When I say work, whats the first
thing that comes to mind? Maybe a cubicle? Or a briefcase?
Or that history exam thats coming up soon? But if youre a physicist, work has a very specific meaning -- one that has very little to do with spreadsheets or the fall of the Roman
Empire. Today, were going to explore that definition
-- and how it connects to one of the most important principles in physics: conservation
of energy. Well also learn what physicists mean when
they talk about another concept that comes up a lot in daily life: power. So lets get towork.
[Theme Music] So far in this course, weve spent most of our time talking about forces, and the way they make things move. And you need to understand forces before you
can understand work. Because work is what happens when you apply
a force over a certain distance, to a system -- a system just being whatever section of the universe you h appen to be talking about at the time. For example, if youre using a rope to drag
a box across the floor, we might say that the box is your system, and the force youre
using to pull on it is an external force.
So, lets say youre pulling on this box-system by dragging it straight behind you, so the rope is parallel to the ground. If you use the rope to pull the box for one
meter, wed say that youre doing work on the box. And the amount of work youre doing is equal
to the force youre using to pull the box, times the distance you moved it. For example, if you pulled the rope -- and
therefore the box -- with a force of 50 Newtons, while you moved it 5 meters, then wed say
that you did 250 Newton-meters of work on the box.
More commonly, however, work is expressed
in units known as Joules. Now, sometimes, the force you apply to an
object wont be in exactly the same direction as the direction in which the object is moving. Like, if you tried to drag the box with your hand higher than the box, so that the rope was at an angle to the floor. In that case, the box would move parallel to the floor, but the force would be at an angle to it.
And in such an instance, youd have to use one the tricks we learned back when we first talked about vectors. Specifically, you must separate the force youre using on the rope into its component parts: one thats parallel to the floor,
and one thats perpendicular to it. To find the part of the force thats parallel to the floor -- that is, the one thats actually pulling the box forward -- you just have to multiply the magnitude of the force by the cosine of the ropes angle to the ground. Youll remember that we typically designate
an angle in a system as theta.
So, to calculate the work you did on the box,
you just multiply the horizontal component -- or F times the cosine of theta -- by the
distance you moved the box. Thats one way physicists often write the
equation for work -- theyll set it equal to force, times distance, times the cosine
of theta. And that equation will fit any scenario that involves a constant force being applied over a certain distance. But what if the force isnt constant? What if, say, you started out pulling hard
on the box, but then you started to get tired, so the amount of force you exerted on the
box got smaller and smaller the farther you dragged it.
To calculate the work you did in that case,
youd have to count up the amount of force you applied over each tiny little bit of distance. And if youve watched our episodes on calculus,
then you know that theres a faster way to add together infinitely tiny increments:
integration. So, to find the work done by a varying force,
you just have to integrate that force relative to the distance the object moved. Which would
look like this.
But force-times-distance is only one of the
ways that physicists measure work. Because, you know how we just said that Joules are
the units of work? Well, Joules are often used as the units for
something else: energy. And work uses the same units as energy,
because work is just a change in energy. It's what happens when an external force is applied
to a system and changes the energy of that system.
In fact, thats one of the ways to define
energy -- its the ability to do work. There are all different kinds of energy, but in this episode, well mainly be talking about two of them: kinetic energy and potential energy.
Kinetic energy is the energy of motion. When the box was resting on the ground, wed
say that it had no kinetic energy. But once you applied a force and it started
moving, it did have kinetic energy.
And the energy of the box changed, which means
that you did work on it. More specifically, the kinetic energy of an object is equal to half of its mass, times its velocity squared. If this looks familiar, thats because it
comes from applying both Newtons second law and the kinematic equations to the idea
that work is equal to force times distance. So, if the box had a mass of 20 kilograms,
and at some point while you were dragging it, it reached a velocity of 4 meters per
second, wed say that its kinetic energy at that moment was 160 Joules.
Then theres potential energy, which actually
isnt what it sounds like. Potential energy isnt potentially energy
-- its potentially work. In other words, potential energy is energy
that could be used to do work. One common type of potential energy is gravitational
potential energy - - basically, the potential energy that comes
from the fact that gravity exists.
If I hold this book a meter above the ground,
wed say that it has gravitational potential energy. Because if you let it go, then gravity is
going to do work on the book. Gravity exerted a force that moves it to the ground. Once the book hits the ground, though, wed
say that its gravitational potential energy is zero, because gravity cant do work on
it anymore.
Calculating gravitational potential energy
is easy enough: its just the force of gravity on the object
-- so, the objects mass times small g -- multiplied by the objects height.
Or mgh for short. Which means that, just by knowing that this
books mass is about a kilogram, and that its a meter above the ground, we can calculate
its potential energy: which is 9.8 Joules. Another type of potential energy that shows
up a lot is spring potential energy. Despite its name, this is not a seasonal thing --
and yes, I really made that joke.
Rather, its the type of potential energy thats
specific to springs! The force of a spring is equal to the distance
by which its either compressed or stretched, times a constant that we write as k. This equation is known as Hookes law, after British physicist Robert Hooke, who came up with it in 1660. Now, the constant, k -- also called the spring
constant -- is different for each spring, and its a measure of the springs stiffness. And the equation makes total sense, if you
think about it: The further you push on the spring, and the
stiffer it is, the harder it will resist.
You even can test this out for yourself by taking apart a clicky pen and playing with the spring inside. By combining Hookes law, with the idea
that work equals force times distance, we can find the potential energy from a spring: its half times k times the distance squared. For example: if you have a spring with a spring
constant of 200 Newtons per meter, and a block is compressing it by half a meter, then the
potential energy of the block would be 25 Joules. So, when something does work on a system,
its energy changes.
But how that energy changes depends on the
system. Some systems can lose energy. These are known
as a non-conservative systems. Now, that doesnt mean that the energy thats
lost is literally disappearing from the universe...
And it doesnt have anything to do with
the systems personal politics, either. It just relates to one of the most
fundamental principles of science: that energy can neither be created or destroyed. But systems can lose energy, like when friction
from the box dragging on the floor generates heat. For non-conservative systems, you can still talk about their kinetic energy or potential energy at any given moment.
But conservative systems let you do much more
than that. A conservative system is one that doesnt
lose energy through work. Say, a simple pendulum. When the pendulum is at the top of its swing,
it stops moving for a brief moment as it changes direction -- meaning that its kinetic energy, at that point, is zero.
But it has lots of potential energy, because
the gravitational force can do work on the pendulum, pulling it down until it reaches
the bottom of its swing. At the bottom of the swing, that potential
energy becomes zero, because gravity cant pull the pendulum down anymore. But now the pendulum has lots of kinetic energy,
because its moving through the swing. And it turns out that, at any given point
in the pendulums motion, its kinetic energy and its potential energy will add up to the
same number.
If its potential energy increases? Its kinetic energy will decrease by the exact same amount, and vice versa. So, now that we know how to define work, we
can use that definition to help explain another common term that physicists have a very specific meaning for: power. Or, more specifically, average power. Average power is defined as work over
time, and its measured in Watts, which is just another way of saying Joules per second.
Basically, its used to measure how much energy is converted from one type to another over time. So, remember that box you were pulling? We figured out that you did 250 Joules of
work on the box when you moved it 5 meters. If it took you 2 seconds to move the box,
then your average power output was 125 Watts. Youre basically a lightbulb! Now, we can also describe power in another
way, by putting two different facts together: One, that work is equal to force times distance.
And two, that average velocity is equal to
distance over time Knowing this, we can say that power is the net force applied to something with a particular average velocity. If you moved the box 5 meters in 2 seconds,
then its average velocity was 2.5 Meters per second. And we already said that you were pulling
the box along with a force of 50 Newtons. So, the force you were using to pull the box,
times the boxs average velocity, would also give you an average power output of 125
Watts.
The two equations for average power are
really describing the same relationship; theyre just using different qualities to do it. Were going to be talking about power a
lot when we discuss electricity in later episodes. Its the best way to calculate how
energy moves around in a circuit. But thats a story for another day.
For
now, our work is done. Today, you learned the two equations we can use to describe work, and that energy is the ability to do work. We also talked about kinetic and potential
energy, and how they play into non-conservative and
conservative systems. Finally, we found two different equations
for power.
Crash Course Physics is produced in association
with PBS Digital Studios. You can head over to their channel to check
out amazing shows like The Art Assignment, PBS Idea Channel, and PBS Game Show. This episode of Crash Course was filmed in
the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio with the help of these amazing people and
our equally amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe..
Fear of the number 13 is the most prevalent
superstition in the Western world. We even have a name for it: triskaidekaphobia. It is quite common for even the most ordinarily
rational and otherwise exemplary person Winston Churchill, for example to refuse to sit
in row 13 in the theater or on an airplane. J.
Paul Getty and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
suffered from triskaidekaphobia. Napoleon was also plagued by a dread of 13. Christopher Columbus, too, seems to have been
afflicted. In the 1950s, the Columbiana, a group of Italian
Columbus experts, concluded upon careful study of his ships logs and notes, that Columbus
actually landed on the Western Hemisphere on October 13, 1492.
The date, apparently, was deliberately changed
to October 12, to avoid the imprint of such an evil omen. When the 13th day of the month lands on a
Friday, the culturally unfavorable attributes of each are multiplied by infinity. Friday is heavily charged with guilt and pain
and death in the Judeo- Christian tradition. It was on a Friday that Eve served forbidden
fruit pie at her legendary garden soiree.
Friday was the day that Adam was expelled
from Paradise, the day he repented, the day he died and the day he was cremated. And it was on a Friday Good Friday that
Christ was killed on the cross. Friday, the day of original sin, the day Jesus
died, the day of public hangings, in combination with 13, the number of steps on a gallows,
the number of coils of rope in a hangmans noose, the number of the Death card in the
tarot deck, is indubitably designated as a day of portent and doom. The pitiful suicide note of a window washer
that was found with his body in a gas-filled room at his home and quoted in a 1960 issue
of the Yorkshire Post, underscores its powerful, popular reputation, It just needed to rain
today Friday the 13th for me to make up my mind.
Poor sod. Ironically, and in definite defiance of the
laws of probability, the 13th day of the month is more likely to fall on a Friday than on
any other day of the week. The precisely aligned pattern of our calendar
days, weeks and months repeats itself exactly every 400 years. In that 400-year period there are 688 Friday
the 13ths.
2012 Has three Friday the 13ths. Just our luck! Some might say. And, though they would mean it facetiously,
they would, indeed, be right. For up until the patriarchal revolution, both
Fridays and 13s were held in the very highest esteem.
Both the day and the number were associated
with the Great Goddesses, and therefore, regarded as the sacred essence of luck and good fortune. Thirteen is certainly the most essentially
female number the average number of menstrual cycles in a year. The approximate number, too, of annual cycles
of the moon. When Chinese women make offerings of moon
cakes, there are sure to be 13 on the platter.
Thirteen is the number of blood, fertility,
and lunar potency. 13 Is the lucky number of the Great Goddess. Representing as it does, the number of revolutions
the moon makes around the earth in a year, 13 was the number of regeneration for pre-Columbian
Mexicans. In ancient Israel, 13 was a sanctified number.
Thirteen items were decreed necessary for
the tabernacle. At 13 years of age, a boy was (and still is)
initiated into the adult Jewish community. In Wicca, the pagan goddess tradition of Old
Europe, communicants convene in covens of 13 participants. Thirteen was also auspicious for the Egyptians,
who believed that life has 13 stages, the last of which is death the transition
to eternal life.
Held holy in honor of Shekinah, the female
aspect of God, Friday was observed as the day of Her special celebrations. Jews around the world still begin the observance
of the Sabbath at sunset on Friday evenings when they invite in the Sabbath Bride. Friday is the Sabbath in the Islamic world. Friday is sacred to Oshun, the Yoruba orisha
of opulent sensuality and overwhelming femininity, and also to Frig, the Norse Goddess of love
and sex, of fertility and creativity.
