Emissions 2020 1

Carbon emissions are being tracked by nation, industry, company, all over the world. The United Nations just released its Emissions Gap Report 2020 earlier this month. It's a summary of emissions by nation, the up/down trends, and a surprising recommendation for America.

With the high standard of living in the United States, it's no surprise that our carbon emissions as a nation are high, 13% of the global total. China comes in highest in total national emissions with 25% of the global total.

National totals are rising each year for China, Russia, and India. Emissions per capita - per person - rising there also. But in the US, per capita emissions are falling each year.

from Forbes

(cont'd tomorrow)

The Blessing

 Churches and Christian groups in the United Kingdom got a big project together last May, and it went viral. Singers and musicians from their homes performed "The Blessing" and sang it for their country. Enjoy.

from Premier Christian News

Fishing feat

 A young fishing guide had an "insane day" last month on a central Minnesota lake. He managed to land two enormous, very heavy muskies within a half hour of each other. Each weighed over 50 pounds.

It's a feat he doesn't expect to experience ever again.

from Star Tribune

Materialist 1

Reuben, a student in the U.K., wrote to Discovery Institute. He said, "your work may have saved my life." No, Discovery doesn't do medical research or emergency rescues. 

Reuben's school system was turning students like him into materialists who deny God, free will, human dignity. He was depressed, but searching. He ran across articles and books from Discovery Institute, which stands up to the materialism paradigm. They take seriously the evidence for an intelligent designer of life and the universe.

Some people prefer a view of reality that tells them that the material universe is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be.  But most people, like Reuben, intuitively know there's more to reality than material stuff. They (we) will never surrender.

Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei is Latin for "Lamb of God" . . the image the Bible holds of Jesus Christ: innocent, given to the world of humankind to redeem us from the darkness.

If you are not a believer, or not yet, here's a question for you. What if you learned that it's all true, that the One True God created and loves the world and you individually? Would you rejoice in this music?

It will resonate in your spirit only if you know the One True God to be both good and true. This is my favorite song for Christmas this year.

Kids' words

 Here's the Christmas story as told by kids in their own words, and acted out by grown-ups. 

Rescue

If you'd like more bad news today (most of us have had enough bad news this year), you'll have to get it somewhere else - because this post is good news. Good news still happens! It just doesn't get much press.

Five high school freshmen were together outside in Middleton, N.J., when they heard screaming: a dad shouting "Hop off! Hop off!" His 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son were flying down a hill on an innertube, backward. 

The kids hit an ice patch, shot over a snow bank, and slid into a pond. Kieran Foley (14) jumped in the shallow, freezing water. His four friends formed a chain to pass the boy to the shore and then did the same for the girl. Kieran lost his boots and finished the rescue barefooted.

The dad gave his pants and boots to Kieran, but that's all the boys would take. No money. 

The mom said, “In this day and age when kids don’t really care and all they do is take their phones out and videotape when something happens, these kids did not even hesitate. I just wanted to call their parents and say, ‘you raised some really great kids.'”

from News12, The Stream

Celebrate

Christianity is the biggest religion in the world, so Christmas is celebrated globally. Many European distinctives found their way to America in the great waves of immigration: stocking stuffers, lighted trees, Santa Claus, reindeer.

Conjunction

Tonight I will join many of you watching the early night sky to see the conjunction of planets Jupiter and Saturn. They are of course very far away from each other but appear close together on rare occasions. 

Click on astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez's photo (that he took through a small telescope) to see moons and rings:

Two planets in conjunction is an explanation some give for the "Bethlehem star" that guided kings to the birthplace of Jesus Christ. There was one that took place on June 17 of 2 B.C. with planets Jupiter and Venus.

from The Stream

Case for God

Six years ago, Wall Street Journal published an article on Christmas Day entitled, "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God," by Eric Metaxas. Surprisingly it was shared on Facebook 600,000 times, far far more than any other article ever in WSJ. 

Back in 1966 Time magazine featured the narrative that faith in God is obsolete. But science has revealed much evidence for His existence since then.

That same year, 1966, astronomer Carl Sagan announced that any given planet could support life if it had the right sort of star and was the right distance from it. The intervening years revealed that at least two hundred parameters are required by a planet to support life. That lowered the odds of finding such a planet to near zero.

Astrophysicists have discovered that the four fundamental forces of the universe were set less than one-millionth of a second after the big bang. Any slight variation of their values would have eliminated the universe. 

Astronomer Fred Hoyle (who coined the term "big bang") said his atheism was shaken by these developments. 

Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

from the website of Eric Metaxas

Non-materialist

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Scientists don't have to assume that "the cosmos is all there is, ever was, or ever will be." Evidence from nature does not prove that there is no Creator or that human beings are pond scum.

As a matter of fact, Harvard astrophysicist Howard Smith claims the opposite - that humans are special and that "The universe, far from being a collection of random accidents, appears to be stupendously perfect and fine-tuned for life."

In his view, we should be "grateful for the amazing gifts of life and awareness, and acknowledge the compelling evidence to date that humanity and our home planet, Earth, are rare and cosmically precious."

Speaking as a Christian, I do thank God for life, for consciousness, and for our rare and precious planet home.

(Re-post from 2016)

Materialist

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-size planet." Science expert and extremely smart guy Stephen Hawking said this, so of course it must be true . . right? Actually, that's not a scientific statement but rather a big philosophical assumption.

Celebrities and experts can be (gasp) wrong, especially when they speak outside their field of expertise. Hawking's claim is that humanity has no transcendent meaning or importance, that there's nothing more to a human being than the chemicals that make up the body.

It's the point of view, the faith, of a materialist. Science icon Carl Sagan said it this way, "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." His claim is backed by his charisma, his compelling rhetoric, his confident celebrity prestige, stirring photography and stirring music (below). But not by facts.

