Drought over

After five long years, California's drought is over. The mountains received 6-12 feet of snow so far this winter, in addition to flooding rains at lower altitudes. Reservoirs have filled to the level of normal or even better. 

photo: strangesounds.org

Ski resorts should be happy. Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows announced they won't close for the season until July 4. Since January 1, they've had 460 inches of snow.

Even if you're used to winter snow, it's hard to imagine that much. Go here to see some great pictures of it, including buried cars and homes.

Egypt too

Last week there were posts on Christians in danger in Nigeria and Iraq, now there's news of more Christians on the run - this time in Egypt.

"Egyptian Christians fearing attacks by Islamic State group militants are fleeing the volatile northern part of the Sinai Peninsula for a fourth day, after a string of sectarian killings there sent hundreds fleeing . . .

"[An o]fficial . . of the Evangelical Church in Ismailia . . east of Cairo says Sunday that over 100 families from the city of el-Arish and nearby had passed through the church since Friday, some 500 people.

"He says the families arrive scared, exhausted and in need of supplies, which were being stockpiled at the church via donations from several parishes. They are then transported to be housed in and around the city, in private homes and now also housing provided by the government." Donation boxes arriving for them at Evangelical Church in Ismalia below:

photo: stream.org

Return home

"The first Christian families are returning to their recently liberated villages on the Nineveh Plain . . Without electricity and water but happier than ever, sisters Nidal and Janan are home at last. “We believe in Christ. He will help us through this period. He keeps us strong.”

Mosul, on the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq, was captured by Islamic State back in 2014. Its 60,000 Christians were given the choice to convert, pay an extra tax, or bow to "the sword." Most of them left - as fast as they possibly could, leaving homes and possessions behind, often winding up in refugee camps.

Those sisters mentioned above are happy to come back, but it's not the same place. Click on "Iraq" under Labels for details about the destruction under IS. 

"Father Gabriel warns not to expect things to return to normal now that IS is gone. “The liberation was just step one. The next step should be the protection of Christians. We can’t do that ourselves; we need the help of the rest of the world. Like when Europe in the 20th century needed the help of the world to cast out evil and to liberate and protect people, in the same way this region needs international protection now. IS may have been defeated, IS’s ideas are still very much alive.”

No protection

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So villages in northern Nigeria are in trouble.

But who will help them? Their government appears to be helping the attackers with weapons and supplies. "The complicity between the army and the Fulani is obvious . . The world’s indifference gives the Nigerian government the advantage in what looks like a quiet effort to rid northern Nigeria of its Christians."

All U.N. member nations adopted the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) in 2005. It's a commitment to protect populations from genocide and ethnic cleansing. If the Nigerian government can't or won't do that, then it seems like the U.N. security council has given itself some responsibility.

One woman's story: 

"Deborah, now 31 and living in a camp for the internally displaced, was captured by the Boko Haram terrorist group and held captive for a year and a half. The Islamists came to her village and slaughtered her husband and family before abducting her and “marrying” her off to a 20-year-old Muslim terrorist . . . After Deborah was recaptured following an escape, she received 80 lashes as punishment. She told journalist Douglas Murray that she no longer fears death.

“What sort of death would I be running from?” Deborah asks. “I have already died once.”

photo: indianexpress.com

Nigeria burns

Christians of Nigeria in Africa have been targets of violence for years. Islamic terror group Boko Haram often attacks villages at night in the north. This is where the attack on a school resulted in 200 girls kidnapped (#Bringbackourgirls) in 2014.

The country is roughly half Christian and half Muslim. After an ineffective Christian president, they now have a Muslim president - who happens to be of the Fulani tribes.

"A few days before any attack, a military helicopter is spotted dropping arms and other supplies into the areas inhabited by the Fulani tribes. Then the attack comes." Elements in the Nigerian military are arming and supplying Fulani fighters.

"When challenged after a massacre, soldiers often claim that they didn’t receive any orders — or had been commanded not to intervene."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Really, Mars?

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Falcon 9 was designed by SpaceX to be the first reusable rocket. In the past, rockets were always destroyed by their first flight. The obvious advantage is that every flight doesn't require a whole new rocket worth tens of millions of dollars. And if going into space can cost less, it can advance much faster.

Launch Complex 39A (yesterday's post), having a great history, has been leased to SpaceX (a private company) for 20 years and they've spent a millions to get it ready for their own rockets.

