Happy 3

(cont'd from this post)

Re-post from 2017

So Shermer says, "if you believe the hype of apocalyptic popularizers you might conclude that climate change, runaway overpopulation, poverty, hunger, and disease will ruin the Earth and leave humanity's only hope for survival on Mars . . .

"It's easy to think this way, given that newspapers, books, television shows and documentary films are built around pessimistic thinking." But the truth is:

Poverty?  "it will reach zero by around 2035"
Pollution?  "air and water in our cities is the cleanest it’s been in centuries"
Health?  "those born today will be healthier, live longer and have more opportunities than anyone in history"

Michael Shermer is scornful of God, scornful of faith, and I don't share his worldview. But he's clear-eyed about this: global living conditions have been rising dramatically for 40 years - so don't fall for panicky pessimism.

His conclusion is, "We should be grateful for the blessings we have today, optimistic about the future, and continue to work toward a better tomorrow because none of this progress was inevitable. It was the result of people taking action to solve our most pressing problems."

So true! We are all blessed when other people use their God-given abilities to solve problems and manage the earth for good results.

from Business Insider

Anti-aging 3

 Follow up to these posts

Last fall the conference called COSM hosted a discussion about anti-aging technologies. Hopeful CEO's of companies researching these technologies, as well as a neuroscientist, defined their goals. 

They believe it will be possible to mitigate age-related decline, maybe to the point that death could be "elective." 

Here's what drives their work forward:

• They're making "genetic medicines for health and longevity" which disassemble damaged cells when they don't self-destruct as they're supposed to ("senescent").
• "Instead of making a drug and injecting it, we program [the patient's] own cells to produce remedies inside them, trying to build an app store for the human body."

from Mind Matters

Men adrift 7

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Creating the beautiful story of his life is all about a man's choices. 

If he's resigned to a boring life without decisions and risk, he will have a life without the joy of growth that comes with taking responsibility for a career, for a family, for a community. "Today’s depressed couch potato scrolling YouTube and watching porn" is building nothing, creating nothing.

As a child I was told more than once not to get my hopes up, which meant that I should expect defeat in the things that interested me. It was confusing. Why be interested in anything then? We need our young men to get a better message than that.

"Make men interested again! Interested people are interesting people." What is there to be interested in? Not much, except "woodworking, art, politics, science, creative writing, naval warfare, cooking, water polo, ornithology, engineering," aviation, trains, law, friendships, management, teaching, hunting, farming-- the ideas are endless.

Let's tell them that it's great to pursue their interests.

photo

from "Make Men Interested Again 

Men adrift 6

Follow up to these posts

"[T]he men aren't all right," and now honest scholars are admitting it. Compared to what used to be typical, fewer men go to college or trade school, fewer get married, and fewer even have jobs. 

Aspiration is good, the hope of achieving something. When too many of our men in the prime of life don't aspire to anything, it's a downward spiral. 

Too many young men in the West "are settling for resignation, a sense that because a man is no longer needed or appreciated in society, the obvious thing to do is to abstain from participation." Sociologists have documented "a trending loss of life satisfaction."

 One financial expert calls it "a crisis of the American male." The Barbie movie character "Ken" isn't a healthy role model. 

from Salvo

(cont'd tomorrow)

Neom

 Follow up to this post

In this post about The Line, I remarked that the Saudi prince was prepared to spend "billions and billions" on the city. Clarification: he plans to spend US$1.5 trillion, an enormous amount of money, on the Neom development (of which The Line is the biggest part).

Goals for the city have been scaled back. Instead of one-and-a-half million residents in the city by 2030, they now expect 300,000 or less. The long-range city length of 170 kilometers (105 miles) is still in place, but by 2030 they only expect to complete 2.4 kilometers (1-1/2 miles) of it. The sides of The Line will still be the height of the Empire State Building.

Another part of Neom will be the Trojena resort, which is "set to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029." Yes, the winter games . . in the desert of the Arabian Peninsula. You may wonder, can they really do that? Something like that on a smaller scale does exist. My son has skied in Dubai.

image

Neom is a grandiose vision. 

from Bloomberg

Happy 2

(cont'd from this post)

Re-post from 2017

Dystopia is the theme of books and movies, i.e. Hunger Games, The 100, Divergence, etc. Some people have the feeling that doom and disaster are coming for the world, whether through poverty or disease or aliens or climate change or . . something.

Materialists, those who believe in nothing but the material universe, tend to believe in a coming doomsday.  But Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, is a materialist - and he definitely does not think the world is getting worse.

photo: businessinsider.com

Shermer thinks we're fortunate to be living in the "most peaceful, most prosperous" time in human history. He says, "There is no period in history when it would have been better to be alive than today."