Her name became the Anglo-Saxon noun for love,
and in the 16th century, frig came to mean to copulate. Friday was associated with the early Mother
Creation Goddesses for whom that day was named. In Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Icelandic, and
Teutonic cultures She was called variously, Freya, Freia, Freyja, Fir, Frea and Frig. Friday is Frigs Day, Frigedaeg, in Old
English, Fredag in Danish, Freitag in Dutch.
In Mediterranean lands, She reigned as Venus. In Latin, Friday is the Day of Venus, Dies
Veneris; Vendredi in French, Venerdi in Italian and Viernes in Spanish. Friday the 13th is ultimately the celebration
of the lives and loves of Lady Luck. On this, Her doubly-dedicated day, let us
consider what fortuitous coincidences constitute our fate.
The lucky blend of just the right conditions,
chemistries, elements, and energies that comprise our universe. The way it all works. The way we are. That we are at all.
That, despite whatever major or minor matters
we might think are unlucky, we have somehow managed to remain alive and aware. This Friday the 13th, let us stand in full
consciousness of the miraculousness of existence and count our blessings. Thank Goddess! Knock on wood!.
Why did Swami Vivekananda, one of the greatest
preachers of Vedanta Philosophy since the time of Shankaracharya, die so young? Just
like Shankaracharya, Swami Vivekananda too did not live long and left his physical body
at the early age of 39. Now even though Swamiji, as he was called
suffered from many ailments such as diabetes and asthma, nevertheless on the day of his
passing he was actually in good health and in a jovial mood during breakfast.
So what caused him to die so young? Actually behind the passing of every evolved soul such
as Swami Vivekananda, there is a greater spiritual reality hidden which we ordinarily do not
grasp. But luckily for us Swamiji himself revealed the truth in great detail.
About 6 years before his passing, sometime in August of 1896, Vivekananda confided to
his brother disciple Swami Abhedananda that he was going to live only for 5 or 6 years
more at most. How accurate was this prediction, for Swami
Vivekananda passed away 6 years hence on July 4th 1902.
When Swami Abhedananda protested
saying a young man like him should not think of death, Vivekananda replied: You do not
understand. My soul is getting bigger and bigger every day; so much so that the body
can hardly contain it. Any day it may burst this cage of flesh and bone.
Now what did Swamiji mean when he said that his soul was getting bigger. Here is the explanation.
The soul is nothing but pure consciousness.
So what Swami Vivekananda meant was that his
consciousness was expanding so much beyond the realms of ordinary human consciousness,
to the domain of the super-conscious that the body was proving an inadequate container
and would soon have to be let go. To better understand this point let us delve
into Vedanta philosophy for just a few moments. According to Vedanta philosophy, consciousness
is a field which exists separate from the body. This field of consciousness is a continuum
which means that it goes on endlessly in all directions like an infinite ocean.
For the sake of simplicity I will draw it as follows the yellow bar representing
the infinite field of consciousness.
Now our individual souls can be thought of as a portion
of this continuous field of consciousness. Thus what we normally experience as human
consciousness is only a small subsection of the infinite range of consciousness. The vast
majority of which lies beyond the realm of ordinary human experience.
Here I would like to point out that many times what we call as paranormal or psychic phenomena
fall in this zone. This is similar to light, where we are able to see only a few frequencies
out of the full spectrum, but certain insects such as bees can pick out many more colours.
Now Vedanta tells us that different living beings experience different portions of this
one continuous spectrum of consciousness.
Take for example the ant. Compared to us it
has significantly lower amounts of consciousness. An ant is not aware of the traffic jam outside,
nor does it worry about picking the kids up from school. In other words the soul of the
ant is in a state of restricted consciousness, or limited awareness about the world.
Many
things exist beyond its ant world of which it is completely unaware. Now let us say that
the soul or consciousness of the ant expands so that it becomes aware of more things.
Then Vedanta tells us that the soul of the ant will find the small body and brain of
the ant as insufficient to express its greater consciousness. And therefore, it will manifest
for its purposes a better body, say that of a cat.
So according to Vedanta this is how evolution happens. Underneath the chain of physical
evolution of species, is the spiritual reality of an expanding consciousness.
This expansion
of consciousness is the real engine which propels the entire train of biological evolution.
Now in the evolutionary chain you do not jump directly from an ant to a cat, rather there
are many small evolutionary steps in the middle, but this is just an example to demonstrate
the idea. In fact in Hinduism, the soul is said to traverse through 8.4 Million life-forms
before it attains to a human birth. But human beings too are not the final step
in the evolutionary chain. In the case of human beings our consciousness or our soul
has gotten significantly bigger than that of animals but it is still restricted.
In fact still beyond the realms of ordinary human consciousness, lies a specific state
of super-consciousness, where our soul has become so enlarged that it has become infinite.
In other words from being a little portion of the ocean of consciousness, it has become
the whole.
This state, where the soul has become one
with the infinite ocean of consciousness - also known as Universal Consciousness or God; this
state of the soul is called by different names in different religions. In Hinduism it is
called Samadhi, in Buddhism, Enlightenment and in Christianity, Salvation.
The names may be different, but they all mean the same thing and that is freedom or
liberation from the evolutionary cycle of birth and death. For in this ultimate state
of super-conscious Samadhi the soul is finally free. Its infinite consciousness can no longer
be confined to the finite body and the body is let go.
This state of Samadhi was attained to by Swami Vivekananda, by his guru Sri Ramakrishna,
by Sri Aurobindo, by Ramana Maharishi and in our present times by my highest guru Shriram
Sharma Acharya.
This state of super-conscious enlightenment
was also attained to by Jesus and by Buddha; and this final state of freedom alone is the
goal for all of us, right down to the little ant.
This brings us to the end of our presentation. Thank you so much for watching. If you have
further questions in your heart surrounding God, soul, consciousness, life and death;
then be sure to visit my website The Spiritual Bee at www.Spiritualbee.Com..
(Soft soothing music) - Steve Farber is with us, he
is the founder and chairman of the Extreme Leadership Institute. He's got clients like
Microsoft, Hyatt Hotels, Cisco, Ernst and Young, et cetera. Been in business for 30 years
and he's here to talk about - Love. - [Joel] In business? - In business, I know
we're not accustomed to using those words in
the same sentence, but-- - What's love got to do with it, if I may? - Well, simply put, love
is just damn good business.
- [Joel] Why? - Well, look, first of all, let's just understand where we are, okay? Over the last 10 years, if
you look at the research from the U.S. Government,
among other places, we've thrown, when I say we I
mean the business community, has thrown nearly a trillion dollars at leadership development. So you take that trillion dollars and compare it with the
very famous Gallup study that comes out every year
that measures engagement. - In other words, how
happy people are on a job.
- How happy people are on the job. - Right. - And how much they
put themselves into it. - Right.
- This year 73% of the
workforce is disengaged. Compare that with 10 years ago. - When it was? - 70%. Now that's essentially the same thing.
- So after a trillion dollars things have gotten slightly worse. - Yes. (Laughs) Or at least they haven't moved. - They haven't moved.
- So we need something
radical to move the needle and love is about as radical as it gets, particularly in the context of business. If we really operationalize love, that's where our competitive
advantage comes from. - That's a big word. What do you mean by operationalize? - So there's lots of companies out there that build marketing campaigns around how much they love their customers, right? And we can print the banners and we can wear the buttons
that say we love our customers.
- [Joel] Right. - It's not that. That's not a bad thing as
long as we can back it up. We need to create experiences,
products and services, combination of the two,
that our customers love.
- [Joel] Right. - Because we all know that that's where our competitive
advantage comes from. So in order to create the experience that our customers love, we have to create an environment that our folks, that our people,
that our team loves working in and we can't do that unless we love them, and the business, and the customers first. - I follow the logic, but it sounds to me like you are mandating a sentiment.
I can't force myself to
love somebody, right? - No, you can't, but first of
all love is not a sentiment. It's a practice, it's a discipline. So I can care for you,
I can be kind to you, I can cultivate an environment
that you love working in, even if maybe there's somebody else that I'd rather hang out with. (Joel laughs) Right? But if I can do that, - [Joel] Right, right.
- It's gonna show up,
I'll give you an example. - [Joel] Yeah. - There's a great little
company in Jacksonville, Florida called Trailer Bridge. They're in the shipping logistics company.
They emerged from bankruptcy in 2014 and the place was toxic. They burned through four
CEOs in three years, four heads of HR in three years. In fact, HR was known in the
company as the rumor mill. (Laughs) That's the function that people
thought that they served.
They were dying to get out of there if they could find another
job people were gone. Mitch Luciano, who was part
of the management team, was tapped by the board to be the new CEO. And this was a guy who,
I later came to find out after I heard the story,
was a huge fan of my books. The Radical Leap, the Radical
Edge, Greater Than Yourself.
- [Joel] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They really influenced how he lead and the core theme and
everything that I'd written about and everything that I do is this idea that love is good business. - So he was putting
your stuff into practice and you hadn't even met the guy yet? - Hadn't even met him, no. - Wow.
- Yeah, which is one of
the great things about - Right. - And gratifying things
about being an author, right? Here's what he did. The first thing he said was, "I can't take the title of CEO. "I'll take the responsibility,
but I won't take the title, "because nobody trusts
the title (laughs) of CEO, "'cause we burn through 'em like tinder." So he said, "I'll be the president, "I'll earn the title of CEO." And then, now this is really important, he was coming from a
place of authenticity.
I love these people, I love this company, I love the future that
we can create together. That's where he was coming from. So the first thing he did was, he said we're a company of 110 people, everybody's wearing name tags,
we should know each other. - We should know each other's names.
- Right, by now. - Right, it's not like a
110,000 people, it's 110 people. - Right, yeah. - So he got rid of the name tags then he lowered the height of the cubicles so people could actually see each other and encourage them to
actually talk to each other.
And then he said we have to model this. As leaders that starts with me. And what love looks like to Mitch, is that if you come into his office, and you say, hey, Mitch, can I have five minutes of your time, even though he knows it's not gonna be five minutes (laughs). - It's gonna be half and hour, right.
- It's gonna be at least an hour. - Yeah, yeah. - He says, "Yes, come in,"
he turns off his computer, he spins around, looks at
you and says, Tell me." - What was the result of all this? - Just the last two years in a row they've been voted
number one and number two best place to work in
the city of Jacksonville. The most profitable results
in the history of the company.
And they, you know, they're
recruiting great talent left and right because their own people are now their best recruiters. - So ordinarily we think business and love are kind of opposite ends
of the dichotomy, right? - Yes, we do. - Here you are a business guy. - Yes.
- And you're not takin' love lightly? - I am not.
- Alright. - I do not take the word love lightly. - And neither should we. (Soft soothing music) - Love is just damn good business.
- Thanks for being with us. - My pleasure. (Soft soothing music).
TODAY WAS SUPER TUESDAY, THE DAY
DURING AN ELECTION YEAR ON WHICH. SEVERAL STATES HOLD PRIMARY
ELECTIONS. AND DEPENDING ON THE RESULTS OF
SUPER TUESDAY, TOMORROW COULD BE. PANIC WEDNESDAY BECAUSE, LET'S
BE HONEST, THIS SUPER TUESDAY.
COULD BE THE DAY THAT TRUMP
RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT BECOMES. OFFICIALLY NOT FUNNY ANYMORE. (LAUGHTER)
WHY DO AMERICANS CALL THIS DAY. "SUPER TUESDAY?"
DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THE WORD.
"SUPER" MEANS? CALLING THE PRIMARY ELECTIONS
"SUPER" IS LIKE CALLING BROCCOLI. A "GUILTY PLEASURE." (LAUGHTER)
TRUMP'S CHANCES OF GETTING THE. NOMINATION ARE LOOKING VERY
GOOD. HE'S EARNED SO MANY
ENDORSEMENTS.
MOST RECENTLY, AT A RALLY IN
GEORGIA YESTERDAY, TRUMP WAS. ENDORSED BY THE C.E.O. OF NASCAR
AND SEVERAL PROMINENT NASCAR. DRIVERS.
