Everyone

People are working hard to bring The Chosen to a billion people around the world, a huge goal, and it's complicated. An organization outside the actual producing of the show was founded with the mission to accomplish that goal. It's called Come and See.

Spectacle

For wealth and luxury and spectacle, the world has a new icon: the city of Dubai on the coast of the Persian Gulf, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

New Year's Eve fireworks show at the Burj Khalifa was unique, an excessive display:

Blessing 2026

Hope your Christmas celebration was beautiful and joyous, and that your New Year will be full of good opportunities! 

We pause during this holiday week to think about the year to come . . and to pray, either today or tomorrow, about 2026. As you well know, it will present both happy and challenging situations to you and your loved ones.

New NASA Chief

Jared Isaacson has always wanted to be in space. He fulfilled his wish with a civilian project which he funded and organized himself, Polaris Dawn, in September of 2024.

Now he's the new Chief of NASA.

Local spots

 What are the local gathering spots like where you live? 

In my community most shops and cafes are franchises: efficient and predictable, they nevertheless don't lend themselves to neighborliness like "third places" do. We need to connect with our neighbors in casual ways.

"Third places" are independent gathering spots having walls cluttered with notices of lost pets and local sports teams, noisy, full of personality, menus of local favorites, all looking like the neighborhood. 

America used to have more of these. "People mixed across generational and economic lines where you could overhear a conversation wildly different from your own, where children learned to behave in public, and where adults remembered the value of showing up and being present. They were unpretentious, inexpensive, and abundant. And because they belonged to their neighborhoods, they carried meaning."

Understanding and trusting neighbors is "social capital." We need it in America, and it's been declining. "Social capital does not regenerate itself—it is produced in spaces where people encounter one another with regularity and low stakes. When those encounters disappear, people stop learning how to share space with those unlike themselves, and difference begins to feel threatening rather than ordinary."

Ideas to enable more third places . . here.

from AEI

American story 3 - No Christmas

The winter of 1776 held no Christmas joy for the colony's cold, ragged troops. Defeat after defeat left them in terrible circumstances. British generals assumed the Americans were finished and took a winter break from fighting. 

General George Washington finally came up with an offensive strike that his advisers and generals could agree to. They crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, attacked Hessian mercenaries, and won a famous victory that changed the war.

How tough were those troops and officers? They were already in bad shape when they crossed the half-frozen river in the night. Two froze to death. A lot of suffering precedes death.

Christmas beauty 3

Christmas has been inspiring composers of music for hundreds of years. The musical results then inspire the rest of us.

Johann Sebastian Bach was himself inspired by the God of the Bible. His music was "the expression of a unitary … world view, in which all beauty … was sacred because God was one, both Creator and Redeemer."

"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." —J.S. Bach

Here is beauty from his Christmas Oratorio, to glorify God and refresh your soul.

Kids' words 2

Here's the Christmas story as told by kids in their own words and acted out by grown-ups. 

Enjoy Christmas

In yesterday's post, you saw Jewish Dennis Prager enjoying the celebration of Christmas in America. He has a lot of company. 

Here is the view of another Jewish (re-post) man who lives in Boston (published years ago in the Boston Globe). He's "far from feeling excluded or oppressed."

Friday, December 28, 2018

One Jew's view

A Jewish man in Boston loves to see Christmas celebrated:

"I’m an Orthodox Jew for whom Dec. 25 has zero theological significance. My family doesn’t put up a tree, my kids never wrote letters to Santa, and we don’t go to church for midnight Mass. But while I may not celebrate Christmas, I love seeing my Christian friends and neighbors celebrate it. I like living in a society that makes a big deal out of religious holidays. Far from feeling excluded or oppressed when the sights and sounds of Christmas return each December — OK, November — I find them reassuring. To my mind, they reaffirm the importance of the Judeo-Christian culture that has made America so exceptional — and such a safe and tolerant haven for a religious minority like mine.

"Ioffe [Jewish woman] writes that being told “Merry Christmas,” even once, is “ill-fitting and uncomfortable.” Hearing it for weeks on end is almost more than she can bear. “It’s exhausting and isolating,” she writes. “It makes me feel like a stranger in my own land.”

