Enough 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

His new book, Superabundance, is a counter-narrative to a commonly held impression:

"Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, “The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . . [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true?"

Tupy and his co-author Gale Pooley analyzed centuries of the prices of goods, compared to how long people of the time had to work for them. They found that the abundance of resources - over history - grew faster than the population grew. On average, the human person produces more value than he/she consumes. Amazing, counterintuitive.

Why is this? Human ingenuity. It's true that unproductive people only consume (by choice or inability) but it's also true that many people are extremely productive. The Christian view of humanity says that our Creator designed us with the ability - if we're free - to creatively solve problems.

Enough

It was predicted long ago that the earth would run out of resources to support rising populations. Famine would kill hundreds of millions and take us back to bare subsistence.

But what actually happened is that the number of humans on earth grew by billions since then, and there is food to feed them all. Not only that, but we have enough resources to live at a much higher standard of living than ever.

Marian Tupy of Human Progress says "we'll have enough" for the future.

Water use 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Western cities in drought have figured out how to manage with less water use - amazingly less. 

Las Vegas NV has grown since 2002 by 800,000 residents. But at the same time, the city has adapted to the point that it takes care of all these people while actually decreasing the amount of water it uses by 26 billion gallons. 

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Phoenix AZ's population has doubled since 1980. But the amount of water they use to provide for the needs of all these people has not doubled along with it. On the contrary, water use has decreased by one-third.

Water usage in Albuquerque NM, San Diego CA, Denver CO, and Los Angeles CA is a similar story.

So the take-away is what, that everything will always get better and better? No. It's this: human beings are creative problem solvers. We have it in our nature. We received creativity from our Creator. What we use it for is up to us.

from Human Progress

Water use 1

Here in the American Midwest we are experiencing dry summers. My gardens have done poorly two years in a row. But our western states are doing worse, going through a historic drought, with reservoirs sinking to new low levels of water in reserve. 

Agriculture dominates 80% of all the water use in the West. California's mild weather means that farming products are a significant part of their economy. From 2015 to 1985, crop yield increased by 38%. Amazingly, water use went down over that same time by 14%. 

How? Farmers have figured out how to grow more crops on less land, with less water. They innovated to find new ways of doing what needs to be done in a way that consumes fewer resources. 

It's what human beings have been doing since the beginning. It's how wealth is created. It's how progress is made for the benefit of all. 

Water use is down in cities too. Impressively.

image

from Human Progress

(cont'd tomorrow)

Can hurt you

(cont'd from last Friday's post)

It took courage to stand against school staff like Sahar did. To be afraid was sensible, justified - because the administration could have retaliated to punish her in substantial ways, grades for example. She was terrified, she says, but went ahead anyway according to her conscience.

Last Friday's video showed her and her father Ben's view of the event where she refused to automatically sign off on paying an activist to speak on "systemic racism" when the staff told her to. That's the view that America is racist to its core, unavoidably and irredeemably hostile against all non-white races. 

Does that sound controversial to you? Sure it is. Controversial doesn't always mean wrong, but Great Neck NY parents don't believe it or want it taught as true. So, yes, this view is very controversial. They are on track with parents all over the country who object.

Sahar stepped into a hot national disagreement over fundamentals. She came out all right, though, and is now the president of New York's DECA.

photo

Not taking orders

"I was just taking orders" is the excuse some have given in the past for doing bad things. It's an excuse that did not excuse wrong actions then, and it's not good enough today. It's a lame excuse because all of us should exercise our own ethical conscience even when given orders by an authority.

Bion Bartning of FAIR supports a high school student and her family for not blindly following orders when her conscience demanded more investigation. She was directed, as student government treasurer, to pay $375 to an outside activist who was going to speak to the school about "systemic racism." She refused because she needed more information about the speaker.

Instead of being intimidated and silenced, this student (Sahar) and her family took a stand against race essentialism and in favor of a pro-human approach to fighting racism.

from Fair For All

Strive letters

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So Strive is now functioning, investing its clients' funds in good businesses that look like they'll prosper. Strive has no political test to apply to those businesses. The financial industry knows what Strive is doing, because it's certainly not a secret. Its view is that asset management companies should do their duty to their clients by seeking the best possible ROI (return on investment) regardless of politics.

Non-financial companies feel the pressure too. So Vivek Ramaswamy, as Executive Chairman of Strive, wrote letters to some big ones urging them to resist the politics and do what's right for their shareholders. 

From his letter to Disney: “Disney must make clear that it will no longer take political stances on issues unrelated to its core business operations.” He noted that the company's public approval fell off a cliff when it took a strong stand on a very controversial matter in Florida, from 77% approval down to 33%.

From his letter to Apple: their "hiring must be based on merit - not race, sex, or politics." 

