Coming 2

Note: A continuation of "Space Factory" was going to post today, but I've supplanted it for something more important

(cont'd from Wednesday's post)

Both Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard, the real hero he plays in "Sound of Freedom," are interviewed here.

In his previous job as a Homeland Security agent, Tim discovered much more than he wanted to know about the abuse and sale of children. This movie is about his first mission to save children from sex trafficking in Colombia.

He explains exactly how the industry is managed across our southern border:

“Why is a three-year-old showing up at the border?” he asked. “Well, I can tell you why, because they show up with a name. The name of the sponsor that they’re given by the trafficker.”

The Department of Health and Human Services “gets the kids, and they by law have to call the number. ‘Hi, we have Jose Gonzalez, Mr. George Smith.’ ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s my kid. Whatever.’ ‘OK.’ They used to actually fly down to have to pick the kid up. Not anymore.”

“Our taxpayer dollars will then send the kid by plane or bus to this George, the sponsor, no background check, no DNA, nothing. And they deliver the kids,” Ballard noted.

Space factory

"If we can get to space, if we can establish a long-term presence - and we can do both - there is business to be done there."

When SpaceX launched satellites this month for its customers, one of them was the world's first space factory. 

Why operate an expensive manufacturing factory in space? It's worth doing because, says the CEO of Varda Space Industries, "There are many high-performance products that are only possible to make in zero gravity." 

Its solar panels have found the sun and the satellite factory is beginning to stabilize. Varda's CEO used to work for SpaceX, and tweeted out a thank-you to them for the ride.

They're going to make pharmaceuticals because drugs have the highest value per unit of mass, and there's a big market for them.

from FreeThink

(cont'd tomorrow)

Coming July 4

You've probably heard about it, the new film "The Sound of Freedom," opening on July 4. Jim Caviezel stars as Tim Ballard, a man who personally has rescued children caught in trafficking.

Here is Jim being interviewed about the horrific industry and the numbers of kids involved. There was resistance to the making of this movie, and it required some courage.

Going nuclear

Sweden is taking a different path to its future in energy than some other European Union members. They decided last week to return to nuclear energy, in contrast for example to Germany's complete shut-down of nuclear. 

According to Sweden's Finance Minister, “We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable energy system.” They seem to share this approach with their neighboring country, Finland.

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from Western Standard

Censor 3

(cont'd from last Friday)

Google has "great strength and resources and reach" and quietly uses that strength to manipulate political opinions and elections. 

When they're discovered and called on it, they stop. A whistleblower from inside the company says they can "turn bias on and off like flipping a light switch."

How do they do it? One way is to target their users. Users who lean Google's way get a reminder to vote, users leaning the other way do not. In swing states, 92% of the autoplay videos being fed to Youtube users in 2022 leaned Google's way. When users do a search for information, the results are biased in favor of Google's preferred political party.

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The well-credentialed researcher who is tracking this information is alarmed -- in spite of the fact that he actually leans toward Google's politics. He's alarmed by the deception.

"Google is shifting votes on a massive scale." Millions upon millions of average American voters don't know they are being manipulated. 

from Daily Caller

Censor 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Three U.S. senators are pushing social media to aggressively censor "misinformation" on their platforms. They worry that Twitter, Google, and Meta won't censor enough during the coming election campaign because all of them have cut staff.

But how will social media know which posts are misinformation and must be cancelled? Easy, the government will tell them. Any fact or opinion that challenges the government's narrative must be stomped on. Because--what if people believe their opponents and so they vote the wrong way?! 

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Do social media companies actually make a difference? Do they deliver votes to a specific party? 

Yes, they do: "Google is shifting votes on a massive scale."

(cont'd on Monday)

Censor 1

Socialist Benito Mussolini became the dictator of Italy about a hundred years ago. He later founded "fascism" (and allied with Adolf Hitler in World War II). As an authority on the subject, he explained it like this:

"The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist . . . [it] interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people." The government controls all values, interprets everything, and dominates "the whole life of a people."

