Creating . . wealth

(continuing "Imago Dei")

We know art is creative.  But have you ever thought about the creation of wealth?  Wealth not just for one individual, but wealth as life-improvement spread throughout a community or nation of people.

"Think about oil for a minute.  For thousands of years, oil was a nuisance - an insoluble mess to be scrubbed from your feet if you were unlucky enough to step in it.  Then one day someone had the bright idea of burning it to provide energy.  Suddenly oil was a resource, not a nuisance.  Soon dark streets could be lit, homes heated, cars driven.  The oil hadn't changed.  But [human] ingenuity had made this formerly useless substance into something we call "black gold."  Can you imagine the world without it?

"Now let's examine sand.  Sand is everywhere.  Like oil, it's sometimes hard to get rid of!  A grain of sand by itself has no value.  But a man can take that grain and transform it into a silicon chip, and suddenly it has value.  Another man can then take that chip and impregnate it with data, making it worth even more.  And when someone else connects that chip to a computer, it is worth quite a lot.  Multibillion-dollar companies like Intel have been built on grains of sand.  The sand, of course, remains basically worthless.  It must wait for people to give it its value." (from Discipling Nations)

Like Michelangelo's chunk of marble, oil and sand had no value to people - until people applied their imagination, effort, resources, aesthetic sensibility, engineering, craftsmanship, cooperation, and problem-solving skills to them.  Then there was value. 

People create wealth for themselves and their community.

Creating . . music

(continuing "Imago Dei")

"In the barrios of Paraguay, a humble garbage picker uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials – and a youth orchestra is born. Music arises and children find new dreams. Our film will showcase the power of creativity, hope, empowerment, and community work."

"This is a wonderful example of what we call the development ethic from Genesis: people using what they have, the resources in their own community, to add value to their world.



"At the core of this vision is the heart and soul of people made in God’s image, acting creatively.

Creating . . art

(The rest of this week will come from the "Imago Dei" label, originally posted January 2013)

"It began as part of a mountain in Italy.  Then one day a workman came along and began chiseling out a block of marble.  Using his discerning eye and powerful hands and arms, he worked for weeks.  When the block was finally hewn from the mountain, another man with a horse-drawn wagon hauled it to Florence.  A third fellow bought the stone and had it put on a pedestal in his studio.  That man was Michelangelo.  As he went about his other work, the artist would often pause to gaze at the immense, flawed block.  Perhaps months later, Michelangelo saw what lay hidden in the stone.  Finally, he picked up his hammer and chisel and began to reveal it.  Today we call what was once a buried chunk of marble a priceless masterpiece -The David."   Discipling Nations

That buried chunk of stone was worthless to people.  Then three individuals (in this story) applied their effort and intelligence and genius to the stone, and the original material (it was always in there) now had huge value, huge worth.  That value, that wealth of beauty, was created by people.

Author J.R.R. Tolkien says, ". . we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."  J. R. R. TOLKIEN, On Fairy-Stories

So we are able to create . . because we are created . . by our Creator . . to be like Him.

Progress

Good news doesn't often make headlines like bad new does. But not all world news is bad. Here is news that confirms Hans Roslings' information about progress:

"Over the past three years, an additional 200 million people have climbed above the international poverty line . . For the first time in world history, less than 10 percent of the global population will be living in extreme poverty."

There's even more. That record low percentage of people in extreme poverty has happened under a toughened definition of the term, from the $1.25/day of the past to today's $1.90/day standard. The definition is more broad-based but still the percentage is a record low.

Christmas Day

Hark! The herald angels sing,

“Glory to the newborn King;

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled!”

Joyful, all ye nations rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With th’angelic host proclaim,

“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Ris’n with healing in His wings.

Mild He lays His glory by,

Born that man no more may die;

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth.

Christmas Eve

Nothing sets a Christmas feeling for me like music. This Christmas carol mentions the town of Bethlehem, where God incarnate entered society on the planet He had made.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Did it

SpaceX has accomplished one of their major goals - they safely landed a rocket back on earth yesterday after it had launched satellites while in space.

Blue Origin, too, accomplished the safe return of a rocket from space, about a month ago. Owner Jeff Bezos (he also owns Amazon) says, "“Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts—a used rocket.”

According to Elon Musk (CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla), "That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.” 