Maybe we're listening too much to fear mongers. Mainstream and social media both tell us that we lurch from crisis to crisis. A steady diet of fear and crisis will give us a skewed view of reality.

(cont'd next week)

"Toxic war" 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Nobody considers mass murder to be traditionally masculine. But that phrase, "toxic masculinity," has become a "catchall explanation for male sexism, dominance, and violence. Men today feel discouraged, devalued, and demoralized."

Cadets at West Point were asked to describe the traits of a "good man." They easily identified "honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice, be responsible, do the right thing, be a protector and provider." The hero of yesterday's story was using his traits to save lives.

Masculine traits are not inherently toxic; they are good when directed to good ends, as the hero showed. 

Then they were asked to describe a "real man." Their answer was "Oh, that's completely different! Tough, strong, win at all costs, get rich, get laid, never show weakness." That's the tension we feel in today's culture, that a real man is not a good man.  

The Washington Post ran this article by a college professor: "Why Can't We Hate Men?"

from The Toxic War on Masculinity

(cont'd next week, how did we get to this point?)

"Toxic war" 1

It's almost as if there's a war being waged on men these days. "Toxic masculinity" seems to say that the male personality is inherently defective. Maybe it's bad to expect men to "be a real man!" Or maybe our culture is confused about what a "real man" is.

In 2018 a young man walked into a bar on designated college night, threw grenades to create confusion, and started shooting his pistol. He managed to kill twelve people, then killed himself. 

A 20-year-old student acted quickly when the shooting started, pushing people under a table. He and seven other friends piled their bodies over them as a shield from the gunfire. While the shooter re-loaded, they threw chairs out the back windows of the bar and repeatedly guided people outside.

The American Psychological Association says that traditional masculinity is harmful. But wait . . who is the traditionally masculine man in this story? It's not the shooter.

from The Toxic War on Masculinity

(cont'd tomorrow)

Fired

A couple weeks ago, I advised caution about truth telling: "If you haven't bowed to the wokeness, please speak up. But maybe not at work . . I don't want you to be fired for thinking things through." Maybe you thought "that doesn't happen." Well, I wish it didn't.

But it really does. A snowboarding coach at a Vermont high school was chatting with students, and agreed with one of them, adding that biological sex is the basis for significant physical differences and should apply to sports.

"The next day, Bloch learned the school district had fired him over the matter and barred him from ever being hired again." 

Not only did this coach tell the truth as he sees it in a respectful manner, but he then had the courage to initiate a lawsuit. The school district and the state Agency of Education admitted that he was wrongfully fired. This man had the courage to speak up even in a job and justice prevailed, thank God.

Eclipse🔆

Our moon covers the sun perfectly in a total solar eclipse, which can be seen in a path 115 miles wide across the U.S. today. In the shadow of the moon (that is, from a position within that path) all you can see (through the proper filter of course) is the corona of the sun. 

Doesn't it seem unlikely that our little moon would ever perfectly cover the huge sun which is 93,000,000 miles away? Yes it does, what a coincidence. 

image: NationalEclipse.com

Here's the explanation. The sun is about 400x bigger than our small moon--but it's also about 400x further away. From our point of view on earth's surface, the moon matches the size and shape of the sun. A total eclipse isn't visible in any other place in our solar system, and it doesn't matter because there are no observers to see it.

Keys to understanding space and light have been discovered because scientists on earth were able to observe total eclipses (discoveries explained here).

"So the best place to view total solar eclipses in our solar system is just where there are observers to see them. Let that sink in a minute." 

"The universe seems to be designed not just for life but also for discovery."

from The Stream

Helium 2🎈

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Pulsar Helium is now engaged in a serious investigation to make sure they can extract the gas and distribute it. The latest measurement indicates an even higher concentration than 12.4%. So far, all very good news. 

photo

There's a billion-dollar market for helium. Since the global supply is shrinking, this discovery has global significance, according to the CEO in yesterday's video. It's the only element on the planet that is completely non-renewable.

As the "safest and most effective coolant around" in liquid form, and unreactive, it's critically important for industries relating to the study of materials. 

 

Minnesota's Dept. of Natural Resources will have to write new regulations from scratch - because they've never had to oversee helium mines before. 

Helium 1🎈

Though abundant in the universe, helium is scarce on earth. It only forms as a product of nuclear fusion and through radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. To be considered for commercial extraction, its concentration must be above 0.3%. 

