Sing louder 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

The man's dream is a memory from his childhood in Germany as a boy.

Week after week, he and his family gathered with their friends in the 1940's on Sunday mornings in their little church. A train always passed behind them during the service. Fellow Germans--neighbors with homes and families--were being hauled in cattle cars.

Inside the church, the pastor's sermon one morning urged Christians to submit meekly to evil, as he said Christ would do. Outside the church that day, a whistle signaled that the train was stopping right next to them. 

At that point, the man's dream becomes nightmarish. Everyone in the church service hears the people in the cattle cars screaming as they pound on their locked doors. The pastor raises his voice over the screams, shouting to his congregation to love their enemies. He nods to the organist and starts them singing a hymn. Loudly.

The congregation is alarmed and disturbed by the screams. But they comply and sing their hymn. The boy walks out by himself and sees the doomed prisoners.

from Sing a Little Louder

(cont'd tomorrow)

Sing louder 1

Recurring nightmares disturb this man. He wakes up in a panic. 

The video below is based on a true story that took place in the middle of the last century. The nightmares come from one of his childhood memories of church services.

It may bear some relevance to church goers today. Take 11 minutes to watch it, time well-spent.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Old & new

When I visited Oxford (UK) and Normandy (France) in 2018, I was struck by the contrast in architecture. We saw buildings in use everywhere that were hundreds of years old - and so beautiful.

By contrast, the library in my town was completely renovated ($11 million) because it was dated and aging at . . 20 years old.

But retaining the old does not always hold sway, I guess. See this example in Germany of replacing the old and beautiful with the dramatically new and modern.

photo

EV competitor

Do you own a BYD? If you live in the US, you might not even know what it is. This Chinese car maker just surpassed Tesla's production of electric vehicles in the final quarter of 2023. 

Tesla far out-sells all other manufacturers of EV's in the US, and the same held for global sales up until now. But BYD is on track to take the leader position in 2024. Elon Musk has a warning for the auto industry:

“Frankly, if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world.” 

Low priced models are part of BYD's soaring success, and they can put out new models in as little as 18 months. Tesla took four years to put out the hyped cybertruck. 

But Tesla has plans for a new "baby Tesla" to compete in the lower price range, expected to cost the consumer under $30,000.

from Yahoo

High speed 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

U.S. High Speed Rail Alliance wants to convince Americans to build high speed trains for our public transportation needs. They say it's the "realistic, easy, and affordable" way forward.

photo

Certainly it's more relaxing than driving through traffic; it's easy to socialize/eat/read/watch the scenery when you're not at the wheel. Less time is required since the common definition of "high speed rail" is moving at 155 mph or more.

But efficiency and energy benefits may be the biggest appeal to lawmakers who worry about the environment. Per passenger, rail transportation emits less carbon dioxide and uses less energy than either cars or airplanes.

According to Brightline West, that HSR project from LA to Las Vegas (yesterday's post) will mean 700 million fewer vehicle miles traveled per year and 400,000 tons fewer carbon emissions.

from U.S. High Speed Rail  Alliance

High speed 1

It looks like the idea for "hyperloop" transportation is dead or nearly dead in this country. Projects proposed in Colorado and West Virginia have not followed through and the most prominent start-up has folded.

Elon Musk promoted the idea and encouraged others to pursue it, touting it as a better option than California's plan for high speed rail (HSR). But the high speed rail project is going ahead. In fact, billions of dollars are promised to it by the federal government.

photo

Brightline, which already runs trains between Orlando and southern Florida, will build the HSR between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Federal money in the amount of $3 billion for this project was announced in December. It's supposed to be done in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles with an expected one-way ticket of ~$100.

There's another $3 billion for a route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and $1 billion for a route between Virgina and North Carolina.

from TechCrunch

(cont'd tomorrow)

Roland 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Police in the US do not use lethal force against Blacks more than they do against white people. In fact, they use that force about 23% less than they do against whites. That was the result that Roland's research team discovered. Some of his colleagues advised him against publishing it because it was "so different." But he did publish it.

A previously fired assistant then filed accusations of sexual harassment against him out of revenge (according to her friend). A Harvard investigator found no basis for it. But Harvard University punished him with 2-year suspension and the end of his research lab, essentially "career death." Claudine Gay was on the deciding committee.

Why? Apparently because his work challenged the official narrative that systemic racism causes American police to frequently kill black men, so Roland's research had to be stopped. So much for "veritas" at Harvard.