WITH THE NASCAR ENDORSEMENT,
DONALD TRUMP HAS LOCKED UP THE. COVETED "GUY YOU WISH YOUR
SISTER WOULD BREAK UP WITH" VOTE. (LAUGHTER)
PEOPLE WERE REALLY APPLAUDING. WHEN THESE NASCAR DRIVERS JOINED
THE STAGE AT THE TRUMP RALLY.
AND THAT'S IMPRESSIVE. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO
APPLAUD WHEN THREE OF YOUR. FINGERS WERE BLOWN OFF BY A
FIRECRACKER? (LAUGHTER)
IT'S NOT NICE! (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
BUT THE C.E.O. OF NASCAR, BRIAN.
FRANCE, SPOKE SAYING THAT "TRUMP
IS A FAMILY MAN." AND IT'S TRUE. JUST ASK ANY OF TRUMP'S THREE
WIVES. (LAUGHTER)
THAT'S HOW MUCH HE LOVES. FAMILIES.
HE MADE THREE OF THEM! TO BE HONEST, I DON'T KNOW WHY
THIS IS EVEN NEWS. DONALD TRUMP BEING ENDORSED BY
NASCAR IS LIKE BERNIE SANDERS. BEING ENDORSED BY A VEGAN COFFEE
SHOP. (LAUGHTER)
BUT THE BIG NEWS ABOUT TRUMP THE.
LAST COUPLE OF DAYS HAS BEEN
OUTRAGE AFTER TRUMP'S INITIAL. REFUSAL TO DISAVOW THE KU KLUX
KLAN AFTER THEY ENDORSED HIM. NOW, IN HIS DEFENSE, TRUMP DID
EVENTUALLY SAY HE WAS AGAINST. THE K.K.K., AND HE DID THAT
AFTER TAKING ONLY 48 HOURS TO.
THINK ABOUT IT. (LAUGHTER)
HE JUST NEEDED TO SLEEP ON IT. TWICE. TRUMP HAS GOTTEN OUT IN FRONT OF
THESE RACISM ALLEGATIONS.
IN FACT, JUST THIS MORNING, HE
RENOUNCED SUPPORT OF ALL WHITE. SUPREMACISTS AND THEN DECLARED,
"THERE'S NOBODY THAT'S DONE SO. MUCH FOR EQUALITY AS I HAVE,"
POINTING TO HIS MAR-A-LAGO CLUB. IN PALM BEACH, FLORIDA AS AN
EXAMPLE.
TRUMP'S MAR-A-LAGO RESORT IS
OPEN TO PEOPLE OF ANY RACE, COLOR, OR CREED...WHO CAN AFFORD
THE NON-REFUNDABLE $100,000 APPLICATION FEE. THAT'S RIGHT. TRUMP'S BEST ARGUMENT FOR BEING
PRO-EQUALITY IS THAT HE BUILT A. COUNTRY CLUB THAT DOESN'T BAN
MINORITIES.
NOTHING REPRESENTS THE MELTING
POT OF AMERICA LIKE A GOLF CLUB. IN FLORIDA. THE SITUATION WITH DONALD TRUMP
HAS GOTTEN SO CRAZY THAT TED. CRUZ HAS BECOME THE VOICE OF
REASON.
CRUZ RECENTLY WENT ON A
CONSERVATIVE RADIO SHOW WHERE HE. OFFERED TRUMP A LITTLE ADVICE. >> YOU KNOW, I'VE JOKED THERE
ARE NOT MANY IRON RULES IN. POLITICS, BUT ONE THAT YOU CAN
COUNT ON 100% OF THE TIME IS THE.
KLAN ALWAYS BAD, NAZIS ALWAYS
BAD. YOU WILL NEVER GO WRONG WITH
THAT RULE. EITHER THE KLAN OR NAZIS, BAD,
BAD, BAD... (APPLAUSE)
>> James: TED CRUZ HAS THE.
MORAL HIGH GROUND HERE. TED CRUZ WAS ENDORSED BY THE GUY
FROM DUCK DYNASTY. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DUCK
DYNASTY GUY AND THE K.K.K. IS.
THAT ONE OF THEM HAS A TV SHOW. BUT AFTER HIS LOSSES ON SUPER
TUESDAY, TED CRUZ IS HAVING A. TOUGH NIGHT. TED, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR
CHANCES OF BECOMING PRESIDENT.
>> HYPERINSULINISM IS
A CONGENITAL DISORDER. OF REGULATION OF
INSULIN SECRETION. >> THE CELLS IN THE PANCREAS
THAT MAKE INSULIN CAN'T TURN. THAT INSULIN OFF,
AND WHEN THAT HAPPENS, THE BLOOD SUGAR
BECOMES DANGEROUSLY LOW.
>> BASICALLY IT'S THE
OPPOSITE TO DIABETES. CHILDREN THAT HAVE
HYPERINSULINISM PRODUCE TOO. MUCH INSULIN AND THAT CAUSES
SEVERE LOW BLOOD GLUCOSE. >> BLOOD SUGAR
FEEDS THE BRAIN.
AND IT'S WHAT OUR BODY
USES FOR ENERGY AS A WHOLE. >> SO WHEN YOU FEEL LOW BLOOD
SUGAR YOU MAY FEEL WEAK, YOU MAY FEEL
CONFUSED AND DISORIENTED, OR YOU MAY HAVE SEIZURES. >> SO THAT PUTS THE BRAIN AT
HIGHER RISK FOR SUFFERING. DAMAGE.
>> THAT'S WHY IT'S SO
IMPORTANT TO DETECT WHEN. INFANTS HAVE A LOW LEVEL
OF BLOOD SUGAR TO BE ABLE. TO CORRECT IT AS
SOON AS POSSIBLE. >> THE LONGER IT TAKES UNTIL
DIAGNOSIS AND REFERRAL, THE HIGHER LIKELIHOOD
THAT THE CHILD WILL HAVE.
CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES,
INCLUDING SEVERE BRAIN INJURY. >> AT THE CHILDREN'S
HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA. HYPERINSULINISM CENTER,
WE SEE APPROXIMATELY TWO-THIRDS. OF ALL THE CASES THAT ARE
BORN IN THIS COUNTRY.
WITH HYPERINSULINISM. >> ONCE A DIAGNOSIS OF
HYPERINSULINISM IS MADE, WE NEED TO EDUCATE FAMILIES
TO WHAT IS HYPERINSULINISM? WHAT CAN BE CAUSING
THE HYPERINSULINISM? AND HOW CAN WE TREAT
THE HYPERINSULINISM? >> THERE ARE TWO TYPES
OF HYPERINSULINISM. THERE'S A DIFFUSE FORM
AND THERE'S THE FOCAL FORM. >> WHEN THERE'S
DIFFUSE DISEASE, ALL OF THE INSULIN-SECRETING
CELLS IN THE PANCREAS.
ARE ABNORMAL, BUT WHEN
IT'S FOCAL DISEASE, A VERY SMALL CLUSTER OF
CELLS MEASURING PERHAPS LESS. THAN ONE-QUARTER OF AN INCH
IN DIAMETER ARE ABNORMAL. >> SO FOCAL FORM REALLY MEANS
JUST PART OF THE PANCREAS. IS AFFECTED AND ONCE THAT PART
THAT'S AFFECTED IS TAKEN.
OUT, IT'S CURABLE. THE DISEASE IS CURABLE. FOR DIFFUSE, TYPICALLY THE
WHOLE PANCREAS IS AFFECTED. ALL THE BETA CELLS ARE
NOT FUNCTIONING PROPERLY.
AND THE BABIES NEED A NEAR
TOTAL PANCREATECTOMY. OR 95 - 98 PERCENT OF THEIR
PANCREAS REMOVED. >> BY DOING GENETIC SCREENING
AND FINDING OUT WHAT GENE IS. DEFECTIVE IN THESE CHILDREN
WE CAN VERYWITH HIGH.
ACCURACYDETERMINE WHO
HAS FOCAL HYPERINSULINISM. AND WHO WOULD HAVE
DIFFUSE HYPERINSULINISM. >> WHEN WE START THINKING
ABOUT MEDICAL MANAGEMENT. VERSUS SURGICAL MANAGEMENT
THE GENETICS PLAY.
Aortic stenosis is a condition that can
kill people suddenly when it becomes severe. The aortic valve is the fourth
and final valve that the blood crosses on its course through the heart. When the
left ventricle squeezes the blood comes out through a healthy sized orifice like
this and the leaflets open and close. When you get these calcium deposits on
the aortic valve, it restricts the excursion and sometimes leaflets are
even frozen and one barely opens.
So, what is ordinarily a nice opening for
the blood to be ejected from the heart becomes a slit. The only treatment,
traditionally, has been open-heart surgery but, this evolving, wonderful new
technology, is ingenious. Transcatheter aortic valve
replacement (TAVR) uses the most common portal of access through the femoral artery in
the groin. Guide wires are advanced up the aorta.
It has allowed us to offer
treatment to patients that were previously thought to be too high-risk..
What exactly is special enrollment and what
makes it so special? That's what I'm here to answer today. Hi, I'm Joshua and I'm a broker at Alexander
and Haberman. Today I'm here to talk to you about MNsure. First things first, then.
What is a special enrollment period? A special enrollment period is period when
an individual can enroll in a QHP (qualified health plan) for the first time or make changes
to a health plan that they already have. As you probably know, every year there's an
annual open enrollment period. That open enrollment period normally lasts
a set number of weeks. And it starts November first.
During this time, anyone can enroll in a plan
and ordinarily their plan will begin January 1st. Special enrollment periods, triggered by the
qualifying life events, are what allow you to buy a plan outside of this annual enrollment
period each fall. In order to take advantage of this period,
you need to have a qualifying life event. Each of these are examples of special enrollment
periods.
As you can see, there's quite a lot of them. In future videos, we'll go into details on
the particulars of each of these situations. For this video, what I want you to understand
is that you have a 60-day window to take advantage of the qualifying life event. If you are already enrolled in a qualified
health plan through MNsure and you experience one of these life events, all you need to
do is call MNsure to report the life event in order to be able to make the change.
If you're new to MNsure the process is much
the way it would be during the annual enrollment period. Decide whether you want to navigate this process
on your own or with the help of one of MNsure's assisters. There's thousands of them across the state
and you can find them easily on the website. Once you've decided how you want to go about
the process, it's just a matter of reviewing your plan options, creating an account, submitting
an application, and selecting your plan.
One of the great things about applying with
MNsure is your determination for eligibility is instantaneous in most cases. And you'll immediately know whether you qualify
for one of the public programs like MinnesotaCare or Medical Assistance or if you're eligible
for advanced premium tax credits for a qualified health plan. If you do become eligible for one of the public
programs, you will receive additional information in the mail from the Department of Human Services. If, on the other hand, you're eligible for
a qualified health plan, you can select that plan and enroll online.
This is where things change from what you
would normally do during the open enrollment period. Because we're in a special enrollment period,
there are some additional steps you need to take. And the first of these is calling MNsure in
order to report your qualifying life event. During your call to MNsure to report your
qualifying life event, they will describe for you the type of additional documentation
that will be needed in order to validate your enrollment.
They'll also tell you how long you have to
provide this information. And how to submit that information. It is very important that follow these guidelines
and instructions from MNsure in order to complete your enrollment. You will also get a written confirmation of
the special enrollment period documentation that is needed.
So don't worry if you can't remember everything
when they tell it to you on the phone. Once MNsure gets your documentations, they'll
review those. And if everything is complete and accurate,
they will forward your enrollment to the carrier and they will send you a notification of your
enrollment status. If everything is not in order, you'll also
get a confirmation from MNsure.
In this case, telling you what is missing
and how to rectify that so you can continue to move forward with the coverage. If you would like any help with any of these
steps along the way, it's important to know that there are many resources for you. From the MNsure Call Center, to the many assisters,
navigators, and brokers that are out there to help you. One thing that we strongly recommend is that
you seek this assistance early in the process before there are potential errors that need
to be corrected.
It's much easier to do things right the first
time than to correct them..