So the folks at Pulsar Helium, Inc., were excited when in February they announced discovery of a new deposit in northern Minnesota: its concentration is extraordinary at 12.4%, and it might be the biggest reserve in North America.

Beyond filling balloons, helium is "a crucial cooling component in rockets, nuclear reactors, superconductors and medical diagnostic equipment, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines." 

from Live Science

(cont'd tomorrow)

All seeing eye

Back in 2018, the Chinese President Xi's "social credit system" was rolling out. It's a way to control behavior, thoughts, relationships, status of Chinese citizens without actually resorting to coercive violence on them. (Read posts here, here, here, here, here, here.)

Government-owned cameras are spying everywhere, providing data which result in approval or disapproval. Ordinary life is a lot harder on people with a low social credit score.

This immigrant was there but fled to America for freedom. He warns that we're starting to see similar things in the West. For instance, parents who don't like what their kids are learning at school were labeled domestic terrorists, and our government pressured banks not to give loans to disfavored businesses.

He says it was okay at the beginning: "These things always are."

Ghost towns

From empty homes to empty towns . . 

photo

A community of 260 mansions was begun 400 miles north of Beijing in 2010. Intended for the Chinese elite class, these palatial homes are empty. Not one has been bought by the rich. Cattle wander among the arched verandas, and garages serve for hay storage. Inside are what looks like marble floors and crystal chandeliers. Nearby are a complex of ~15-story apartment buildings that will probably never be finished. 

China is in the midst of its own real estate crisis. Its biggest residential real estate developer declared bankruptcy last August. They had pre-sold 1.2 million units, but 800,000 of them will not be finished.

An aging population is part of the problem along with other reasons like the Covid pandemic. Maybe the world is starting to suffer from the effects of falling birth rates.

from Architectural Digest

Misirere

Imagine hearing this in a soaring European cathedral in the early 1600's.

 

Repentance, the theme of this beautiful music from about 1630, is not upbeat and not popular today. Modern people are told to blame others for any wrong-doing they may have committed.

According to the Bible, though, it's healing and restorative to admit it when you have not done what is right. God knows it anyway, so you're not fooling him.

But of course, this is not the end of the story. The point of the gospel, the good news, is that God has provided mercy and wants to extend it to you. Is there a condition? Only one: put your faith in Jesus, the Christ. He died that first Good Friday for you and me, but he didn't stay in that grave. He rose from the dead on the first Easter.

Take the mercy, accept the help.

Disparity

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Must all racial disparity (variance or difference) in any context be understood as the result of hostile, hidden racism? It should be easy to see through such an extremely over-simplified generalization. Here's some data from the address. and it may not be comfortable to hear. (The data is not documented. If you question it, do research of your own.)

In 2019, half of all black 12th graders had not mastered basic reading, and two-thirds had not mastered arithmetic and how to read a graph." According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only three percent of black high school seniors were college ready in 2023." These are serious concerns - but they don't mean that college exams are racist.

Politicians (like our current president) may say that being a black person is much more dangerous than being white. Actually, that's true. "Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined . . "

But it's because of black-on-black crime, not the implied reason that white people (especially police) are always on the attack. 

There's a skills gap between races and a behavior gap. The solution is to deal with and to close those gaps, not to vilify the whole white race.

from Hillsdale

Merit 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If shoplifters are arrested and laws are enforced for one race but not for other races, we've lost justice.  

It seems obvious that justice and medical standards and law schools should be color-blind. It was obvious to all of us until 5 minutes ago. The point of the civil rights movement in the latter half of the last century was that rights and justice should be administered without regard to the race of the individual. That would be fair and just. Now we've gone backward, less fair and less just.

Most Americans are bewildered. A scholar and writer puts it in black and white terms with no confusion in this address to a conference last month. She says, "Disparate impact thinking is destroying our civilization."

"Any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination." So bar exams, police arrests, medical degrees, law schools--anywhere that the percentage of black people differs from the 13% of the general population that is black--are all the result of racist discrimination.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how many people actually believe this nonsense? If you haven't bowed to the wokeness, please speak up. But maybe not at work . . I don't want you to be fired for thinking things through.

from Hillsdale

Merit 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some medical schools have stopped using the Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) as a requirement for new students. The National Institutes of Health has broadened their criteria for doctors getting neurology grants to include things like whether they received childhood welfare.

California's state bar association lowered the pass score on its bar exam for attorneys because only 5% of black law school graduates passed the exam the first time, compared to 42% of the Asian law school grads and 52% of white law school grads.

