Paid protester 2

Was that "paid protester" really offered money to protest, to play the part of an innocent demonstrator trying to change American policy out of sincere beliefs? Or did he make that up?

It wasn't just him. Someone published a craigslist ad seeking people to demonstrate in Seattle last Saturday for a pay check of $500/day. 

As this writer says:

"In case you believed the mainstream media when it said the anti-ICE protests aimed at frustrating the enforcement of just, democratically enacted, bipartisan U.S. immigration laws are spontaneous reactions from local communities to heavy-handed enforcement … well, just don’t."

Education crisis 1

Everybody seems to agrees that our education system is in crisis. Various opinions describe it as being teacher shortages, poor reading skills, student mental health, too much bureaucracy, and they're all right and there's more problems than these--they affect every educational level from K-12 right up to the college level.

Administrators and other non-teaching staff have grown by 7x the number of teachers in the last several decades. "Both students and staff are chewed up by a bureaucratic machine that favors ever larger budgets . . ." The cost keeps rising, yet test scores rise little or not at all.

Almost 100 Yale professors signed an open letter to its president, opposing the growth of non-teaching staff which now amounts to double the number there a couple of decades ago. 

This Brown University student testified before Congress that he found enormous, wasteful spending bloat at the university level: 

Paid protester

In the past, protests in America were mostly people caring passionately about some cause enough to go out on the streets and demonstrate for their opinion. Today many protesters are not moved by conviction but for pay. 

They may carry a sign, shout, obstruct the right of way for their neighbors, destroy public property, destroy private property (photo), attack the police, throw bricks. 

Here is a young man who was offered $150/day to protest in Los Angeles. He doesn't really care much about the point of it which is to protest ICE officers deporting illegal immigrants, but he needed the money so he took the job.

But he started realizing that he was involved in destroying the community. They told him to go to certain streets where he found pallets of bricks to use (in destroying the community). Later he saw a pallet of molotov cocktails and thought, "Man, should I really be doing this? Like, this is bad news." He didn't care about the city of Los Angeles, but he thought "But I'm American, after all, like, this is not good." This man's conscience kicked in.

"I got to thinking, whoever is funding this must really hate this country." Yup, I believe he's right. 

from X post 

Burn cars≠fun

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you followed a link on yesterday's post, you heard an ABC reporter telling people what he thinks is happening at the riots in Los Angeles: "just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burning".

"Fun"?? This is from a used-to-be-trusted legacy media news outlet. To the degree that anyone agrees with this deluded view of a violent situation, we have a genuine crisis going on in this country.

Peaceful?

Have you heard reports that the Los Angeles riots protesting federal ICE officers have been peaceful? 

One way or another, people are still finding ways to report true conditions (photo), a fruit of the freedom of speech we still have. 

Suggestion: if you heard that the protests are peaceful, a little suspicion would be appropriate in your future trust of that source. 

from Stream

AI in school 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Studying and learning are hard work. What if you, as a student, could delegate writing  assignments to artificial intelligence? That would mean less work, more free time, and it's super tempting. So students do it all the time . . even in writing classes.

A 20-year veteran of teaching gave it up because of that fact of life. Many students will do whatever they can to spare themselves the discomfort of difficult work. Thinking things through and communicating that through your own carefully constructed writing can be difficult. 

She was trying to teach writing at the college level, which includes reading and returning feedback to the student. Sadly, she discovered that most of her instructive feedback was a total waste because it was directed toward the AI that "wrote" it. So she quit.

If a student doesn't discipline himself to learn how to think and write, he's going to be at a disadvantage for the rest of his life to people who did learn it. 

How is our education system going to handle this?

from Time

AI in school 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Hannah would assign her students to write a paragraph, or five sentences, or an essay. Many were not able to do it, or complained that it was too hard, or questioned the value of doing the work . . and of course, many completed assignments were written by ChatGPT or another large language model (there's technology to determine that).

Some students saw no value in learning how to write a resume or a cover letter if they could simply make AI do it.

Are these kids learning how to write (photo)? Will their new employer be surprised with the low level of skill these students can execute when they need to think and write in the job environment? 

The problem is not only that turning in a writing assignment that the lazy student did not do is dishonest. It is dishonest, but there's more. Writing well requires a degree of clear thinking, often of making a reasonable argument. If this student ever has to recommend a certain decision to other people, in work or in the community, she will have to think through the options and make a case for the best one. She needs to build that communication skill.

