Tesla value 1

Tesla stock continues to soar far above all other car stocks and will split today, despite all the doubts of detractors. Some think investors value Tesla's future because of its advancing battery technology or the charisma of its CEO.

But there's a different theory relating to its business model, a theory that makes good sense to me. There's more going on than just technology and charisma.

Look at this analysis of the depreciation of other makes of cars compared to Tesla cars:

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(cont'd tomorrow)

Must hide 4

If you decide to fight back when you're bullied unjustly for your beliefs or on some false accusation, Dr. George has one further piece of advice for you: don't become like your accusers.

He addresses students who know their convictions will sooner or later run counter to the dominant opinions on their campus. He says that failure to conform may lead to an outraged ideologue calling you nasty things. Here's how to respond:

"Keep your dignity, stand your ground. Be civil, assertive, and persistent."

"Hold your college or university to its own professed commitments to fairness, inclusion, and non-indoctrination. You have powerful tools at hand: the force of argument and the power of reason."

"Insist on your right to free speech, but remember that other people have that right too. They do you no wrong in challenging and criticizing your beliefs."

Good advice from a master lawyer.

from First Things

Cancelled

This week's posts centered on Dr. Robert George urging us to stand up to "cancel culture" in spite of the possible punishment we may have to endure. The price can be high. If a man loses his job, for example, his family will also pay a price.

Watch this man, if you have the time, as he tells his story to Eric Metaxas. He was a professor of journalism, "stoned and bloodied" by an online mob.

Must hide 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some call him "Robbie" George. His advice to his twitter followers who know they will be "cancelled" if they advocate for their convictions (yesterday's post) . . will not be followed by all or even most of them. They will pay a price for it if they do open up, and they have much to lose.

Cancel culture bullies intimidate and injure rather than civilly engage with people of a different opinion. But George tells us to stand up to it anyway.

We've all heard the threat, "you're on the wrong side of history, history will judge you," but George says that's an empty threat. Speaking as a Christian, he says History will not judge you but God will.

"[God] will want to know from each of us whether we sought the truth with a pure and sincere heart, whether we sought to live by the truth authentically and with integrity, and whether we stood up for the truth, speaking it out loud and in public, bearing the costs  . . ."

Must hide 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Those twitter followers who didn't dare identify themselves began to ask Dr. George what they should do in their situations. He does not recommend further hiding.

“Now I'm getting deluged with a new set of messages, most asking ‘What can we do?’ ‘What can be done?’” George said. “Well, since you asked: WE NEED COURAGEOUS PEOPLE TO STAND UP TO THE BULLYING. Risky? Sure. And there will be casualties. I don't pretend otherwise. But there is no other way.”

(cont'd tomorrow)

Must hide

Robert P. George is a legal scholar, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University in New Jersey. Many other honors and degrees are listed here.

He has a number of anonymous twitter followers and asked them to identify themselves, only to learn that they didn't dare. Why? Same situation that Karlyn Borysenko (here and here) discovered: a bullying, shaming environment.

Many of them are academics, some even tenured professors who expect that their tenure could be stripped from them. 

“Is this the country we now live in?” George asked. “One in which many people feel they must hide their beliefs in order to keep their jobs or maintain their careers? One in which people live in fear of speaking their minds — worrying for their futures and their families' well-being if they do?”

(cont'd tomorrow)

More free

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Economic freedom brought historic prosperity to the West where it began, according to yesterday's graph, in the 1500's. But economic freedom in varying degrees began to spread to other regions and they prospered too. It didn't happen all at once, but grew slowly until the trend took off a couple hundred years ago. Hence the hockey stick effect.

"[R]eal average global income per person rose by factor of 10 over the last 200 hundred years . . ."

Why is freedom so good for prosperity? When people are free to pursue their talents/strengths/ideas, their accomplishments escalate and improve lives. All of us benefit, eventually even to some extent in regions less free.

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World prosperity

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a time period. GDP per capita refers to that total number divided by the total number of people, so it's GDP per person. It's a measure of prosperity.

Using that metric in the value of US dollars in 1990, here's an overview of the world's prosperity over the last thousand years.

