His own words 1

The British criminal story:

"Abused and fatherless," that's how Allen describes his childhood. "Bullying and intimidating my way through life," that's the life he chose for himself once he left home as a teenager. 

He was signed as a professional rugby player, but the "criminal underworld" attracted him to fighting and heroin. During one of his prison sentences he cleaned up his life, but back on the streets he returned to drinking, drugs, violence. He thought about suicide.

At rock-bottom he turned to God. He says he took all the raging anger he felt and placed it at the feet of Jesus on the cross. Peace finally came.

The broken fragments of his life began to come together, including his family. Allen started speaking to prisoners and became a sports chaplain. Even so, it hasn't been easy, he says, having a "functioning conscience." But God is refining him, and that's the life he chooses  now.

This is Allen Langham, author of Taming of a Villain

Paid in full

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Retired Judge Tom Kohl became a Christian believer as an adult, and says that he doesn't know how he could have gotten through the events of 2006 without the presence of Jesus Christ in his life. His daughter was a meth addict, and she was murdered that summer. Eventually (hard to imagine) he was able to actually forgive the murderer, and started a prison ministry.

Warden Burl Cain (previous posts) is retired now, but he's still interviewed about the transformation that occurred at Angola. Below he says, "It's a miracle! But I didn't do it. He [God] did." The plan works, it saves the state money, and it blesses everyone (in the words of interviewer Eric Metaxas).



Judge Kohl started speaking at prisons around the country. Warden Cain invited him and his wife to spend a few days at Angola. It changed the judge's life and he started the plan in Oregon. Cain's plan is being instituted in other prisons across the country. It's brought education, skills, morality, and culture change.

Angola 2

(cont'd from yesterday)

Warden Cain became famous for what happened at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The culture did change. Inmates' lives changed.

A secular publication, The Atlantic, created the video below five years ago (13 minutes).


In the video you'll see one of the organizations that sprang up at Angola. "Malachi Dads" is a group of Christian lifers who are motivated to father their kids to offset the rate (70%) at which most kids of incarcerated dads eventually go to prison themselves.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Angola 1

In 1995 Burl Cain became warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary ("Angola"), the most violent prison in America. Ninety percent of the inmates knew they would be there for the rest of their lives with no incentive to reform. Most mornings he came to work, Cain learned there had been stabbings, beatings or other bloody violence in the night.

The state Secretary of Corrections told him to change it - somehow. Cain says he was not smart enough to do that, but being a Christian, he prayed for wisdom. The culture of the prison had to change. 

New Orleans Baptist Seminary established a campus at the prison, with no faith required of  the students, and was able to grant genuine college degrees. (The ACLU helped the warden walk a legal line with this.) Some students became ministers - of any religion including Islam - and the culture changed over the years.

Angola used to be a place of violence, death and hopelessness. Today, it's miraculously different.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Title IX

(cont'd from Friday's post)

So now men account for 42% of college degrees and women receive 58% of the degrees, just the opposite of the situation in the chart posted last Friday.

Back in 1972, Title IX was created to eliminate education discrimination on the basis of sex where federal financial assistance was involved:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Nine years later women and men received degrees equally. But today men have fallen behind.

Today Ohio State University is being investigated under Title IX  because it educational programs and activities limited to women only. Men are not allowed in. Somehow Title IX has not been enforced and gender discrimination is on the other foot.

Men's degrees

Decades ago it was common for more men to get college degrees than women in America. That changed in 1981 according to the U.S. Dept. of Education.

In fact, it flipped. Now 58% of all college degrees go to women, with about 42% going to men.

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Top brands

Coca-Cola, Microsoft and IBM led the way for a long time. Watch what happens when Google appears on this list in 2008, Apple appears in 2011, and Amazon in 2014.

Space Force 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to the general, these lofty goals are possible. But current military leaders aren't doing these things. He calls it "lack of forward thinking," like in World War II when Pershing and Marshall failed to focus on the strategic potential of tanks and airplanes.