Dr. Roland Fryer still wants to find strategies that actually help black kids achieve. "Truth helps us. False narratives do not. I find it insulting that people would change the truth because they think they're trying to help us."

Roland 1

Roland started life in a lower-income black neighborhood in Daytona Beach, Florida. Raised by his grandmother, his father was in prison and he didn't meet his mother until he was in his 20's. His extended family sold drugs in Florida.

He stayed away from drugs because he saw what happened to his cousins, and not one of his childhood friends is still alive.  Always feeling like a misfit, he never bought into the idea that it was cool to be poor. 

The first person to ever tell him he was smart was his economics teacher. He fell in love with economics, worked very hard as a student at Harvard, and became a professor. They were all trying to find the truth ("veritas") in their subjects, he naively thought. 

That's what Roland was trying to do. Back in 2015-2016 he looked into the actual police statistics to find the data about policemen killing black men. He did the research and published his conclusion, and then his life changed.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Competitor

NASA launched a lunar lander from Cape Canaveral last month, but the rocket booster was not from the well-known and often-used SpaceX. 

photo

United Launch Alliance (ULA), owned by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, was formed in 2005 to make rockets. They dominated the market for almost a decade, charging NASA over $400 million per launch. NASA contracted with them in 2013 for 28 launches, but SpaceX protested, offering a price of just $90 million using their Falcon 9.

A major restructuring of ULA followed with the goal being to cut its launch pricing in half so that it could compete, but the company was still in danger of bankruptcy by 2015. They asked for $1+ billion from the US Air Force to help them develop a new rocket called the Vulcan. Today that rocket provides 22,000 jobs across the country.

Jumping over the intervening years, last month's launch was delivered by ULA's brand new rocket, the Vulcan Centaur, at a price to NASA of $108 million for its five payloads.

I still have questions about ULA. If I find answers, I'll continue this.

from Wikipedia and Wikipedia

Girls' sports

An official with the NCAA has taken a stand for female student athletes. 

William Bock III resigned from his position on their infractions committee to say it's not fair to make females compete against male bodies.

The NCAA allows it if the transgender athlete meets certain requirements, like a lower current level of testosterone. But Bock made the right point in his resignation letter when he pointed to something we all know:

“There’s a lot of biological development that starts at birth that allows you to maximize testosterone, and those changes that you get through development — they don’t go away . . . you’re never going to bridge the gap between men and women."

Common sense at last. Apparently it took a little courage as well, judging from another of his comments:

“I’ve gotten no response from anybody,” he said. “Which I think probably says a lot about the fear that’s driving silence at academic institutions on this issue.”

from Washington Examiner

The mother lode

Rare earths are essential for the manufacture of modern technology products. They're not common or abundantly found on earth. When you put together those two factors, essential and uncommon, it means that manufacturers will pay a high price to get them.

China is the main source of rare earths. That means China makes a lot of money from supplying them to manufacturers, and it means that they can manipulate this advantage for political goals.

photo

But all of this may change because the "mother lode" of rare earths, the largest deposit ever found, has been discovered--and it's not in China. It's in the US, in the state of Wyoming.

"If wisely exploited, this find—estimated to be the richest in the world—will give the U.S. an unparalleled economic and geopolitical edge against China and Russia for the foreseeable future."

from WSJ, "Wyoming Hits the Rare-Earth Mother Lode"

He gets us . .

Yes, Jesus certainly gets us, as the Super Bowl ad says. He knows us to our core and understands us. But that's not all He does. 

He gets us as we are . . and He doesn't leave us there.  He saves, transforms, cleanses, restores, forgives, heals, delivers, redeems, loves us. In short, #HeChangesUs

EV charging 5

Follow-up to this post

Most EV (electric vehicle) car manufacturers have decided to build Tesla's charging technology (NACS) right into their new cars, starting in 2025. Here's the list so far: Ford, GM, Rivian, Toyota, Volvo, Polestar, Mercedes, Nissan, Fisker, Honda, Acura, Jaguar, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Lexus.

Starting later this year, 2024, owners of these EV's may use some of Tesla's supercharger stations, but they will have to use an adapter that will be available.

Stellantis (Jeep) and Lucid haven't decided yet. You have to wonder what's holding them back. Tesla's charging stations are both more plentiful and more reliable than any other. Researchers at University of California/Berkley found that rival CCS stations were often not functional.