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(cont'd tomorrow)

Raindrop

Falling raindrops could have big impact on fragile tissues of birds or insects, but somehow they fly through rain storms without damage. National Academy of Sciences USA published a report to explain this in June called "How a Raindrop Gets Shattered on Biological Surfaces."

A camera recorded drops hitting insects, bird feathers, and plant leaves at 5,000-20,000 frames per second:

"[W]hen the impacting raindrops approached the tissue surfaces, the surfaces generated shock-like surface waves. The shock waves disrupted the spreading raindrops at the point of where air meets liquid. These perturbations then triggered ruptures and holes, breaking the falling raindrops in each case into dozens of tiny satellite droplets."

Watch the raindrop break up in this 5-second clip.

It's another amazing feature in the design of life forms.

Read 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some of us feel bludgeoned by media's focus on bad news, going from crisis to crisis. It's good to step back and get a bigger picture of reality, and that may mean reading a whole book by a serious author. 

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Increasing civil and economic freedoms have produced tremendous progress in our world over the last hundred years according to the book reviewed here. Apparently this author doesn't mention the importance of religious freedom, so I wouldn't have that in common with his views, but he recognizes the good that has happened:

"Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place. Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history. Life expectancy at birth has increased more than twice as much in the last century as it did in the previous 200,000 years. The risk that any individual will be exposed to war, die in a natural disaster, or be subject to dictatorship has become smaller than in any other epoch. A child born today is more likely to reach retirement age than his forbears were to live to their fifth birthday."

History

Resentment is a lifestyle for some people. It's the choice they make when they compare their circumstances to other people who have more material comfort, or better health, or a happier family. 

In some cases the choice of resentment rather than thankfulness happens because they don't know what has come before. Perhaps they don't know the price that was paid in the past for the blessings of today.

It's important to know the history of your family, of your country, of humanity. Today's world is extraordinary compared in almost any way to the world of the past - not because people of the past were stupid or undeserving, but because it took a long time to get what we now take for granted.

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History, that is, the true account of our past, should be taught. Click on the image above to see some ways that things are better.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Space tourism 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Beyond the 600 who have paid $250,000 for a seat, thousands more indicated their interest in such a reservation without paying anything. Virgin Galactic now asks them to pay $1000 to simply confirm their intent. Called "One Small Step," it's not a firm reservation and it won't put you into VG's future astronauts club.

But if you do One Small Step, you will have first crack at "One Giant Leap" when Virgin Galactic officially releases new seats. Heads up: the final price will be more than the original $250,000. 

But the honor of being the very First Commercial Passenger is no longer available. That premier spot was taken by the founder himself, Richard Branson. He publicly said that he will be the first.

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from Forbes

Space tourism

Businesses and whole national economies were hit hard over the last six months of the pandemic. Airlines and travel industries suffered huge loss. They're struggling to stay solvent.

Sir Richard Branson's business empire of travel/hotels/cruises looks to be in deep trouble. Airlines Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia have filed for bankruptcy. Up until 2020, these industries were mainline. No one saw the disaster of 2020 coming.

But surprisingly the part of his empire that may survive all this is the outlier parts, the risky-looking parts. And that would be Virgin Galactic and Virgin Hyperloop. 

"Space tourism" is what Virgin Galactic does (or wants to do) and it's had some success. The company has sold 600 reservations for a future ride into space . . at the retail price of $250,000 per ticket.

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from Observer

Harness fire 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Earth's atmospheric pressure is right for the lungs of human beings and for the mastery of fire as well. Our oxygen uptake is enabled, while combustion is also enabled without the threat of uncontrollable spread, because oxygen is 21% of our air.

During the Carboniferous period, earth's atmosphere was 30% oxygen. Even "wet forests" were subject to spontaneous combustion.

Our planet is the right size. Its gravity must retain heavier gases like nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, while at the same time not retaining hydrogen and helium.

On our planet there is only one species capable of manipulating fire, felling trees, creating charcoal to refine ores, etc. Human beings have the size, strength and intelligence for the job:  "about 1.5 to 2 meters in height with mobile arms about one meter-long ending in manipulative tools." That tool, of course, is the wonderful human hand.

All these factors were essential to building the modern way of life that we all take for granted. If you pre-suppose a loving Creator, it makes sense.