In today's America, the government works with corporations to define truth and limit what  the people see, think, and feel. It's not a secret. Social media takes direction from government to censor "misinformation"--by the government's definition, for its political benefit.

At least one motive for Elon Musk to purchase Twitter was his interest in freer, less controlled and less censored speech ("Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy"). After reducing staff in big numbers, he said (video below):

"If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, turns out."

Here's that famous recent interview that Elon gave:

(cont'd tomorrow)

EV charging 4

Charging electric vehicles is important to our current U.S. government. Money is being directed to a national system of charging stations - a way to put a finger on the scales, as it were, because this administration likes EV's and wants to favor them over conventional gas-powered vehicles.  

But there are different technologies among builders of the stations as well as among car manufacturers. Which will the government choose as the standard for the country?

Tesla has the largest private network (over 40,000) and the best charging technology. But a feud exists between the President's administration and Elon Musk on various issues. So . . the government picked an inferior system to be the national standard.

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Never one to stand down from a fight, it looks like Elon won this battle: 

A deal was just announced that both General Motors and Ford are going to make electric vehicles using Tesla's charging technology, as opposed to all others. Together, these three manufacture 70% of American EV's. Rivian followed with the same choice. Hyundai and Toyota are considering it.

Musk said Tesla “is not going to do anything to prefer Tesla [cars charging]” as more rival brands access [Tesla's] Supercharger network. “It will be an even playing field … The most important thing is we advance the electric vehicle revolution.”

Decisions & AI

Some say that artificial intelligence will get more intelligent than humans and then take over, that AI will spontaneously evolve consciousness and free will on its own. This idea is at home in the materialist view that there's no supernatural reality (matter only).

Some say that AI can never achieve human intelligence, but will continue to grow only in computing power. Human persons have a mind and soul that go beyond computation to consciousness and creativity. This idea is at home in the Christian view that we are created in the image of God, that we are more than our physical body and brain. 

This author thinks that people might stop thinking creatively and let AI make their decisions for them, like these pampered and docile humans seem to have done in the movie Wall-E:

Don't do that. Retain your God-given dignity, make your own decisions, think things through, and embrace your humanness with all its challenges.

from Discovery Institute

Wait, no WFH?

(cont'd from last Wednesday's post)

A source for last Wednesday's post claimed that commuters would never return to their city offices in pre-covid numbers, as if it's an obvious truth. But the opposite analysis, originally in the Washington Post, popped up in my feed: the golden age of WFH may already be over.

“Companies that put up with [remote work] for a long time are finally getting sick and tired of [it] . . . Working from outside the office “simply isn't as productive as office work . . . Too much evidence has piled up to credibly deny this any longer.”

Why? According to Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, new hires and junior staff "do better if they're in the office, meeting people, being onboarded, being trained." Makes sense.

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A recent survey found that, "80% of new hires will quit a job if they had a poor onboarding experience—which is much more likely to be the case if they’re welcomed aboard from a distance." And when it comes to promotions, in-person employees have an advantage.

So the jury's still out when it comes to the future of WFH.

from Yahoo

Irish farmers 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

By 2050, the European Union wants to be the first continent to achieve net-zero greenhouses gases. It's a legally binding goal, so member nations have to comply.

Up til recently, dairy farmers were urged to produce more for the common good. Many of them did that, like Donald Scully, who increased his herd by 5x. He loves the lifestyle, though it's long days of hard work. "The work is 24/7, Scully says. “You have to love it otherwise you wouldn’t do it.” 

He hopes his teenage son will become the fourth generation Scully to raise cows. But that's less likely when some in the government talk about reducing the number of cattle in the country by a million.

According to the head of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, the widespread mood is frustration. Many farms could go into bankruptcy.

from The Guardian

Irish farmers 1

Like the farmers in The Netherlands, Irish farmers feel threatened by their government, and for the same reason - climate change. Ireland's government is talking about eliminating 200,000 cows over three years.

“Our #1 priority is to make cattle farmers profitable by helping them consistently produce the best tasting and most eco-friendly meat and dairy products on the market,” says the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation.