 

AI in school

Teachers have been fleeing the profession in higher numbers for a while now, frequently citing poor behavior. Since ChatGPT came out in fall of 2022, it use and the widespread use of "large language models" (LLM's) like it have made teaching even harder, in the opinion of some.

Here's one of them, a high school teacher for three years. She thinks technology should be kept from students until college.

Europe ≠USA 4

(cont'd from this post)

A Harvard graduate, author, and columnist came to speak on a Hillsdale College stage in April. He came to say that, yes, the U.S. vice president was correct about EU leaders departing from the values they used to share with us . . like democracy. It's not very democratic if Europeans have voted for 50 years to reduce immigration but their leaders keep giving them more.

Regarding the annulled election in Romania, he added information. When the "populist" candidate beat the established elite candidate last November, authorities cancelled the election while claiming Russian disinformation interference. (Sound familiar?) Voters were told they must just believe it, without evidence.

When it was obvious that the populist was going to win the re-scheduled election too, he was arrested and banned from the vote.

Regarding Germany, the leftist establishment say that they had to keep the anti-immigration AfG out of legislative functions to which they are constitutionally entitled as the largest opposition party. Why? If they allowed them into power, they would risk going back to Nazi horrors! 

"Then the federal office of constitutional protection declared that AfD would be placed under heightened surveillance because they're a “threat to human dignity.” 

Troubling signs from the European Union (image).

 

from Imprimis

MB in France

All governments try to prevent "leaks" because they all keep secrets from citizens. A report on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in France was recently leaked to a "newspaper of record," Le Figaro.

Intended only for top government officials, the report claims "that the Muslim Brotherhood has built an extensive ideological infrastructure in France--not through violence, but through schools, charities, mosques, and soft power."  Its goal is to infiltrate civil society "under the guise of religious and educational activities." (Image)

 

The Brotherhood's French network includes 21 private schools (3 are state-funded), 815 Quranic schools ("66,000 minors are taught to see themselves as part of a global Muslim community in moral and cultural opposition to Western secularism"), and hundreds of mosques. A core concept is the hatred of Jews. 

None of this is illegal. It's a patient, gradual takeover which takes years. Will the French ultimately comply? 

That depends. How do they feel about being colonized?

from "How the Muslim Brotherhood is Capturing Europe"

Tech exit 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Social media is addicting. In fact, this author calls it "maximally addicting." When you think about it, social media companies have to be as addicting as possible for maximum profit and power (if they're not also and equally driven by a moral conscience).

Are they not aware of the bad effects on kids? She says they are aware of it, but they choose to do nothing. Snapchat, for example, gets 10,000 complaints about "sextortion" every month. How many are unreported? Parental controls are just a myth.

“It’s possible to reset a child’s brain,” says the author. "Despite how bad tech addiction can get for a child, it is possible for the brain to heal and reform itself."

Parents can agree with all this, but what should they really do about it? That's the focus of her book, how to replace screens with real world relationships and responsibilities. Hint: parents will have to be more intentional and more engaged, probably enlisting the support of other families.

 

Tech exit

Parents were put on alert to the harmful effect of smart phones on their children last year when The Anxious Generation came out. Many already suspected it, school administrators and teachers saw it, but that book really woke up the public.

Bringing phones to school was blocked in some districts, and parents have tried to figure out how to limit their kids' use of tech. But a new author says that screens are "digital fentanyl" and inherently harmful. So what's actually needed is a "Tech Exit."

Even adults know they can easily get addicted to their phones. Children don't have all the skills or discipline or wisdom to be self-sufficient--they need their parents to parent.

Seattle battle

A Christian organization submitted a request for a permit to hold an outdoor event in Seattle. Their application specified a venue request for Pike Place Market. The city denied that request and directed them to Cal Anderson Park. 

So they complied and held it there on May 24. Maybe that was a mistake. 

The park is "in the heart of the Queer community," according to a group called "Radical Women Seattle" which turned up to protest against "fascist family values."

 

Many hundreds of protesters tried to disrupt the event with bullhorns, shouting, signs, heckling. Police made 22 arrests.

It turned out that the mayor of the city is solidly behind the protesters.  He made a public statement:

"Seattle is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ . . . Today's far-right rally was held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city's values, in the heart of Seattle's most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood."

Somebody is lying about the choice of this park, and it should be easy to verify. The FBI is looking into it.

from CBN

Ancient 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Natural disaster or economic collapse may motivate large groups to emigrate out of their homeland. But what drove hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians to leave was something else. 

Civil war broke out in 2011 and everything changed. The previous tolerant Muslim regime fell last December and militant factions (including ISIS) are in power.