(Re-post from 2016)

Walter Williams RIP

Economist Walter Williams passed a couple of weeks ago, and he will be missed. As author of ten books and 150 professional articles, plus a winner of many fellowships and awards, Dr. Williams had honors and influence. 

He changed his undergrad major from sociology to economics when he read a book by W.E.B. Du Bois, who said:

"Black people are not going to get very far ahead in our country without understanding economic systems." 

EQ 1

(cont'd from last Thursday's post)

Emotional intelligence (EQ) includes at least two factors: identifying emotions in yourself as well as other people, and managing them effectively. Good leaders need to set the example of some degree of EQ so that their team can grow in this skill.

This author identifies EQ in the leadership of Elon Musk relating to last week's test of the SN8.

A spacecraft in which NASA and SpaceX can confidently send people to Mars . . has not been seen on earth yet. They're using all their resources to produce such a thing, but some questions in the process cannot be answered until it actually flies. Thus, the prototype tests. Expensive tests. SN8 was estimated to be worth $200 million. The ascent went well, the switchover to the header tanks went well, the flap control on descent went well . . but it ended in fire and "rapid unscheduled disassembly" (RUD). 

Musk knew the chance of avoiding RUD would be small, but that wasn't the only goal of the test.  He reacted on twitter by naming the other tests and celebrating their success, rather than focusing on the fiery drama. For all the people who had invested massive effort in this, he re-focused on the bigger goal and congratulated their win. That was emotionally intelligent.

from Inc

Left Google

(cont'd from Dec. 9 post, "Anti-trust 2")

Google is not only under scrutiny from the U.S. Congress, but from some of its own employees. At least four whistleblowers have departed Google recently.

Last year one of them published his story in a British newspaper. Enthusiastic at first about a project he worked on to use artificial intelligence to drive medical advance, he gradually became less so. Eventually his conscience compelled him to reveal that Google was gathering data about millions of Americans -- with the consent of neither the patients nor the doctors, probably breaking the law.

Just weeks ago Dr. Timnit Gebru, an AI ethics researcher, was surprisingly terminated at Google. She had written a paper that seemed to say Google's AI research wasn't doing enough to avoid discrimination, fake news, and more.

Issues are mounting. Will Congress break up Google, as Congressman Cicilline recommends?

SN8

SpaceX has been developing and testing prototypes of their "Starship," the big craft that will take people to the moon and to Mars. The latest (SN8) took off yesterday for another test propelled by three raptor engines. It performed some complex maneuvers and came back to earth -- too fast. It hit hard and exploded.

But Elon Musk appears to be excited since it did everything they wanted it to do except land safely. He had predicted it had a one-in-three chance of landing in one piece. He says he's confident that Starship will take crew to Mars by 2026.

from Space

Anti-trust 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Congressman Cicilline is chair of the House Judiciary's subcommittee on Anti-Trust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. They released a 400+ page report claiming the tech companies violate anti-trust law. 

"Google, for instance, is effectively the only search engine in town, bolstering its own products in searches, downgrading those of competitors, and “extorting” companies that want to get seen by users."

Cicilline's opinion: "Simply put, they have too much power. This power staves off new forms of competition, creativity, and innovation . . Their dominance is killing the small businesses, manufacturing, and overall dynamism that are the engines of the American economy."

His solution: break them up. It remains to be seen whether Congress will agree.

photo

from Brown Alumni Magazine

Anti-trust 1

Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline grew up seeing the occasional mafia member at his family dinner table. His father was, in plain terms, a "mob lawyer" who represented a crime organization.

He became a lawyer, a public defender, and then a politician who advocated for causes. Back in the 1990's he was a "leading force in an effort to dismantle the system powering the political machine of [his own party]." 

The "culture of corruption" in Rhode Island included cronyism. Lawmakers were allowed to "create commissions and boards tasked with doling out millions of dollars in contracts, and then appoint the members [of] those bodies or even serve on them themselves." The state constitution did not separate powers to prevent conflict of interest.

Now Cicilline has a new cause. The U.S. Congress has been investigating anti-trust violations among tech companies. Last July he took the opportunity during a hearing to blast Google's CEO with this question, "Why does Google steal content from honest businesses?"

from Brown Alumni Magazine

(cont'd tomorrow)

Fateful day

Somebody in Hawaii was ready with a camera early in the morning of December 7, 1941, when the U.S.S. Shaw was hit by enemy fire - a deadly enemy we didn't know we had.

This attack on Pearl Harbor forced America into the second world war 79 years ago today.

Still wears it

 From the snarky Babylon Bee:

"Time Traveler Arrives From 3000 A.D. And Oh No! He's Still Wearing A Mask!"

Changed mind 5b

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

With a degree from Harvard, Gina should have felt confident and optimistic. But no, she felt empty because things she used to care about, meaningful things, had been stripped away from her. Her new viewpoint did not see the world kindly. In her own words, she now felt hate. She hated America.

An accident drew her back home from her chosen exile (as far from America as she could go). She started writing for leftist media, assigned to write articles that she says were anti-men/anti-America/anti-capitalism. Her education prepared her for this.

But then she was "red-pilled" watching Dave Rubin interview Candace Owens. Her curiosity and inner strength drove her to dive deep for the information she craved. She concluded that she had been lied to.

What a story. If you didn't watch her 9-minute video yesterday, you should now.

Changed mind 5a

Gina Florio's mom told her she could do anything she wanted to do with her life, if she got a good education. She did that - at Harvard. But looking back at the experience now, she's not impressed with her education.

She has changed her mind about some things.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Changed Mind 4

This is Brandon Tatum and this is his story. He's changed his mind about some things, he found some heroes. 

He says, "You are an individual person and you have your own mission in life."