It's all in the service of Elon Musk's vision to make humanity an "inter-planetary species." by building the transport system to colonize Mars. He gave a talk in Mexico recently to explain how he sees that happening.

The talk is on youtube but it lasts about an hour and a half. Here's a 7-minute summary, including some big questions yet to be addressed:

Returned

Kennedy Space Center's current director, Robert Cabana, flew the space shuttle four times as commander. He has sadly watched the pad from which he took off, pad 39A, lay unused and "rusting away" since the last shuttle launch in 2011.

But yesterday that changed. After a horrible failed launch last summer, SpaceX successfully launched a cargo re-supply mission to the International Space Station right there on 39A. After about 10 minutes, the first stage of the re-usable Falcon 9 rocket came back down safely at Cape Canaveral Air Force base - SpaceX's second such landing at this place.

If everything goes according to plan, SpaceX will launch a mission crew - people - in about a year from this spot. 

It's all part of CEO Elon Musk's goal to take human beings to Mars.

(cont'd tomorrow)

$20,000

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

American seniors face a financial challenge partly because they retire at the traditional age but have a longer life after retirement now than in the past. Here's another important factor:

"The median amount middle-lass Americans have saved for retirement is $20,000 . . ." That's a bleak prospect for the rest of one's life. "34% of the middle class expect to work until they are 80 because they will not have enough saved for retirement."

Advancing age can sneak up on you. Quoting author Kurt Vonnegut, "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." Yes, been there 😲

(from "Aging in America," Retirement Advisor)

Graying USA

Many Western countries have birth rates per woman that are well below replacement rate, so their societies are changing (check the "Demography" label on the right).

America's birth rate has been right at replacement (2.1 per woman) until recently; but we, like them, have a graying population. Raleigh NC is "going gray the fastest" with an over-65 population that has nearly doubled from 2000-2013. Austin TX is right behind them, followed by Atlanta GA.

The biggest challenge with much of the population over 65 is financial:

"As people age, the cost of keeping them alive rises with them, and the ability of modern science and technology keeps them living longer. People need a plan. People need to know how they're going to pay for staying alive so long, and they need to know who's going to foot the bill."

(from "Aging in America," Retirement Advisor, cont'd tomorrow)

Comparing

Comedian Tom Shillue says he's a pretty happy guy . . because he stopped comparing himself to other people like Jerry Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon.

He recommends we all stop comparing ourselves to whoever we think is better.

Kind

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to yesterday's article from The Atlantic, couples who have happy long term relationships are couples who have - diligently, over the long haul, regardless of not feeling like it - chosen to be kind to their partner.

"Kindness . . glues couples together. Research . . has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage.

Kindness shows up when you:

• generously interpret your spouse's action in a positive way 
• share in the joy of his/her happy news together
• choose to communicate fact, not sarcasm

You could give dozens of situations that come up in your own relationship! Happy couples look "for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully."

photo: listdose.com

Unkind

It's probably safe to suppose that few people get married expecting divorce. But about half of all first marriages fail, then more of second or third marriages. There's been some research to discover how it happens that love turns into rejection.

According to this report. rejection starts way before the divorce. Maybe both partners actually feel "love" at the beginning, but that wasn't enough. There's a behavior that can lead to unhappiness and breaking up. It's un-kindness.

"Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there."

photo: therelationalmarketer.com

How long can you stay excited about a spouse who will only focus on their own concerns, who must always be right, who's indifferent to your happy or sad news? Not very long. The relationship is shredding.

(Valentine's series #2)

Married man

Marriage requires a lot from a man if he wants a happy marriage: he'll have to put his wife and children before himself most of the time. He'll probably work more, spend less time with his friends, and stay faithful. 

But research clearly shows that, generally speaking, it will be well worth it. Two professors published a report based on studies of the costs and benefits of marriage to men. "They found a clear takeaway: Marriage is good for men in “every conceivable measure.” 

photo: world.wng.org

Benefits include more happiness, less depression, more wealth accumulation, and they even eat "more fruits and vegetables":

"Men who get and stay married live almost 10 years longer than their unmarried or divorced peers. Married men eat more fruits and vegetables. Married men also appear to manage illness better, with their wives providing companionship and advocating on their behalf with doctors and nurses. A recent Harvard study found married men diagnosed with cancer live significantly longer."

