Je préfère les sports d’èquipe.

I prefer individual sports

Je préfère les sports individuels

It is good for the body and the mind

C’est bon pour le corps et le mental.

Reasons to do sport 2

Make a multiple choice quiz for my year 8 science students based on the science in this transcript from a video: 3°C 0:04 It can be the difference between snow and sleet 0:08 Wearing a jacket or not 0:11 In your day-to-day life, it may not seem significant 0:15 But 3°C of global warming would be catastrophic 0:20 Heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation, even fire 0:25 3°C of warming is really disastrous 0:28 The scary thing is, the world is well on its way there 0:32 Since the industrial revolution, the Earth has warmed between 1.1°C and 1.3°C 0:40 This is a problem that babies you pass in the street will have to live with 0:46 Children born today... 0:47 ...are up to seven times more likely to face extreme weather than their grandparents 0:52 If global temperatures do rise by 3°C... 0:55 ...what would their world look like? Climate change is already having devastating effects 1:03 Rising sea levels 1:05 Desertification 1:07 Hollywood has always enjoyed imagining the end of the world 1:11 While blockbusters like this are clearly fiction... 1:14 ...this film will show the scenario we all face... 1:17 ...unless more drastic measures are taken to stop burning fossil fuels 1:30 In some parts of the world the effects of inaction are already clear 1:35 The slums of Bangladesh’s capital are filling up with climate migrants 1:41 Minara comes from Bhola District, an area in southern Bangladesh 1:46 There, like many other parts of the country... 1:49 ...rivers swollen by heavier rain and melting Himalayan glaciers... 1:53 ...are washing away people’s homes 1:56 Many, like her, have lost everything 2:00 Our home in Bhola had endless amounts of land 2:03 There was lots of space for farming, we had a spacious house 2:08 There were different types of fruits, vegetation and trees growing at home 2:12 We used to eat the fruit from our own trees 2:18 I can’t eat them now because they don't exist anymore 2:21 Since the river flooded for the third time, I had to flee to Dhaka 2:26 Life was much better back home 2:29 It was unbearable to live through, truly intolerable 2:33 We didn’t have the time to save anything at all 2:38 1.1°C to 1.3°C of global warming has already transformed Minara’s life 2:45 It’s one of the reasons why so many migrants like her... 2:47 ...are moving to the city each year... 2:50 ...nearly 400,000 according to the last estimate 2:53 And climate models show there could be much worse to come How climate modelling works 3:02 Climate scientist Joeri Rogelj... 3:04 ...has spent the last ten years modelling future climate scenarios... 3:08 ...for the United Nations 3:10 The models we use to carry out this exercise... 3:13 ...really represent the state of the art... 3:15 ...of our current knowledge of climate change and where we are heading 3:19 Joeri’s projections use data collected by hundreds of scientists around the world 3:26 Here this is the 3°C level... 3:28 ...and so there is at least a one-in-four chance that under current policies... 3:32 ...we would hit 3°C by the end of the century 3:36 This is just one of the scenarios Joeri looks at 3:40 Another one imagines that all policy promises are kept 3:44 The most optimistic assumes that all promises have been kept... 3:47 ...and net-zero targets are met 3:50 Where our best estimate ends up around 2°C at the end of the century... 3:54 ...there is still a one-in-20 chance that we end up with 3°C instead 3:59 One would not be entering a plane if there is a one-in-20 chance... 4:03 ...that the plane will crash Nowhere is safe from global warming 4:07 A rise of 3°C would affect everyone 4:10 Even wealthy cities in rich countries wouldn’t be immune to the consequences 4:15 European capitals like Paris and Berlin... 4:18 ...would bake under more extreme heatwaves 4:22 Frequent storm-surges in New York could turn parts of the city desolate 4:27 In many ways, cities magnify, intensify climate events 4:33 Cities are hotter than the places around them... 4:36 ...they tend to be more vulnerable to flooding 4:39 And you can get a really bad event in a city in a way that you can’t in the countryside 4:46 And because of their denser populations... 4:49 ...disasters in a city affect far more people 4:52 Some cities might be badly prepared for the changes coming 4:56 But they have the means to adapt 4:59 Cities tend to be wealthier than surrounding places 5:03 They have a lot of amenities 5:05 A city that has taken seriously the risks of a 3°C world... 