On February 1st of 2013, a 21-year-old college student named Elisa Lam vanished at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles California. So what happened? [Eerie music] The Elisa Lam case immediately baffled local law enforcement. They had no leads other than a small snippet of video that they later released to the public, and we'll get to that in a second. First, let's fast forward a few days when a maintenance worker named Santiago Lopez took the elevator of the hotel to the 15th floor, then climbed a ladder and crossed a segment of the roof to the large water tanks that supplied the water system of the hotel.
He immediately noticed that the hatch on one of these tanks was unlocked. He climbed the ladder and he looked in the hatch. That's where I found Elisa Lam or her remains, at least floating face-up in the water. Investigators say that although the corpse was nude, there was no evidence of sexual assault.
Ordinarily, this would be a tragic but not incredibly uncommon occurrence
someone accidentally dies while they are exploring a place that they're not supposed to be exploring. However, the circumstances surrounding this case made it anything but ordinary. After thorough investigation, local law enforcement became desperate for any sort of lead, so they released information to the public specifically, video footage from the elevator in the Cecil Hotel on the night of Elisa Lam's disappearance. In the video, Miss Lam appears to be hiding or attempting to hide from an unknown entity.
She moved sporadically, in and out across the threshold. Her movements are erratic, and body language experts, who in the years since her disappearance, have attempted to discern her motive from her physicality, can only say that she appears to be exhibiting fleeting at times contradictory emotions. She returns to the elevator, numerously pushing different buttons and waiting for the door to close. It doesn't.
Eventually, she leaves the elevator. After a pause, seemingly of its own accord, the elevator closes. In the days, months and years following her demise, numerous people have attempted to construct theories explaining how this tragedy occurred. Number one: accidental death.
What if Elisa Lam, in the grip of a bipolar episode, disrobed, transported herself up the elevator, through the ladder, gained roof access, and then went into one of the water tanks and was unable to escape? The four tanks are 4x8 feet, and the hatch atop each tank is 16 inches square. As far as we know, no one has attempted to recreate this theory meaning no one has climbed up to the tank, attempted to open or unlock it, and then climbed in and attempted to climb out. The hatches are designed to be opened from the outside, and it seems that it would be very difficult to open a hatch if it were closed from the inside. Elisa Lam was a diminutive person but, to be fair, without someone specifically testing this under these conditions, we cannot rule this possibility out.
Two: What if Elisa Lam was murdered? In the video footage, she appears to be convinced that someone or something is following her. Additionally, in her blog post earlier before her disappearance, she noted the presence of creepers who she felt were following her on the street, or being aggressive, or you know creepy toward her. Third is an interesting one: Her blog posts continue after her death. The most plausible argument for this is that she simply scheduled these to publish before she passed away.
So if she was murdered, who would be a suspect? Well, this leads us to an interesting twist. In order to gain roof access at the Cecil Hotel, one needs to have an employee badge. So who could gain the access? This is one of the first questions investigators asked, and the hotel staff claims that they received no notice of unauthorized entry or attempts at opening emergency exits and fire doors and things of that nature. And the third possibility would be that Elisa Lam took her own life.
This would still have some of the pros and cons of the first two theories. Let's explore the stranger theories. Demonic possession and/or ghosts. To people who believe in the paranormal, it is quite possible for a place or an environment to have its own malevolence.
Similar, of course to the famous, or infamous, Overlook in Stephen King's novel "The Shining." And make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, the Cecil Hotel has quite a history. The Black Dahlia stayed there in 1947. Goldie Osgood, known as the pigeon lady of Pershing Square, was raped and murdered in the hotel in 1964. Both Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker, and Unterweger, his copycat killer, stayed at the hotel while they were committing these crimes.
The Cecil Hotel has also been home to numerous suicides over the course of its existence. So given these fact, these tragic occurrences, one could see how a person with a belief in the paranormal might say this is a bad place where bad things happen. So what do you think? Is this another tragic story of a bizarre but mundane accident? Or is there something more to the story? A cover-up by the hotel? A cover up by law enforcement? Let us know in the comments. And while you're there, let us know what you would like to see in an upcoming audio or video episode.
If you would like more in-depth information on Elisa Lam and the theories swirling around her disappearance and demise, check out our audio podcast available at StuffTheyDontWantYouToKnow.Com And if you have a topic that we should cover but you'd rather not mention it in public YouTube comments, I completely understand. Write to us directly. We are conspiracy@howstuffworks.Com.
WATCH: Tim Allen Goes On Jimmy Kimmel, Sends
Anti-Trump Hollywood Elites A Message They Cant Ignore Tim Allen is one of the few well-known conservatives
and Republicans in Hollywood. Ordinarily, they are shunned and refused work
because of how liberal the rest of the entertainment industry is. The alienation of Allen worsened when he expressed
his support for President Trump. But his support for the President was never
more clear than when he appeared on Jimmy Kimmels late-night talk show.
Deadline.Com reported, Tim Allen stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live!
On Friday night, where he shared his experience about going to Donald Trumps inauguration
and how being a conservative in Hollywood is like living in 1930s Germany. I was invited, we did a VIP thing for the
vets, and went to a veterans ball, so I went to go see Democrats and Republicans, the
Last Man Standing actor said. Yeah I went to the inauguration. Im not attacking you, laughed Jimmy
Kimmel, after Allen turned defensive.
Youve gotta be real careful around here,
Allen replied. You get beat up if dont believe what
everybody believes. This is like 30s Germany. I dont know what happened.
If youre not part of the group, You
know what we believe is right, I go, Well, I might have a problem with that. Im a comedian, I like going on both sides. Allen, whos previously spoken out about
Hollywood being hypocritical, told Megyn Kelly on Fox News last year that he finds
it odd that Hollywood didnt like Trump because he was a bully. But if you had any kind of inkling that
you were for Trump, you got bullied, he explained.
During his interview with Kimmel, Allen also
discussed how people should be paranoid about our privacy being compromised by the government
and other major companies. If a government drove by with a gray sedan
with a camera on it, youd be rioting and going to Washington, he explained. But if its white, with emojis and Google
on it, Yay, youre waving at it. Theyre taking pictures of your house! Allen is most known for his old show Home
Improvement and his more recent show that he starred in Last Man Standing.
A great show, that got amazing reviews, yet
was pulled from the network. Something Allen attributes to his conservative-leaning
character. A Los Angeles Times article event reported
that there are 2,500 of his entertainment colleagues who joined a secret group for entertainers
who are conservative because of the fear that if they are open about it they will be ostracized
from the industry. The Washington Post reported, In 30 years of show business, Ive never
seen it like this, an unnamed actor told the outlet.
If you are even lukewarm to Republicans,
you are excommunicated from the church of tolerance. Since it premiered several years ago, Allens
show has been hailed as a rare counterexample to Hollywood politics. Finally, we have a hero who hunts, fishes,
watches sports, and occasionally drives a tank, the Imaginative Conservative wrote. But Allen himself has complained of network
censorship when his protagonist, an alpha-male family man whom the actor has called an
educated Archie Bunker, tries to go after liberal icons.
Allen admits he has gotten more than one
warning to stop calling President Obama a communist, the TV Page reported in
2015. Allen didnt sound so dire during the Republican
primaries, when the Hollywood Reporter asked whether he vented his own political views
through his character. Its getting more and more comfortable,
he said. These guys know me so well that theyre
writing stuff that is exactly what I wouldve said.
Its a marvelous thing when you have liberal
people writing for [a show like this]. And he sounded lukewarm about the prospect
of a Trump presidency. Forget the stupid s he says about immigrants,
Allen said. Thats just ignorant.
But he might be able to do the stuff that
really needs fixing. After the election, on Fox News, Allen compared
Trump to an amateur performer with very bad comic timing. I dont want to defend the guy, he
said. The industry has become more toxic to conservatives
since Trump took office, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Workers complained of political shouting matches
on set and the professional shunning of those known to hold right-leaning views although
some had enough celebrity to speak out safely. Tim Allen is a comedic genius who has found
success in the entertainment industry for over 30 years. He has been able to carve out a spot for himself
as a high profile, high profiting, and well known conservative actor. Something that almost none of his other counterparts
have been able to do.
Which is exactly why he has found success,
especially with Last Man Standing. It was something that spoke to real people,
middle-class Americans. And it is this messaging that won Republicans
power in the general elections as well as the midterm elections..
So over the last couple of decades climate change has really loomed as an imminent problem for coral reefs corals in particular are really quite suspectible to the change in climate. All over the world there's been mass coral bleaching events, and it's for this reason that corals of the Kimberley are particularly fascinating. As you can see at low tide they are exposed three or four metres out of the water and normally at high tide the water would be right above us. Yet the corals of the Kimberley appear to be very, very hardy and very tolerant of these extreme conditions so very high sea surface temperatures very high daily temperatures and very high light exposures so it's clear that there's some special biological adaptations that have occurred in the corals of the Kimberley that helps them to survive these extreme conditions.
So I'm particularly interested investigating these biological adaptations. And right here today we've found something that gives us a little bit of a hint into one of these possible adaptations. See here is a porites micro-atoll so ordinarily this coral will be this yellow colour, but as you see on the here where the coral is exposed it is pink. So what I'm proposing this is this is an expression of a fluorescent protein have a photo-protective role.
So it's obviously able to reflect the light better and it helps the exposed part of the colony survive these extreme conditions. So presently nothing is known about the pigments of corals of the Kimberley but in other locations the pigments have proven very, very interesting in that they're used in biomedical imaging and other types of cell biology research. Also what corals have is a sunscreen a natural sunscreen in their mucus so combined with the fluorescent pigments and proteins and the sunscreen properties, corals really do seem to have worked out how to cope with these conditions up here in the Kimberley..
The Next Logical Step by Ben Bova Ordinarily the military least wants to have
the others know the final details of their war plans. But, logically, there would be times "I don't really see where this problem has
anything to do with me," the CIA man said. "And, frankly, there are a lot of more important
things I could be doing." Ford, the physicist, glanced at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression
on his face, the look that meant he was about to do something decisive.
"Would you like to see the problem first-hand?"
The general asked, innocently. The CIA man took a quick look at his wristwatch. "O.K., If it doesn't take too long. It's late enough already." "It won't take very long, will it, Ford?"
The general said, getting out of his chair.
"Not very long," Ford agreed. "Only a lifetime." The CIA man grunted as they went to the doorway
and left the general's office. Going down the dark, deserted hallway, their
footsteps echoed hollowly. "I can't overemphasize the seriousness of
the problem," General LeRoy said to the CIA.
Man. "Eight ranking members of the General Staff
have either resigned their commissions or gone straight to the violent ward after just
one session with the computer." The CIA man scowled. "Is this area Secure?" General LeRoy's face turned red. "This entire building is as Secure as any
edifice in the Free World, mister.
And it's empty. We're the only living people inside here at
this hour. I'm not taking any chances." "Just want to be sure." "Perhaps if I explain the computer a little
more," Ford said, changing the subject, "you'll know what to expect." "Good idea," said the man from CIA. "We told you that this is the most modern,
most complex and delicate computer in the world ...
Nothing like it has ever been attempted
beforeanywhere." "I know that They don't have anything like
it," the CIA man agreed. "And you also know, I suppose, that it was
built to simulate actual war situations. We fight wars in this computer ... Wars with
missiles and bombs and gas.
Real wars, complete down to the tiniest detail. The computer tells us what will actually happen
to every missile, every city, every man ... Who dies, how many planes are lost, how many trucks
will fail to start on a cold morning, whether a battle is won or lost ..." General LeRoy interrupted. "The computer runs these analyses for both
sides, so we can see what's happening to Them, too." The CIA man gestured impatiently.
"War games simulations aren't new. You've been doing them for years." "Yes, but this machine is different," Ford
pointed out. "It not only gives a much more detailed war
game. It's the next logical step in the development
of machine-simulated war games." He hesitated dramatically.
"Well, what is it?" "We've added a variation of the electro-encephalograph
..." The CIA man stopped walking. "The electro-what?" "Electro-encephalograph. You know, a recording device that reads the
electrical patterns of your brain. Like the electro-cardiograph." "Oh." "But you see, we've given the EEG a reverse
twist.