Two obvious reasons for that . . human space explorers have to return to earth alive, and there's much more that can be done if the cost of sending up a rocket is cut by 90-1000%.

Job culture 2

(cont'd)

In addition to freedom/flexibility and team collaboration (yesterday), millennials are also looking a work culture that will:

* facilitate life success - a "recognition that people’s lives matter . .  requires leaders and managers who are strong coaches and mentors .  . 79% of Millennials say this is important to them."

* communicate how they plan to change the world - example: everyone who works at Tesla Motors knows that Elon Musk's goal is to reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuel

(quotes from "Why millennials don't want to work for you" at Forbes)

In my own family, my daughter-in-law just changed jobs and happened to site the second item (yesterday's post) as part of the reason why she did. Makes total sense to me.

Job culture 1

Workplace environment is changing in some good ways. That was my impression after reading "Why millennials don't want to work for you" at Forbes.

Millennials (age 18-34) are of course a growing percentage of the work force. What they're looking for is :

*  entrepreneurial culture -. the freedom to "work when, where and how you like as long as you are delivering results . .  the flexibility and freedom – where possible – to be [your] own boss with a focus exclusively on results."

*  team collaboration - "When I think of effective teams and the concept of true collaboration for a common purpose, there is no better example than a medical trauma ward. On such a team, competition, silos and politics are dangerous. Everyone must be unified and focused on a single outcome to achieve success."

These points would have improved the jobs I've had. Two more tomorrow.

(cont'd tomorrow)

.Independence

Malik Fal, originally from Senegal, is Harvard-educated. He's had a career in business and as a consultant.



"The sooner Africa can graduate from its dependence on aid, the better, because that would allow businesses to flourish."

Africans' challenge today is an economic one, he says. Their fathers' challenge was to achieve political independence, but now they must achieve economic independence. Political independence "doesn't mean much unless they can sustain themselves."

"When you have a local business that's striving, that's enabling employees to send their kids to school . . this is what really transforms communities."

Perpetuating

Economist Dambisa Moyo, originally from Zambia, says that aid from the West to developing countries in Africa has become a self-perpetuating industry. "Glamour Aid" promoted by celebrities has strayed so far from its well-meaning intent that it actually brings harm to today's African people.



It should be noted that she's talking about huge government-to-government payments (not humanitarian aid in crises). She says only about 20% of that aid actually makes it through government hands down to the country's people.

(cont'd tomorrow)

"Don't panic"

(cont'd)

Hans made three points while surveying his audience in the TED talk  (last two days of posts) regarding girls' education, natural disaster survival, and decline of abject poverty, all global in scope.  His fourth point was that people in general are ignorant of the good news about the first three points.

He's made an hour-long documentary demonstrating all of that. See the progress for one Mozambique family: "It's so great seeing Olivia and Andrea pedaling their way out of extreme poverty!" Their newly purchased bicycle eliminates hours of walking to sell their crops, bring water, and go to literacy class.


A vivid illustration shows why global population will undoubtedly decline after peaking in only a few decades. (Estimates of the peak number vary from eight to 11 billion.)

At about 44:45 in the video, Hans shows us his own absolute favorite chart. It's stunning! At least find and watch this part. I'd hate for you to miss it. 

Better

(cont'd)  Spoiler alert: if you didn't start the talk by Hans Rosling in yesterday's post and answer the 3 quick survey questions at the beginning, do it now before reading further

Hans started "Gapminder" to help people develop a view of the world that is based on facts, that is, information that represents reality.  I think it's a worthy labor. As he says in the talk, we need "to know about the present" in order to think clearly about the future. 

There's good news that should be told. About a billion people have risen out of abject poverty over the last ~30 years. Why don't people know it? Maybe because they get their news from the world of entertainment (you know the standard, "if it bleeds it leads").

We discover that, contrary to conventional wisdom,  most girls in the world are educated, natural disasters kill far fewer people, and there are far fewer in desperate poverty today than just a few years ago.

Perhaps the reporting of news is somewhat agenda-driven. Maybe it serves some ideology to emphasize the bad news and under-report the improvements, the good news.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Not ignorant

Here is that charismatic, number-crunching Swede, Hans Rosling, with a new TED talk (that I just discovered, though it's over a year old), determined to make us all less "ignorant about the world." As usual, his audience loves it.