5:08 …wouldn’t necessarily be a worse place to be in a 3°C world 5:12 But a city that hasn’t prepared for these sort of eventualities... 5:16 ...that might be a really nasty place The impact of prolonged droughts 5:20 So far, many developed cities have got off lightly... 5:24 ...but some rural parts of the world are suffering disproportionately 5:29 Smallholders—small-scale farmers—are particularly vulnerable to climate change 5:35 And there are over 600 million around the world 5:38 Smallholders with farms under two hectares... 5:40 ...produce around a third of the global food supply 5:46 Central America’s “Dry Corridor”... 5:48 ...supports a mix of smallholdings and medium-sized farms 5:53 Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea... 5:56 ...the area is prone to droughts 6:08 Israel Ramírez Rivera is a smallholder in Guatemala 6:12 Here, climate change is making the dry seasons longer, and more severe 6:18 This is the biggest ear of maize that this plot could deliver 6:23 He depends on his crops of corn and beans 6:26 But they’re getting harder to grow 6:30 The surrounding mountains... 6:32 ...used to provide us with native food... 6:38 ...and now that isn’t an option anymore... 6:41 ...due to climate change and its effects 6:46 Nearly two-thirds of the smallholders in the Dry Corridor now live in poverty 6:52 The impact of all of this for us... 6:59 ...malnutrition among children 7:03 We’ve lost a few 7:07 For my crops especially, the midsummer heat is harder than before 7:16 The plant dries up and can’t provide us... 7:19 ...with the necessary food provision 7:24 Severe droughts in Central America... 7:26 ...are now four times more likely than they were last century 7:30 Many families from here have gone to the States 7:37 The economic despair and debts... 7:44 ...have pushed many people from this community to do this journey 7:53 Migration from Guatemala to the United States has quadrupled since 1990 7:59 Not all of this has been due to climate change 8:02 But longer droughts would force even more to move 8:05 In a 3°C world, annual rainfall in this region... 8:09 ...could drop by up to 14% 8:12 At 3°C, over a quarter of the world’s population... 8:16 ...could endure extreme droughts for at least a month of the year 8:19 Northern Africa could see droughts that last for years at a time Rising sea levels, storm surges and flooding 8:24 But for some, too much water will be the problem 8:29 10% of the world’s population lives on a coastline... 8:32 ...that’s less than 10 metres above sea level 8:35 For these coastal inhabitants, a 3°C world would spell disaster 8:40 By 2100, global sea levels could have climbed by half a metre from 2005 levels 8:46 Low-lying cities like Lagos would be especially vulnerable... 8:49 ...with up to up to a third of the population displaced 8:54 And in Fiji, rising waters are already upending lives 9:04 You can see the graveyard there, it’s all under water now... 9:08 ...due to this rising sea level and climate change 9:15 The village of Togoru in Fiji is being swallowed by the sea 9:19 Barney Dunn, the village headman, has seen over half the village disappear 9:24 Relatives’ houses have been abandoned, and family graves are now under water 9:29 We have been asked by the government to relocate... 9:32 ...but no one wants to relocate... 9:34 ...because we have our great-great-grandparents down there in the sea 9:39 This is the place we’ve been brought up in 9:41 ...it’s not easy to leave 9:44 Past attempts to build a seawall haven’t worked 9:48 But Barney sees building a new one as the village’s only hope 9:52 If they do that, maybe we can save whatever is left 9:56 But if we don’t have the seawall, then it will be keep eroding and time will come... 10:01 ...maybe in ten,15 years, Togoru will be all eroded 10:05 Rising seas also mean storms cause more floods 10:11 And many more countries could suffer 10:14 The Philippines and Myanmar are just two countries... 10:17 ...that will also see an increase in storm surges in a 3°C world 10:21 To escape, many will move… 10:24 …often, to urban areas Extreme heat and wet-bulb temperatures 10:27 Half the world’s population already lives in cities... 10:31 ...almost a third in slums 10:36 For them, a 3°C world could be deadly 10:40 Minara has moved to Dhaka to escape the impact of climate change 10:44 But life could get even worse for her 10:47 I’m struggling a lot nowadays 10:49 The heat during the day is unbearable 10:52 Even late at night it doesn’t cool down 10:57 The heat is getting more intense every day 10:59 I mean, it’s going to get much worse 11:03 I can barely survive it now, how will I live through it in the future? 