Instead of using a machine that makes a recording
of the brain's electrical wave output, we've developed a device that will take the computer's
readout tapes, and turn them into electrical patterns that are put into your brain!" "I don't get it." General LeRoy took over. "You sit at the machine's control console. A helmet is placed over your head. You set the machine in operation.
You see the results." "Yes," Ford went on. "Instead of reading rows of figures from the
computer's printer ... You actually see the war being fought. Complete visual and auditory hallucinations.
You can watch the progress of the battles,
and as you change strategy and tactics you can see the results before your eyes." "The idea, originally, was to make it easier
for the General Staff to visualize strategic situations," General LeRoy said. "But every one who's used the machine has
either resigned his commission or gone insane," Ford added. The CIA man cocked an eye at LeRoy. "You've used the computer." "Correct." "And you have neither resigned nor cracked
up." General LeRoy nodded.
"I called you in." Before the CIA man could comment, Ford said,
"The computer's right inside this doorway. Let's get this over with while the building
is still empty." They stepped in. The physicist and the general showed the CIA
man through the room-filling rows of massive consoles. "It's all transistorized and subminiaturized,
of course," Ford explained.
"That's the only way we could build so much
detail into the machine and still have it small enough to fit inside a single building." "A single building?" "Oh yes; this is only the control section. Most of this building is taken up by the circuits,
the memory banks, and the rest of it." "Hm-m-m." They showed him finally to a small desk, studded
with control buttons and dials. The single spotlight above the desk lit it
brilliantly, in harsh contrast to the semidarkness of the rest of the room. "Since you've never run the computer before,"
Ford said, "General LeRoy will do the controlling.
You just sit and watch what happens." The general sat in one of the well-padded
chairs and donned a grotesque headgear that was connected to the desk by a half-dozen
wires. The CIA man took his chair slowly. When they put one of the bulky helmets on
him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. "This ...
This isn't going to ... Well, do
me any damage, is it?" "My goodness, no," Ford said. "You mean mentally? No, of course not. You're not on the General Staff, so it shouldn't
...
It won't ... Affect you the way it did the others. Their reaction had nothing to do with the
computer per se ..." "Several civilians have used the computer
with no ill effects," General LeRoy said. "Ford has used it many times." The CIA man nodded, and they closed the transparent
visor over his face.
He sat there and watched General LeRoy press
a series of buttons, then turn a dial. "Can you hear me?" The general's voice came muffled through the
helmet. "Yes," he said. "All right.
Here we go. You're familiar with Situation One-Two-One? That's what we're going to be seeing." Situation One-Two-One was a standard war game. The CIA man was well acquainted with it. He watched the general flip a switch, then
sit back and fold his arms over his chest.
A row of lights on the desk console began
blinking on and off, one, two, three ... Down to the end of the row, then back to the beginning
again, on and off, on and off ... And then, somehow, he could see it! He was poised incredibly somewhere in space,
and he could see it all in a funny, blurry-double-sighted, dream-like way. He seemed to be seeing several pictures and
hearing many voices, all at once.
It was all mixed up, and yet it made a weird
kind of sense. For a panicked instant he wanted to rip the
helmet off his head. It's only an illusion, he told himself, forcing
calm on his unwilling nerves. Only an illusion.
But it seemed strangely real. He was watching the Gulf of Mexico. He could see Florida off to his right, and
the arching coast of the southeastern United States. He could even make out the Rio Grande River.
Situation One-Two-One started, he remembered,
with the discovery of missile-bearing Enemy submarines in the Gulf. Even as he watched the whole areaas though
perched on a satellitehe could see, underwater and close-up, the menacing shadowy figure
of a submarine gliding through the crystal blue sea. He saw, too, a patrol plane as it spotted
the submarine and sent an urgent radio warning. The underwater picture dissolved in a bewildering
burst of bubbles.
A missile had been launched. Within seconds, another burstthis time
a nuclear depth chargeutterly destroyed the submarine. It was confusing. He was everyplace at once.
The details were overpowering, but the total
picture was agonizingly clear. Six submarines fired missiles from the Gulf
of Mexico. Four were immediately sunk, but too late. New Orleans, St.
Louis and three Air Force
bases were obliterated by hydrogen-fusion warheads. The CIA man was familiar with the opening
stages of the war. The first missile fired at the United States
was the signal for whole fleets of missiles and bombers to launch themselves at the Enemy. It was confusing to see the world at once;
at times he could not tell if the fireball and mushroom cloud was over Chicago or Shanghai,
New York or Novosibirsk, Baltimore or Budapest.
It did not make much difference, really. They all got it in the first few hours of
the war; as did London and Moscow, Washington and Peking, Detroit and Delhi, and many, many
more. The defensive systems on all sides seemed
to operate well, except that there were never enough anti-missiles. Defensive systems were expensive compared
to attack rockets.
It was cheaper to build a deterrent than to
defend against it. The missiles flashed up from submarines and
railway cars, from underground silos and stratospheric jets; secret ones fired off automatically
when a certain airbase command post ceased beaming out a restraining radio signal. The defensive systems were simply overloaded. And when the bombs ran out, the missiles carried
dust and germs and gas.
On and on. For six days and six firelit nights. Launch, boost, coast, re-enter, death. And now it was over, the CIA man thought.
The missiles were all gone. The airplanes were exhausted. The nations that had built the weapons no
longer existed. By all the rules he knew of, the war should
have been ended.
Yet the fighting did not end. The machine knew better. There were still many ways to kill an enemy. Time-tested ways.
There were armies fighting in four continents,
armies that had marched overland, or splashed ashore from the sea, or dropped out of the
skies. Incredibly, the war went on. When the tanks ran out of gas, and the flame
throwers became useless, and even the prosaic artillery pieces had no more rounds to fire,
there were still simple guns and even simpler bayonets and swords. The proud armies, the descendents of the Alexanders
and Caesars and Temujins and Wellingtons and Grants and Rommels, relived their evolution
in reverse.
The war went on. Slowly, inevitably, the armies split apart
into smaller and smaller units, until the tortured countryside that so recently had
felt the impact of nuclear war once again knew the tread of bands of armed marauders. The tiny savage groups, stranded in alien
lands, far from the homes and families that they knew to be destroyed, carried on a mockery
of war, lived off the land, fought their own countrymen if the occasion suited, and revived
the ancient terror of hand-wielded, personal, one-head-at-a-time killing. The CIA man watched the world disintegrate.
Death was an individual business now, and
none the better for no longer being mass-produced. In agonized fascination he saw the myriad
ways in which a man might die. Murder was only one of them. Radiation, disease, toxic gases that lingered
and drifted on the once-innocent winds, andfinallythe most efficient destroyer of them all: starvation.
Three billion people (give or take a meaningless
hundred million) lived on the planet Earth when the war began. Now, with the tenuous thread of civilization
burned away, most of those who were not killed by the fighting itself succumbed inexorably
to starvation. Not everyone died, of course. Life went on.
Some were lucky. A long darkness settled on the world. Life went on for a few, a pitiful few, a bitter,
hateful, suspicious, savage few. Cities became pestholes.
Books became fuel. Knowledge died. Civilization was completely gone from the
planet Earth. The helmet was lifted slowly off his head.
The CIA man found that he was too weak to
raise his arms and help. He was shivering and damp with perspiration. "Now you see," Ford said quietly, "why the
military men cracked up when they used the computer." General LeRoy, even, was pale. "How can a man with any conscience at all
direct a military operation when he knows that that will be the consequence?" The CIA man struck up a cigarette and pulled
hard on it.
He exhaled sharply. "Are all the war games ... Like that? Every plan?" "Some are worse," Ford said. "We picked an average one for you.
Even some of the 'brushfire' games get out
of hand and end up like that." "So ... What do you intend to do? Why did you call me in? What can I do?" "You're with CIA," the general said. "Don't you handle espionage?" "Yes, but what's that got to do with it?" The general looked at him. "It seems to me that the next logical step
is to make damned certain that They get the plans to this computer ...
Today I want to talk about the good, the bad
and the ugly when it comes to searching for property online. We've certainly come a long way from the old
days where we used to circle the classifieds in the newspaper and the agent controlled
all of the information. Its certainly changed with the internet
now! Combined with the fact that people are so
time poor and they're looking to be a borderless property investor or property buyer, it's
important that we actually do look online to give ourselves some research and some insights
into the properties. So, first of all, the good: For me, it's a big marketplace.
If you think about realestate.Com.Au or you
think about Domain, you think about home sales its where the market is. Granted, you still get the agent who advertises
in the local newspapers they will still advertise in the local magazines to expand
the exposure to the property but the majority of the agents are putting it online. So it's where the market actually exists! That's my number one good if you're not
looking online, you're missing most of the market. Now these portals make it very quick easy
and convenient for you to look at these properties.
Can you imagine trying to see the insides
of properties like they can? Multiple properties in an hour; you can literally
look at scores of properties. But if you're physically walking around, chances
are youd see two, three, maybe four at best, so it's just very, very quick, easy
and convenient to look online. The other thing is you get a very quick snapshot,
a very comprehensive overview. You've got the description, you've got the
floorplan, you've got heaps of photos, and youve got a map, in terms of the context
of where this property is in the overall of the suburb.
So you're getting lots and lots of information
in a very quick snapshot to determine, Hey look, I don't want to be in that part of the
suburb. If you're looking at the map or you look at
some photos, you can say, That color scheme doesn't actually work for me. So it's very, very fast and gives you access
to all that information. There's also a lot of free information that
you can get: rental sales, data, suburb history.
All of this information makes it very easy
for you particularly if you don't know the suburb or you're researching some new
opportunities for new suburbs this data makes it very, very easy for you to gather. It would be very, very difficult probably,
I'd argue, almost impossible to do that manually. The aggregation of this information that happens
online is unbelievably good. The other thing that's really good is you
can get a virtual tour.
I mean, if I'm sitting in, let's say somewhere
in Perth, and I want to look at a property in Adelaide or Brisbane or Canberra, I can
do a virtual tour very easily. The obvious one is to go on Google Maps and
have a look at the street view, but a lot of people don't realise the power of Google
Earth. I can actually do a flyover within the suburb. I can change the orientation that I'm looking
from.
I can zoom in very, very quickly, while also
getting into the street view. So that virtual tour is something you actually
can't do when physically inspecting the property. You would need a drone, or a helicopter, just
to get that bird's-eye view you get online. Also, you can research the locals.
You know, the suburb and the location where
are the schools, and what are the local businesses, and where can I go and get a cup of coffee
and what's the local park? I mean, what am I going to do in the suburb
when I'm not working? What am I going to do in my leisure time? What are the businesses Im going to interact
with? What are the types of people, the demographics? I can get all of this information online,
which you just cannot do if you're doing a physical inspection where would you get
access to that information really, really quickly? The other final thing for me is its 24/7. Let's say you're a shift worker and you get
home at midnight you have to wait till tomorrow to start looking at real estate. You can get online straightaway and can be
looking until 2 a.M. In the morning.
It is 24/7 research you can do straight away
and that'll never change. So there's lots and lots of good things that
come from searching online. In terms of the bad things: Searching is not researching. If you think of an analogy: if I'm looking
at a show and there's a farmer sitting next to me and we're looking at all their prized
cows all I see is animals with four legs that are either brown or black and white.
That's the variation for me; but that farmer
can look at that cow and see so many intricacies I would never even dream of. This is the same when it comes to looking
at real estate. I could be looking at a property and see different
things from someone who's a beginner, whos also looking at the same information. So searching is not researching.
So, just because it's convenient and you can
do it; it doesn't necessarily mean that's all you need to do. The other thing is the agent is always putting
their best foot forward. Their number one goal is to get you to inspect
the property. They want you to get out of your seat, get
in your car and go and have a look through the property.
So they're only putting the best photos up. They're only putting the positive reinforcing
aspects of the property in the description. I mean, you've never seen a feature photo
of the big gaping crack that's in the wall, which leads all the way to the roof. It just doesn't happen.