Farmers feel the pressure to be "eco-friendly" because Ireland is trying hard to reduce carbon emissions per the goal set by the European Union, and cows do belch methane. A month ago the Irish minister of agriculture announced that the government would increase their investment in "climate-smart" food systems by a huge 60% from 2021-2025.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Commuters left

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Commuters left" refers not to all commuters leaving big cities, but rather a significant percentage of commuters. Lockdowns are long gone. Most workers have gone back to their offices in the cities - but still work remotely from home.

New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles now have only about half of the commuters they had before the pandemic. That's a lot of people who don't come downtown every day anymore. They used to go to shops and restaurants - many are closed. 

Big office buildings are partly empty now. Owners can't regain their rent income, so they default on their loan (mortgage). They stop making payments, hand the keys over to their bank/lender, and now the building is their lender's problem. The lender won't recover the full loan they made to the property owner.

Real estate companies and lenders are taking a hit, and cities take in lower tax revenue.

Beautiful, iconic Union Station in Washington D.C. has an uncertain future. Its owner defaulted on $430 million in loans in 2020. That steady stream of commuters which supported it . . may never come back.

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from Forbes, June/July 2023, pp. 92-100

Work from home

One of my neighbors works from home 100%. Her husband works from home two days per week. During the covid lockdowns, any employee who could do their job at home - did. After covid, it seemed like that would continue. 

But then CEO's pushed back with mandates to come into the office. Workers pushed back because they like WFH, claiming (with evidence) that they're still productive.

Managers and CEO's do have a point. According to one of them, WFH can be temporarily successful - but only if the business is already a healthy one.

Another says that there's less energy with remote work because there's less connection and collaboration between employees. In-person work seems to produce an energetic creativity that isn't duplicated over remote screens.

The debate goes on. But cities have a serious situation on their hands. They think that a lot of workers are gone from the downtowns . . for good. 

Commuters have left and they're not coming back - an urban catastrophe, according to a Forbes writer.

from Fortune

(cont'd tomorrow)

Bee algorithm 3

(cont'd from last Friday's post) 

If you are open to the idea that God exists, the obvious appearance of design in the natural world -- in honey bee hives and the intricate dance directing other bees to flowers -- makes sense. If you start with a commitment to believing God does not exist, you have to think up something to explain away the design of the natural world. 

Even the famous crusader for atheism, Richard Dawkins, concedes that living animals appear to have been designed and wisely assembled. He definitely would not agree that the Creator placed an algorithm in the bee's brain to direct its behavior.

Committed atheistic scientists have to mentally fight the ubiquitous appearance of design in living systems. Francis Crick advises them: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." 

If they don't fight hard against their own common sense, they'll conclude that a Creator designed it.

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Bee algorithm 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Boston Research Journal was quoted in yesterday's post saying, "The use of hexagonal honeycombs by bees is not a coincidence." They think they know where this "ingenious" design came from. Not from intelligence or a plan, of course; not from an algorithm in their design; but from natural selection working on random genetic variations (evolution):

"Hexagonal honeycombs built by bees showcase nature’s ingenuity and efficiency. Through their meticulous construction, bees optimize space, create sturdy structures, conserve resources, and regulate temperature within the hive. The hexagonal shape has evolved as a result of millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning, allowing bees to build remarkable architectural marvels that support their survival and collective success."

Isn't a bit of a stretch to assume that evolution made it all happen: optimizing space, regulating temperature, meticulous construction, etc., without any direction or intelligence?

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These publishers along with most of the scientific world assume that bee behavior--like the "waggle dance" to communicate location of flowers and the building of the ingenious hive--came about solely by chance through evolution, no plan or design or intelligence necessary. 

Like office buildings . . which pop up randomly all the time!

No, you have to abandon common sense to believe that.

(cont'd next week)

Bee algorithm 1

You could describe an office building as a complex, functional system designed to enable people to carry out their jobs and accomplish their company's purpose. Well-educated people designed and constructed all the sub-systems (like electrical) that make it work.