Answer his survey questions at the beginning of the video for yourself and see how you compare to other audiences including Swedes, Americans, and chimpanzees :)



(cont'd tomorrow)

Lowline Lab

(cont'd from last Friday)

Lowline Lab is a demonstration of the technology that's going to produce a green park below street level on the lower east side of Manhattan - New York's first underground park.

To get sunlight below Delancey Street so there could be plants in the park, James Ramsey developed an "optical system" which is highlighted in this lab as a "proof of concept." Tubes overhead use mirrors and lenses to take the light down underground. A flexible metal canopy over the lab helps to reflect light down on the plants according to where it's needed.

Ramsey is working with Dan Barasch to develop the park. Here is the TED talk Dan did about the project:

Church people

Did Rich Mullins really say this, as I saw on facebook? He could have. But it's true regardless of who said it:

"I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite, because nobody goes to church because they're perfect. If you've got it all together, you don't need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning. Every time you go to church, you're confessing to yourself, to your family, to the people you pass on their way there, to the people who will greet you there, that you don't have it all together. And that you need their support. You need their direction. You need some accountability, you need some help."

Church people are just people. We need God and we need other people.

Pearl Harbor

Two days ago was the 74th anniversary of the attack that shocked America into entering World War II. Japan's bombing of the military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was a complete surprise to Americans because we were not at war with Japan or its ally, Germany.

Amazingly, an army colonel had predicted 18 years earlier, in 1923, that this very thing would happen some Sunday at 7:30 a.m. It actually did happen on December 7, 1941, on a Sunday morning at 7:55 a.m.

About 2400 people were killed that day at Pearl Harbor, and nearly 1200 were injured. "As of two years ago, 2000 - 2500 Pearl Harbor survivors were believed to be still alive . ."

Bike lock DNA

(cont'd)

So DNA contains the instructions on how to build a living thing, right down to the chemistry within the cell.

If you wanted a computer to perform a new task, what would it need? You would have to give it instructions, information, code. In the same way, life forms carry their self-replicating information within the DNA in all of their cells. But where did the original set of instructions come from for each life form?



Biologists are well aware that information was essential for the origin of each life form. The puzzle this situation puts to them is called the "information enigma."

Materialists and atheists must explain the existence of information by random chance alone. The video above demonstrates the the overwhelming odds against such an explanation, and suggests that intelligent agency is the only thing we have ever seen which can produce information.

That bike lock analogy? Watch the video to see how it illustrates the incredibly remote chance that life and species developed entirely by random chance.

For every good protein (string of amino acids in correct sequence), there are *10 to the 77th power* combinations of amino proteins that do not yield a good protein. The odds against random chance producing just one good protein are the same as hacking the right combination on a bike lock with 77 dials, with 10 possible digits in each dial.

DNA Code

You know what DNA is, that immensely complicated and big molecule at the center of all the cells in your body - and all the cells in every living thing. Segments of DNA are genes that code for how the cell must build a perfect, working protein .

There are thousands of proteins. Each protein is a string of amino acids, and a short protein is 150 amino acids long in a specific order. If one of these proteins (string of amino acids) is incorrectly assembled, it is destroyed by a quality control mechanism because they must be perfect.

So what are the odds that a code could develop by accident - randomly - to instruct a living body to build the thousands of proteins necessary for life?  The odds are small, like trying to hack a bike lock.

More on the bike lock analogy tomorrow.
(cont'd tomorrow)

Low Line

Last August my niece and I visited the High Line in NYC. It's a park with shops and a path above the streets, following an old elevated train track.

Now I find out there's also a Low Line park located in "lower east Manhattan" that will grow trees and plants below the streets. The site is an abandoned trolley terminal, unused since trolley service ended in 1948.

It won't actually be up and running until maybe 2020, but a "lab" has been constructed to demonstrate the technology and prove that this will, indeed, work. More on this demo next week.

Need nuclear

Peter Thiel, entrepreneur and investor, authored an opinion piece in the NY Times last Friday entitled, "The New Atomic Age We Need,"

He says that clean energy goals will not be achieved unless nuclear energy returns to a major role, that America  " . .  already had a practical plan back in the 1960s to become fully carbon-free without any need of wind or solar: nuclear power. . . [O]ur power grid could have been carbon-free years ago."