"Is it really the Christmas cheer that makes her feel so alienated? That certainly isn’t the reaction Christmas evoked in other Jewish immigrants and their children. Not only were many of the greatest Christmas songs composed by Jewish songwriters , but several of those songwriters were themselves first-generation Americans. Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”) was born in Russia. So were the parents of Mel Torme (“The Christmas Song”). Edward Pola (“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”) was the son of immigrants from Hungary . . .

"As an observant Jew, I don’t celebrate Christmas and never have. Do the inescapable reminders at this time of year that hundreds of millions of my fellow Americans do celebrate it make me feel excluded or offended? Not in the least: They make me feel grateful — grateful to live in a land where freedom of religion shields the Chanukah menorah in my window no less than it shields the Christmas tree in my neighbor’s. That freedom is a reflection of America’s Judeo-Christian culture, and a central reason why, in this overwhelmingly Christian country, it isn’t only Christians for whom Christmas is a season of joy. And why it isn’t only Christians who should make a point of saying so."

Merry Christmas 2

If you were an American Christian living in, say, Iraq, would you wish your neighbors a Happy Ramadan? I would do that if I lived there - to extend courtesy to my neighbors and to honor the country I live in.

About 92% of Americans celebrate Christmas, some Christian and some not. So you're on very solid ground when you say "Merry Christmas!" to almost everybody.

Don't let this tradition die. Say it to someone today!

Peppermint

Do you feel that special Christmas holiday feeling? "All of life starts going … soft-focus, with glimmering lanterns and crackling fireplaces . . ." It makes you want to order a peppermint latte (photo). 

It permeates this season (though not as much as it did years ago because of the secularizing trend). Think of the lovely music, like "White Christmas" and "Silver Bells." A mood of good feeling, of well-being comes over us.

Cynics or atheists enjoy it too, but they have to deny that the power which inspires the good feelings comes from the ancient meaning of our Christian holiday. Check out this post from 2016.

What would be the mood of a holiday inspired by ancient Nordic folklore? By ancient Aztec traditions? "What kind of “winter villages” would modern Aztecs have organized?"

This author says, "The fact is that the good cheer, conviviality and family reunions we feel compelled to organize at this time of year really do flow from a long list of powerful truths that our ancestors only learned about because of a single Jew’s birth in Bethlehem."

from The Peppermint Latte Argument for the Existence of God

Agentic AI - 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Careful guardrails will be essential since decision making and execution of decisions is what agentic AI will do, and there will be consequences. Programmers will have to imagine possible bad consequences in order to protect priorities like privacy, cost, human safety.

Examples of what agentic AI could do in a couple of applications:

• In the finance sector, it could avoid fees by transferring funds and optimizing investments while monitoring funds 
• In cybersecurity, it could continuously monitor network traffic to detect suspicious traffic patterns and trigger automated responses

An AI expert offers training in how to use "authentic agentic AI" below:

  

"AI is not just about building smarter machines, but about building them responsibly, ensuring they serve humanity’s best interests." Absolutely.

from Logicgate

Agentic AI - 1

You're familiar with the large language models (LLM's) like ChatGPT. They generate pictures and they generate text (by scanning the internet for likely word sequences) according to the command of a human user. 

But artificial intelligence has gone way beyond that level to what is called "agentic AI" software systems. They are "proactive entities designed to tackle specific tasks with a remarkable degree of independence." They are programmed to make decisions and take action on them according to a human programmer's goal.

That independence is empowered to reach decisions by following this procedure (image):

• gather information
• analyze and then create a plan
• execute the plan using available tools
• evaluate results

AI has passed another frontier. It continues accelerating into the future.

from Logicgate

(cont'd tomorrow)

AI in space 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

How about putting data centers where solar power is free 24 hours/day and weather doesn't interrupt, thus solving the energy problem? How about putting them where cooling is also free 24 hours/day, thus solving the cooling problem?

Yes, there is such a place, a place to put data centers where no community will object or delay, where solar energy and coldness abound. The plan is to put them far, far away--in space.