"In village after village . . Christians were kidnapped, tortured, sometimes ransomed, and often executed. Monasteries were turned into battle stations. Churches were bombed. In Maaloula, jihadists entered homes and demanded that families convert to Islam or die. Some were killed in their doorways for refusing. 

"ISIS went further, targeting Assyrian villages in the northeast, executing men, enslaving women, and erasing churches that had stood since the fifth century."

While millions of refugees (photo) fled the country, it also became "a targeted campaign of cultural and religious cleansing," and the rest of the world let it happen according to this Middle Eastern writer.

from "The Vanishing Light"

Ancient 1

"The Christian golden age of Syria has ended . . . And it will not return."

Did you know that the nation of Syria had a Christian golden age? Me neither. Christian culture in this place has 2,000 years of history, but today we Westerners know almost nothing about it. 

Paul the Apostle was confronted by Jesus on the way to Damascus (the country's capital today). That means it goes way, way back. As one of the "original heartlands of Christianity," there were bishops, theologians, martyrs, and three actual popes.

About 300,000 Christian Syrians (photo) are still there, compared to over 1.5 million at one time. Their presence "was not a minor thread in the nation’s tapestry, but was woven into every aspect of culture, language, and national identity" along with other threads including Islam.

But most are gone now. "The Christian families that once ran shops in Aleppo, taught in schools in Homs, and prayed in the ancient basilicas of Damascus are now rebuilding their lives in Berlin, Detroit, and Melbourne."

from "The Vanishing Light"

(cont'd tomorrow) 

Test flight #9

Starship test flight #9 finally got off the ground (after some delays in FAA approval) yesterday.

After the first stage booster separated to leave Ship (second stage) in space, its engines shut down and then did a "boost back burn" to turn and come back to the launch site. A landing burn to slow it down would have been next, but control was lost. It was the first re-use of a Super Heavy booster, and some vital data was gained before its end in the Gulf.

Ship's engines ignited at separation and burned for a couple of minutes to propel Ship toward orbit. Then they stopped at SECO (ship engine cutoff). The SpaceX narrators seemed very relieved at the achievement of this important milestone.

One of the goals of this flight was to push Starship to its limits. One hundred heat shield tiles were intentionally removed over critical areas in order to see what would happen during re-entry. Unfortunately it didn't make it to re-entry.

So both stages eventually failed, but vital data was gathered.

Quits Harvard

Harvard University has lost its credibility among American taxpayers. As the federal government removes billions of dollars of public funding, they counter with the claim that they can do whatever they want to do under the umbrella of free speech and academic freedom. 

Yes, they have free speech but we don't have to pay them billions for misleading students and breaking civil rights law. 

 

A psychiatrist who taught in their medical school felt compelled to break away a year ago. He explained his understandable reasons:

"I stopped teaching at Harvard last year [2024] primarily because of its anti-truth-seeking culture, radical left-wing bias, racial and gender discrimination, and prevailing anti-intellectualism . .  Harvard has strayed from its foundational mission of unbiased truth-seeking . . ."

He doesn't hold back: "Harvard remains in denial of its own radicalism. It sneers and looks down on most of America and on American values like color-blind equality, meritocracy, free speech, hard work, and individual responsibility." 

from "Harvard Insider Blows Whistle: This Place is Totally Corrupted"

Memorial Day 2025

Re-post from 2015,  just "in case you thought it was National BBQ Day"

Memorial Day is set aside to honor and remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country. "[T]ime and time again brave men and women have been willing to fight for the freedoms we all too often take for granted.

To be more specific, let's honor those 1335 Americans who were killed in Ramadi, Anbar Province, Iraq, in 2004-2007. Some people are acutely aware of the sacrifice - like family of the fallen - since Ramadi was overtaken by ISIS this month.

While the U.S. State Department thinks it was a major blow to the fight against ISIS, Gen. Dempsey remarked that Ramadi was not that important. The mom of the first Navy Seal to die there put a personal face on it in her letter:

“You, sir, owe an apology to the families whose loved ones’ blood was shed in Ramadi. Ramadi matters to us and is very symbolic to us. You need to apologize to our troops whose bodies were blown to pieces from IEDs and bullet holes leaving parts and pieces behind. Ramadi matters to them. "

Brain≠Mind 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you literally are your brain, like some say, what hope would there be for a child born with only half of a brain? A brain surgeon in the video below told her parents that there was little hope for her. But twenty years later, she is a vibrant young woman, functioning normally.

