Misirere

Imagine hearing this in a soaring European cathedral in the early 1600's.

 

Repentance, the theme of this beautiful music from about 1630, is not upbeat and not popular today. Modern people are told to blame others for any wrong-doing they may have committed.

According to the Bible, though, it's healing and restorative to admit it when you have not done what is right. God knows it anyway, so you're not fooling him.

But of course, this is not the end of the story. The point of the gospel, the good news, is that God has provided mercy and wants to extend it to you. Is there a condition? Only one: put your faith in Jesus, the Christ. He died that first Good Friday for you and me, but he didn't stay in that grave. He rose from the dead on the first Easter.

Take the mercy, accept the help.

Disparity

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Must all racial disparity (variance or difference) in any context be understood as the result of hostile, hidden racism? It should be easy to see through such an extremely over-simplified generalization. Here's some data from the address. and it may not be comfortable to hear. (The data is not documented. If you question it, do research of your own.)

In 2019, half of all black 12th graders had not mastered basic reading, and two-thirds had not mastered arithmetic and how to read a graph." According to the ACT, a standardized college admissions test, only three percent of black high school seniors were college ready in 2023." These are serious concerns - but they don't mean that college exams are racist.

Politicians (like our current president) may say that being a black person is much more dangerous than being white. Actually, that's true. "Blacks between the ages of ten and 24 are killed in drive by shootings at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that same age cohort. Dozens of blacks are murdered every day, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined . . "

But it's because of black-on-black crime, not the implied reason that white people (especially police) are always on the attack. 

There's a skills gap between races and a behavior gap. The solution is to deal with and to close those gaps, not to vilify the whole white race.

from Hillsdale

Merit 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If shoplifters are arrested and laws are enforced for one race but not for other races, we've lost justice.  

It seems obvious that justice and medical standards and law schools should be color-blind. It was obvious to all of us until 5 minutes ago. The point of the civil rights movement in the latter half of the last century was that rights and justice should be administered without regard to the race of the individual. That would be fair and just. Now we've gone backward, less fair and less just.

Most Americans are bewildered. A scholar and writer puts it in black and white terms with no confusion in this address to a conference last month. She says, "Disparate impact thinking is destroying our civilization."

"Any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination." So bar exams, police arrests, medical degrees, law schools--anywhere that the percentage of black people differs from the 13% of the general population that is black--are all the result of racist discrimination.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how many people actually believe this nonsense? If you haven't bowed to the wokeness, please speak up. But maybe not at work . . I don't want you to be fired for thinking things through.

from Hillsdale

Merit 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some medical schools have stopped using the Medical College Achievement Test (MCAT) as a requirement for new students. The National Institutes of Health has broadened their criteria for doctors getting neurology grants to include things like whether they received childhood welfare.

California's state bar association lowered the pass score on its bar exam for attorneys because only 5% of black law school graduates passed the exam the first time, compared to 42% of the Asian law school grads and 52% of white law school grads.

In the area of law enforcement, police officers don't always arrest shoplifters and sometimes district attorneys don't prosecute shoplifting and certain other crimes anymore. Why? 

"Macy’s flagship store in New York City was sued several years ago because most of the people its employees stopped for shoplifting were black. The only allowable explanation for that fact was that Macy’s was racist. It was not permissible to argue that Macy’s arrests mirrored the shoplifting population."

from Hillsdale

(cont'd tomorrow)

Merit 1

Suppose a day comes in your future when you need surgery on your eyes in order to preserve your sight. What sort of surgeon do you want to operate on you: so-so or excellent? You have common sense, so you hope for an excellent surgeon who got through medical school by thoroughly learning the material, not by some other criteria like a famous name or skin color.

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Similar question: do you want a so-so pilot or an excellent one next time you fly with a commercial airline? 

Of course you hope for excellent surgeons and pilots who earned their credentials by merit. You want them to deserve those credentials. You don't care what color their eyes or skin are. Up til now, that was simple common sense. A medical degree or pilot's license meant that the student earned it by doing the related work to an excellent standard.