In the area of law enforcement, police officers don't always arrest shoplifters and sometimes district attorneys don't prosecute shoplifting and certain other crimes anymore. Why? 

"Macy’s flagship store in New York City was sued several years ago because most of the people its employees stopped for shoplifting were black. The only allowable explanation for that fact was that Macy’s was racist. It was not permissible to argue that Macy’s arrests mirrored the shoplifting population."

from Hillsdale

(cont'd tomorrow)

Merit 1

Suppose a day comes in your future when you need surgery on your eyes in order to preserve your sight. What sort of surgeon do you want to operate on you: so-so or excellent? You have common sense, so you hope for an excellent surgeon who got through medical school by thoroughly learning the material, not by some other criteria like a famous name or skin color.

photo

Similar question: do you want a so-so pilot or an excellent one next time you fly with a commercial airline? 

Of course you hope for excellent surgeons and pilots who earned their credentials by merit. You want them to deserve those credentials. You don't care what color their eyes or skin are. Up til now, that was simple common sense. A medical degree or pilot's license meant that the student earned it by doing the related work to an excellent standard.

Do they still mean that? In today's world, you might wonder. Because merit doesn't always result in the getting job or the college admission or the promotion. 

from Hillsdale

(cont'd tomorrow)

Happy 1

Are Americans happy? It's a big-scale question that the United Nations analyzes periodically. According to their report published this week, we as a people are a lot less happy than we used to be. In just a year we dropped from 15th happiest country in the world to 23rd happiest. 

That's a big drop in a short time. This week's report specifies generations for the first time, so the reason for it can be identified: young people (ages 10-29) are deeply unhappy, and they pull down our average.

Well, we know how they've been educated for years and that may have something to do with it. Human beings are not made happy when we're told that we're alone in the universe, that there's no God and no ultimate justice, no transcendent meaning to life, that we're nothing but more-evolved animals, etc.

Happiness is not trivial, as long as we don't define it with a shallow meaning. For our purposes on this blog, we're using the term as life satisfaction, peace of mind, a sense of well-being. For several weeks we're going to explore the subject every Friday. There is hope.

Have a good weekend! 

Air taxi 2

(cont'd from Monday's post)

Air taxis will now be tested in China, a recent development. Ehang has been granted permission to run trial operations of its eVTOL in a city yet to be determined.

It occurs to me to wonder if all the ideas, the technology, in the design of this eVTOL came from Ehang . . .

from Bloomberg

More Starship 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

What if airplanes were not re-usable, what if they were destroyed after every flight? It would be so expensive to fly to your destination that you would be lucky to fly once ever in your life. 

It used to be that way with space launches. Up until recently, a brand new rocket had to be built for every single launch. SpaceX was first to put a rocket into orbit and return it safely for another flight, a huge cost savings.

photo

From the beginning, this was the SpaceX vision. They've done it with Falcon 9 over 300 times, and Starship will be reusable as well. It's a game changer, no question: a spaceship to transport people safely in space, usable again and again like an airplane. It will take NASA astronauts to the moon (Artemis mission).

Starship will also carry cargo. The price to get your satellite or experiment into space will drop something like ten-fold. NASA's old Space Shuttle had to charge $25,000 per pound of payload. Starship will probably be able to charge about $1500 per pound.

from Business Insider

More Starship 1

Apparently there is only so much that can be known about how to make Starship successful by working in the SpaceX office. At some point, no more progress can be made until they send their current version of Starship into space and see what happens.

As the former NASA head Jim Bridenstine said a few years back, SpaceX has something NASA has lacked, a "willingness to fail." He says they "fly, test, fail, fix" - repeatedly.

Yes. Starship has been developed through a process of "fly, test, fail, fix" over and over again. Trial #28 took place on March 14. Starship, the space vehicle which will carry people in the future, was launched into space on the booster Super Heavy for only the third time that combination has been tested together. 

Super Heavy detached at the right time and turned back to earth, while Starship fired its own three rockets and continued on to orbital velocity. Both exploded before they could finish all of their mission. But they got further than ever before. Watch:

(cont'd tomorrow)

Air taxi

No longer a product of fiction (like The Jetsons' personal aircraft), air taxis may be coming as early as next year.