(Valentine's series #1)

Halo gamer

Michael was hooked from the first time he played Halo. It turned out that whatever talents are required to be good at it, he had those talents. He was also apparently a teenager who had school based issues to cope with and to escape from.

photo: halo.bungie.net

He became known among Halo gamers around the world as "HC One Stick." Obsessed with the game, he started setting world records and still has four of them. Michael had found his niche, his personal identity. For fifteen years Halo was his "drug of choice."

But today Michael says that he simply can't play Halo casually and so he doesn't play it at all . He has new priorities and a new identity: Christian husband and father. Find the rest of his story at www.stream.org.

H1

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So development of hyperloop transportation is being carried on in two ways. Elon Musk is sponsoring student design team competitions, and one start-up company is raising investment funding and trying to create a sustainable hyperloop business.

Hyperloop One (H1) reached an agreement with the United Arab Emirates last November to partner in building it between Abu Dhabi and Dubai (Monday's post). This video is their vision of how it will work for a traveler:



They're also talking with European countries about various routes.

Transportation that will be smoother, faster, safer and cheaper - the world wants this to work. H1 expects to have a viable commercial enterprise in operation for cargo by 2020 and for passengers by 2021.

How fun will it be to watch this unfold 😏

MIT wins

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A team of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won the first round of competition last month to design a hyperloop pod, including its brakes, speed, stability and levitation. (If you didn't watch yesterday's video to see the concept, a "pod" carries either people or cargo through a large, nearly airless tube.)

Here's Elon explaining that the point of his  hyperloop competitions is to generate creative energy toward this new transportation technology:



Next summer the 22 teams who qualified in January will bring their prototype to the next competition to take place on a track built by SpaceX  next to their headquarters in California. The goal this time, Elon says, will be speed.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Moving ahead

You haven't forgotten about the hyperloop, right? There still are two companies pursuing the dream.

One of them, "Hyperloop One," has received a grant of $5o million from the UAE to actually build it between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. That distance is 99 miles, and it will only take twelve minutes. This is actually happening.



(cont'd tomorrow)

Incentivized

Maybe you've heard that government-owned and -run businesses are less successful. It's not hard to figure out why. Bureaucrats are not solely dependent on the success of that business and do not "go down with the ship" if it fails.

But risk-tolerant individual owners could earn a lot, and they could lose a lot. They are highly incentivized:  reward for making it work and disaster if they don't make it work.

Three stories of American businesses show the contrast.

NK worst

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Open Doors publishes an annual list of the 50 worst countries for persecution of Christians. As in the past, North Korea is at the top of that list, the very worst place in the world to live as a Christian.

photo: worldhelp.net

"Worship of the ruling Kim family is mandated for all citizens, and those who don’t comply (including Christians) are arrested, imprisoned, tortured or killed. Entire Christian families are imprisoned in hard labor camps, where unknown numbers die each year from torture, beatings, overexertion and starvation."

(cont'd next week)

Open Doors USA

The mission statement of Open Doors USA is "Serving persecuted Christians worldwide," and they have been doing that since 1952.

"[A]ccording to the United States Department of State, Christians in more than 60 countries face persecution from their governments or surrounding neighbors simply because of their belief in Jesus Christ."

On average around the world, there are 772 cases of violence against Christians each month. They could include beating, discrimination at work or school, rape, torture, imprisonment, death, and more. An average of 214 Christian properties (including churches) are destroyed, and 322 Christians are killed.

photo: catholic.org

(cont'd tomorrow)

Discarded

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

All that manufactured stuff is eventually discarded and it's a lot of trash. As an example, "The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in rubbish every month." Some expect that the amount of solid waste generated globally will triple by the year 2100.

"A city resident generates twice as much waste as their rural counterpart of the same affluence." So one reason that global waste is rising fast is just the fact that more and more people live in cities all over the world. Think of China, where the government is aggressively moving millions upon millions of people from their rural homes to cities - and in some cases building those cities from scratch.

photo: wikipedia.com

But there are good reasons to expect that earth won't get buried in waste despite growing urbanization. 

Wealthier cities of the world deal with waste much more efficiently than poorer cities. It makes sense. In very simple terms, people use their material resources to meet their survival needs, and then at some point they can turn their energies to priorities lower on the list.

Just one more benefit - among so many - that accrues to a poorer nation when they start to create their own wealth beyond survival.

All our stuff

This post is for anyone who's ever wondered how much human-made stuff there is on the earth, and how it compares to the natural world.

To sum it up, there's more stuff - in both mass and in variety - manufactured by humans.

The stuff we've made amounts to "30 trillion metric tons . .  about 50 kilograms for every square meter of Earth’s surface."