They don't put the negative photos into the
description and into the advertisement. So, it's important to understand that they
are putting their best foot forward, and there's more information than these to transpire. You just can't get that online. Things aren't always as they seem.
Think about the photo that's been digitally
altered, or think about the photo that's been taken from a wide-angle lens, which represents
a room to be much larger than it ordinarily is. It's just a lot smaller and they've made it
look bigger. Again, their goal is to get you to have an
inspection and put that positivity in. But it's only as strong as that weakest link.
So, if they are altering those images, it's
important to understand that this can only be rectified through the physical inspection. I mentioned before it's only as strong as
the weakest link. If the agent was to accidentally put it in
as two bathrooms and its only one, or they forgot to put a car space in when it actually
does have something, it means that you will have that property represented in a way that's
not reflective of what actually exists. So, the information you get online is only
as strong as the weakest link.
Finally, as good as Google is, and as good
as it is that I can see anywhere around the world, it's only as good as Google catchig
up with the photo. Think about a new subdivision or a new area,
which doesn't yet have any information that you can see online. Nothing will replace the physical inspection
in that particular circumstance. If there's any missing properties, you won't
be see any.
In terms of the ugly: For me, that's kind of What's missing?. The first thing is really around the feeling. What you cannot replace in a physical inspection
is the feeling of the house, the feeling of the suburb, the feeling of the layout that's
just something that you get only when you physically inspect the property. Secondly, you want to have the interaction
with the suburb, the surroundings, the agent you just don't get that online.
So it's important that you do the physical
inspection for that. Of course the local knowledge. You want to talk to the people in the area. Specifically, I like to go and talk to the
neighbors.
I want to ask them some intel what do
you know about why they're selling? Because remember my number-one priority is
to find out what the vendors motivation is, and I could probably fast-track that if
I talked to some people in the area who know these people are about to move out. I might get some really great intel, and I
just cannot do that by searching online. Of course, the final thing is around full
disclosure. You are still going to need to talk to the
agent and ask them specifics about a property that you just don't know.
There might be stuff in the contract that
you need to find out, there might be some specifics about why is the vendor selling,
you need to actually find that information out through talking to the agent and inspecting
the property you just can't get that information from our searching online. So there you have it! The good, the bad and the ugly. We've come a very long way since those days
when we used to circle in red around the properties in the classifieds and I think, importantly,
what we can do is a lot of preparation online. We can do a lot of DD (due diligence) sitting
it out in front of our computer in our chair, but nothing will beat a physical inspection
and it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical inspection by you you can actually get
a physical inspection by someone you trust with the transaction.
It could be a friend, a trusted relative or
it could be a professional like a buyer's agent who can inspect that property on your
behalf. But the main point here is: I wouldn't buy
property sight unseen without having your representative check the property physically. We've got to remember it's a high-value transaction
it's very expensive so it's important that we get it right because the recycle costs
of getting it wrong are very, very costly. So, there you go the good, the bad and the
ugly when it comes to searching online, So, why don't you leave me a comment below
and let me know what you think about this?.
Announcer: The American Enterprise Institute presents
the distinguished lecture series on the bBicentennial of the United States. Our host for this thought-provoking series
is Vermont Royster, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist with "The Wall Street Journal"
and Professor of Journalism and Public Affairs at the University of North Carolina. Vermont: I'm Vermont Royster with another
in the American Enterprise Institute distinguished lecture series on the American bicentennial. 1976 Marks America's 200th birthday.
There have been, there still are, and there
undoubtedly will be many setbacks, but the American experiment has withstood the test
of time, it's a success. The American Enterprise Institute a nonpartisan,
nonprofit research institution based in Washington, views that what our founding fathers had in
mind at the time of the revolution is still important to Americans today. In order to explore this connection between
our heritage and our present, the AEI has invited many of the nation's leading scholars
to share with us their views on the American Revolution, and how it still applies today. Today's lecturer is Dr.
Leo Marx, Literary
Critic, Intellectual Historian, and Professor of English and Americans Studies at Amherst
College. Dr. Marx delivers his lecture on the University
of Virginia at Charlottesville. He will speak on the American Revolution and
the American landscape, both of which are all represented at the University of Virginia.
The university was founded and designed by
Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Jefferson laid out the school to be what he
termed an Academical Village. On a large lawn, Jefferson placed 10 pavilions
connected by student dormitory. At the north end, Jefferson designed a rotunda,
which was a smaller and somewhat modified version of the Pantheon in Rome.
The dome of the rotunda was destroyed by fire
in 1895, it is now being restored for the American bicentennial. The central point in Jefferson Academical
Village concept is the lawn or what is called the quad on several other campuses. Each of the 10 pavilions surrounding the lwn
was based on a different classical style of architecture. It was Jefferson's idea that the different
styles would familiarize students with the basic forms of classical architecture.
Originally, professors were to live and teach
in the pavilions, and today a few honored professors still live there. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the
grounds at the University of Virginia are the so-called Serpentine Wall, which enclosed
the gardens around each pavilion. The walls were designed by Jefferson for both
their beauty and their strength. Since the walls are only one brick thick,
the curve of the design strengthens and stabilizes the entire structure.
The ingenious Mr. Jefferson made additional
use of the curve design. Since certain plants require less sunlight
than others, the curved shadows cast by the walls provide varying amounts of shade, providing
the proper amount of sunlight for the different types of plants in the garden. The major academic building on the ground
is Cabell Hall which was opened in 1899.
It was designed by architects Stanford White. Cabell Hall houses a major auditorium which
is the site of today's lecture by Dr. Leo Marx. Dr.
Marx is introduced by Dr. Robert D. Cross,
the Dean of the University of Virginia Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Robert Cross: Tolstoy once made a crucial distinction
between thinkers who were hedgehogs and those who were foxes.
And Isaiah Berlin, applying this distinction
to historian,s concluded that he was a hedgehog who had one big idea, a fox abounded what
one called insights and tricky historical maneuvers. I'm not enough of a biologist to declare exactly
in which category to place our speaker today. I'm assuming I would grant him qualifications
in both categories. Every so often an enormously important book
emerges and such was our speaker's book, "The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the
Pastoral Ideal in America." But is in the best sense a foxy book as well
as a hedgehog book.
Its implications are not only immediate but
long run, and not only profound but profoundly pertinent. Leo Marx is not bound by any terrain or any
dogma, but the application of intelligence, insight, and some very big truths indeed. I am pleased to present my former tutor, present
friend, and after he speaks I'll decide if I still agree with him,
Professor Leo Marx, Professor of English and Americans Studies Amherst College. Leo Marx: Thank you, Robert, you said you
were getting your arm back.
Is that it? Ladies and gentlemen, although the subject
I have been invited to discuss this evening is unusual, it may not strike you as wholly
unfamiliar. I say it is unusual because we do not ordinarily
think of a landscape as having political consequences. A landscape, after all, is an image of topography. Does it make any sense to attribute revolutionary
force to a topographical image? How would it acquire such force? To my knowledge, no political philosopher
ever has addressed himself to these questions.
But though the subject seems unusual when
considered in the abstract, simply as a concept, the actual title of tonight's lecture, "The
American Revolution and the American Landscape" sounds familiar. If anything, it has a conventional school
room air about it, like an idea of revolution that we learned in the first grade along with
the words, "To America, the beautiful." The oddity of the concept of a revolutionary
landscape seems to fade when we specify the American Revolution and the American landscape. To indicate what I mean, suppose for a moment
that we are not now assembled in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the university designed by Mr.
Jefferson, but in Paris, in a setting designed say for Louis Qautorze. And suppose that the revolution we are preparing
to celebrate is not the one that began on the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts
in April 1775, but rather the one that began at the Bastille in July 1789.
Is it conceivable that we would have gathered
here to discuss the French Revolution and the French landscape? I think not. The point is that our subject not only is
peculiar, but as we used to say with more pride than we can muster nowadays, peculiarly
American. This is not to deny that the French mind like
that of any self-conscious people, has in a degree been shaped by the place it inhabits. As Americans however, we seem to be particularly
receptive to the idea of the native landscape as having had a special influence upon the
formation of our national identity.
The reason is obvious, from the time they
first saw the new world, Europeans conceived of it symbolically as a possible setting for
a new beginning. It is the unique tangibility of this ideal
landscape so unspoiled, so rich, so beautiful that accounts for its exceptionally powerful
hold upon the native imagination. This fact is reflected in the work of all
our classic American writers Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Mark
Twain, Frost, Faulkner, Hemingway, where the landscape is normally a setting or a backdrop,
but an active shaping ingredient in the consciousness of men and women. If our writers are correct, the landscape
is an important clue to the understanding of American thought and behavior.
Let me illustrate with a familiar example
F. Scott Fitzgerald's fable, "The Great Gatsby," which is an enjoying an immense vogue right
now. As it happens in fact, the new film version
of Gatsby the third film to be made of the novel is having its first showing in New York
this evening. Today, we tend to read Gatsby as a tragic
fable, written in the peculiar hybrid mode of pastoral romance developed by American
writers.
But it also can be read, interestingly enough,
as a kind of mystery story. I want to call your attention to the mystery
and to the remarkable device that Fitzgerald uses to dispel that mystery as a clue to the
relation between landscape and revolution in America. The story is told, you will recall, by Nick
Carraway, a young man from Minnesota who comes east in the spring of 1922 to make his fortune
in Wall Street. The novel turns on Nick's effort to understand
the behavior of his legendary mysterious neighbor the former James Gatz of North Dakota.
To Nick, Gatsby represents, as he says, "Everything
for which I have an unaffected scorn." What he scorns is Gatsby's vulgar display
of wealth, his ostentatious parties on that blue lawn, the burnished cream-colored car
with its burgeoning appurtenances, not to mention he's ruthless, even criminal methods
of getting rich. And yet Nick cannot help admiring the man,
above all he admires Gatsby's single-minded devotion to one ideal, his absolute commitment
to winning back Daisy, his first love. It is the man's extraordinary gift for hope,
his belief in the possibility of erasing the past. The five years since his rhapsodic affair
with Daisy that leads Nick to tell Gatsby, "Finally, you are worth a whole damn bunch
put together." But the truth is that until the very end Nick
is unable to make up his mind about the man, he cannot fathom that mysterious blend of
moral obtuseness and idealism.
And so all through the summer, he wavers between
feelings of revulsion and admiration. It is only when the summer's over after Gatsby
has been murdered, that Nick finally discovers the missing clue. "Just before going back to Minnesota, his
trunk packed, he returns to the shore near Gatsby's house. It is evening, and in the moonlight, he sees
the landscape as the imagines it once had appeared to arriving Europeans.
And only then, does he find an explanation
for Gatsby's contradictory and self-destructive behavior." "Most of the big shore places were closed
now," he says "And there were hardly any whites except the shadowy moving glow of a ferry
boat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential
houses began to melt away, until gradually I became aware of the old island here that
flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes. A fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made
way for Gatsby's house had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human
dreams." "For a transitory enchanted moment, man must
have held his breath in the presence of this continent compelled into an aesthetic contemplation,
he neither understood nor desired, face-to-face for the last time in history with something
commensurate to his capacity for wonder." What this extraordinary only resonant passage
implies is nothing less than a theory of the origins of the American character and, by
extension, of our national behavior.
It says that what happened to Gatsby, how
we came to be the man he was, and his eventual fate can only be understood in the light of
the special way that Europeans perceive the New World. The side of an unspoiled, unstoried green
continent, nurtured certain propensities of thought and action which are still operative
five centuries after Columbus's first landfall. It is important to notice also that Nick describes
that flowering landscape back of the vanished trees as having pandered to the dreams of
his prototypical American. With that one devastating word, Fitzgerald
quietly insinuates a criticism of the dream, which the landscape evoked.
Vermont: We're watching Dr. Leo Marx discussing
the American Revolution and the American landscape. Dr. Marx's thesis that the native landscape
of America has had a special influence upon the formation of our national identity.
In just one moment, Dr. Marx continues. While many students in Virginia and other
universities often spend a midnight dreary, while they ponder the weak and weary, the
student who did it in this room was the author of those lines Edgar Allan Poe. Fittingly, Poe had room number 13.
