Hurricane Helene is long gone from the headlines, but flood victims in North Carolina are still struggling to return to their homes and the normal life they lived before Helene.
From their own home hundreds of miles away, two thousand Amish volunteered to come and work to restore homes and businesses:
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
While currently using version #2 of the Raptor engine on Starship tests, the third is in testing phase, and SpaceX is already working on version #4. Innovation does not stop.
If you're interested in the engineering, go here for the strategies they use in the design of Raptor 3. Here's Elon Musk himself explaining Raptor design elements:
Innovation doesn't stop, and neither does testing. As Elon puts it, "Oh we blew a lot of engines up." To keep up that pace, he says "A high production rate cures many ills. If you have a high production rate, you can have a lot of iterations. You can try lots of different things." You can risk failing because you have a lot more engines in the pipeline.
Five years ago, Jim Bridenstine of NASA put his finger on this distinctive of SpaceX: "SpaceX has something NASA has been lacking, a willingness to fail." They fly, test, fail, fix -- over and over again.
It's still that way at SpaceX.
Dozens and even hundreds of improvements are made as a result of every Starship test flight.
The Raptor engine has evolved from its first design to a simpler one.
Much of the "fiddly bits" on Raptor 1 have been "deleted, combined, simplified on Raptor 2: a gigantic difference in complexity."
It's simplified, and yet it's more powerful. The first version produced 185 tons of thrust, the simplified version 2 produces 230 tons of thrust.
When the next test flight (#9) of Starship launches, it will reuse the same booster and 29 of the same Raptor 2 engines used in test flight #7. It will be the first time for booster and engine reuse in a Starship flight.
Raptor 3, a new design, is still in the testing process.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
So, in effect, Harvard's argument is that they have a right to taxpayer money (in the billions of dollars) while they pursue any policies they choose, i.e. do whatever they want. They're shocked, shocked, that the American people might want to withdraw their money from racial discrimination and . . antisemitism.
Yes, the university's president admits it. He tells NBC in this video: "At Harvard, we have a real problem with antisemitism . . . There's no doubt about the severity of this problem."
He says they have no choice but to defend themselves against government "overreach" and they're going to use their "first amendment rights."
Amazing hutzpah! They claim the American right of free speech for themselves - while that freedom is suppressed on their campus.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Dated April 11, 2025, a particular letter was sent to Harvard from the government. It says that the U.S. has invested in that university because of its value to the country, but that investment is no longer justified since they haven't lived up to intellectual and civil rights conditions.
A sum of $2.2 billion in federal government grants was withdrawn as a penalty for defying the government's letter.
Responding to the suit, a White House spokesman said: “The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enriches their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families, is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.”
(cont'd tomorrow)
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Ivy League presidents received letters from the current administration warning them of the consequences of their violation of the Civil Rights Act and other policies. Federal funding could be withdrawn.
Responses have varied. The president of Columbia University agreed to change policies, and then she "stepped down" from her position. Princeton's president (photo) defied the letter's demands, and seems to argue that he is defending civil rights with his discriminatory policies.
Does he not understand the argument? "[R]acial discrimination is wrong whether it targets whites, Asians, Jews, blacks or Hispanics. Any institution that continues to discriminate based on race is ineligible for federal support." Princeton received $455 million from the federal government last year.
Harvard receives billions from the federal government. All those billions are at stake, and they're suing the administration.
from City Journal
(cont'd tomorrow)
Is it right to choose people for college admission or jobs or home purchase or promotion based on their race? It's not even legal in the United States to do that, and hasn't been since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But prestigious Harvard University was convicted of doing that very thing in 2023, and they're not the only one. Somehow our whole university system got way off track:
"Shielded by a virtuous public image, elite universities have institutionalized discrimination against disfavored racial groups, implemented DEI policies based on racial rewards and penalties, hired and promoted faculty according to skin color rather than merit, and overseen racially segregated student programs, dormitories, and graduation ceremonies."