The EV market relies on a charging network that is easy to find and works well. The US government wants EV's to dominate. All car manufacturers are working on it. To Elon Musk and others, it's a moral imperative. But, is it really? For me, the jury is still out.

image

from Business Insider

Aliens & faith

What if we discovered real, actual space aliens, non-human intelligent beings from other planets? Many believe it could happen.

 Some think that would somehow disprove the faith of Christians. Would it? Does Christianity depend on humans being alone in the universe?

What would you say?

Climate fear

Dr. Wielicki was alarmed at the fear which he saw in his university students. They were afraid that the world would be destroyed by climate change, even to the point of deciding not to have children.

So he explained to them that, in his view, the earth is not in that sort of danger.

"The narrative in the main stream media is doing so much damage to mental health. Climate anxiety is probably the number one anxiety issue for the students that I talk to. And the science does not support that fear. I think that fear is irrational."

And then he paid the price for dissenting from the favored narrative. 

Europe's farms 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

(?Kerry's remark is curious, since more CO2 means more green plants to feed people.)

European Union has a plan to severely cut down greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by the year 2040. It includes policies to limit what farmers can do, how they run their business, including both livestock and crops.

Farmers all over Europe have been dramatically protesting to tell them that the plan must change. They have won over various groups. One of them wrote to the EU saying, “The root of the problem is clear: the majority of farmers simply cannot make a living from their work. They are trapped in a system that is killing them.”

photo

Worried that a lot of voters are going to express their anger in the election coming next summer, the president of the EU made some changes to the plan this week:

• a recommendation to citizens to eat less meat was dropped
• a requirement to cut pesticide use by half was dropped
• a requirement to cut nitrogen, methane, and other emissions by a third was dropped

Apparently the farmers made enough noise.

from The Telegraph

Europe's farms 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Last week farmers took their protest to the EU itself: 

"Demonstrators rolled into Brussels in their tractors in the early morning hours before gathering outside the European Parliament where the summit was being held, blaring horns, hurling eggs and sparking fires."

photo

Rising costs, declining profits, government threats against farms, declining government support for farmers, all contribute to fear for their future. These pressures come from the European Union's passion to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Globally,  agriculture produces 12% of CO2 emissions.

As American John Kerry, "presidential envoy for climate," says, "We can't get to net zero, we can't get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution . . . You can't continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Europe's farms 1

Farmers in Europe are really upset. 

Angry farmers are protesting in Germany, Romania, France, Greece, Bulgaria and other countries. Thousands used tractors, fire, manure to get the attention of their governments because they have the impression that nobody is listening.

photo

Rising taxes and regulations are part of the problem, but there may be an agenda for farms that's bigger than taxes and regulations. Dutch farmers were told that the government plans to seize 2000-3000 farms. In Ireland, the government wants to "eliminate" 200,000 cows. 

(cont'd tomorrow)

Level 4

A Level 5 autonomous, self-driving vehicle would drive safely and reliably anywhere and under any conditions without human intervention. That exciting idea was promised by some researchers (Ford, Tesla), but nobody's gotten there yet and it doesn't look like any car company will attain it any time soon. 

But some companies are focused on Level 4 instead of Level 5. Waymo is having some success with it, describing itself as "The world's first autonomous ride-hailing service," operating now in San Francisco and Phoenix. Like Level 5, their electric vehicle needs no human intervention; but it only operates in defined areas under defined conditions.

photo

Cruise tried to do the same thing but with perhaps a little less focus on safety. California revoked their permit for autonomous driving vehicles.

Waymo is still losing an estimated billion dollars per year. Eventually they must turn a profit. Neither investors nor employees will be able to keep the company going without it. 

from Mind Matters

U of Austin

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

University of Austin will welcome its first class of students next fall. It is not the University of Texas at Austin, but a new university altogether, designed to allow students and faculty to think and speak freely while pursuing truth. You know, like the university system which thrived for centuries doing that until today's disastrous corruption.

Six hundred professors applied for the initial fifteen faculty positions, six hundred who want to escape the oppressive culture of other universities to join this new one. Maybe they are afraid (of course they are) to speak their opposition to the mono-culture on their current campuses.

In the words of one of the founders, "Independent thinkers are repelled by intolerant and rigid intellectual environments. When universities are obsessed with hunting heretics, they become incapable of real creative achievement and fall behind."

 The founders and faculty (including Peter Boghossian) are optimistic that this can succeed.

from "Why I'm Co-founding a New University Dedicated to Freedo of Thought and Study"