CO2 & $

Turns out that CO2 can be more useful than just keeping life going on earth :)

Startup business Novomer is "converting pollution into sustainable polymers and chemicals."

Joule feeds it to bacteria that make diesel fuel.

Skyonic makes baking soda and other products from it.

Apparently, it has lots of potential. And we seem to have plenty of it.

Prisoner

Negotiations between Iran and the U.S. have come and gone, but Saeed Abedini's wife (Nagmeh) says that he is worse off in Iran than ever, after three years in prison there. Stun gun strikes, solitary confinement, attacks from staff and inmates, there's more of it.

photo: worldmag.com

After meeting with the American ambassador to the U.N, Samantha Power, Nagmeh Abedini summed it up this way:

"She said they really thought Iran was acting in good faith with the nuclear deal and would release the Americans,” she said. “Their strategy was hoping. My strategy was from day one they should have said, ‘Release the Americans, and then we'll talk.’”

Women have

More than half (52%) of all professional, management and "related positions" are held by women, not by men. 

And it may surprise you that "Women have overtaken men and now control more than half of all U.S. wealth and will likely take an even bigger piece of the pie in coming years"

Therefore . . what? What do these two statistical facts tell us? I'm open to your thoughts about it.

from http://www.businessinsider.com

Connected

(cont'd)

"The Edge" is said to be the most sustainable and connected building in the world. Here are more ways it may be the "smartest building in the world:"

LED panels illuminate and "are also packed with sensors—motion, light, temperature, humidity, infrared—creating a “digital ceiling” that wires the building like synapses in a brain." They "require such a trickle of electricity they can be powered using the same cables that carry data for the Internet."


All work spaces are less than 23 feet from a window, so daylight dominates. Solar panels on the south and the roof create most of the power that the building uses, and that includes the charging of phones and of electric cars in the garage.

"During summer months, the building pumps warm water more than 400 feet deep in the aquifer beneath the building, where it sits, insulated, until winter, when it's sucked back out for heating. The system developed for the Edge is the most efficient aquifer thermal energy storage in the world, according to Robert van Alphen, OVG's project manager for the Edge."

One more good video about The Edge with a few more details is here.

The Edge

"The Edge" is a 15-story office building in Amsterdam designed by  a London architect, and it's called the "smartest building in the world."

So . . how is this a smart building? In many ways. For example, in the sense that you can customize the building to your needs like this:

"A day at the Edge in Amsterdam starts with a smartphone app . .  From the minute you wake up, you’re connected. The app checks your schedule, and the building recognizes your car when you arrive and directs you to a parking spot.

"Then the app finds you a desk. Because at the Edge, you don’t have one. No one does. Work spaces are based on your schedule: sitting desk, standing desk, work booth, meeting room, balcony seat, or “concentration room.” Wherever you go, the app knows your preferences for light and temperature, and it tweaks the environment accordingly."

(cont'd tomorrow)

911 tower

"Starchitect" Bjarke Ingels has designed the last tower that will, as he puts it, "frame" the eight blocks of  the 911 memorial.

The building will look like a column of seven offset blocks, providing an outdoor terrace or hanging garden for each block. He pictures the blocks housing different sorts of companies, more creative than financial. Its core tenants will be media companies.

Ingels, just 40 years old, moved to New York City from his native Denmark five years ago and is very much in demand. His firm is also co-designer of Google's new headquarters near San Francisco Bay.

Charlie Rose interviews the animated and well-spoken Bjarke Ingels here.

WeAreFilms

(cont'd)

Alex and Aaron started making films together as kids and it just hasn't stopped. They got "better equipment" and kept learning, started a website.

They have some advice for dreamers who can identify  - "Don't think that just because you don't have the best equipment that you can't make something beautiful or touching. . . Find others who are equally as passionate about filmmaking as you are and make videos together on weekends. That's what we would do. Eventually you find a core group of people that you love working with and ideally you get to hire those people to work with you in the future whenever you have paid gigs."

Both brothers having homophilia, they've enjoyed donating their time and skills to filming summer camp memories for children with the condition.

"Shooting a music video is one of our favorite things to do. There's just something magical about creating an image that a song will be remembered by."

Film makers

"The film industry has a reputation for being cutthroat, backstabbing, and grueling. It’s true – especially in NYC. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And we don’t have to be that way."

That's Aaron Craig who works with his brother in film making. They are good at it and they love it (so often this way, that you love doing what you are gifted to do).

They work with excellence and passion, like other good film makers. They also aim to do it without being cutthroat and backstabbing.