Science writer Ronald Bailey at reason.com agrees that "Environmentalists Need to Get Real" at the big climate conference in Paris. "Anyone who claims to be worried about future man-made climate change and who still opposes modern nuclear power is not serious and should be ignored."

Army runs

Nigeria's suffering citizens in its northeast quadrant are still the target of Boko Haram. (Click on Nigeria under Labels for stories of these attacks.)

Dozens of girls were taken and hundreds of buildings set on fire over the weekend. A local newspaper reports that the military base was destroyed while soldiers and their commanding officer ran for their lives. After a battle on November 19, 107 soldiers were missing. Equipment was stolen including a tank, trucks, guns, and uniforms.

Civilian fighters held off attackers in Gulak until military reinforcements came to help save the town.

Not lettuce

Maybe you have heard that humans share about 98% of our genes with apes. This fact is sometimes claimed as evidence by those who deny a transcendent difference between humans and animals, who prefer that we see ourselves as a variety of ape.

But author Wesley J. Smith has a counter-argument:

"We share many genes with lettuce, but that doesn't make us part salad." The actual percentage of our genome that we share with lettuce is about 50%. What that tells you is that you can be hugely different from another life form while having a lot of the same genetic code.

Activists who tout the 98% figure may have "an ax to grind", that is, a cause - human equivalence to animals, the subverting of traditional values or faith, something that rejects the intrinsic dignity of human lives.

"Time will tell whether society chooses to accept this radical equation. We just shouldn't be fooled into thinking that the idea is compelled by "the science." It's about ideology."

Victim?

Maybe the obsession with blaming other people for our own feelings has gone as far as it can go.  

At Oklahoma Wesleyan University,  a talk was given to students about the importance of love based on the Bible. One of them later complained that he felt victimized. He resented the fact that he had guilt feelings for not living up to the teaching about love.

University president Everett Piper says, "I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience! 

"At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered.

"If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for."

Cavern

A professional photographer camped for eight days inside one of the largest caves in the world. He used a GoPro camera mounted on a drone to get magnificent views of the huge caverns.

Watch the 6-minute video here at National Geographic's website. Look for people. He gets them in many of the shots so that you can grasp an idea of the size of this place.

US thanks

During his first year as the very first president of the United States, George Washington recommended "". . a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God . ."

British author Sally Lloyd Jones says, "As a Brit first coming to the United States, I couldn’t believe that a whole holiday could be centered around being grateful. It struck me as so beautiful. It still does.Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday."

Rule of man

(cont'd)

If we want consumers and sellers to make their own choices freely (free markets), "rule of law" must prevail in contrast to "rule of man." Laws must be written to protect both consumers and sellers, and they must apply to everyone - even the government.

If a king or senator or president is not subject to law, he or she can favor his friends and sell political influence and punish his opposition - in short, do whatever he wants for his own benefit. That's corrupt.

Author and professor Rodney Stark tells a story that demonstrates how vulnerable we are to those in power when a king or ruler is above the law:

The Battle of Lepanto (1453) was fought in the Mediterranean Sea between Ottoman forces (Turks) and Europeans. Ali Pasha, a son-in-law of the ruling Ottoman Sultan, led the Turks with over 200 ships.

When they were defeated and Ali Pasha killed, it was discovered that he had carried his personal treasure into the battle in the hold of his ship. He had prestige and position in his own country and he was in the Sultan's family. But he still could not protect his wealth from government seizure unless he took it with him - into battle.

Nothing is safe under "rule of man."

Free markets

(cont'd)

All through human history, the natural state of the vast majority of people has been bare subsistence, or poverty. So our biggest concern, the most pressing question, should be: how did some cultures manage to raise their average material standard of living to a measure of comparative wealth?

A single feature correlates to cultures that rise out of poverty - it's economic freedom. This photo of the Korean peninsula shows visually the economic difference between the oppressed north and the south:

photo: nationalgeographic.com

South Korea has general economic freedom. But North Korea, a command economy, is controlled by a dictator. North Koreans as a people group are too poor to afford energy to light up their country at night.