Always considering the big picture, Elon thinks about how to help human civilization survive the dangers he foresees. When asked last month whether AI in space is possible, he answers that it is inevitable:

AI in space 1

Follow up to this post

Artificial intelligence developers want new data centers asap. But local opposition is slowing everything down.

Energy is a big issue. Additional nuclear power plants of any type would help fill the energy gap, but it takes time to build up new ones. Anyway, our power grid is not as robust as it should be, so how will it handle huge new amounts of power? And since the needed increase of energy will probably come initially from fossil fuels, pollution could be a problem.

Massive amounts of cooling technology will also be required for data centers because so much heat will be generated. Will it come from local water sources like rivers or springs? Communities often don't like that idea.

Will local governments be receptive to enormous energy needs, possible local electricity rate hikes, possible pollution, and the draining of water resources if they allow a data center to be built?

So far, communities are delaying or blocking permits for the proposed building of data centers.

“Opposition is cross-partisan and geographically mixed,” the researchers wrote. “Blue and red states alike are tightening rules or rethinking incentives; legislators in places like Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota are scrutinizing subsidies, grid impacts, and local authority, often cutting across traditional party lines.”

from NBC

(cont'd tomorrow)

Invest America 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Founder of Dell Technologies, Michael Dell, is all in on this idea. An investor all his life, he and his wife seem inspired: they are giving $6.25 billion out of their own charitable fund to give kids --not babies, but 10 and under--their own investment account seeded with $250.

Spending the money will be totally up to the child when he or she has access to it; no requirement dictates what it must be spent on. Meanwhile, "They'll learn about dividends, re-investment, and long-term thinking--not by studying financial theory, but by seeing their money steadily increase."

It could change families for generations.

Invest America 1

It's never been done in America before. A law was passed last summer to give every eligible new-born child a new investment account seeded with a thousand dollars by the federal government (Invest America).

Children are eligible who are U.S. citizens, have a Social Security number, and are born from January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2028.

More contributions to the account can be made by almost anyone, up to $5000 per year. The money can be invested in ETF's (exchange-traded funds) and mutual funds.

It's for the child's future. No withdrawals by anyone can be made. At age 18, the child/beneficiary will convert the account to an IRA, subject to IRA rules for withdrawal. He or she can use it for anything, not just for education.

No eligible American child will reach young adulthood penniless under this program. As Michael Dell put it, "Everyone starts with something."  Neither parents nor anyone else can get their hands on the money. The child can watch the account grow and learn how to invest. 

This could be a wonderful thing.

from Schwab

Ed tech 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some kids are on screens at school six hours per day. It hasn't resulted in better learning scores, but rather in worse scores. 

"Thanks largely to the pandemic, an estimated 88% of school districts now issue laptops or tablets to students. While these devices make it easier for teachers to collect assignments and generate reports, they have been shown to significantly undermine student learning."

What can parents do in light of the unexpectedly poor results coming from ed tech in the classroom? This author has suggestions:

1. Families need the freedom to opt their kids out of mandatory academic screen use.
2. If your school district wants more ed tech, make them prove it will help.
3. Get a printer for your family. Reading is better on paper, and so is taking notes, writing, and practicing math problems.

from We Gave Students Laptops and Took Away Their Brains

Ed tech 1

Reading a real paper book is more fun than reading it on your phone or laptop, whether a novel or nonfiction. But did you know that it also creates a more effective learning experience? 

Turns out that memory (located in the brain's hippocampus) is linked to a physical location, like knowing where in that book you learned something. Scrolling doesn't give a physical location to a new fact, so it's missing one learning aid.

We now have decades of data on student learning associated with increasing use of education technology in classrooms. Disturbingly, it shows that kids learn less: "The more schools digitize, the worse students perform."

It was assumed that ed tech would help. But no, what disappointing results we have after all the effort and money that American school districts have spent digitizing.

from "We Gave Students Laptops and Took Away Their Brains"

(cont'd tomorrow)

Concessions

Last spring Harvard and a number of other universities got a letter from the current U.S. administration informing them that they were in danger of losing the millions or even billions of dollars they are used to receiving from the federal government. 