11:08 Dhaka is getting hotter 11:11 In the last 20 years the average daytime temperature... 11:13 ...has crept up by nearly half a degree 11:17 Days that approach 40°C are now being reported 11:20 And high so-called wet-bulb temperatures are on the rise 11:26 A wet-bulb temperature is a measure of heat and humidity 11:30 Humans cool themselves by sweating… 11:32 But in these conditions, when relative humidity is near 100%... 11:36 ...sweat doesn’t evaporate well 11:38 So people can’t cool down… 11:41 ...even if given unlimited shade and water 11:45 At a high wet-bulb temperature, the body can’t lose heat... 11:49 ...and so it gets hotter and hotter... 11:51 ...and the body is designed to work at a given temperature 11:53 And if it gets too hot inside, you will die 11:58 The human limit for wet-bulb temperatures is 35°C... 12:02 ...around skin temperature 12:04 Dhaka will have a much higher chance... 12:05 ...of reaching dangerous wet-bulb temperatures... 12:07 ...if global warming reaches 3°C 12:12 You can’t really adapt to that 12:14 You have to get out. If the temperature is so high that you can’t work... 12:20 ...can’t do hard manual labour outside for significant parts of the year... 12:25 ...then many places will become functionally no longer part of the economy 12:33 Jacobabad in Pakistan, and Ras al Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates... 12:37 ...have already recorded deadly wet-bulb temperatures 12:40 More of the tropics and the Persian Gulf... 12:43 ...as well as parts of Mexico and the south-eastern United States... 12:47 ...could all get to this threshold by the end of the century 12:50 Climate modelling might show us the weather Increased migration and conflict 12:52 But it doesn’t show us its other effects on society 12:56 Established migration patterns could change 12:59 Climate disasters may exacerbate reasons people cross borders 13:03 Within countries, more people will move to cities 13:07 In a 3°C world, tens of millions of people a year... 13:10 ...could be displaced by disasters made worse by climate change 13:15 When people are displaced by climate... 13:18 …they may well go to cities... 13:19 ...because cities are the places that attract people from the countryside already 13:25 A lot of people who can get to the developed world... 13:28 ...not least because the developed world tends to be less hot, will give that a go 13:35 As migration around the world increases... 13:38 ...there could be more competition for fewer resources 13:42 Water—already a highly contested resource—will be a focal point 13:47 Turkey’s new Ilisu dam has reduced the flow of water into Iraq 13:53 China lays claim to rivers vital to India and Pakistan 13:57 The prospect of a water-conflict makes people very uneasy 14:03 How national tensions would exacerbate those sorts of reactions... 14:08 ...in a 3°C world... 14:09 ...is the sort of thing that no one should really want to find out 14:14 I think you’d have to be incredibly sanguine... 14:16 ...not to think that the sort of climate extremes that we talk about... 14:19 ...in a 3°C world wouldn’t lead some places... 14:22 ...to the brink of societal collapse 14:25 Those lucky enough to escape unrest... Adaptation and mitigation are crucial 14:28 ...would still have to adapt to a radically different world 14:32 People can adapt to climate change in all sorts of ways, one of the most obvious ones... 14:37 ...is air conditioning 14:39 But other ways to adapt at a local or regional level... 14:42 ...I mean, one of the most obvious is diversifying agriculture 14:47 There are physical things you can do, like seawalls 14:52 The fact that people can adapt and that adaptation will reduce suffering... 14:57 ...doesn’t mean that it will eliminate suffering 15:00 Suffering is built into this whole process of heating up the planet 15:06 Adaptation will only get the world so far 15:09 The best way to deal with a 3°C world... 15:12 ...is not to go to a 3°C world 15:14 And that’s why increasing efforts on mitigation are important 15:17 It’s why working towards negative emissions... 15:20 ...that could bring down the temperature after it peaks are important 15:25 Once you get to a 3°C world, you are in real bad global trouble 15:33 The scale of change needed... 15:35 ...and the slow progress of governments so far... 15:38 ...means 3°C of warming is uncomfortably likely unless more is done 15:44 Despite existing pledges, greenhouse-gas emissions... 15:48 ...are still set to rise by 16% from 2010 levels by 2030 15:54 The need to act has never been clearer 15:57 There’s still time to reduce emissions, so that a 3°C world remains fiction... 16:02 ...rather than becoming fact