Strive now has standing with these companies because they've invested in them on behalf of their clients. (Read the letter to Chevron here.)

from NYPost

Strive

Follow-up to this post

Organizations and individual investors give money to "asset management" companies to invest it for them. Those companies have a fiduciary duty to invest the funds in excellent businesses that will give a good return to the clients.

But Vivek Ramaswamy was surprised to find out that many of those companies (BlackRock is the world's largest) don't necessarily strive to maximize value. Instead, they invest their clients' money in businesses that support certain political values: environmental, social, governance (ESG). This way they exercise a lot of power on behalf of those politics.

He thinks this is unfair to shareholders and clients, especially since it may be a hidden agenda - hidden because many clients wouldn't like it and would take their funds elsewhere.  So he started a new asset management company which is up front about its priority to take care of people's investments. It's called Strive.

Vivek has a number of videos on YouTube; here is one of them:

(cont'd tomorrow)

SLS questions

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

There's a decade's worth of problems haunting the Space Launch System (SLS) since it took the place of the Space Shuttle program back in 2011. 

image

One problem is that SLS technology is old. The main engines are the ones used on the Space Shuttle, using liquid hydrogen propellant and liquid oxygen. The shuttle was scrubbed at least once on most launch attempts due to hydrogen problems.

SLS is not even reusable. Starship (SpaceX) will be.

A former NASA Deputy Administrator tried to get the agency to use a private company for Artemis but couldn't do it. She says the government status quo is too strong. The Planetary Society says the problem is politics.

So, it looks like lots of people have asked that question at the end of yesterday's post.

from Interesting Engineering

Artemis 1 wait

Artemis 1 will eventually get off the ground. But the first two proposed launch dates had to be scrubbed (leaky valve and faulty sensor). Possible dates for the next attempt are September 27 and October 2.

image

Disappointment with SLS (Space Launch System), the biggest rocket ever, has been going on for years. The rocket originally was supposed to launch in 2016, six years ago. It got pretty close to finally launching at Kennedy Space Center last month and has been sitting there ever since while repairs are made.

The cost goes up with every delay, of course. Over 23 billion taxpayer dollars have gone into developing the SLS so far over the past ten years without success. Should we cut our horrifying losses and give the project to someone else?

Somebody in the U.S. Congress is surely asking this question: what if we commissioned SpaceX to build it?  

(cont'd tomorrow)

Thoughts

It's good to be generally informed, even when much of the news is bad. But don't obsess over the bad news. The Bible has wisdom for you about your thoughts, about what to feed to your amazing brain.

As the Apostle Paul says, choose to turn your thoughts to what is real and pure and beautiful:

from You Version

Smartphone

Just about everyone has mixed feelings about their smartphone, a love/hate relationship. There are good and bad effects and no one is completely untouched.

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What is truth? How do you decide who to listen to, who has authority, who merits your trust. For some in today's social media world, it's a matter of likes, views, subscribers, numbers.

Sean McDowell does a lot of conversations on his youtube channel, some guests agreeing and some disagreeing with him. One listener commented that a guest on the show had more authority than Sean did. Why? Because he had more views and subscribers at that time than Sean did. It wasn't even a matter of who made better points than the other.

Screen time is always available to distract you from more important things. Much has been made of the advice to put down your phone when you're interacting with a live person. A teen-age girl once told Sean the reason she spent a lot of time watching videos: “I keep myself busy, so I don’t have to slow down and feel the loneliness in my heart.” 

More on this topic and his new book . . 

from Sean McDowell's blog

Zuby

Zuby's background can only be called diverse - including cultures of Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and education in the U.S. He's an author, speaker, rapper, and more, with over a million followers on social media.

He likes debates. Convenient, because he also likes to think for himself.

Water 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post) 

• Life requires minerals that are bound in our planet's rock. In the course of earth's water cycle, those minerals are dissolved and distributed all over the world. Water dissolves without destroying lots of things we need, while not dissolving necessary things.
• Water's heat capacity helps us stay temperature-stable within a narrow range. 
• Normally the frozen state of a liquid would contract and get denser. If frozen water got denser, it would sink. Lakes and rivers would be frozen from top to bottom, killing all aquatic life. But floating ice actually insulates and preserves the liquid state of the water beneath it.

photo

"Water is the driving force of all nature," said Leonardo DaVinci. He didn't know what the last several hundred of years of science has discovered, but his intuition was correct.

The fine-tuning of water, and of nature in general, make possible the existence of complex beings such as ourselves, according to Michael Denton. 

from Salvo

Water 1

Water is known to be an essential element of the planetary environment which can sustain life. One of the most common substances on earth, it's simple: two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. 