Brown University (photo) in Providence, RI, got one. At stake was about $500 million, which the school calls "crippling cuts." As at Harvard, the issues were antisemitism and DEI policies. Their negotiated settlement included agreeing with the government to address "antisemitism, unlawful DEI, merit-based admissions, and gender identity issues."

Some at Brown say that the agreement was a "savvy bit of dealmaking, giving away little of substance." The founder (graduate 2021) of a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter at Brown agrees:

"Frankly, Brown got off easy.” During his time on College Hill, he says, “I saw exactly how hostile the campus was to ideological diversity. . . Forcing Brown to accept biological reality and merit-based admissions is a nice start, but the DEI bureaucracies, activist professors, and overall ideological capture is left untouched. Brown receives its money with barely a slap on the wrist.” 

Brown's alumni magazine admits that "Compared to the agreement Columbia University had signed a week earlier pledging $221 million in fines to the federal government, Brown made far fewer concessions."

from Brown Alumni Magazine

Additional note: "Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn't worth the cost . . a dramatic decline over the last decade." Sadly, I concur. We've discovered that universities and colleges in general are not doing what we Americans thought they were doing, and we can't keep giving them our tax money.

Too many? 4

Earth now supports more than double its population--at a higher standard of living--compared to what it did back in the 1970's, when the overpopulation panic started. 

After decades of alarmist warnings that the world can't support any more of us, actual evidence--cited in the last three posts--is piling up in favor of the opposite view. We earthlings are better off with more people, and in more danger long term from falling birth rates.

But the global trend today is a birth rate so low that some countries will never be able to recover from it. 

To exactly replace their population total, a country needs an average birth rate per woman of 2.1. Only one region of the world still has births above that rate. Check out birth rates for over 200 countries here. A few examples: Italy 1.26, Germany 1.46, USA 1.84, Paraguay 1.88, Congo 5.49, Japan 1.4. Generally, the poorest countries have the most births. Europe, long term, may be in trouble (image).

Before the end of this century, global population will start its relentless decline and will never stop, according to one social researcher. Result? The end of human progress in solving difficult problems.

from Stream

Too many? 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Re-post from 2013

Thomas Malthus in 1798 predicted that humans would multiply on the earth until the earth could no longer sustain them.  Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1970 published The Population Bomb which predicted, on the basis of Malthus, a future of massive global starvations.  What did happen was the opposite of that (yesterday's post).

What did they miss, since this does happen among animals? The vole population (a sort of mouse) can multiply to the point of outpacing their food supply.  

But people are "More Than Voles," as Eric Metaxas put it.  Created by their own Creator to create, humans can create their own niche to support themselves.  Homo sapiens are not utterly dependent on the natural environment like animals but rather can create wealth.  

According to the materialist (there is no supernatural) worldview, humans are just animals. According to the Christian worldview, humans bear the likeness of their Creator.  

God gave humans "the intelligence to complete the work of creation . . for their own good and that of their neighbors."

Too many? 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

In yesterday's video you saw that mainline media, elites, the president at that time, were all persuaded that a population crisis had erupted because about 3.5 billion humans lived on this planet. You saw Ehrlich unapologetically maintaining his panicky tone years later.

Today our global population has more than doubled at 8+ billion. Did that result in more suffering in terms of life expectancy, food supply, child mortality, air quality, etc? 

No. As it turned out, life on Earth is actually better by these metrics despite huge population growth.

1. Across the world, people are living longer
2. Food supply has not declined in the last fifty years, but has grown to a new level 
3. Child mortality has dropped across all income levels
4. "In many countries, people breathe the cleanest air in centuries"

But how can that be? What's the explanation?

(cont'd tomorrow)

Too many?

Many people have the impression that we urgently need to reduce the number of people making their home on this planet. They may argue that it would be best for human beings now living and for those on Earth in the future. Or, they may argue that nature deserves to have Earth to itself with no human population.

Why would declining numbers be better for people? Mostly because they believe that our human population is unsustainably using the planet's resources; that is, consuming too much with the result that there won't be enough for future generations.

