but they're not being like out on the desks where students can pick at them and they just end up moving them away because they're in the way of their workspace anyway so why not just make them more of like a atmospheric piece. I really wanna get some like fake electronic candles and like put those next to each plant and like turn off the lights and have just like a little like restaurant feel. So yeah, things are coming along.  They think I wanna go buy one of these from Walmart and then get one of those dish drying racks and put it down here in my sink. That way I can wash my dishes and then leave them in the sink to dry because I don't like putting them down like in the sink itself. Like this one still needs to be washed.  So I really wanna do that and then get some dish soap. I have a dish washing item but dismiss, I know I need to drink water but I wanna do that. So I think I might get that at Walmart, I don't know when, because I'm really excited. So all the money that I've been saving up from doing princess parties I've been saving up for two things. First thing, I'm saving to buy myself some cue outfits for my spring break cruise. And second, I've been saving up for a new iPad because I would love to try digital planning and I have a super old iPad that Cash sometimes uses when he watches movies in the car. And I think eventually even though I don't want him to be a screen baby I don't want him to be like obsessed with the iPad.  He doesn't watch it the whole time. He just, I'm not explaining myself. Anyway, I got myself a brand new iPad and I'm so excited. It's gonna be here tomorrow and I'm gonna have it in time to take to get your teach on and I can take notes and I'm just so excited. I also ordered a case for it and I did get the Apple pencil and I got a cover for the pencil. So I'll show that to you guys when I get it but we don't have any writing today. It is early release due to parent teacher conferences. So I'm gonna just get off of this camera and I'm gonna let you guys go and I hope that you're all having a wonderful week. I am so far and I will see you guys in the next vlog which will probably be get your teach on. Jennifer and I are planning to vlog the whole thing.  I wanna actually vlog it. So wish me luck. I need to be a big girl but I'm a big girl pants and vlog in public. Maybe if Jennifer's doing it then I won't feel as awkward. So that's my strategy.


Giving college debt, the Biden administration today announced that they will forgive about $5 billion of college debt from students who were students at Corinthian College. Only students from Corinthian College will see their debt forgiven by the US government, which is bizarre. Corinthian College was a school shut down by the US government with all kinds of claims. But at the end of the day, Corinthian College was shut down because the government didn't like Corinthian College. Corinthian College was shut down because it's a private college. But it's worse than just being a private college. It's the ultimate sin for the left. It's a for-profit college. Richard, thank you. Wow, $100. Really appreciate that. It's good to have you back. So they shut the college down, which basically prevented the students from getting an education, which basically threw the students out into the streets. And now to compensate for that, they're going to forgive all those students their debt, the students who were thrown out of college, but also students who got a degree at the college and now might have jobs, might have decent jobs, might have good jobs. Why just Corinthian College? What about the millions of other students who have student debt? There's over a trillion dollars of student debts out there. Why some? Why not everybody? Why, you know, what's cherry picking? Does somebody in the Biden administration have a kid who went to Corinthian? Did somebody in the Biden administration have friends who have kids who have went to Corinthian? Did somebody in the Biden administration get a job offer from when they leave government from somebody who has kids? I don't know. One school?  What about all the other schools they shut down?   Are they going to forgive all their debt? But why just them? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why, because I know exactly why. Because the perception is, and this is reality, not just perception, the reality is that the students who went to Corinthian College, but the students who go to most private for-profit colleges, are students who are generally from a poor background, from a background in a lower socioeconomic stratum, whereas the students who went to Harvard and Yale and Princeton are middle-class and up for the most part. And what the Democrats are really afraid of, if they forget all debt, is that they'll be accused of benefiting rich and middle-class kids at the expense of the US economy, which will be true. But if they only forgive the debt of poor kids and they can't, they don't know how to measure that because all students are poor. That's part of being a student. How do they measure by their parents? How do they figure out who's poor and who's rich? Well, one way to do it is to say, well, if you went to a crappy, or it's perceived as crappy, private school, then you must be poor and therefore will forgive your debt. But if you went to Harvard, for now at least, we're not gonna forgive your debt. Now, ultimately, ultimately, before an important election, they'll have to forgive the debt of the middle-class kids because that's where the votes are. They were your votes in the middle-class. And if you want people to vote for you as Democrats are desperate to have, then you've gotta throw some goodies towards the people who actually vote and towards the big numbers. And they are the middle-class. So, you know, every time they forgive this debt, it's a gift that we are all paying for. It is basically raising our taxes. It is basically raising inflation, which is a tax. It is basically shifting the costs, right? The university still has the money. It's shifting the cost from the student who is supposed to pay back the debt to the government, which then has to tax me less and not to fund its expenditures. It's shifting it to all of us. So it's not just a gift to the student. It's a gift paid for by you. So take this personally. It's a gift paid by you through inflation or through taxes directly. There is no free gift. Every time the government forgives that, it's raising the deficit. It has to get that money from somewhere. Guess who it's gonna get it from? You. So, I mean, debt forgiveness.  