“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History, and today, we're going to talk about slavery, which is not funny. 0:06 Yeah, so we put a lei on the eagle to try and cheer you up, but let's face it, this is going to be depressing. 0:10 With slavery, every time you think, like, "Aw, it couldn't have been that bad," it turns out to have been much worse. 0:14 Mr. Green, Mr. Green! But what about – 0:15 Yeah, Me from the Past, I'm going to stop you right there, because you're going to embarrass yourself. Slavery was hugely important to America. 0:20 I mean, it led to a civil war and it also lasted what, at least in U.S. history, counts as a long-ass time, from 1619 to 1865. 0:29 And yes, I know there's a 1200-year-old church in your neighborhood in Denmark, but we're not talking about Denmark! 0:35 But slavery is most important because we still struggle with its legacy. 0:38 So, yes, today's episode will probably not be funny, but it will be important. 0:42 [Theme Music] North & South economic ties 0:51 So the slave-based economy in the South is sometimes characterized as having been separate from the Market Revolution, but that's not really the case. 0:57 Without southern cotton, the North wouldn't have been able to industrialize, at least not as quickly, because cotton textiles were one of the first industrially products. 1:04 And the most important commodity in world trade by the nineteenth century, and 3/4 of the world's cotton came from the American South. 1:11 And speaking of cotton, why has no one mentioned to me that my collar has been half popped this entire episode, like I'm trying to recreate the Flying Nun's hat. 1:18 And although there were increasingly fewer slaves in the North as northern states outlawed slavery, cotton shipments overseas made northern merchants rich. 1:26 Northern bankers financed the purchase of land for plantations. 1:29 Northern insurance companies insured slaves who were, after all, considered property, and very valuable property. 1:35 And in addition to turning cotton into cloth for sale overseas, northern manufacturers sold cloth back to the South, where it was used to clothe the very slaves who had cultivated it. 1:45 But certainly the most prominent effects of the slave-based economy were seen in the South. Slave-based agriculture in the South 1:49 The profitability of slaved-based agriculture, especially King Cotton, meant that the South would remain largely agricultural and rural. 1:56 Slave states were home to a few cities, like St. Louis and Baltimore, but with the exception of New Orleans, 2:00 almost all southern urbanization took place in the upper South, further away from the large cotton plantations. 2:06 And slave-based agriculture was so profitable that it siphoned money away from other economic endeavors. 2:11 Like, there was very little industry in the South. 2:13 It produced only 10% of the nation's manufactured goods. 2:16 And, as most of the capital was being plowed into the purchase of slaves, there was very little room for technological innovation, like, for instance, railroads. 2:23 This lack of industry and railroads would eventually make the South suck at the Civil War, thankfully. 2:27 In short, slavery dominated the South, shaping it both economically and culturally, and slavery wasn't a minor aspect of American society. Popular attitudes concerning slavery 2:35 By 1860, there were four million slaves in the U.S., and in the South, they made up one third of the total population. 2:42 Although in the popular imagination, most plantations were these sprawling affairs with hundreds of slaves, 2:47 in reality, the majority of slaveholders owned five or fewer slaves. 2:51 And, of course, most white people in the South owned no slaves at all, though, if they could afford to, they would sometimes rent slaves to help with their work. 2:57 These were the so-called yeoman farmers who lived self-sufficiently, raised their own food, and purchased very little in the Market Economy. 3:04 They worked the poorest land and, as a result, were mostly pretty poor themselves. 3:08 But even they largely supported slavery, partly, perhaps, for aspirational reasons, and partly because the racism inherent to the system gave even the poorest whites legal and social status. 3:18 And southern intellectuals worked hard to encourage these ideas of white solidarity and to make the case for slavery. 