Some call it "overshoot." In other words, they foresee coming deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil erosion yielding insufficient food, pollution and reduction of fresh water--all coming because our global population uses natural resources at a faster rate than Earth can keep generating.

A very short summary of this view that there are too many human beings was made by David Attenborough, saying that humans have "overrun the planet." 

Author of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, persuaded much of America that we had to quit producing so many people:

from The Stream

Robovan

What else is Tesla working on? A year ago, the "robovan" was revealed. It will transport up to 20 people, has a futuristic look, and of course it's an autonomous vehicle.

It will serve a function similar to our current bus system . . but it's still just a prototype so far. The rider cost per mile may potentially be 5-20 cents. Sounds good, but it's far from ready to go.

Pie & AI

Are you using artificial intelligence yet to aid you in day-to-day challenges and questions? Here's a down-to-earth story from my own life.

We spent Thanksgiving Day with beloved relatives. My part was simply to bring the pumpkin pie, which I've done many times and was happy to do. But this time I had a complicated math problem to figure out. So, of course, I asked Grok to give me a hand! 

Here's the problem I had. I prepared pumpkin filling according to a recipe for a deep dish 9-inch pie pan. But I was going to use a standard 9-inch pie pan. How much filling (measured in cups only) should I put in the smaller, standard 9-inch crust?

It took only seconds for Grok to answer fully, with sophisticated math and reasoning but in simple terms which were easy to execute. 

Squanto 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

One of them was Squanto, about 22+ years old. As a boy on the east coast of North America, he had been captured by explorers for slavery. Monks in Spain listened to his story, treated him kindly, and sent him to London, England, where he might find passage back to his home.

Ten years later he did return, only to discover that everyone in his home village had died of disease. He found the surviving Pilgrims in the spring, right where he had lived as a boy. He became a friend and taught them the skills they needed.

Squanto and his friendship and knowledge seemed like a miracle to the Pilgrims. A feast day was held to thank God for their first harvest, the Thanksgiving tradition we still keep. They welcomed 90 braves and their Chief Massasoit to the celebration feast.

Squanto 1

Puritans coming to the new world from Europe in the 17th century wanted freedom to practice their sincere Christian faith, religious freedom they didn't have back home in England. They got some financial backing from investors and crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower.

Just in time for a winter of severe suffering alone in the dark season: no homes, no food except the little they brought, no government support, no modern medicine--nothing but sickness and freezing and starvation. About half couldn't make it. 

By springtime, it didn't look good for the grieving 50-or-so survivors either. They were praying for help . . and a miracle showed up.

Two young Indian men walked in one day, and said in effect, Hello there!

from The Mayflower

(cont'd tomorrow)

Luck Day

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Is it old fashioned and cringey to thank God on this national holiday like they did 404 years ago? It's antiquated in the view of many of today's Americans who believe there's no personal God.  Maybe they'd like to change the name of our holiday from Thanksgiving Day to "Luck Day." But it would inspire nobody.

A choice to look for blessing and give thanks to God changes our mindset from despair to hope based on statements like Jeremiah 29:11 from the Bible:

"For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome."

Don't resign yourself to adopting the philosophy of "Luck Day."

Give Thanks

 It's Thanksgiving week! Let's observe this good holiday and give thanks for our blessings! . . despite Christmas music at the mall 😏

Thankfulness in 1621

President Lincoln started a recurrent, scheduled Thanksgiving holiday in America. But that wasn't the first time Americans observed a day of giving thanks to God.

You probably know that the ship Mayflower brought colonists to the coast of North America in November (November!) of 1620, and that about half of them died that first winter (I'd guess the rest were very, very uncomfortable).  

But the next summer was productive, and the remaining 40 pilgrims plus 90 Indians enjoyed a three-day autumn feast together.  Here's one of the first-person accounts of that feast, taken from a letter: 

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. . . [A]mongst our recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us . . their greatest king Massasoit, with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted . . . [B]y the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."  (from The Book of Thanksgiving by Paul Dickson)