NASA and Joby Aviation are working on a ride-to-the-airport concept. You are their niche market if you would like to get a ride which takes half the time of driving your car, with no need to park the car at the airport, and with no chance of getting held up in traffic. You will be able to order the ride at the same time you buy your airplane ticket.

image

Electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) stir eager interest in "commuter-hell supercities" but won't be common til they're fully tested and certified by governments (perhaps a decade from now).

from Robb Report

More speed 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

At this point, the hyperloop concept is going nowhere here in the US. But the potential is still alive, maybe, in China.

photo

A maglev train was tested successfully in a "low-vacuum" tube 1.2 miles long. Its velocity wasn't reported but may have been as high as 387 miles per hour, much faster than existing high speed rail. 

More testing is the next step. "If it's successful, it could be the next potential solution for high-speed travel across relatively short distances."

from MSN

More speed 1

Hyperloop - fast and autonomous - isn't being developed in the U.S., but faster and/or autonomous transportation appeals to just about everybody. Variations are already used in multiple locations all over the world.

Dubai (UAE) on the Arabian Peninsula has an eye-catching system. Autonomous cars move people along a monorail system between major landmarks like Palm Jumeirah.  Here are 44 other monorail locations.

photo

China had no high-speed rail at the turn of the century, but now has 45,000 network miles, the world's longest HSR. The fastest commercial train in the world runs between Shanghai and its international airport. With peak speed of 268 mph, it makes the 19-mile trip in a little over 7 minutes. It uses "maglev" technology, the magnetic levitation idea connected with the hyperloop concept.

Japan's bullet train was the world's first HSR to operate way back in 1964.

Stealing IP #3

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

While testing some turbines in China, American Super Conductor found that they were running on new code which AMSC had not released yet. They investigated Dejan because he was one of the few who had confidential access, and then found the emails which told the whole story.

image

Sinovel, their biggest client, cancelled all its millions of dollars' worth of orders (of course it did). Dejan confessed and spent a year in Austrian prison. AMSC suffered market value loss of over a billion dollars and had to let 600 employees go out of their previous total of 900. It was devastating.

Afterward, cyber attacks kept coming. AMSC hired a computer security firm, which discovered that the attacks were now coming from a Chinese military unit tasked with spying on North American companies. Thousands of American companies have lost "engineering documents, manufacturing processes, chip designs, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, you name it it's been stolen."

from The Great Brain Robbery

Stealing IP #2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Imagine this scenario. You have some ideas for a great tech product. You start your company and hire some engineers to develop those ideas. You find clients who really want your product and are happy to purchase it from you. You keep figuring out more ways to help your clients and take care of your employees.

After decades of research and experiment at your company, someone takes your valuable results and gives them away. That's stealing intellectual property. 

That's pretty much how it was for American Super Conductor. They spent years and millions of dollars developing advanced software for the operation of wind turbines. After China in 2005 passed a law calling for wind farms, AMSC contracted with the Chinese company Sinovel to provide the required gadgetry and computer code to them while they would do the physical building of the wind turbines.

An AMSC employee (Dejan) working in their Austria office was seduced by the Chinese. An email showed his demands: "All girls need money. I need girls. Sinovel needs me." Sinovel executives were glad to comply.

from The Great Brain Robbery

(cont'd tomorrow)

Stealing IP

A grand jury just indicted a former Google engineer for stealing intellectual property. Over 500 confidential files of Google's ideas (mind work) were stolen for Chinese companies. 

image

He was arrested last week in California for stealing trade secrets relating to AI technology and could receive up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250k for each of the four counts of theft.

Hired in 2019, with access to confidential information, he started uploading hundreds of files into his personal account in 2022. He was soon offered the position of chief technology officer in a new Chinese startup dealing with artificial intelligence. He founded another Chinese startup to train "large AI models powered by supercomputing chips." 

Surveillance camera footage showed somebody else faking his identity at Google's entrance while he was in China. He resigned last December.

from Ars Technica

Paris Olympics 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tickets are going fast! No, really. "Of the 10 million tickets available for the Olympic Games, just under 8 million have already been taken up."  Better hurry if you don't already have your tix.

What could go wrong? Plenty of things. 

Bed bugs, for one thing. Last fall it was like a plague. About the same time, trash collectors went on strike and piles were left on Paris streets. That in turn probably exacerbated the persistent rat problem.

For another thing, they have millions of visitors coming in the middle of a "housing crisis." In the words of one student, "[M]any of my friends are being evicted from their flats in June so that their landlords can let them out at inflated prices during the Olympics."

Workers are being asked to work from home if possible, so that the already-strained transport system isn't overloaded. Transportation tickets will double in price.

Add more strikes and public protests to the list. Be glad you are not in charge of making this whole thing look good to the world and run smoothly. Because the last thing France wants is to damage its global, glorious reputation. 

from Paris is heading for an Olympic-sized disaster