Now Americans through the recently elected president's administration are trying to bring universities back to American values. It's a fight. Harvard University is front and center.
from City Journal
(cont'd tomorrow)
from Tolkien Gateway
An Oxford professor and scholar in the mid-20th century, he wrote "high fantasy" fiction that is always counted among the most popular books of the whole century.
He was a genuine Christian living in the skeptical Oxford culture, who influenced the young atheist C. S. Lewis. Tolkien believed that the Christian narrative is true and it gave his work a hopeful, positive nature. Here's what he says about the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrated yesterday on Easter:
"I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy . . it is a sudden glimpse of Truth . . this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. . . The Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible . . Christian joy . . comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love."
This is Easter weekend. A re-post from 2014:
Easter
is a national holiday in America. Even "nones" (identifying with no
religion) can celebrate Easter as the return of spring, life returning
to the landscape (if you have winter at your location).
Hey,
me too - I love the green coming back to nature. But this Christian
holiday is actually the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. As this author says: it's a stunning, outrageous claim.
He
looked ordinary, used only his culture's technology (2000 years ago),
and gathered around himself a relatively small band of followers. The
apostle Peter explained why they followed him: "You have the words of eternal life."
Everything
he did went to benefit other people. What mythical god ever lived a
selfless life or went to his grave to redeem human beings? "[T]here’s nothing in any myth that comes close to the self-sacrificial love Jesus displayed when He went to the Cross."
from Stream
Avi Snyder was an angry man in his younger days. He didn't believe that God exists, and he hated what followed from that fact: his belief that everything is meaningless and there's no point to life at all.
He screamed at the ceiling, "How dare you do this to me??" The thought came back, "So you're angry. Who are you angry at? I thought you were an atheist."
There's more to his story, but all this is in the first 4 minutes.
It's physically dangerous to be Christian in parts of the world. Nigeria is one of those places where disaster keeps happening. At least 60 were killed two days ago.
A local pastor says, "‘Many of these attacks result in mass burials [photo]. The sight of numerous corpses and the frequent need to conduct mass burials is something no minister wishes to experience, yet it has become our reality. Daily kidnappings, molestation and rape of Christian women, particularly in rural villages across north-central Nigeria . . [are] disturbingly common.’
Another leader, eyewitness of another recent attack, adds: "What we are experiencing in Bokkos is so devastating . .
"They burned down the church, they burned down houses. They killed pastors, they killed people, they killed even women and children. I saw the corpses and I shed tears."
Organized demonstrations against Tesla are designed to put pressure on Elon Musk to back off on cleaning up the federal spending mess. Protests have been part of American life for a very long time and they're considered legitimate free speech.
Keying, protests and firebombing take their toll on their target, as they're intended to do. Though still the world's biggest maker of EV's, deliveries of cars dropped in the first quarter (Q1 2025) by 13% compared to last year's first quarter.
Model Y was the most popular passenger car in the world in 2024. It's safety rating is outstanding. It was "near-perfect" in crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Hopefully, not everyone interested in EV's will be intimidated by the "Tesla Takedown."
Teslas tend to do well in crash tests. Here's a Model X from six years ago, not rolling over as many SUV's tend to do:
from Electrek
Americans were strongly in favor of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year, of course. We don't want to pay for fraud, waste and abuse of this country's financial resources. It's been going on for decades and it's tough to rein in.
Now surveys seem to indicate more people disapprove. What happened? In addition to single "keying" events of random Teslas, there have been fire-bombings and protests (photo) of Tesla facilities. It's a way to sour public opinion and reduce Tesla's value, thereby inflicting pain on Elon Musk.
These events weren't spontaneous outbursts of outraged citizens. A few may have been inspired just by press reports ramping up fear, but there's also sophisticated organization.
The nationwide protests were all posted and scheduled by Action Network. They originally identified The Disruption Project as the host or co-sponsor, which was founded by an experienced left-wing activist.
from City Journal
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
A lot of new names (288) went on the billionaires list for the first time this year, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Springsteen from the entertainment industry. Investments, added to their performance incomes, got them over the the billion-dollar line.