The neurosurgeon was at that time a materialist, like so many. It's not that he made a conscious choice, but that worldview dominates in our culture and you just pick it up from school and media. Over his professional experience of doing 7,000 surgeries, he changed his mind.

He believes we have souls or immaterial minds, and they use the brain. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, mapping of the brain shows that the brain does control movement, sensory perception, emotion, and memory. But no part of the brain has been shown to control abstract thought (like doing math or understanding history) or the free will.

Brain≠Mind

If someone denies the existence of God and everything supernatural, if he claims nothing exists but the natural world or universe, that is an atheist or materialist. Of course, that person must also believe that human beings have no immaterial soul.

One believer in this worldview is the well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He ably articulates the materialist opinion against a soul: "What I do know is, everything you are derives from electro-chemical synapses running in your brain." He also gives evidence for that view.

So, you're just your material, physical brain (image) which is located in your skull. He thinks that is everything you are including thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc.

Christians hold a different view, taken from the Bible. God Almighty created the natural universe but exists outside of it, and created human beings with a likeness to himself, whose soul or spirit  will live beyond the life of their physical, material bodies. 

Here's a good question: is there scientific evidence for the Chistian view? Yes.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Gen Z & church

Polling in America has told us for decades that the number of people claiming no religious affiliation (the "nones") is rising. But that's leveled off. Bible sales are increasing and Christian entertainment has grown.

Generation Z (born 1997-2012) is a significant part of this trend. They generally seem to be curious about Christianity and are looking for hope.

 

It's especially interesting that young men lead the trend. Gen Z men go to church more than Gen Z women. 

Similarly, the Bible Society in partnership with a research team in Britain says:

"We found that the Church is in a period of rapid growth, driven by young adults and in particular young men . . . [Y]oung adults are more spiritually engaged than any other living generation, with Bible reading and belief in God on the rise."

from USA Today

Hopeful AI 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So this author says AI will soon be smarter than us humans. That is still debated among the experts--but if true, then he's right that we will certainly have to lean on and develop the best parts of our human nature. 

Smartness has never been the only good thing about humans. It's good to know information and understand it, but as people created in the image of God, there's more.

• Having true friends and being one, having genuine relationships with other people, will never really be replaced by AI (though it can be faked).
• Creative thinking will never be replaced by AI, creative in the sense of creating new organizations, businesses, families, ideas (though some white-collar jobs will be replaced).
• Taking responsibility to build your own character virtues will never be replaced. Your experience of life will still be directly affected by your honesty, generosity, discipline, compassion, etc.

Materialists who believe nothing exists but physical reality may have to re-think their assumptions. Transcendent qualities like love and honor arise from outside the material world. 

These things arise from the immaterial spirit of a person (see Friday's post).

 

from The Free Press

Hopeful AI 1

So many experts in technology sound alarm bells about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI) to the future of humanity. Without a doubt, there are dangerous possibilities.

Other opinions, though, are out there. Naturally, CEO's of companies leading the way in AI are optimistic and enthusiastic. That would include Sam Altman and Larry Ellison. 

Altman's OpenAI has a vision for a beneficial role of AI in our future. They see AI elevating all humanity, functioning for our benefit. An AI user and an AI developer say, "This technology can usher in an age of flourishing the likes of which we have never seen."

 

But they also tell us to prepare for some disorientation as well, because "AI will change what it is to be human." They are certain that AI will exceed human intelligence by 2030 . . a mere five years away. So that means: we won't have intelligence supremacy anymore.

What should we do to prepare? More of what we are best at doing. We have value way beyond mere intelligence (see tomorrow's post).

 from The Free Press

(My image is Grok-generated)

(cont'd tomorrow)

EU immigration

Immigration (or shall we say invasion) is a monster-sized issue for Europe. Vast numbers have been allowed to overwhelm native populations in Germany, the UK, Ireland, and more. Mainstream political parties like AfD (labeled "far right") tap into very serious concerns.

Only days before the US vice president's address, Munich suffered another attack by an immigrant. The man, who was to have been deported back in 2020, sped up his car and drove into a crowd, injuring at least 30 people. It happened "just after a series of deadly attacks in Germany, all allegedly involving immigrants."

Though the chancellor says the man must be punished and deported, whether that will really happen remains to be seen.

You probably remember immigrant rape gang stories from the UK. Prime Minister Starmer seemed not to care. But maybe he feels a certain political pressure from the "far right" to start limiting the invasion:

Europe≠USA 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Vice President J. D. Vance's  address to the Munich Security Conference about "our shared values" is worth taking a closer look.