Do they still mean that? In today's world, you might wonder. Because merit doesn't always result in the getting job or the college admission or the promotion. 

from Hillsdale

(cont'd tomorrow)

Happy 1

Are Americans happy? It's a big-scale question that the United Nations analyzes periodically. According to their report published this week, we as a people are a lot less happy than we used to be. In just a year we dropped from 15th happiest country in the world to 23rd happiest. 

That's a big drop in a short time. This week's report specifies generations for the first time, so the reason for it can be identified: young people (ages 10-29) are deeply unhappy, and they pull down our average.

Well, we know how they've been educated for years and that may have something to do with it. Human beings are not made happy when we're told that we're alone in the universe, that there's no God and no ultimate justice, no transcendent meaning to life, that we're nothing but more-evolved animals, etc.

Happiness is not trivial, as long as we don't define it with a shallow meaning. For our purposes on this blog, we're using the term as life satisfaction, peace of mind, a sense of well-being. For several weeks we're going to explore the subject every Friday. There is hope.

Have a good weekend! 

Air taxi 2

(cont'd from Monday's post)

Air taxis will now be tested in China, a recent development. Ehang has been granted permission to run trial operations of its eVTOL in a city yet to be determined.

It occurs to me to wonder if all the ideas, the technology, in the design of this eVTOL came from Ehang . . .

from Bloomberg

More Starship 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

What if airplanes were not re-usable, what if they were destroyed after every flight? It would be so expensive to fly to your destination that you would be lucky to fly once ever in your life. 

It used to be that way with space launches. Up until recently, a brand new rocket had to be built for every single launch. SpaceX was first to put a rocket into orbit and return it safely for another flight, a huge cost savings.

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From the beginning, this was the SpaceX vision. They've done it with Falcon 9 over 300 times, and Starship will be reusable as well. It's a game changer, no question: a spaceship to transport people safely in space, usable again and again like an airplane. It will take NASA astronauts to the moon (Artemis mission).

Starship will also carry cargo. The price to get your satellite or experiment into space will drop something like ten-fold. NASA's old Space Shuttle had to charge $25,000 per pound of payload. Starship will probably be able to charge about $1500 per pound.

from Business Insider

More Starship 1

Apparently there is only so much that can be known about how to make Starship successful by working in the SpaceX office. At some point, no more progress can be made until they send their current version of Starship into space and see what happens.

As the former NASA head Jim Bridenstine said a few years back, SpaceX has something NASA has lacked, a "willingness to fail." He says they "fly, test, fail, fix" - repeatedly.

Yes. Starship has been developed through a process of "fly, test, fail, fix" over and over again. Trial #28 took place on March 14. Starship, the space vehicle which will carry people in the future, was launched into space on the booster Super Heavy for only the third time that combination has been tested together. 

Super Heavy detached at the right time and turned back to earth, while Starship fired its own three rockets and continued on to orbital velocity. Both exploded before they could finish all of their mission. But they got further than ever before. Watch:

(cont'd tomorrow)

Air taxi

No longer a product of fiction (like The Jetsons' personal aircraft), air taxis may be coming as early as next year.

NASA and Joby Aviation are working on a ride-to-the-airport concept. You are their niche market if you would like to get a ride which takes half the time of driving your car, with no need to park the car at the airport, and with no chance of getting held up in traffic. You will be able to order the ride at the same time you buy your airplane ticket.

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Electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) stir eager interest in "commuter-hell supercities" but won't be common til they're fully tested and certified by governments (perhaps a decade from now).

from Robb Report

More speed 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

At this point, the hyperloop concept is going nowhere here in the US. But the potential is still alive, maybe, in China.

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A maglev train was tested successfully in a "low-vacuum" tube 1.2 miles long. Its velocity wasn't reported but may have been as high as 387 miles per hour, much faster than existing high speed rail. 