The video of Jay Richards in yesterday's post is so good - go back to yesterday and watch it if you haven't yet! He uses a beautiful story to demonstrate freedom in the marketplace - it results in more satisfaction, more happiness, more wealth, for everyone.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Inasmuch

"Jay Richards argues that Christians who care about human well-being should support free markets." Because . . Jesus said that "inasmuch" as we care for the well-being of our brothers and sisters in need, it's as if we do it for Him. So let's think about well-being and ask good questions.

"Even if you live in the bottom quintile (20%) of the American economy, you are among the wealthiest people ever to have lived in the history of the human race." (Q) How did it happen that people even in the bottom income bracket in the United States are wealthier than most of the rest of the world? 

Poverty has been the state of humanity throughout history since the Garden of Eden. By far the majority have had a subsistence living, just enough (material wealth) to survive. So the most important question that can be asked is not "where does poverty come from?" but (Q) "where does prosperity come from?" 

The second most important economic question is, (Q) "what special conditions have enabled whole cultures to leave absolute poverty and enjoy more than subsistence?"

The key factor that answers that question is in tomorrow's post.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Why IS attacks

For obvious reasons, many of us in the West are baffled when it comes to comprehending the motives of Islamic State (IS). Their brutality is beyond repugnant, so attempts to figure it out go on.

There's the sympathetic, sort of Marxian theory:  terrorists can't get jobs, they're disadvantaged, so it's understandable that they'd resort to torture and murder. Fyi, I don't hold with this theory. It's often held by materialists who like economic explanations and don't like "values" explanations.

But there may be a move to start believing in beliefs. Last March, Atlantic's Graeme Wood said that IS "is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs" that include a mission to bring in the final war of the world, apocalypse.

And just yesterday a CNN article claimed the same thing. Author Frida Ghitis sited IS attacks on powers like Russia and France to demonstrate her theory that IS is actually trying to get that apocalypse going - to incite it.

Only a very small segment of humanity wants to bring in the apocalypse by murder and torture. But it doesn't take many to make a terrible difference in the world.

EV question

Electric cars are cool. But are they the best choice if you want to reduce green house gases to cut global warming? Are battery electric vehicles (BEV) really much better for the environment than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars? 

A lot of people think so, but questions could be asked. When EV's are re-charged, what source provides the electricity? If the source is fossil fuel, is there any advantage over ICE cars?

"Battery electric vehicles are a rare case of a product which is both substantially more expensive with significantly worse performance than the technology it is supposed to replace."

I don't know if the energy trade-off is worthwhile; I'm still asking questions.

Self-control

My friend Sheryle writes powerfully for Christians in Recovery, out of personal experience with recovery and personal experience with God's help. Here she talks about hard choices. What if the way to recovery is difficult or painful? 

image: christians-in-recovery.org

"You either embrace the pain of discipline or you embrace the pain of regret." The "pain of regret" would be regretting that you didn't embrace the pain of discipline so you could be free.

"A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls," according to the Bible in Proverbs 25:28. He/she is so exposed to injury.

Work perks

According to the chart, millennials (age 18-34) place top value on being trained/developed in their work life. It makes sense. Information expands faster and faster, so they know they must keep learning. And . . continuing to get better at what they do will ensure being able to afford more of the rest of this list.

image: forbes.com

Good music

If you took piano lessons as a child, you may have a better appreciation for music today and a musical skill, all of which is good. But it seems there is more to the way you were benefited by those lessons.

Looks like you are better able to function today as a result of the way your brain was trained during that study of music. "Musical training doesn't just affect your musical ability — it provides tremendous benefits to children's emotional and behavioral maturation."

image: brainmadesimple.com

A professor of psychiatry at University of Vermont says that if a child took lessons on a musical instrument, "it accelerated cortical organization in attention skill, anxiety management and emotional control." We could all use more of that.

Carbon sink

(cont'd)

If you're not that excited about the soil, grass, animals or ranchers, well, the maker of yesterday's video isn't either. But his interest lies here:

 "I’m fascinated with [that new kind of] grazing because of its potential to help slow climate change . . .Via photosynthesis, plants suck CO2 out of the air, give us oxygen (O2) to breathe and send carbon down t[o] their roots . . " The dead roots lock up carbon for decades, where  it can bond with the soil and stay underground for centuries.