A honey bee hive is a complex, functional system constructed by bees in the wild or in human-made devices. Individual bees carry out their jobs in this home which provides for their needs while they accomplish the mission to produce honey.

photo

Intelligent, these bees. They start working at their jobs when they're three weeks old. The ones who build the hive don't go to hive-building college, since they're born knowing exactly what to do. How, exactly, do they know that?

Glands in their bodies create construction material: "Wax is an expensive commodity and so comb construction can be quite costly for a honey bee colony. Honeycomb is constructed in such a way to minimize wax consumption." Like a responsible human engineering firm.

Its hexagonal pattern gives optimal strength and stability to its material (wax), while it optimizes space and thermal efficiency for its purpose. "The use of hexagonal honeycombs by bees is not a coincidence" (Boston Research Journal published this week).

from Evolution News

(cont'd tomorrow)

"I in AI?" #4

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It's widely understood today that chatbots are not reliably accurate. But if they ever achieve more factual accuracy, they will be widely trusted for advice and counsel. It will be up to you and me to use sound judgment when we want to know what's true. 

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This writer has some advice for Christian school teachers: don't avoid using AI-based information retrieval with your students. Google searching will soon be replaced by AI-powered systems and the next generation really must develop skills to use it well.

Questions like these will need to be answered:

• What are the best practices for fact-checking auto-generated content?
• Do chatbots reflect the secular worldview of their human programmers? If so, how can we engage with auto-generated content without being naïve or unnecessarily dismissive?

We'll learn to use it right.

from Salvo

"I" in AI? #3

Follow-up to these posts here and here

Despite warnings about ChatGPT and other AI like it, many users may think "Are you sure AI is not as intelligent as a person? Because it really looks like it is."😕

Yes, it sure does seem like it's a person speaking to you. It was designed to be people-friendly like that. 

But all it does is to gather the most “probabilistic” order of words on the internet, around the project or subject or question that you give to it. It is just as fair or unfair as the content it finds. It does no evaluation of that content (except that it will favor its programmer's views).

“Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web." It can't create excellent  writing:

"ChatGPT can never rise above median writing quality, because finding the median in writing quality is what it does."

from a professional writer at American Mind

(cont'd tomorrow)

Chick-Fil-A DEI

Fast-food giant Chick-Fil-A got a new VP of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Of course, they did that to force their employees to start treating their abused customers with respect and kindness.

Wait . .  No, they are already famous for doing exactly that, for treating people with respect and kindness. It's a big part of their established brand and reputation.

Some think there's a different reason for bringing in a new vice president of DEI.

Fidelity 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It may seem like these Americans-who-don't-believe-in-American-values suddenly popped up out of nowhere. Example: our own government shockingly turned against parents who hold their kids' schools accountable. Example: statues of our founders were defaced or destroyed.

But undermining has been going on for decades . . decades . . and many just slept through it. Our values eroded gradually. 

Communist Russia worked intentionally and effectively to corrode what Americans believed in. I'm posting the interview of the Russian defector who told us this again, in case you didn't watch it last week:

Robby George calls us to be faithful, in spite of hostility, to what we know is true. In addition to whatever else it's called, June is now Fidelity Month: "“a month dedicated to the importance of fidelity to God, spouses and families, our country, and our communities.”

Fidelity month

This month is National Camping Month, National Country Cooking Month, and of course Pride Month. Now Robert P. George issues a new call to Americans to "Fidelity Month." The word fidelity comes from the Latin word which describes a person who is faithful, loyal, and worthy of being trusted by others.

A survey released in March by Wall Street Journal showed that many Americans have abandoned the values that described us in the past, even the recent past. We were united by those values, though we often disagreed on how to implement them. 

Now much of our society rejects the values of faith in God, respect for our laws and our country, the inherent value of every human being. You, my reader, are well aware of it.

But many of us (maybe still a majority?) believe in these things. He calls us to be faithful to them - in spite of opposition - with his statement posted on Facebook:

"At the foundation of America’s greatness are the virtues of her people. It is those virtues that sustain the principles and practices of our nation's constitutional order--our "experiment" (as our Founders described it) in republican government and ordered liberty."

(cont'd tomorrow)