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He thinks being the first nation in space is a must: "Space will be a multi-trillion dollar market that will disproportionately benefit the first nation to build a vibrant space infrastructure and define the principles and rules of the marketplace of space. 

"If America is first, its principles—the rule of law and the protection of liberty—will be in a position to prevail. If Communist China is first, the marketplace will look much different."

"If we do not master space, our nation will become indefensible."

Space Force 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Lt. General Kwast has a vision for what America could and should do with our Space Force:

• Deliver unlimited, clean, affordable energy.
• Provide fresh water for every human without aquifers or pipes.
• Build a low-cost secure internet.
• Develop deterrence against ICBMs and nuclear weapons.
• Revolutionize manufacturing by deploying resources in space.
• Provide a shelter in space to protect/preserve people, seeds, medicines.
• Design defense capabilities to replace sacrificing American lives.
• Reduce the effect of natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes.

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from Hillsdale College Imprimis

(cont'd tomorrow)

Space Force 1

A retired U.S. Air Force General, speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan this winter, says there is an urgent need for the U.S. Space Force ordered by the president last summer. 

China plans to be the dominant power in space by 2049, and doesn't hide the fact. Just ten years from now, according to the general, they will have "nuclear propulsion technology and solar power stations in space." With it, they'll beam clean energy to anyone on earth and be able to disrupt our power grid and paralyze our military anywhere.

China is committed to developing space technologies, which means they're working at a faster pace with a better strategy than we are. Space infrastructure will be a network, and networks "can deliver power, information, or goods from one node to many nodes at a fraction of the increase in cost per customer."

space nodes image

So there will be an economic advantage to being first in space infrastructure, which will lead to global economic dominance in this century and the next.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Her own words 1

The straight-A student story:

Religious people are ignoramuses, that's what she thought. Smart people don't need all that.

Surprisingly, a couple she knew and admired turned out to be believers and she accepted a Bible from them. After all, an educated person should read the best-selling book of all time. Instead of finding phony miracles and gobbledygook, she was intrigued to find wisdom in it.

She bought a modern translation and found it engaging, attractive, but knew she didn't want to be religious. "I didn’t want to believe in God, but I still felt a peculiar sense of love and presence I couldn’t ignore."

Upon running into an old friend, she accepted his invitation to church. Her questions didn't seem to fit in with the church format, but she persisted in asking them. Eventually, sensing she had nothing to lose and much to gain, she asked Jesus Christ to be the Lord of her life.

This is Rosalind Picard, a professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). You've already heard her TED Talk.

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Their Own Words

Most Christians become a believer during childhood. As children grow up, they will have to ask questions and get answers or their faith will be left behind.

But some, about a third, only become Christians after they grow up. They may or may not have had a religious upbringing. What motivates them to make this choice? 

We're starting a new series tomorrow, "In his/her words," the stories some people tell about their own journey to faith in Jesus Christ. 

Some stories have drama, some don't, but each is unique in its way - and each story is the same in that it leads to a personal surrender to the same Creator God.

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Tesla rising 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tesla stock and valuation is rising, that's the situation. It's rising in defiance of common sense, in a way . . because so far there has been no annual profit. 

A group of engineers started the company in 2003 to make performance electric cars that would be fun to drive, and they've done that. 

But investors by definition put their money into projects that they think stand a very good chance of making money. And in the 17 years Tesla has existed, they have yet to make an annual profit. 

Market Watch reports Tesla's annual financials since 2015 here. Gross Income has gone from ~$100 million (2015) to ~$4 billion (2019). But Net Income has been in the red each year, standing at $862 million at the end of 2019.

Yet it's the highest valued car company in America. Like I said Monday, Tesla is a phenomenon.

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Tesla rising 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tesla stock is up 78% from the first of the year. It's been a crazy ride if you watch their stock. Just a week ago today, more of their stock was traded in a single day than any other, ever.