And it all weighs much more than the combined weight of all humans: "Human-made things are 60,000 times as heavy as humans themselves."

photo: sciencenews.org

Half there

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A description of social media addiction might be in order (because this is a behavior thing rather than linked to a substance like alcohol). From what addiction.com says, a person must have his or her social media hits to just feel normal.

The antidote would be to tame that cell phone (and thus facebook, pinterest, twitter, etc.) by driving it back into its cage (turn it off) when you need to give total attention, engagement or focus to the person you're with or the situation you need to handle.

Coke wants to give you some help when you're tempted to be only "half there" instead of "all there" with your friends or family. Actually, they offer a collar in this spoof ad:

All there

"Fully engaged," that's how author Liberty McArtor says she used to be with her close friends as a child. In contrast, she describes herself today as distracted by and even addicted to social media and technology.

Sitting still in the car at a stoplight for 30 seconds is a long time to be bored, so she must check her phone for notifications. Another example - finding herself "lost in Twitter with no memory of how I got there, even as I'm writing this article!"

photo: businessesgrow.com

Her addiction is not uncommon. But she has an uncommon point to make about boredom: kids should experience boredom sometimes without the instant rush of tweets and likes and texts. 

She says, "When you’re bored, you and your brain have to find something to do . . boredom [as a child] often preceded my most memorable adventures."

Her new resolution is to put down the phone and be "fully engaged engaged in the moment." I think of it as being not distracted by that entertaining phone, but rather all there in that moment.

(cont'd tomorrow)

EU weaker

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

We here in the U.S. have been less than happy with our economic growth of 12% since 2008, which is just an average of 1.5% per year (about 3% was normal for decades).

But Europe has even less economic growth. Since 2008 the economy of the European Union has grown overall only 4%, an average per year of 0.5%.

Because of that, unemployment in Europe is nearly 10% (about twice that of the U.S). And it's much worse for young people (image below).

"The currency can muddle through for some time to come," says a European economist. "But it cannot survive indefinitely unless ... fundamental problems are addressed."

photo: crossingthebaltic.com

EU disunity

The European Union is "falling apart" according to cnn. Those are strong words, maybe too strong to be accurate because the EU is definitely not closing its administration buildings any time soon. But there are multiple signs of disunity:

• Brexit, the great surprie when a majority of British voters told the UK government to get out of the EU
• Other countries which may also make that choice are France, The Netherlands, Austria, Finland, and Hungary
• Politicians in favor of leaving the EU seem to be growing stronger (Marine LePen in France for example)
• The euro, Europe's common currency, has weakened after financial crises in Greece, Portugal, and more

"Populist" is the term for politicians who appeal to widespread dissatisfaction among masses of voters who want change. After giving up the freedom to make many of their own laws and policies, these European voters want to get their sovereignty back from the European Union.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Happy anyway

Sam is happy. He knows how to keep being happy, he's figured out some important things, and he'd like all of us to learn how to do the same in spite of our challenges.

Sam is challenged by the normal things of life, but especially by a disease that afflicts only 350 kids in the world: progeria.

Here he is explaining "My philosophy for a happy life."

Hidden Figures

Nothing is "over the top" in the movie, "Hidden Figures." Nobody has special powers, including the three authentic women whose stories are brought to light. They are gifted in math ability, but they're not extraordinary warriors.

The women are diligent in their work at NASA in the segregated American South of the 1960's. They use their imaginations and press into their opportunities. In short, there's nobody who couldn't take inspiration from Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson.

Gifted hands

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A movie was made of Dr. Ben Carson's inspiring story (2009) starring Cuba Gooding Jr. Get an outline of the movie's plot here unless you want to avoid spoilers.

His reputation in neurosurgery was global. German parents of conjoined twins took their desperate situation to him, the central drama of the film.

HUD Secretary

Before the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development can be confirmed, the American Senate held a hearing to interview this man, Ben Carson. He told his story:

"[H]is mother used to work cleaning beautiful homes. One day she asked him if he would rather live in those nice houses or the house in which he and his brother lived in Detroit. She told him that only he could decide the type of home he would eventually live in by how much he studied in school and the choices he made for his life.

"Thus motivated, Carson said he went from last in his class to first, and people who used to call him “dummy” started asking him for help with their schoolwork."

Dr. Carson (he became a brain surgeon) spent his childhood being poor in Detroit. Sharing similar experiences with people he will try to help in his new position - it can only be a good thing.