But its properties are rare:

• it's an amazing solvent
• it holds a lot of heat
• ice floats!

from Salvo

(cont'd tomorrow)

Bat man 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So Bat Man is real, in a sense. He developed his own echolocation ability to compensate for blindness, and now teaches others to do the same.

Daniel calls it flash sonar. He trained his sense of hearing to distinguish and interpret the sounds that echo back to him when he clicks his walking stick on the pavement - or just makes a clicking sound with his mouth.

It must be very highly developed, because he can even ride a bicycle.

Bat man 1

As you probably know, bats fly using their innate ability called "echolocation." It's an amazing ability which, of course, you don't have and neither does any other human. Right?

File this one under the heading of "amazing biological potential we never knew we had."

Bullied 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A school in Kansas adopted a policy that teachers must call students by their preferred name and pronouns, and this must be kept a secret from the parents if the student wishes it. One of the teachers (she'd been teaching there for 17 years) called them by their legal names, and refused to hide it from the parents. 

She was suspended and disciplined. 

She took her case to court, and like the one in yesterday's post, based it partly on religious freedom: that the school district violated her free speech, free exercise of religion, and due process rights. (Btw, is it okay and lawful when your employer compels you to lie?)

She won her case and was awarded $95,000 by the court.

Her lawyer says, "This case provides straightforward lessons for Kansas school boards: Schools shouldn’t lie to parents and teachers don’t forfeit their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door."

Note: Dr. Jordan Peterson sees government-compelled speech and modern identity politics as moving toward fascism.

from Daily Signal

Bullied 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Ok, this one goes beyond bullying. A teacher was arrested in Ireland today (at his school, in his classroom) in a dispute with his school that originated because he refused to use "correct" pronouns regarding a transgender student. 

He says he refused to call a boy a girl, and that to do so would violate his Christian beliefs, a religious argument. Maybe that will work to defend his position. But it seems to me that the stronger argument would be to use science and common sense. 

photo

Exactly as that German biologist explained (yesterday's post), there are only two types of sex cells in the human body: male and female. Traits in individuals can vary, i.e. more masculine girls and more feminine boys, but the vat majority of human beings are obviously one or the other. 

To be forced to speak against demonstrable scientific truth is "madness," she says. 

Watch a molecular geneticist interviewed by Peter Boghossian (who is strongly anti-religion) saying essentially the same thing here. I thought we all believe in science now. Apparently not.

from The New American

Bullied

If your child was being bullied, pushed around and demeaned, you would take action. Would any teacher take the bully's side, claim that it's okay? No. If he or she did, you would demand that your child be treated respectfully and that the teacher enforce a safe space for all kids.

Adults can be bullied into surprising things. What would you call it if you were forced (by threat of punishment) to agree that 2 + 2 = 5? Even Captain Picard nearly made himself believe and agree to a lie ("there are five lights") under torture and bullying by his Cardassian enemy.

Somehow some of our citizens on the left have started to claim that none of us knows what a woman or a man is. 

Germany's "Commissioner for the Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity" says that belief in two genders is unscientific. But according to a German developmental biologist (she also won a Nobel prize), that statement is unscientific because:

“There’s the one sex that produces the eggs, has two X chromosomes. That’s called female. And there’s the other one that makes the sperm, has an X and a Y chromosome. That’s called male.” 

from The New American

(cont'd tomorrow)

Resources 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

2021 Re-post

So where people are free enough, they tend to use their God-given talents to build on the knowledge that came before in order to improve things, to create solutions.

But sometimes an individual laborer will stand out for more than the normal progress. A person of genius who also has opportunity and an amazing combination of talents will pop up, one in a million:

"There are many smart people in the world. Some, but not all, are also creative. And some of these, but not all, are highly energetic and ambitious in their goals. At the extreme, we have superstars in science, engineering, business and the arts who are one-in-a-million in developing valuable innovations. These people produce new ideas that millions of other people can use. This is a huge point: the benefits of the creative geniuses are enjoyed by the rest of us."

The world is able to produce much more food, for example, because of the work of Norman Borlaug. There's Alan Turing and Steven Jobs. You will think of more.

image

from Forbes

Resources

Labor Day is coming up next Monday in the U.S. Its purpose is to recognize the achievements of our nation's workers. 

We who labor are not only consumers, but creators of value. We take our planet's natural resources and apply our mental and physical work to them. We create things to satisfy the many needs and wants of society, our neighbors and families. 

2021 Re-post:

It's an idea that really needs to die out: that human beings are nothing more than mouths to feed, just consumers of resources. Not so. Human beings create material wealth when they're free to dream and solve problems.

In spite of being proven wrong, the idea comes up every now and then. If I may refer just once more to the Marvel movies . . Thanos killed half of all life in "Avengers: Infinity War" so that the other half could get all the universe's resources and live better. Bad and wrong on every count.