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Harness fire 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Fire-making was the first, essential step in the long process leading to today's technology and fire enabled another essential step: metallurgy. Wood, rock, etc., could not replace the properties of metals in our modern life. 

The Bronze Age (copper and tin) started about 3500 B.C. Copper requires heat of about 2000 degrees fahrenheit, but the most important metal requires even more heat. Iron smelting was mastered around 1200 B.C. and the iron age began. Strength and durability took tools to a whole new level.

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"The mastery of fire and . . metallurgy , , prepared the stage for the coming of the industrial revolution . . . Inventions followed thick and fast: dynamos and electric motors ushered in the modern electric age, the internal combustion engine, the first airplanes, jet engines, and the development of the electronic computer during World War II."

But fire came first. And the mastery of fire depended on unique properties of both humans and the natural world.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Harness fire 1

"Curiosity" was launched by NASA in 2011 to study the surface of Mars. The car-sized robot still roams over the planet's surface in 2020, still energized by its solar battery, still sending information back to earth.

Was something like Curiosity foreseen or anticipated even a hundred years ago, back in 1920? It's now a cliche, but technology exploded over the last century, technology that would have looked like magic not so long ago: technology that taught us the structure of our DNA and the structure of the universe.

Of all the discoveries made in the course of mankind’s long march to civilization, there was one primal discovery that made . . all this possible. It’s a discovery we use every day and take completely for granted. But this discovery changed everything. 

Humankind discovered how to make and tame fire. 

from Fire-Maker

Rights

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

The concept that all human beings have "rights" is a moral imperative, a "should" sort of claim: all human beings should freely exercise their rights. But is it obvious? It was definitely not obvious for thousands and thousands of years of civilization. 

Kings and emperors throughout history might rule kindly from time to time, but their governing paradigm was not to preserve peoples' rights. They held their power position because of birth or force, but either way they did what they pleased. It's called "totalitarian" when there's no greater authority than the ruler or the government and they have total control.

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American founders wanted to break that mold. They took the "Imago Dei" concept from the Bible (that humans are all created in the image of God) and crafted a government around it:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Radical.

John Locke

Actual civilizations may have existed for something like 12,000 years, possibly earliest in the region of the Middle East. Humanity's primary challenge was simply to survive. If a family had enough food, avoided disease, and was not killed or enslaved by powerful leaders, they did survive.

Change took thousands of years. What people have or expect or demand in today's world wasn't even imagined thousands of years ago . . even hundreds of years ago. 

Concern for "human rights" took a very long time to develop. Here's an early writer working to develop the value of human rights less than 350 years ago. 



(cont'd tomorrow)

SpaceX COO

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk. It's focused on his goal to make humanity a multi-planet species, and he gets all the media attention. But he doesn't run the company. Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX is Gwynne Shotwell.

With a degree in mechanical engineering, she was employee #7 at SpaceX. 

More missions

SpaceX has passed its test, Crew Dragon was a success. Now the path is clear for future missions taking astronauts to the International Space Station. Two more are scheduled, and four more will follow.

Crew 1 will launch late in September. It will take three Americans and one Japanese to the ISS where they'll stay for six months doing science experiments, space walks, and station maintenance.

Crew 2 is planned for next spring. Two Americans, one Japanese, and one European space agency astronaut will fly to the ISS. The American astronaut pilot of Mission Crew 2, Megan McArthur, is the wife of Bob Behnken who just returned on Sunday from the ISS.

from Business Insider

NASA news

In case you missed it this weekend:

1) Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken splashed down safely yesterday, nineteen hours after Dragon (their SpaceX spacecraft) left the International Space Station. The first splashdown in 45 years is also the first ever NASA commercial mission (meaning that a private company built the spacecraft in partnership with NASA).



Elon Musk's elated reaction (20:09) at their safe return: "Thank God! I'm not very religious, but I prayed for this one." No kidding, so did I.

2) "Perseverance," the new rover, launched last Friday. Next February it will land on Mars to take samples and look for any signs of ancient life. All the data NASA has received indicates that the mission flight is nominal, proceeding as expected.

NASA is focused on the goal to take astronauts to the moon in 2024: "All that we build, all that we study, all that we do, prepares us to go."