3:23 Many of the founders, a bunch of whom you'll remember, held slaves, saw slavery as a necessary evil. 3:29 Jefferson once wrote, quote, "As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. 3:37 Justice is on one scale, and self-preservation in the other." 3:41 The belief that justice and self-preservation couldn't sit on the same side of the scale was really opposed to the American idea, 3:47 and, in the end, it would make the Civil War inevitable. 3:50 But as slavery became more entrenched in these ideas of liberty and political equality were embraced by more people, 3:55 some southerners began to make the case that slavery wasn't just a necessary evil. 3:59 They argued, for instance, that slaves benefited from slavery. 4:03 Because, you know, because their masters fed them and clothed them and took care of them in their old age. 4:07 You still hear this argument today, astonishingly. 4:09 In fact, you'll probably see asshats in the comments saying that in the comments. 4:12 I will remind you, it's not cursing if you are referring to an actual ass. 4:15 This paternalism allowed masters to see themselves as benevolent and to contrast their family-oriented slavery with the cold, mercenary Capitalism of the free-labor North. 4:26 So yeah, in the face of rising criticism of slavery, some southerners began to argue that the institution was actually good for the social order. 4:33 One of the best-known proponents of this view was John C. Calhoun, who, in 1837, said this in a speech on the Senate floor: 4:40 "I hold that, in the present state of civilization, 4:43 where two races of different origin and distinguished by color and other physical differences as well as intellectual, are brought together, 4:51 the relation now existing in the slave-holding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good. A positive good." 4:59 Now, of course, John C. Calhoun was a fringe politician, and nobody took his views particularly seriously. 5:04 Stan: Well, he was Secretary of State from 1844 to 1845. 5:07 John: Well, I mean, who really cares about the Secretary of State, Stan? 5:10 Danica: Eh, he was also Secretary of War from 1817 to 1825. 5:13 John: All right, but we don't even have a Secretary of War anymore, so... 5:16 Meredith: And he was Vice President from 1825 to 1832. 5:19 John: Oh my god, were we insane?! 5:21 We were, of course, but we justified the insanity with Biblical passages and with the examples of the Greeks and Romans, 5:28 and with outright racism, arguing that black people were inherently inferior to whites. 5:33 And that not to keep them in slavery would upset the natural order of things. 5:37 A worldview popularized millennia ago by my nemesis, Aristotle. God, I hate Aristotle. 5:42 You know what defenders of Aristotle always say? 5:44 "He was the first person to identify dolphins." 5:47 Well, ok, dolphin identifier. 5:50 Yes, that is what he should be remembered for, but he's a terrible philosopher! Lives & experiences of enslaved people 5:53 Here's the truth about slavery: 5:55 It was coerced labor that relied upon intimidation and brutality and dehumanization. 6:00 And this wasn't just a cultural system, it was a legal one. 6:03 I mean, Louisiana law proclaimed that a slave "owes his master... a respect without bounds, and an absolute obedience." 6:09 The signal feature of slaves' lives was work. 6:12 I mean, conditions and tasks varied, but all slaves labored, usually from sunup to sundown, and almost always without any pay. 6:20 Most slaves worked in agriculture on plantations, and conditions were different, depending on which crops are grown. 6:25 Like, slaves on the rice plantations of South Carolina had terrible working conditions, 6:29 but they labored under the task system, which meant that once they had completed their allotted daily work, they would have time to do other things. 6:36 But lest you imagine this is like how we have work and leisure time, bear in mind that they were owned and treated as property. 6:42 On cotton plantations, most slaves worked in gangs, usually under the control of an overseer, or another slave who was called a "driver." 6:49 This was back-breaking work done in the southern sun and humidity, and so it's not surprising that whippings – or the threat of them – were often necessary to get slaves to work. 6:58 It's easy enough to talk about the brutality of slave discipline, but it can be difficult to internalize it. 7:03 Like, you look at these pictures, but because you've seen them over and over again, they don't have the power they once might have. 7:09 The pictures can tell a story about cruelty, but they don't necessarily communicate how arbitrary it all was. 7:14 As, for example, in this story, told by a woman who was a slave as a young girl: 7:18 "[The] overseer... went to my father one morning and said, "Bob, I'm gonna whip you this morning." 