Poe wrote to his foster father that he'd paid
$15 for the room in rent, and then he spent another $12 for his bed, and $12 for the room
furniture. Today, the Poe room is maintained as it was
in the 1800s as an exhibit on the university ground. We now return to Dr. Leo Marx who is speaking
not far from this room.
Dr. Leo: If there is anything distinctive
about the American experience of the land, it is the brevity of our tenure and the fact
that we often made the land a commodity before using it as a habitation. "The land was ours," in Robert Frost's words,
"before we were the lands." So far from having a particularly enduring
affection and attachment to the places we inhabit, Americans probably are the least
rooted, the most casually nomadic of modern peoples. Moreover, the nation's record as a user of
forests, grasslands, wildlife, and water sources in the 19th century is, in the judgment of
one historian, the most violent and the most destructive of any written in the long history
of civilization.
No, the unique significance of the landscape
in the American consciousness is not to be confused with reverence for the land as such. Rather, as Fitzgerald understood, its significance
is chiefly symbolic. It is a central feature of our midst of national
origins. According to that myth, it is the landscape
that invited Europeans to disengage themselves from a constricted social environment, and
to begin a simpler, freer, more fulfilling life in the unstoried terrain of North America.
When Nick gazes at the shore and the moonlight,
when the imagines how it looked to the first Europeans, he suddenly recognizes the origin
of Gatsby's quote, "heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." Like, Columbus or the Dutch sailors or the
millions who followed them, Gatsby believes that tomorrow, any tomorrow, we shall erase
the past, and begin a new life. The sort of life that only exceptional wealth,
beauty, and freedom can provide. If Americans have a peculiar inclination to
experience the world in this way, it is because the idea of a new beginning once had, or at
least seem to have had, such a credible basis in topographical fact. That unspoiled, unstoried continent once had
been there, a tangible landscape of limitless possibilities, and it informed everything
that Europeans did when they came to America.
To Europeans, the most important physical
attribute of the American landscape probably was space itself, real, open, seemingly boundless
space. It is worth recalling that the beginning of
interest in landscape as a subject, exemplified by the painting of landscape for its own sake,
coincided with the age of exploration. Before that time, European art and literature
seems to reflect a sense of being hemmed in, confined to old, used, closed spaces. When the idealizing imagination of Europeans
had taken flight, it had tended to move in time rather than space.
Such dreams of Felicity as we identify with
the golden age or Eden, or Arcadia, draw most of their vitality from their location in time. It is their temporal distance, their pastness
rather than a particular topography that gives these ideal worlds most of their power. And a similar point can be made about the
future-oriented utopias of the Renaissance. But the availability of space outside of Europe
and particularly in the hospitable climate of North America changed all that.
Here was usable space that enabled Europeans
literally to act out the most ancient primordial urge to get away, to take a trip and to begin
life again in unspoiled landscape. When Tom Paine wrote "Common Sense" late in
1775, he had been in the colonies for only one year, yet that most effective of revolutionary
pamphlets is drenched in a similar kind of topographical awareness. "The Reformation," Paine writes, "was preceded
by the discovery of America: As if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the
persecuted in future years when home should afford neither friendship nor safety." In addition to the seeming emptiness of American
space, hence its availability as an asylum for the oppressed, Paine emphasized the monumental
dimensions of this virgin landscape. "Throughout," he writes, "as if there were
some necessary affinity between greatness and size, the sheer extent of the continental
terrain, and the greatness of the American cause." I quote "The sun never shone on a cause of
greater worth, 'tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or kingdom, but of a
continent of at least one-eighth part of the habitable globe." It is worth noting, incidentally, that the
words "continent" and "continental" became more and more popular with the Americans as
their revolutionary fervor increased.
When the delegates for the first Congress
Assembled in Philadelphia in September 1774, they did not refer to that body as the Continental
Congress, but that is how it came to be known along with Continental Currency and the Continental
Army and so on. The mere verbal identification of the revolutionary
cause with the huge North American land mass was a source of courage and hope. It obviously was reassuring for John Adams
to write in another letter to his wife, a curious sentence like this one, I quote "The
continent is really in earnest in defending the country." There is a certain pathos, it seems to me,
along with the unmistakable brag, about the popularity of the word continent. Here, after 150 years, were this spokesman
for this thin line of colonial settlements still largely confined to a narrow strip along
the Eastern Seaboard, describing themselves as an entire continent in revolt.
It was not difficult for a brilliant polemicist
like Paine to invest the American landscape with revolutionary significance. In "Common Sense," he repeatedly translates
indisputable geographical facts into arguments for independence. I quote, "'tis repugnant to reason," he writes,
"to the universal order of things, to all examples from former ages to suppose that
this continent can long remain subject to any external power, reconciliation is now
a fallacious dream." Like Franklin, Paine loved to taunt the British
with their presumptions smallness, "There is something absurd," he writes, "in supposing
a continent to be perpetually governed by an island." Topography, after all, reveals those laws
of nature to which the Declaration will appeal as a sanction for revolution. "In no instant," Paine wrote, "has nature
made the satellite larger than its primary planet.
And as England and America, with respect to
each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different
systems, England to Europe, America to itself." A large part of what Paine meant by "Common
Sense" is a simple environmentalism, the assumption that a man's interest inevitably are determined
by the place he inhabits. "It is folly to argue," Paine writes, "that
Americans should accept the royal veto because British subjects living in England accept
it." I quote, "England being the King's residence
and America not so, makes quite another case. The king's negative here is 10 times more
dangerous and fatal than it can be in England, for there he will scarcely refuse consent
to a bill for putting England into a stronger state of defense as possible. And in America, he would never suffer such
a bill to be passed." Vermont: Dr.
Leo Marx has been discussing
the effect of the landscape of America upon our development as a nation. In just one moment, Dr. Marx will return. Students of Virginia are surrounded by some
examples of outstanding statuary on the gardens of the university.
This statue entitled "Homer and His Young
Guide" was done by Sir Moses Ezekiel, and so was the surrendering of Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson statue was cast in Rome and
presented to the state of Virginia by the sculptor. Jefferson stands on a replica of the Liberty
Bell, and the figures around in the bell represent liberty, justice, religious freedom, and human
freedom. The beautiful grounds of the university form
a fitting backdrop for our AEI lecturer Dr.
Leo Marx, who is discussing the American Revolution
and the American landscape. Leo Marx: Turning now to the second attribute
of the American landscape, its seeming timelessness, I want to suggest how it also contributed
to the idea of a revolutionary new beginning. But the spatial and temporal characteristics
of the landscape lent credibility to the cause of revolution in precisely opposite ways. The vast forests, mountains, rivers, prairies,
and plains of North America provided tangible images of boundlessness.
They provided real objects for the representation
of ideal space. But that same undeveloped landscape divested
time of its usual landmarks. Compared to the terrain of Britain and Western
Europe with its cities, roads, monuments, and ruins, the American landscape was unmarked
by the usual traces of history, or at least what the white man of Europe considered to
be history. The fact that Indians lacked a written record
of the past was one of the many reasons that Europeans assigned them to the realm of wild
nature or savagery rather than to human civilization.
During the Revolutionary era, Americans often
referred to their country as an asylum, by which they meant a sanctuary from the forms
of constraint and repression inherited from the past. It was a landscape that invited epithets like
unstoried, and immemorial. Words that indicate how this place carried
the mind beyond the usual limits of memory, tradition, and history. It was a terrain that nebuly turned thought
from the past to the future.
It implied that the grip of the past upon
the present is not a fixed condition of human existence and that a fresh start is always
possible. By 1776, this potentially radical idea had
been translated into a specific program for dissolving the political bands which connected
Americans to the past. It issued an revolutionary act of separation. But if the unstoried landscape reinforced
the separatist or centrifugal aspect of the revolution, it also lent an impetus to its
political corollary, the idea of founding an entirely new republic.
A landscape untouched by history inevitably
had aroused fears of lawlessness, and the instinctive response of many Englishman was
to go back to first principles and establish a new political order. A large part of the success that we claim
for the American Revolution, can be attributed to the fact that it took place in an undeveloped
landscape. Most revolutionary movements no matter how
much they have aspired to anti-authoritarian ideals, have had to struggle against entrenched
power and authority. And in the course of the struggle, they often
have been compelled to recreate the kind of centralized power they initially had repudiated.
But in large measure, the old order against,
which the American revolutionist were fighting, was across the Atlantic. Besides, the very newness of the colonies
tended to diminish the influence of the wealth, status, and power, that some Americans had
acquired by 1776. Hence, the American revolution was won without
generating the kind of class hatred, fanaticism, absolutism, and violence, that often has undermined
revolutionary idealism. Unlike the French, Russian, or Chinese, revolutionists,
the Americans did not have to build their new order on the ruins of an old one.
Even at the time, the Americans understood
why there's had been a particularly fortunate revolution. When a group of French officers who had fought
beside the Americans were embarking for their return to Europe, one Bostonian issued this
warning, I quote, "Do not let your hopes be inflamed by our triumphs on this virgin soil,
you will carry our sentiments with you. But if you try to plant them in a country
that has been corrupt for centuries, you will encounter obstacles more formidable than ours. Our liberty has been won with blood, you will
have to shed it in torrents] before liberty can take root in the old world." The third attribute of the North American
landscape that contributed to the revolutionary spirit along with it spatial and temporal
character, was the promise of economic fulfillment.
To gaze upon what Columbus called those very
fruitful fields admirably adapted for tillage, pasture, and habitation was to imagine an
escape from the chronic scarcity which Europeans had assumed to be a permanent fact of life. In Jefferson's language, the unique thing
about America was, and I quote, "The lovely equality which the poor enjoy with the rich." Our term "middle class" lacks the resonance
of this 18th century middling concept, for the men of the revolution had moral, cultural,
and political, as well as economic implications. And they all were figured forth by the image
of a terrain midway between a decadent Europe and a savage frontier. The Republic of the middle state was to be...
Excuse me.
The Republic of the middle state was to be
an almost pastoral society of small property holders. Men who would be satisfied to fulfill the
austere neoclassical ideal of economic sufficiency. It is this moderate sensibility which distinguishes
the revolutionists of 1776, from those who staged most other revolutions. No other revolution has been fought by men
in so little danger of real deprivation, or so unprovoked by the injustice of people living
lives of luxury with insight of desperate poverty.
Just as the American landscape represented
freedom from constraint in space and in time, it represented the scarcely credible possibility
of freedom from want. But of all the implications of the American
landscape which nurtured the revolutionary spirit of a new beginning, the most profoundly
effective, if also the most elusive, was philosophical. Here, I refer to the capacity of the landscape
to represent the concept of nature itself. When Europeans journeyed into the wilderness
to establish new communities, they were beginning again returning to nature in a quite literal
sense.
And when in 1776, the Congress voted to declare
the independence of the colonies, they faced the issue of beginning again in an abstract
political and philosophical sense. How would they justify breaking the law and
resorting to violence? This was the bedrock philosophic issue with
which the Congress confronted the committee of five, Messrs Jefferson, Adams, Franklin,
Sherman, and Livingston, when it directed them to draw up the official proclamation
of independence. In effect, these men were asked to provide
a reasoned case on behalf of behavior which they themselves would have described not long
before as criminal. They were asked to justify acts which they
knew would really be regarded by many of their contemporaries as treason and murder.
But the fact is that they had very little
difficulty in marshaling their arguments. They announced to the world that they were
entitled to make a revolution, to alter or abolish the existing government by in the
familiar yet seldom understood phrase the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God." This is not to suggest that the idea had emanated
directly from the native landscape, or that Mr. Jefferson had plucked it like some ideological
flower from his garden. But it was ready at hand as everyone knows
in the language of the natural rights philosophy, so effectively propounded by John Locke almost
a century before.
To justify an unlawful seizure of power, Locke
had asked the Englishman to suppose a hypothetical situation in which they found themselves living
outside of politically defined social space in what he called a state of nature. His brilliant notion was that when we try
to imagine such a return to nature, we are more likely to see the purpose of government
in proper perspective. We then recognize that government is not a
natural necessity like air, food, water, clothing, or shelter. Men form governments for self-protection,
and it follows therefore that governments exist to serve men rather than the other way
around.