Production of cars in 2019 (yesterday's post) was a whopping 50% higher than 2018. That's huge. Investors who have funded that big stock price see a big future for this company. The gigafactory in Shanghai is already producing, and re-opens today after a close for coronavirus. Another one is going to be built in Germany. 

According to this article, Tesla's market value is now about $140 billion. Toyota sells many times as many vehicles, but their market value is only about $50 above Tesla's. Toyota is the highest valued car company in the world.

Around the world, Tesla has over 14,000 supercharger stalls at 1659 locations, with a hundred more under construction.

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Tesla rising

Tesla, and its famous CEO Elon Musk, are click bait. And why not. Tesla Motors, Inc., is a phenomenon for reasons too numerous to go into.

 A January headline declared that, "Tesla Is the Most Valuable Car Company in America Ever." Really? Yes. Bigger than Ford at its peak value in 1999, which was $81 billion. Its January market valuation was nearly $83 billion.

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According to that Barron's article, "Elon Musk’s feat is impressive. He built a car company from scratch this century, and it is now worth more than any of the so-called Detroit-three auto makers at any point in history."

It does not make the number of vehicles that, say, Ford does. Last year Ford sold well over a million vehicles while Tesla sold just 367,500 vehicles, and Toyota delivered 2 million just in North America. So it's not enormous production which drives this super high valuation.

Now in February its valuation seems to be rising again.

(cont'd tomorrow)

A way out 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Yesterday's video is a trailer for a documentary coming out soon, "The Final Fix." 
The producers want to see this new treatment finally gain traction as an alternative to traditional drug programs - which have a success rate of 3%. The claimed success rate of this new treatment is an astounding 92%. 



Who wouldn't be excited about a drug addiction treatment that works like this did for Barry?

The documentary's makers say that the immense, billion-dollar industry that runs drug treatment centers today is not thrilled about new competition.

A way out 1

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Death and the disruption of normal life come with drug dependence/addiction, and that impacts family and friends too. This mom experienced all of that. She says every drug program they tried was a failure, and that our whole system of helping opioid users must change.

Now there is a treatment that's completely different. A surgeon, Meg Patterson, stumbled onto it back in the 1970's.  It sounds crazy good: no pain, sickness, or cravings, cured in less than ten days. Hard to believe? Sure.

No way out

About 17,000 people in the U.S. died by murder in 2017. A big number, until compared to the number of deaths in the U.S. by overdose: in 2017 over 70,000 people died of a drug overdose, and most of those involved prescription or illicit drugs.

It starts with pleasure or pain relief, but ends with no pleasure and plenty of pain when you try to quit. Listen to this man's story of trying to get out of pain meds dependence:

Killer robots 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Will a ban on fully autonomous weapons (because they are "morally repugnant") keep us safer? If the United Nations asserts such a ban, will rogue nations like North Korea and Iran feel obligated to submit or will they defy it?

China is building killer robots and selling them to the Middle East. Will they scrap their programs out of concern for human rights? Not likely. This is the nation that blows up churches and mosques, holds captive a million Muslim Uyghurs, and puts up 600 million cameras to watch its citizens.

This arms race is well on its way. No one wants to get into a fight they know they will lose.

Killer robots 1

Despite having read and written about AI (artificial intelligence), I wasn't familiar with the idea of  killer robots. But they are fully autonomous weapons, maybe drones. They are not controlled by human operators, but rather by their programming to identify and attack targets.

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Fear and concern inspired an organization called "Campaign to Stop Killer Robots," and Human Rights Watch is its global coordinator. They're worried about a worldwide arms race to acquire the ability to wage war with these things.

"As machines, they would lack the inherently human characteristics such as compassion that are necessary to make complex ethical choices."

Furthermore, "replacing troops with machines could make the decision to go to war easier."

Their solution: "The development, production and use of fully autonomous weapons must be banned."

(cont'd tomorrow)