It starts out with a foundational principle of democracy. Including himself among the audience members who have a position in government, he says "Now it's time for all of us (who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples) to use it wisely to improve their lives."

America's Declaration of Independence states the principle: government gets its just (fair and right) powers from the consent of the citizens who are governed. 

Then VP Vance tells them that Americans are shocked when they hear that the Romanian election was "annulled," that Germany was also threatened with the same thing if things don't go "correctly." He reminds them that tyrannical forces in Europe once "censored dissidents, closed churches, cancelled elections" . . and they were not the good guys.

Europe≠USA 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It has been our impression that the people of Europe, like we Americans, believe in democracy. That includes the principles of free speech, free and fair elections, the people themselves voting for representatives who will support their wishes. 

But do they really share our values? Our vice president spoke in Munich two months ago on that very question. There's evidence that they don't. 

An election was just held in Germany. During the political campaign leading up to it, one of the parties, Alternative for Germany (AfD), was "shut out of governing coalitions" and "denied committee chairmanships in the national parliament in Berlin that its numbers would otherwise entitle it to." Media "kept AfD officials off the airwaves."

"While other political leaders, including far leftists, are regularly quoted in the press and interviewed, AfD are rarely heard or seen on broadcasts or given space in publications." Why? Because, according to leftist power-holders, they are "far right." 

But the tide may be turning. AfD won more seats in the government a week ago. AfD is not an extremist group, though it's convenient for the establishment to call them names.

from City Journal

(cont'd tomorrow)

Europe≠USA 1

"Extremist," "far right,"--terms meant to scare the public--are used by the left both in the USA and in Europe. 

In France, the second biggest political party (RN) and its leader Marine Le Pen are labeled "far right" in every headline listed on the first page of a google search I did. But can that be accurate when so many citizens vote for it?

In Germany, the first or second biggest political party (AfD) has been labeled an "extremist" organization. The federal parliament may ban it from future elections. But it represents nearly half of the German voters (photo).

 

Changing the meaning of words is one way to manipulate the perceptions of the public. Legacy media still has some credibility with some people, and the left uses it to scare and confuse.

You may have heard the terms "literal nazi" and "far right" used by the left in our presidential campaign last year, but they didn't entirely work. The right American political party won that election and became the current administration.

from "Killing Democracy to Save It"

(cont'd tomorrow)

Starship V3

How can we make it better? That's a central question which SpaceX addresses to its Raptor engines, but it doesn't stop there. Innovation keeps coming with regard to the "ship" spacecraft which is the top half of the integrated "Starship." 

Version 2 is currently being used for test flights, but V3 is coming (see this video from one of the many avid SpaceX watchers to learn the details) and it's full of upgrades. 

It's bigger, to accommodate both more fuel capacity and bigger payload. Elon's X post shows Starship 3 in comparison to Falcon 1, the first rocket they produced (still in use). 

Vast improvement was made in the relative cost to put payload into orbit: 400x better. (Click on the image to see the small print.)

NPR & PBS 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Public radio/TV must be non-partisan to qualify for government funds. So the question is, are we sure that the Corp. for Public Broadcasting (NPR & PBS) is biased in favor of the left? The NPR head testified before Congress on this question (photo).

 

You may remember that a veteran of NPR (25 years) became a whistleblower, even though he leaned left himself. In his article for The Free Press, he details several major stories in which NPR intentionally took the side of the progressive left without giving the opposing views any consideration.

Research shows that far more interviews and guests are from the left. In a four-month period, the non-left political party was referred to as "far right" or "hard right" extremists. No such terms were applied to the progressive left.

As one journalist used to say, "There's no such thing as neutrality in journalism. There's only transparency." 

NPR & PBS should transparently admit they are not neutral. They can continue their progressive leftist slant, but should give up demanding that taxpayers foot the bill.

 from "NPR and PBS Dug Their Own Graves"

NPR & PBS

News reporting and broadcasting should be "fair and balanced" in America, and that's what we look for. But of course there are journalists who think their own opinions are right and refuse to give coverage to other views. 

It's allowed in America, where we have protected free speech. But the other half of Americans, who see things differently, certainly should not be forced to pay for the broadcasting of opinions they believe to be wrong. That wouldn't be fair.

Those other Americans have been in this position for decades. Complaints that government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR and PBS) is biased go back to the 1960's. But moves to cut public funding were always de-railed by appealing to kids' programing like Big Bird and Mr. Rogers.

Times change. Under the current president, government funding -- provided by taxpayers -- may really end. CPB is shocked. They are suing.

(cont'd tomorrow)