Remember, all student loans in the United States today, since Obama administration, have been granted by the government. And I don't know a single Republican who is advocating for doing away with that system. I don't think Trump advocated for doing away with that. Nobody advocates for doing away with that system, but that is the system in which we live, which is a system where the government gives all the student debt. And it gives you a loan, no matter what degree you're pursuing, no matter what university you're going to, no matter what your prospects for returning that loan are in the future, that is, no matter what your job prospects are, they're willing to give a loan to anybody who's accepted to any university. Now, that's not how private markets function. In a private market, private lenders would ask you, what degree are you getting? Well, if you're getting a degree in feminist studies, transgender feminist studies, then how are you gonna make a living? And if you don't expect to make a living, how are you gonna pay back the debt? Oh, we're not gonna give you a loan. Oh, we're gonna give you a loan at such a high interest rate, you don't want a loan. Oh, you're getting a degree at MIT in engineering. Yeah, we'll give you all the loans you want. That's how markets work. They assess the risk of the loan and they adjust. Get the government out of loan guarantees for mortgages, for businesses, for students, for everything. And what will happen? You privatize it. Maybe fewer students will go to college. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe some crazy departments will shut down where students are, quote, learning, supposedly learning something that is not useful. They'll never be able to make any money from it, never be able to return the loan. Some of those departments might shut down for lack of funding. Maybe, maybe students will be steered towards more life-enhancing careers. And finally, in a shocking turn of events, it might be the tuition will come down because universities will actually have to compete. It won't be so easy to get the money to go to school. So universities will have to lower their amount they charge. If you look at tuition, it's gone through the roof, much higher rate than inflation, much higher rate than any other good. Why? Because it's completely 100% subsidized by the government. If Harvard wants to charge an extra $10,000 a year, that's fine, because the government will lend me an extra $10,000 a year if I can get it to Harvard. There's no price constraint. And students think, oh, I go to Harvard, I'll be easily to pay whatever amount of money I'm gonna owe them, owe the government.  We live in a crazy world where the problems, specific actions of government make the problems. And they're easy to solve. And nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody, no, not on the right, not on the left, not on the middle, nobody cares.  They put band-aids and band-aids and band-aids and band-aids and band-aids on them to cover them up, but they actually do the things that would solve the problem. No, you actually want to get rid of poverty? No, they don't. They actually want to make school affordable for people? No, they don't. They want to cover their asses. And they want to keep power. And they want to keep control. And they want to keep growing. And they don't want to shake the boat. And they don't want to do anything radical. They don't want to do anything too crazy. And they don't want to lose their elections. God forbid they lose an election. And they've got this tool, altruism, to constantly pound away at the American people and to put those band-aids on all the time, all in the name of altruism. The evil of self-interest, the evil of profit, the evil of private. And we solve it by layering on government solutions that are always altruistic. Oh, it's poor kids. Oh, it's these kids who, you know, they paid a lot of money for that education, those greedy universities, and now we're saving them. How can you not want to save them? And of course, none of us as an individual bear a lot of the cost. We bear a little bit of the cost and we bear it every year for a long period of time. So it's a little bit of a year, so we don't feel it. So we don't get excited.  Because we don't really feel it. It's two bucks here, two bucks in a few more days, two bucks in a few days after that. We'll never see it. There's no bill that arrives. Okay, this is the cost to you of the college debt repayment. Write a check. If we actually literally had to write a check, we wouldn't agree to these policies, but we don't. It just goes. It's just a little bit more, a little bit of great taxes, goods that are priced at a little higher price, which is what price inflation is, and we never feel it. So we don't get up in arms. I mean, we didn't get up in arms when we locked down. Never went get up in arms in about a slight increase in our cost of living so that we can do good for those debt burdened students out there. Well, they're not students anymore. They're employed, but they're debt burdened young people. That's horrible. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are ready subscribers and those of you who are ready supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.