Biologist Allan Savory (whose TED talk went viral) claims that "holistic management" of livestock can regenerate soil and grasslands for the benefit of humanity - and can also stop climate change by capturing CO2:

"Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process—green plants growing on regenerating soil.

Underground

You might remember Allan Savory's TED talk. He dedicated his life to finding a way to turn unproductive, dying grassland back into green and productive grassland.

Here are three farmer/ranchers who tried the new system and found that their dying grasslands became green, fertile, everything they could want it to be. They've regenerated dying soils "with cascading benefits: More water soaks into and stays in the soil; soil microbes thrive; plant nutrition and production levels take off; and wildlife — from bugs to birds to large mammals — flocks to the ranches."

If regenerated soil, flourishing grasslands, thriving livestock, happy ranchers don't ring your bell, then maybe this will:

Rancher Gabe says that in the few years they've managed grazing this new way, they have tripled the amount of carbon in the soil. Healthy soil with its lush plant life captures carbon from the air and stores it underground, where it should be, instead of in the atmosphere. Hugely significant for anyone worried about global warming.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Veterans Day

Thank you, U.S. veterans.

Alternative

NBC would call Harvard law student Josh Craddock's lifestyle "alternative" because he's married, 23 years old, and the father of a 10-month-old. Living in NYC, Josh and his family would have been typical decades ago, but today they are different.

These millennials don't think of marriage the same as most of their generation do. "We view marriage as a cornerstone institution that molds and shapes us, not as a capstone achievement to be added once we have everything else figured out."

Many would say Josh's point of view is mature: "If I could tell my generation one thing about marriage, it would be that marriage is not just a platform for self-realization or romantic love. It is a lifelong commitment to the good of another."

When an admissions counselor met his family, she said "Wow! You guys live an almost normal life!" But actually, they don't. It would have been normal any time up til, say, about  30 years ago. Now they're different.

Driverless 2

(cont'd)

So Google is not a car company but it's engaged in a "car project" to build a car that drives without a driver. How to do that?  It's complicated. The car will correctly handle a ridiculous number of variables, like a woman in a wheelchair chasing ducks across the road. 

Google's technical director of that project explains his approach in the TED talk below. It goes beyond just improving driver-assistance systems (like "collision mitigation braking") - which is the approach of the car makers. In Urmson's mind, that's like trying to fly by getting better and better at jumping.

Urmson thinks there's a "transformative opportunity" here to go beyond driver-assistance systems to fully driver-less. Why try something so challenging? Safety. He says that the rate at which cars crash today (with human drivers) would be, in the airline business, like a 737 crashing every work day. 

In 2013, they first tested it with "Googlers" who didn't work for the car project. "Something awesome happened. Every one of them told us they loved it!"

Driverless 1

Bloomberg Businessweek reported last week that "Driverless Cars Are Closer Than They Appear." All the big Detroit car manufacturers are now on board with the need to develop driverless capability. "If GM stays with its current car-selling model, it'll go out of business. "Yup, we're done," says an executive." What's pushed them into the new model? Free market competition.

Detroit considers Google's self-driving project a "very serious competitive threat." Tesla's Model S already offers an autopilot option. So (as can happen in any industry) the most "disruptive" innovation is coming from outsiders. It happened not in the entrenched car industry, but in the center of America's technology industry in Silicon Valley CA.

GM knows a lot about making traditional cars, but it's a very big stretch for them to catch up to Google and Tesla in this way. Their first market offering of a driverless feature won't come til 2017, when Cadillac will introduce what they call "Super Cruise." Even then, it will only operate on highways.

Tomorrow's post - Silicon Valley has a certain disdain for Detroit. Watch Google's car program technical director do a TED talk.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Bridge of Spies

A pretty ordinary guy who's good at his job (insurance lawyer) and loves his family and believes in the ideals of his country - this guy somehow gets put in a position to make a big difference in the world. The movie never tells us who chose him or why.



"Bridge of Spies" tells the story of this insurance lawyer who managed to use his head and his integrity to perform a tricky and sensitive service to America. We never find out why he was chosen, but he was the right choice.

Steven Spielberg directed it. It's good.

Universe

The beginning of the universe requires a "beginner,"that is, a "causative agent who works outside of matter, energy, space, and time. By definition, that is the God of the Bible" (in the words of Dr. Hugh Ross). "We're living in the one time of the universe where we can observe the entire history of the cosmic creation event."

