Elon Musk

(cont'd)

2008 was the the bad year for Musk and his projects. After six years, SpaceX wasn't bringing in profits yet. We're talking about individuals, not governments, learning from scratch how to make rockets for space, and finding someone to buy them. Musk had spent all his $200 million. To keep making payroll, he borrowed money wherever he could find it, including friends - and thought he might have to let one of the companies just fail, either SpaceX or Tesla. And his wife divorced him.

It occurs to me that there are people out there who are going to hate and resent Elon Musk for the success of his companies and the money he has made. (You're probably not one of them.) But I suggest that they need to think it through a little further.

Is Musk a good and likeable person? I don't know, but I'm able to identify the quality of bravery and admire that.

SpaceX has about 3800 employees who earn a living and, from the sound of that Bloomberg article, are excited to work there. Are the haters creating enough wealth to support thousands of employees and their families?

Some good things have been accomplished.

Risky

(continuing yesterday's thread)

A new biography of Elon Musk authored by Ashlee Vance has just come out and it's summarized in a May 24th Bloomberg article called "Go Fever: The Irrational, Inhuman, Interstellar Odyssey of Elon Musk."

photo: extremetech.com

In 2001 & 2002 he and some friends/partners flew to Moscow to try to purchase rockets - because he had always been interested in making humanity "interplanetary". They wouldn't bargain with him so he stormed out. As the little group were finally relaxing on the plane to go home, he still worked away on his laptop. Turning around to them, he said, "Hey guys, I think we can build this rocket ourselves."

So SpaceX was born. He didn't know much about space, but he was *optimistic*. He looked for young overachiever-engineers "with a high tolerance for risk." They must have been inspired by his big goals, because some of those employees work 100 hours per week.

Enormous amounts of work, stress, courage, money and time have been invested into SpaceX and it very nearly failed more than once. It was risky.

More risk

We're all going to have to take some risks in life - and not everything works out. Ellie Holcomb risked failure and disappointment going solo in music, and she didn't enjoy the risky uncertainty. Some people are willing to dare greatly. If they win, they earn bigger rewards.

Entrepreneurs take on risk to start a business when they don't know for sure that they can find enough customers for their product, that they won't run out of money. But they take the leap and just try.  It's courage, it's optimism. Courage is a character quality.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk had that courage and optimism to the point that one of his friends thought he had gone crazy. He dared to risk all his fortune on two crazy-expensive goals, to start a new car company and start a rocket-building company. Just for fun, he started them about the same time.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Risk taker

"I got my master’s in education and swore that I would never marry a musician or do music for a living." She spoke as the daughter of a music producer. But Ellie Holcomb did enter the music industry, and she won the Dove Award last year.

She sang with and wrote songs for her husband Drew's group, The Neighbors, until both he and her dad told her to start writing for herself.

“I didn’t want to do it! It made me want to throw up. I thought, ‘No one is going to back this; no one knows my music; this is a terrible idea!’ Yet, I was writing songs out of God’s word, and his word was changing me, and that’s when I thought it might be worth taking a risk.”

"I had to learn to be vulnerable and really broken in front of our band, in front of my husband, and it absolutely changed my faith, it changed everything."

Memorial Day

Military Appreciation Month was started in 1999 to recognize and thank the military for their service. But Memorial Day is specifically to honor and remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country. "[T]ime and time again brave men and women have been willing to fight for the freedoms we all too often take for granted.

photo: .977  Radio Network

To be even more specific - let's honor those (1335 Americans) who were killed in Ramadi, Anbar Province, Iraq, in 2004-2007. Some people - like parents of the fallen - are acutely aware of the sacrifice, since Ramadi was overtaken by ISIS this month.

While the U.S. State Department thinks it was a major blow to the fight against ISIS, Gen. Dempsey remarked that Ramadi was not that important. The mom of the first Navy Seal to die there put a personal face on it in her letter:

“You, sir, owe an apology to the families whose loved ones’ blood was shed in Ramadi. Ramadi matters to us and is very symbolic to us. You need to apologize to our troops whose bodies were blown to pieces from IEDs and bullet holes leaving parts and pieces behind. Ramadi matters to them. "

Moral truth

We've completed videos of The Ten Commandments this month, and I hope you enjoyed it. Some Jewish perspectives on the "decalogue" were new to me, as they would be for most Christians. 

Is moral truth for real? If the God of the Bible exists, then He is intensely engaged with humanity and has revealed timeless moral truth. Even atheists will sometimes agree that morality is just made up by society unless a good and sovereign God exists.

A free society needs moral truth, not just moral opinions. The human heart is inadequate as a universal standard.