That's a "good work" - in whatever it is that you do, to do it well and do it with integrity that honors God. 

(cont'd tomorrow)

Tesla class

(cont'd)

CEO Elon Musk "just wants to focus on making the world’s best car, and the $70,000 Model S, by all rights, can claim that prize." They burned through $1.5 billion in the last twelve months, but investors seem to have confidence that Tesla can become everything their CEO wants to accomplish so the funding keeps coming in.

What does he look for when he hires?  “Elon doesn’t settle for good or very good. He wants the best. So he asks job candidates what kinds of complex problems they’ve solved before and he wants details.”

“We always probe deeply into achievement on the résumé,” says Musk. “Success has many parents, so we look to find out who really did it. I don’t care if they graduated from university or even high school.”

When a new CIO was hired, his first task was to build all the software to run the company - from scratch - in three months - at 1/5 the cost. "When Vijayan told him such a task wasn’t possible, Musk simply stated, with a Steve Jobs-like confidence: “Let me know what you need from my side to make this happen.” Says Vijayan, “He doesn’t accept constraints as ‘givens’ the way most people do.”

According to their "vice president of engineering: “We take leaps of faith that are like jumping out of an airplane and designing and building the parachute on the way down.”

World class

Tesla Motors just keeps making headlines. Read this to see why Forbes places Tesla at the top of its list of "world's most innovative companies" :

"It goes from 0-60 in under three seconds in “ludicrous” mode, the fastest of any four-door production car on the planet, and is also the safest car in its class. When it collides with the crash-test machine, the crash-test machine breaks. You can order it online and have it delivered to your door, get software updates beamed wirelessly and receive maintenance alerts before bad stuff happens. Plus, it’s beautiful. The door handles reach out to be opened as you approach, then fold flat for better aerodynamics. 

"Don’t believe us: Consumer Reports called it the best overall car on the market for the past two years."

"The first thing you notice when you step onto Tesla Motors TSLA +3.44% production floor are the robots. Eight-foot-tall bright-red bots that look like Transformers, huddling over each Model S sedan as it makes its way through the factory in Fremont, Ca . ." (click on the photo to see it bigger)

Btw . .  no, Tesla does not pay me to report on their cars all the time. I'm just kind of fascinated.

Not just CA

Australia is suffering too. Right now cattle ranchers in terrible drought conditions are "enjoying the bad times - because we know the catastrophic times are still coming." They cull their herds and take down mulgo trees to feed the cattle.

The drought has been happening over years. The video below came out 6 months ago.

Free talk #2

(cont'd)

Free speech means that a person has the 1) right to say what he thinks should be said, but it also includes the 2) right of others to hear the dissenting view or the inconvenient fact (as the late Christopher Hitchens, famous atheist, said).

The first right is a matter of equal justice before the law, that one has the same right as others do to say what he thinks important. That right is also a matter of respect for the rationality and desires of all people since they too are created in God's image (not only the people who agree with me).

The second right honors truth. It is possible, even though we have good reason to think what we think, that we are wrong. We must allow for this. Under this concept, the dissenter must be allowed to bring to the discussion what we have so far rejected or neglected - because it could be a part of the truth that we missed.

And we want our decisions in society and in personal life to be based on truth, on what really is - not on a fantasy of what we'd like to pretend is true.

Free talk #1

Should we in America be free to say what we want to, what we believe? Yes, the Constitution's First Amendment guarantees that right to us. The government may not stop you from speaking. But there are pockets where free speech is not welcome.

Those pockets are the very place you'd expect free speech to be defended:  university and college campuses. Over half of them now restrict speech they don't like, and the U.S. Dept. of Education may make restricted speech mandatory in all higher education.



But why?

(cont'd tomorrow)

911

I remember September 11, 2001 ~

Here's the gist of a conversation I had with my niece Bethany and our friend Adam 3 weeks ago in NY when it was time to either go to the 911 memorial or eliminate it from our trip:

Me - I'm indifferent about visiting Ground Zero, but I don't know why, since it's so important.
Adam - It just mechanically lists the data & events with grief for the deaths.
Me - Maybe they're trying not to be political.
Bethany - There's nothing about 911 that isn't political!!
Me - That's it! That's the reason - I get the impression that the memorial is only data, no meaning.

Since I still have not been there, I wonder - are no value statements are made at the memorial? It will be a priority next time for me, but if you have been there and have an opinion, I welcome it.

Go here for the stories of four men who survived being on high floors in the two towers.

"Trees" #2

(cont'd)

Those big man-made "trees" in Singapore are made to be a useful part of the park ecology. They have solar panels to generate power, they catch rain water and moderate the tropical heat.