7:22 Daddy said, "I ain't done nothing," and he said, "I know it, I'm going to whip you to keep you from doing nothing," 7:28 and he hit him with that cowhide – you know it would cut the blood out of you with every lick if they hit you hard." 7:33 That brutality – the whippings, the brandings, the rape – was real, and it was intentional, because, in order for slavery to function, slaves had to be dehumanized. 7:43 This enabled slaveholders to rationalize what they were doing, and it was hoped to reduce slaves to the animal property that is implied by the term "chattel slavery." 7:51 So the idea was that slaveholders wouldn't think of their slaves as human, and slaves wouldn't think of themselves as human. 7:57 But it didn't work. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. 7:59 Slaves' resistance to their dehumanization took many forms, but the primary way was by forming families. Family, love, & religion of enslaved people 8:05 Family was a refuge for slaves and a source of dignity that masters recognized and sought to stifle. 8:10 A paternalistic slave owner named Bennet H. Barrow wrote in his rules for the Highland Plantation: 8:15 "No rule that I have stated is of more importance than that relating to Negroes marrying outside of the plantation... It creates a feeling of independence." 8:23 Most slaves did marry, usually for life, and, when possible, slaves grew up in two-parent households. 8:28 Single-parent households were common, though, as a result of one parent being sold. 8:32 In the upper South, where the economy was shifting from tobacco to different, less labor-intensive cash crops, the sale of slaves was common. 8:40 Perhaps one-third of slave marriages in states like Virginia were broken up by sale. 8:45 Religion was also an important part of life in slavery. 8:47 While masters wanted their slaves to learn the parts of the Bible that talked about being happy in bondage, 8:52 slave worship tended to focus on the stories of Exodus, where Moses brought the slaves out of bondage, 8:57 or Biblical heroes, who overcame great odds, like Daniel and David. 9:01 And, although most slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write, many did anyway. And some became preachers. 9:07 Slave preachers were often very charismatic leaders, and they roused the suspicion of slave owners, and not without reason. 9:13 Two of the most important slave uprisings in the South were led by preachers. 9:16 Thanks, Thought Bubble. 9:17 Oh, it's time for the Mystery Document? Mystery Document 9:19 We're doing two set pieces in a row? All right. [buzzing noise] [music] 9:24 The rules here are simple. 9:26 I wanted to re-shoot that, but Stan said no. 9:29 I guess the author of the Mystery Document. 9:30 If I am wrong, I get shocked with the shock pen. 9:33 "Since I have been in the Queen's dominions I have been well contented, yes well contented for sure, man is as God intended he should be. 9:40 That is, all are born free and equal. 9:43 This is a wholesome law, not like the southern laws which puts man made in the image of God on level with brutes. 9:49 O, what will become of the people, and where will they stand in the day of judgment. 9:53 Would that the 5th verse of the 3rd chapter of Malachi were written as with a bar of iron, 9:59 and the point of a diamond upon every oppressor's heart that they might repent of this evil, and let the oppressed go free..." 10:06 All right, it's definitely a preacher, because only preachers have read Malachi. 10:10 Probably African American, probably not someone from the South. 10:13 I'm going to guess that it is Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church? 10:18 [buzzing noise] DAAAH, DANG IT! 10:19 It's Joseph Taper, and Stan just pointed out to me that I should have known it was Joseph Taper because it starts out, 10:24 "Since I have been in the Queen's dominions..." 10:27 He was in Canada. He escaped slavery to Canada. The Queen's dominions! 10:31 All right, Canadians, I blame you for this, although, thank you for abolishing slavery decades before we did. 10:36 [electric sounds] AHHH! How people resisted & escaped slavery 10:37 So, the Mystery Document shows one of the primary ways that slaves resisted their oppression: by running away. 10:42 Although some slaves like Joseph Taper escaped for good by running away to northern free states, 10:47 or even to Canada, where they wouldn't have to worry about fugitive slave laws, even more slaves ran away temporarily, hiding out in the woods or the swamps, and eventually returning. 