It is our ability today to observe 100% of the history of the universe that gives us the most compelling evidence for the God beyond space and time who created everything, according to Dr. Ross.

The worldview of Scientism would say that all the unfolding discoveries of science reveal a simple material cause for everything. But just the opposite has happened in the last few decades, when science learned that the universe had a creation date.

Famous scientist Dr. Arno Penzias, a Nobel laureate in physics, said this about the universe:

"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan. Thus, the observations of modern science seem to lead to the same conclusions as centuries-old intuition."

Yes, the intuition of human beings throughout history who have thought "this whole thing did not happen by accident."

Soli Deo gloria.

Scientism

Scientism is faith in science (and its methods) as the only source of true knowledge about everything. When it comes to spiritual truth, scientism would say "Spiritual truth can't exist because science can't find it. Science is the ultimate judge!"

It's sort of hard to keep faith in scientism because human experience simply goes beyond material data.  You'd have to kill your intuition to do it because humans overwhelmingly want their lives and relationships to mean something. We believe in genuine love and justice that are not reducible to physics and biology.

Scientists have opened the material universe and how it works to us, with incredible results that have blessed human life on earth (thank God). But some scientists have gone so far as to claim that science proves that God doesn't exist, and that's just not the case.

In fact, "The Scientific Evidence for God is Growing, Not Shrinking." One evidence for God is what we've found out about the universe, the subject of tomorrow's post.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Big Africa

The only way to get a good idea of the relative size of continents on earth is to look carefully at a globe. But we probably look at a flat map much more often, which gets more and more distorted moving away from the equator - so we have a skewed impression.

Did you know that Africa is as big as this (below)?

photo: economist.com

Few girls

(cont'd)

During the one-child rule which held for the last app. 30 years, Chinese couples were tempted to prefer boys to girls. So "gender selection abortions [have been] "extremely common". In some areas there could be up to 130 boys born for every 100 girls.

That kind of imbalance means that millions of young men will necessarily be unable to find wives. Social behavior is different in villages and schools.

"A shortage of brides is putting young women in neighboring countries at risk of being trafficked." 

At a shelter for victims of trafficking, all the girls say "they were tricked by relatives, friends or boyfriends and sold to Chinese men as brides." A Vietnamese girl said, "I had heard a lot about trafficking. But I couldn't imagine it would happen to me."

Two-child

China's notorious restriction on families has been lifted - the famous "one-child" rule is no more. Couples are now allowed by the Communist Party to have two children. It's an effort to correct some unintended consequences that have shown up during 30 years under "one-child."

Population has decreased to the point where the elder portion of the population is booming, coupled with a declining number of working-age people to support them. A second effect is a big imbalance in gender. For every 100 girls born, there are 115+  boys born.

Under "Central planning", the state or elites will make many of your decisions for you. Ex: how many children you will have.

(cont'd Monday)

Adam & Eve

Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross have updated their book of ten years ago, Who Was Adam? As scientists and Christians, they speak and publish on the ways they see scientific evidence supporting the claims of the Bible.

Science progresses by testing theories with new information. When new evidence is consistent with that theory, it is strengthened. But previous theories must be evaluated in the light of new evidence whether it supports or contradicts them.

So, to allow comparison of the original text with the new material, they left all the original content in the updated book (didn't edit their original claims), and added 150 new pages to it containing information that's come to light since then.

Regarding Adam and Eve . . Rana and Ross demonstrate that the science seems to lean in the direction of a real couple as the first modern humans.

Russians

This is from bloomberg.com, "If Russians hate the U.S, so much, why do they want to move there?" I didn't know they did (want to move here).

When pollsters ask Russians if they like Americans, they say no. But "the number of Russians trying to emigrate to the U.S. has never been higher." They "increasingly see the U.S. as a safe place to park their money, maybe park their spouses and children."

A quarter million Russians got U.S. visas last year, while another 75,000 went to Europe. A Moscow political scientist who moved to Germany told Bloomberg, "Kremlin policy is forcing the educated class to choose: either line up under the banner of war with the West or leave."

An immigration lawyer says that they are afraid to talk openly about immigrating, that in Skype interviews they may say they are simply curious or inquiring for a friend. "Then, when they come in face to face, it's a different story,"