When a government ceases to provide that protection,
men have a right derived from their essential being, from that initial state of nature,
to alter or abolish it. They have a natural right to organize a revolution. In making this argument, Locke came close
to deifying the idea of nature, by which he meant a set of abstract principles or laws
governing the universe and accessible to human reason. That such laws exist had been proven beyond
all doubt by the astonishing discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
Although science had discovered the physical
principles of natural order and harmony, their political counterparts had yet to be fully
apprehended, and it was to fill that gap that Locke offered his theory. But if Englishman of the 18th century were
responsive to the doctrine of natural rights, consider for a moment how much more it meant
to their colonial relatives. For a century and a half, the colonist been
accustomed to thinking of themselves as living if not in a state of nature, well, then, at
a considerable distance from the centers of urban civilization. Americans were indisputably, irrevocably provincials.
And during the revolution, they embraced that
idea. The pervasive environmentalism of the age
enabled them to make a virtue of provinciality. For after all, if thought and behavior is
in large measure determined by the environment, and if the ultimate principles of order and
harmony lie hidden behind the mask of nature, then an American obviously was far more likely
to gain access to those principles than a Londoner or a Parisian. "Thus the American landscape effected a virtual
religious conversion when Englishman set foot on American soil," said Creve Coeur, "they
experience a kind of resurrection, they become new men." This idea accorded perfectly with the criticism
of a corrupt society developed by disaffected Englishman at home, adapted to American needs
the standard viewpoint of the neoclassic, and radical wig social criticism meant that
course native homespun like provincial manners was more natural, honest, and virtuous than
imported silk or a London coffeehouse sophistication.
Vermont: Dr. Leo Marx has been pointing out
that the American landscape, its vast open spaces and its promise of abundance, was one
of the major reasons for the great migration here from Europe in the days before the revolution. In just one moment, he will continue. On Edgar Allan Poe's day, the dormitory rooms
and the ranges and pavilions that surround the Great Lawn at the University of Virginia,
were the customary living quarters for all of the students.
Today, those 109 rooms are considered a place
of honor. They're occupied by graduates students, upper-class
or honor students, and a select few others, who have made some outstanding contribution
to the university. Although all the rooms are centrally heated,
each of the honor rooms has its own fireplace. Students enjoy using these original fireplaces,
they provide their own firewood which is stacked neatly outside each doorway.
Dr. Leo Marx is about to conclude his lecture
with a warning about the ecology of America and the future of the American revolution. Leo Marx: In America, as in Republican Rome,
access to a more natural rural setting was thought to be conducive to sound, anti-monarchy
views, at a time when Englishman believed that the simple life repose and contemplation
in the countryside helped to breed Republican manners. The American landscape inevitably was perceived
as a seedbed of Republican virtue.
What I have been trying to suggest is that
the topographical awareness of Americans coincided with John Locke's philosophic argument on
behalf of revolution. Even in the 17th century, he had had some
glimpse of this truth, in the beginning, he wrote, "All the world was America. When Englishman migrated, they, in effect,
are approximating a return to that state of nature in which men are best able to perceive
self-evident truth." The Lockian doctrine of natural rights thus
provided a philosophical confirmation of a viewpoint that seemed to arise almost spontaneously
from American soil. If the former attributes of the native landscape
I have been discussing have a common significance, it is, most simply put, the idea of freedom
from constraint, the apparent limitlessness of space, the seeming absence of history,
the promise of abundance, the accessibility of nature's God.
All of these were made visible, physically
attainable, or so it seemed, by the American landscape. This was the green beacon that attracted millions
of English and European migrants to the new world. The colonists who rebelled against Britain
in 1776, were a self-selected population of men and women, with a special responsiveness
to the idea of a fresh start. Either they themselves or their ancestors
had at some point been willing to leave an old organized society, and begin a new life
in the fresh green terrain of the new world.
In conclusion, and with the approaching bicentennial
in view, I would like now to briefly consider what has happened to this myth of a political
new beginning in the two centuries since the revolution. To that end, I want to remind you once again
of F. Scott Fitzgerald's image of the American landscape with which I began. When the narrator Nick Carraway imagines the
old island that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes he goes on to say that the fresh green
land pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of human dreams.
With that long shocking verb, Fitzgerald,
to repeat, insinuates a dark view of the fate of American idealism, to pander is to minister
to base passions. In other words, the magnificent landscape
has had two quite different effects upon the American consciousness. Initially it fostered a spiriting vision like
Gatsby's extraordinary gift for hope. And in 1976, that meant a revolutionary commitment
to the idea of separation from England and the establishment of a more generous free
republic than any known to Europe.
But at the same time, a landscape pandered
to an illusion which has well-nigh destroyed that hope that revolutionary commitment just
as it destroyed Jay Gatsby. Is there any chance of getting a glass of water
before I choke? Leo Marx: To be more specific, consider the
contradictory influences of the image of landscape as empty boundless space. It inspired the men of the revolution to create
a society dedicated to the proposition, as Lincoln later would put it, that all men are
created equal. But as it turned out, the same image ministered
to self-serving ethnocentric and racist behavior.
There was no place in that imaginary unspoiled
landscape for the Indians who thus could be removed along with the trees that made way
for Gatsby's palatial house. It is worth noting incidentally that it was
a black American Stokely Carmichael, Spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,
who reminded us of the unmistakably, if unconsciously, ethnocentric history lesson we teach our children
with the simple statement "Columbus discovered America." If there was no place in this myth of national
origins for the Indians, neither was there one for the blacks who came to the new world,
not in order to be more free, but to be enslaved. In practice, the more ample life for all people
figured by American space, was interpreted to mean a more ample life for men of white
European descent. Thank you very much.
By the same token, the sense of being out
of historical time in America had both creative and destructive consequences. The image of a landscape unmarked by history
lent an impetus to the revolutionary idealism embodied in the Declaration of Independence. But it also encouraged Europeans to entertain
the illusion that when they crossed the Atlantic they somehow purged their age-old tendencies
toward aggression, domination, and conquest. It encouraged them to believe that in America
they might create a classless conflict-free, peaceful Republic, like the Edenic world that
presumably existed before history began.
There is a telling passage in "The Great Gatsby"
when Nick tries to persuade Gatsby that he cannot expect Daisy simply to erase the five
years she has been married to Tom Buchanan. I quote, "'You cannot repeat the past,' Nick
says. "Cannot repeat the past?" He, Gatsby, cried incredulously. "'Well, of course, you can.
I'm going to fix everything just the way it
was before.'" This idea that it is possible at any moment
to race time, to recapture an ideal untainted past, and to start again is traceable to the
myth of national origins. It accounts for the often noted American propensity
for strategies of denial or avoidance. When we have cut down all the trees on a piece
of land or polluted a river or made a city unlivable, our native instinct often has been
to move out and start somewhere else. A contemporary sociologist Philip Slater has
named this habit of thinking that is the idea the complicated problems can be flushed away,
the toilet assumption of American thought.
It is a dangerous self-deluding tendency and
one that is served to deflect attention and energy imagination from the complex problems
that would have to be solved in order to make the ideals of the American Revolution attainable
in our own time. So, too, the promise of abundance, symbolized
by the American landscape, has had the unforeseen effect of diminishing revolutionary hope. The patriots of 1776, envisaged a society
that might make possible for the first time in history, freedom from want. They hoped to create a community distinguished
by a relative equality of condition in which no one would be too rich or too poor.
But in fact, the seemingly inexhaustible resources
symbolized by the landscape gave rise to a quite different passion for an endlessly rising
rate of economic production and consumption. Our natural wealth indeed has ministered to
those very base passions greed, selfish acquisitiveness, and wasteful luxury in the face of acute deprivation
that the Founding Fathers identified with the decadent European aristocracy. A primary source of the disenchantment with
the decadent...Excuse me. A primary source of the disenchantment with
the American dream that informs our literature in "The Great Gatsby," for example, is Fitzgerald's
savage portrayal of the narrow self-serving mentality of the very rich in America.
"'They were callous people,' Nick says of
Tom and Daisy. "They smashed up things in creatures and then
retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept
them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.'" But of all the base passions to which the
landscape ministered, perhaps the most destructive has been our excessive belief in American
differences. It was only a short step from the exhilarating
revolutionary spirit with its deep sense of America's exceptional good fortune, to an
exaggerated and self-righteous view of the uniqueness of native virtue. As I noted earlier, the return of Europeans
to a more natural environment, if not to that pure state of nature in which all truth becomes
self-evident, often was regarded as providing access to ultimate, almost sacred, meanings
and values.
In less pretentious terms freedom from the
constraints of European convention and scarcity made possible a new sort of person more spontaneous,
forthright, easy, good-hearted or in a word, as we say, more natural than people elsewhere. Hence any purpose adopted by Americans is
likely to be perceived by Jay Gatsby's purpose as the following of a grail. The initial identification of the national
consciousness with nature had the effect of sacralizing national aspirations. Although the attributes of the landscape encouraged
Americans to believe they were creating a unique society marked by a new revolutionary
conception of freedom and equality, they were, in fact, recreating many of those European
conditions against which the revolution had been fought in the first place.
As we approach the bicentennial celebration,
it would be a mistake to deny on all the ways in which the Republic of today falls short
of the goals envisaged by Jefferson and his colleagues in 1776. If that green light at the end of Daisy's
dock is a sadly diminished emblem of what the new world landscape once had represented,
so has our commitment to the ideals of the revolution been diminished. For at least a century after 1776, the United
States was the inspiration of people struggling for freedom throughout the world. But today, in many places, men and women with
aspirations not unlike those of the patriots of '76, regard the United States as the enemy
rather than a friend of revolutionary egalitarianism, and not without reason.
Within this country, moreover, the attitudes
toward the concept of revolution also have changed. In recent years, the word itself has regained
a measure of its appeal for numbers of disaffected Americans. Once again, some Americans students, blacks,
and others are thinking about revolution as a feasible means of achieving political ends. But the significant fact is that they are
contemplating a revolution directed against our own institutions, our own government.
And so all of these reflections bring me back
finally to the way F. Scott Fitzgerald unlocked the mystery of Jay Gatsby's fate. It was from the landscape that Nick learned
what destroyed Gatsby. In the end, he realized that the myth of national
origins which gave rise to those dreams of ecstatic fulfillment also destroyed the dreamer.
To be sure the myth always had forced to delusions,
but in the beginning, before settlement was completed, they had had a much more credible
basis in fact. I quote, "'And as I sat there," says Nick,
'brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out
the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn,
and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.'" And then just here in the pause between two
sentences, Nick, at last, is able to explain the mystery of the failure of American hopes. He now knows something that Gatsby had not
known and that something has led to Gatsby's destruction.
"'He did not know," says Nick of Gatsby, "that
it, the dream was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city
where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.'" I take this to mean that the vision of possibilities
figured forth by the American landscape, if it ever was achievable, was closest to realization
when the Republic began. Since that time, we have neglected the responsibility
of bringing it up to date that is of translating it into a language appropriate for a society
that no longer has access to an unspoiled unstoried landscape. In preparation for 1976, it is instructive
to read "The Great Gatsby" as a cautionary fable. It may remind us why, and how, we have become
distracted from our own generous revolutionary ideas.
And it may yet encourage us to change direction
and complete America's uncompleted revolution. Vermont: We've been listening to Dr. Leo Marx,
discussing the American Revolution and the American landscape. Dr.
Marx reminisces that as Americans destroyed
and diminished our natural resources, we have also diminished our commitment to the goals
of the American Revolution. This lecture has been one in a series presented
by the American Enterprise Institute, dealing with many aspects and many points of view
regarding the American Revolution, and its effect on all of us today. If you would like a copy of Dr. Marx's lecture
or the entire series, write the American Enterprise Institute, that's AEI, Post Office Box 19191,
Washington, DC, 20036.
Until next time, this is Vermont Royster. Thank you for joining us..