“Generations of Americans since the 1950s have been raised with 'how do you feel about it?' rather than 'this is right and this is wrong.' The heart has substituted for the code. The heart has substituted for God. And the result is civilization in decay.”

Too many?

Earth has about 7 billion people on it. In 25-30 years, earth's population will peak and start declining. These are the facts and they are not in dispute. All the more developed countries of the world are reproducing at rates below replacement rate

Over all, humanity is feeding, clothing, sheltering, and moving people much better today than in the past. A billion people have risen out of abject poverty around the world in the last thirty years.

Why the hysteria about "over-population"? The case for less alarm over population is in my posts labeled "Demography" and in this animated video:

Poverty inc

If you have not thought much about the global aid system, the trailer below for "Poverty, Inc." will stimulate your thinking.

Magatte Wade says  "I'm glad people want to help . . people give us food, dig us wells, bring us shoes . . the problem is - it does not work . . Emergency disaster relief has become the permanent model. We don't need one more celebrity doing one more campaign . . If you really want to help, the poverty industry as we know it has to go."

"After 40 years, if you're still here - that's a problem."



"No one wants to be a beggar for life."

Adapting

The economist (Dr. Rodriguez) in yesterday's post considers reproduction to be a human right. Is it? Her point was that the World Bank, as an example, should not exercise such financial power over her country (Guatemala) that they can dictate family size.

Here's another author who says that forced population control is the most inhumane way to fight poverty - as if the way to get rid of poverty is to eliminate poor people. Her article is full of interesting links.

Are people a net drain on the earth, as David Attenborough and many others say? Or are even the common people productive creators?

I watched an inspiring BBC program now streaming on Netflix called "Generation Earth." We as a species adapt in amazing ways to feed and care for ourselves across our planet.

Sterilize

"Third world" individuals are finding their own voices. We've heard from Africans about the corruption inherent in "government aid" (remember, this is not "emergency aid"). It hurts the economy of the recipient nation, it tends to fill the bank accounts of rich tyrants, and it makes third world governments less responsive to their people.

Here is a new revelation - the enormous aid industry may require population control that can result in forced sterilizations. Quite a claim, made by this economics professor at a Guatemala university:



" [I]t is extremely offensive that someone in an office in Europe will decide that no more black babies should be born or no more Latin American babies should be born, or that only one baby should be born.”

10th of Ten

When it comes to my neighbor's house or car, I could admire it and aspire to get one like it. That is not a sin. Or I could admire it and desire to take that specific one away from my neighbor. That's the sin of coveting. As Dennis points out, it is a thought sin - the only one of the ten that identifies a thought rather than an action.

Myths?

Controversy over "climate change" hasn't ended. UK's The Guardian says that certain myths about the issue should be exploded. No one will agree with all their points.

But I like this reminder:

Green plants take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide.

Say that carbon dioxide (CO2) really is increasing at a dangerous rate because we burn fossil fuels. Or disagree. Either way, earth would benefit from more trees, which absorb large amounts of CO2. So I'd like to see both Savory's and Fletcher's efforts pursued and supported.

More of the article's claims - polar ice isn't necessarily shrinking, humanity will not necessarily be worse off if temps increase, most scientists do believe human activity is warming the planet.

It's like this

It's like this - I just got my laptop (with all the passwords) back today after leaving it in a hotel room! That's why there has been an unprecedented week-long gap in this blog - and I'm so sorry about that! Dear reader, I would never desert you. I can still hardly believe that I left it behind, when I haven't left anything at all in a room for years and years.

Thanks for coming back and for checking from time to time. Now, let's get back to reading and thinking things through together.

(Note: last Friday's ninth commandment came up automatically because it had been pre-scheduled)

9th of Ten

Is truth important? It's important to me, and probably to you. In this one, Dennis Prager explains that knowing and telling the truth is a must.

Fight back

Nigerian military has rescued 93 women and 200 girls from Boko Haram. In addition to girls taken from that boarding school a year ago ("bring back our girls"), the Islamist group has steadily been kidnapping females.

What does Boko Haram do with them? As most of the world has come to expect, they're forced into slavery for sex and for combat.

Last year the Nigerian military seemed powerless to stop the attacks. So what has changed to result in this big successful rescue? Neighboring countries of Chad and Cameroon have helped.

photo: africanlanguages.americancouncils.org

8th of Ten

One of God's ten commandments is "Do not steal." Nothing specific is mentioned; it's open-ended to include anything that may be stolen. So if you have inherited or received or worked for anything - even your reputation in the neighborhood - your neighbor has no right to take it from you.