The huge "trunks" are made of concrete and steel, while the "branches" are big wire rods. That walkway is seven stories above ground.

At night there's a light and sound show. They expect the finished project is to be a national landmark and attraction magnet for tourism.

"Trees" #1

When we visited Singapore in 2006, we found the city/nation/island to be beautiful, clean, orderly. Possibly we could now add the words innovative and fanciful to the description.

Two months ago the big landscaping and parks project, Gardens by the Bay, opened to the public. It includes 18 man-made "trees" up to 150 feet tall. The "trunks" of these trees have solar technology and vertical gardens. Paths have been built between them.

theguardian.com

(cont'd)

Moral persons

(cont'd)

It's hard to believe that people would claim something so nonsensical as legal personhood for chimpanzees, though they are being consistent with their worldview which says that there's nothing special about human beings (you have to wonder how they can deny the specialness of humans).

William Wilberforce was one of the founders of the SPCA. As a Christian, he appealed to humans' moral responsibility to kindly care for animals - and this was consistent with his worldview that humans are accountable persons who can choose to do what's morally right.

Sometimes you hear that Christians have no business "moralizing," that they should keep their values to themselves, that God's standards are not for the world at large but just for believers. I have to disagree. God's standards for behavior are light in the darkness of a confusing world.

Personhood

Are chimpanzees people too? There's a movement that seeks legal "personhood" for chimps and other animals based on their view that humans have no transcendent value over other animals.  They call it "species-ism", discrimination that favors humans against animals.

But humans are different. One thing that distinguishes humans is their moral responsibility to treat animals kindly. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the oldest charity of its kind, was founded in 1824 for this purpose - we demand kindness from persons but not from animals.

That's the basic foundation of a recent decision by the New York court. They "refused to hear an appeal seeking to create chimp personhood."

The court says that animals cannot "be held legally accountable for their action," as persons can. 

(cont'd tomorrow)

Influence

All of us are consumers of our own culture. Some people's minds are fed nothing but conventional, mainstream, politically correct education and entertainment. But conventional opinion may be good, it may be true - or it may be neither good nor true.

Author Hugh Whelchel asks, "Have Christians Lost the Ability to Be in the World but Not of it?" For about a century, he says, the church has been absorbing more than influencing culture. 

The world would like us to conform, to just "take their word for it." They can be rough and judgmental - but the Bible says not to blindly conform to culture:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Uber future

Just in case you're thinking of driving for Uber:  a study has shown that Uber drivers make around $19 per hour while traditional cabbies make about $12.90 per hour. (The study was done by a Princeton economist who advises Hillary Clinton.)

Clinton says that Uber drivers make so little that they drive down the income of cabbies (er . . what?) and presidential candidate Sanders just wants Uber to be highly regulated. If the California law suits against it are successful, Uber will incur the cost of treating their drivers like employees, which would include insurance and expenses. I've no doubt that consumers will pay more if that happens.

It's been a success with both drivers and consumers so far. Is Uber the evolved version of the taxicab business? Maybe it's on the right side of history.

High supply

(cont'd)

A barrel of oil costs far less all over the world now than it did just a couple of years ago, resulting in global benefits (yesterday's post).  But why did that happen?

There's more than one thing contributing to it, but the first event was this - oil industry innovation.  New fracking technology enabled American companies to extract oil from rock at lower cost. Therefore, much more oil came on the global market. 

With bigger supply, the worldwide price began to fall. Normally when oil prices fall, Middle Eastern oil producers slow down their production to reduce the worldwide supply until prices come back up. This time they did not slow down. So worldwide supply stayed high, oil prices stayed low.

When people (not just Americans) have ordered, lawful freedom, they can come up with ideas that make things better, that create wealth for themselves and for society.

Half price

The price that the world had to pay for a barrel of oil last year was cut in half. That drop resulted in people all over the world paying less for the energy they need for heating, cooling, driving, cooking, wherever oil is used for power.

"[Since] the world burns 34 billion barrels of oil every year, a $10 fall in the price of oil shifts $340 billion from oil producers to consumers. [And] the $60 price decline since last August will redistribute more than $2 trillion [60 x 34 million) annually to oil consumers, providing a bigger income boost than the combined US and Chinese fiscal stimulus in 2009."

That's just the benefit to consumers, to households. Beyond consumers, businesses are also cutting their costs because of declining oil prices. That will lead to worldwide economic growth, which supports improved standards of living.

And all this happened . . how?

(cont'd tomorrow)