10:55 No one knows exactly how many slaves escaped to freedom, but the best estimate is that a thousand or so a year made the journey northward. 11:01 Most fugitive slaves were young men, but the most famous runaway has been hanging out behind me all day long: Harriet Tubman. 11:07 Harriet Tubman escaped to Philadelphia at the age of 29, and over the course of her life, she made about 20 trips back to Maryland to help friends and relatives make the journey north on the Underground Railroad. 11:17 But a more dramatic form of resistance to slavery was actual, armed rebellion, which was attempted. 11:22 Now, individuals sometimes took matters into their own hands and beat or even killed their white overseers or masters. 11:27 Like Bob, the guy who received the arbitrary beating, responded to it by killing his overseer with a hoe. 11:33 But that said, large-scale slave uprisings were relatively rare. 11:36 The four most famous ones all took place in a 35-year period at the beginning of the 19th century. Slave rebellions 11:41 Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800 – which we've talked about before – was discovered before he was able to carry out his plot. 11:45 Then, in 1811, a group of slaves upriver from New Orleans seized cane, knives, and guns, and marched on the city before militia stopped them. 11:52 And in 1822, Denmark Vesey, a former slave who had purchased his freedom, may have organized a plot to destroy Charleston, South Carolina. 11:59 I say "may have" because the evidence against him is disputed and comes from a trial that was not fair. 12:05 But regardless, the end result of that trial was that he was executed, as were 34 slaves. Nat Turner's Rebellion 12:09 But the most successful slave rebellion, at least in the sense that they actually killed some people, was Nat Turner's in August 1831. 12:15 Turner was a preacher, and with a group of about 80 slaves, he marched from farm to farm in South Hampton County, Virginia, 12:21 killing the inhabitants, most of whom were women and children, because the men were attending a religious revival meeting in North Carolina. 12:27 Turner and 17 other rebels were captured and executed, but not before they struck terror into the hearts of whites all across the American South. 12:34 Virginia's response was to make slavery worse, passing even harsher laws that forbade slaves from preaching, and prohibited teaching them to read. 12:42 Other slave states followed Virginia's lead and, by the 1830s, slavery had grown, if anything, more harsh. 12:47 So, this shows that large-scaled armed resistance was – Django Unchained aside – not just suicidal, but also a threat to loved ones and, really, to all slaves. How enslaved people resisted their oppression & why it matters 12:55 But, it is hugely important to emphasize that slaves did resist their oppression. 12:59 Sometimes this meant taking up arms, but usually it meant more subtle forms of resistance, 13:03 like intentional work slowdowns or sabotaging equipment, or pretending not to understand instructions. 13:08 And, most importantly, in the face of systematic legal and cultural degradation, they re-affirmed their humanity through family and through faith. 13:16 Why is this so important? 13:17 Because too often in America, we still talk about slaves as if they failed to rise up, 13:21 when, in fact, rising up would not have made life better for them or for their families. 13:26 The truth is, sometimes carving out an identity as a human being in a social order that is constantly seeking to dehumanize you, is the most powerful form of resistance. 13:34 Refusing to become the chattel that their masters believed them to be is what made slavery untenable and the Civil War inevitable, so make no mistake, slaves fought back. 13:45 And in the end, they won. I'll see you next week. Credits 13:48 Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. 13:50 The script supervisor is Meredith Danko. 13:52 Our associate producer is Danica Johnson. 13:54 The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. 13:57 And our graphics team is Thought Cafe. 13:58 Every week, there's a new caption to the Libertage, but today's episode was so sad that we couldn't fit a Libertage in... 14:04 UNTIL NOW! [Libertage Rock Music] 14:08 Suggest Libertage caption in comments, where you can also ask questions about today's video that will be answered by our team of historians. 14:13 Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we say in my home town, don't forget to be abolitionist.