More testing is the next step. "If it's successful, it could be the next potential solution for high-speed travel across relatively short distances."

from MSN

More speed 1

Hyperloop - fast and autonomous - isn't being developed in the U.S., but faster and/or autonomous transportation appeals to just about everybody. Variations are already used in multiple locations all over the world.

Dubai (UAE) on the Arabian Peninsula has an eye-catching system. Autonomous cars move people along a monorail system between major landmarks like Palm Jumeirah.  Here are 44 other monorail locations.

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China had no high-speed rail at the turn of the century, but now has 45,000 network miles, the world's longest HSR. The fastest commercial train in the world runs between Shanghai and its international airport. With peak speed of 268 mph, it makes the 19-mile trip in a little over 7 minutes. It uses "maglev" technology, the magnetic levitation idea connected with the hyperloop concept.

Japan's bullet train was the world's first HSR to operate way back in 1964.

Stealing IP #3

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

While testing some turbines in China, American Super Conductor found that they were running on new code which AMSC had not released yet. They investigated Dejan because he was one of the few who had confidential access, and then found the emails which told the whole story.

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Sinovel, their biggest client, cancelled all its millions of dollars' worth of orders (of course it did). Dejan confessed and spent a year in Austrian prison. AMSC suffered market value loss of over a billion dollars and had to let 600 employees go out of their previous total of 900. It was devastating.

Afterward, cyber attacks kept coming. AMSC hired a computer security firm, which discovered that the attacks were now coming from a Chinese military unit tasked with spying on North American companies. Thousands of American companies have lost "engineering documents, manufacturing processes, chip designs, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, you name it it's been stolen."

from The Great Brain Robbery

Stealing IP #2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Imagine this scenario. You have some ideas for a great tech product. You start your company and hire some engineers to develop those ideas. You find clients who really want your product and are happy to purchase it from you. You keep figuring out more ways to help your clients and take care of your employees.

After decades of research and experiment at your company, someone takes your valuable results and gives them away. That's stealing intellectual property. 

That's pretty much how it was for American Super Conductor. They spent years and millions of dollars developing advanced software for the operation of wind turbines. After China in 2005 passed a law calling for wind farms, AMSC contracted with the Chinese company Sinovel to provide the required gadgetry and computer code to them while they would do the physical building of the wind turbines.

An AMSC employee (Dejan) working in their Austria office was seduced by the Chinese. An email showed his demands: "All girls need money. I need girls. Sinovel needs me." Sinovel executives were glad to comply.

from The Great Brain Robbery

(cont'd tomorrow)

Stealing IP

A grand jury just indicted a former Google engineer for stealing intellectual property. Over 500 confidential files of Google's ideas (mind work) were stolen for Chinese companies. 

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He was arrested last week in California for stealing trade secrets relating to AI technology and could receive up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250k for each of the four counts of theft.

Hired in 2019, with access to confidential information, he started uploading hundreds of files into his personal account in 2022. He was soon offered the position of chief technology officer in a new Chinese startup dealing with artificial intelligence. He founded another Chinese startup to train "large AI models powered by supercomputing chips." 

Surveillance camera footage showed somebody else faking his identity at Google's entrance while he was in China. He resigned last December.

from Ars Technica

Paris Olympics 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tickets are going fast! No, really. "Of the 10 million tickets available for the Olympic Games, just under 8 million have already been taken up."  Better hurry if you don't already have your tix.

What could go wrong? Plenty of things. 

Bed bugs, for one thing. Last fall it was like a plague. About the same time, trash collectors went on strike and piles were left on Paris streets. That in turn probably exacerbated the persistent rat problem.

For another thing, they have millions of visitors coming in the middle of a "housing crisis." In the words of one student, "[M]any of my friends are being evicted from their flats in June so that their landlords can let them out at inflated prices during the Olympics."

Workers are being asked to work from home if possible, so that the already-strained transport system isn't overloaded. Transportation tickets will double in price.

Add more strikes and public protests to the list. Be glad you are not in charge of making this whole thing look good to the world and run smoothly. Because the last thing France wants is to damage its global, glorious reputation. 

from Paris is heading for an Olympic-sized disaster

Paris Olympics 1

With an expected fifteen million visitors coming to town this summer, Paris is making a tremendous effort to give them a good impression and a good time at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

Spectacular scenery will abound as a background for photos. Imagine the opening athletes coming down the Seine River on boats as you watch from the riverside quai, beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower, equestrians on the grounds at Versailles.

artist's image

Huge profits will ensue for businesses and the city. But possible disasters loom as well, so the upfront costs are also huge as they try to eliminate those possibilities.

Three swimming events will be held in the river itself, where swimming has been banned since 1923 because of pollution. Confident that it will be clean, President Macron says he himself will take a swim in the river.

from Paris is Heading for an Olympic-Sized Disaster

(cont'd tomorrow)

Never happened 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said (he's still on Google's board but no longer running it): “We definitely messed up on the image generation . . . it definitely, for good reasons, upset a lot of people.”

He added: “We haven’t fully understood why it leans left in many cases and that’s not our intention. . . weird things that are out there that definitely feel far left."

Yes, it sure does feel far left. He claims that he doesn't understand why. Maybe he's just blinded by his ideology. Because it's totally clear to the rest of us--Gemini presents left-wing ideas because its creators/engineers are left-wing. 

Racial diversity is a filter built into image generation. When users ask for an image of a historical figure who was actually of the white race, this is less important than the woke preference of the Gemini designers. So, for instance, it presents non-white Nazi soldiers, which we all know never happened.

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Personal views of those designers take priority over factual, accurate truth. Clearly, truth-telling is not the highest priority. So we wonder, what else that Gemini shows us is not going to be really true? 

That's it. That's why people are upset. 

Never happened 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Sundar Pichai was the CEO of Google, and is now CEO of its parent company, Alphabet. In 2022 he was paid $226 million. Google is said to be worth $1.7 trillion. It employs 150,000 people, including about 30,000 engineers. A giant.

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You're familiar with its search engine, its email (gmail), and of course Youtube. Gemini was supposed to be its splashy entrant into the generative artificial intelligence market, an answer to ChatGPT by this technology giant. 

Instead, Gemini seems to have cost the company billions since its recent launch. Google stopped it from generating images on February 22. As of last Thursday, Alphabet's market cap (number of shares x its share price) had tumbled by $96 billion.

from Yahoo Finance

(cont'd tomorrow)

Never happened 1

Artificial intelligence has advanced greatly since Open AI's ChatGPT, which was itself a breakthrough advance in 2022.

No business wants to be left in the dust, so staff work diligently to find every possible way to use the new technology. More generative large language models (LLM's like ChatGPT) are being developed by tech companies. Gemini by Google is one of them.

Shortly after its launch, Gemini triggered alarm. When asked by users to generate pictures of historical figures, it showed them . . but not as they were. Minority races were substituted for white people and dressed in the style of their century. 

People are learning, if they didn't know it before, that AI does not necessarily report true and factual information. 

Gemini and all other artificial intelligence only follows the instructions (algorithms) of its creators. It does not "think things through" or look for truth. "AI can only learn from what it’s been given" by its developers--who have their own biases.

from "Google Gemini Presents a Pattern That Never Happened"

(cont'd tomorrow)

Sing louder 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Why does the man have these nightmares? Because he and his family and his church actually stood by and watched a few feet away as Jews were hauled to concentration camps. His childhood conscience was shocked, and it burned into his adult conscience.

A pastor of that time, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, didn't take the view of this boy's pastor. He claimed that the Christian church has a responsibility to fight evil:

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak.

Not to act is to act.”

Eric Metaxas wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer and sees the passive American church often doing what many German churches did then: ignoring evil in our own time, in our own country. His Letter to the American Church was written to call churches to fight it, not ignore it.

"Can it really be God’s will that His children be silent at a time like this? Decrying the cowardice that masquerades as godly meekness, Eric Metaxas summons the Church to battle."

Here is a trailer for the film that recently came out. Any church may screen it for free.