Ideas for more sustainable cities In 2020. over 56% of the world s population lived in urbon arcos. Cities are becoming more and more popular. But why isn't rural life as attractive as city life? The main reasons include work. lifestyle education and Sea th in cities there ore more fun things to see and do, like art galleries, concert hails and sports stadiums, There are a so better hospitals, transport na anueners However, as cities become more overcrowded, they get more polluted. For this reason, urban residents want to make their cities more sustainable. But how? Here are five ways: 1 New York's Central Pork is an island of green in a forest of skyscrapers. City parks like these provide people with a peaceful ploce to connect with nature. and o quiet area for exercise. 2 The moming and evering tush hours lare the busest times in the city. When people commute* to and from work or school, they need frequent, fast public transport, like trams and underground troins. Transport should also be as cheap as possible - and accessible to those with less mobility, like older people or wheelchair users. 3 Cities need pleasant places for people to meet and so shopping. So they should have more pedestr on zones, like in Copenhagen, Denmark, Copenhagen has the world's longest pedestrion street. It's almost 3.2 km long! Pedeston aones encourage ' people to go shopping on foot, instead of driving to shopping malls. 4 1 kes are often the quickest and most susta nable. way to get around, but mony city streets are frenetic and dangerous. Sa susto nable cities have cycle paths, as well as public bikes ond e scooters. They alto have hybrid buses and lots of car charging points. 55 Cities need to encourage residents to care about the environment, with fun ecological exhibitions" and events. The Supertree Gardens in Singapore are amazing, ver fal botanic gardens. They are 50 metres high and the /se solor energy. Eco-festivols - lIke Terroformo in Milan, Italy, and the Secret Solstice in Reykjavik, Iceland - use solar and geothermol energy. They're some of the most sustoinable festiois in the wortd

It is necessary for us to take adequate care of our clothing for the following reasons: Reasons for maintenance of clothes. (a) To make clothes long last. (b) To save costs on new ones. The following are the guidelines to care and maintain our clothes: 1. Sorting: Clothes are sort out in terms of colour and size to enhance thorough cleaning and avoid stains. 2. Soaking: Soak them for easy washing. 3. Washing: We wash clothes in- between our palms or by kneading them in a bowl of soapy water to squeeze out the dirt. 4. Rinsing: This is done in clean water as many times as possible until the clothes are clean. 5. Drying: This is done on the clothes line of clothes hanger and not on the grasses or flower beds to avoid infections. 6. Ironing: This is done either by the electric iron or charcoal box iron. Do not over heat the iron to avoid burning of clothes. 7. Hang the hangable. Examples are coat and gowns. 8. Fold the Foldables. Examples are Wrapper and blouses. Keep them away in the boxes, bags or wardrobes. Before washing your ready made or imported wears, take note of the care label. It has care instruction notifying one on how such clothes could be properly handled. Laundry symbols give laundry instructions

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