(cont'd from this post)
Sultan Bolkiah is far from the richest person on earth. In fact, according to the Forbes list of global billionaires, #10 on the list is three times richer. (But, of course, the sultan takes the prize for collecting luxury cars.)
The top four on the list made their fortunes in the American technology sector. After Elon Musk comes Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), and Larry Ellison (Oracle). The U.S. has the most billionaires, China is next, followed by India with its own ~200 billionaires.
A minority inherited the money, but about two thirds of them created their own fortunes. Factors like the value of their investments and businesses are considered when Forbes figures out their net worth, and one of the investigators explains it below.
from Forbes
Here's some items from the list of DOGE savings that I took right off their website:
The problem with government buildings has been known for a long time, and it's not disputed. Last week at a subcommittee hearing, the chairwoman said "Here in DC, GAO found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied—some much less."
It's not a partisan issue, and everybody should be able to support cleaning up our expensive and under-used properties.
(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Sultan Bolkiah has some expensive hobbies. His 200 polo ponies are comfortable in their air-conditioned stables, and then there are cars . . a lot of cars.
His private collection of 7,000 luxury cars is the biggest in the world, and worth $5 billion. About 600 are Rolls-Royces, 450 are Ferraris, and 380 are Bentleys. For his daughter's wedding in 2007, he acquired a custom "gold coated" Rolls-Royce. In fact, it sounds like several are designed or coated with gold.
Included among his aircraft is a Boeing 747-400, and it's gold plated too.
Apparently his $30 billion of personal wealth is enough to indulge all this extreme extravagance, but some people have even more money than the sultan. The richest man in the world (who created his wealth) has way more money. But he doesn't seem to have the same desires. He lives in a $50k home in Texas.
from The Economic Times
Millionaires have money, yes, but they're not "super rich," and they're not that rare. About 58 million of them exist in the world and you probably don't know who they all are in your own city. Surprisingly, it's said that one in 15 Americans is a millionaire.
Today's super rich are billionaires, 3,028 of them globally. We wonder, how do they live? One of them, Elon Musk, bought homes for his children and their mothers, but he lives in a 3-bedroom house valued at $50k in the small community of Boca Chica TX, where SpaceX is located near the border with Mexico.
One of the most lavish lifestyles in the world is that of the Sultan of Brunei, said to be worth $30 billion. He owns the biggest residential palace in the world, Istana Nurul Iman Palace (photo).
It's colossal: 1,788 rooms and two million square meters, with its own mosque that can hold 1,500 people and a banquet hall for 5,000. Commissioned by the Sultan in 1981, it was completed in 1984 so it's relatively modern. That central dome in the photo doesn't just look golden. Gold actually tops it, 22-carat gold.
From Hindustan Times
(cont'd tomorrow)
It turns out that one of those "rescued" astronauts who returned from the ISS via SpaceX is a man of Christian faith.
He's still getting used to earth's gravity but he's glad to be home. He says, "God is always good."
Antonio Gracias has been working on the DOGE team, recently looking into Social Security. He comes onstage with Elon to explain to an audience something surprising:
"New non-citizen social security numbers" dramatically grew during the last four years under the previous administration, from 270,000 in 2021 to over two million in 2024. That's an explosion, not just growth. About 1.3 million of them are already on Medicaid. Some actually voted in our recent election.
Antonio takes the time to honor the "very good people" working in Social Security who showed him what was going on, at their own risk.
He says he's "pro legal immigration," and this chart is "not political. This is about the future of America."
If you wanted to find out what DOGE is, would you go to Wikipedia? Many would, because they think it is neutral and honest in reporting factual information in a non-partisan way. I wish that were the case.
It has nothing good to say about this heroic effort to trim the federal budget. On the contrary, the reader only learns that DOGE is controversial, it inspires lawsuits, its claims to the discovery of fraud are false, its leader is ambiguous, it cuts good programs, it's a partisan political tool, etc., etc.
In short, Wikipedia's article is a hit job on DOGE and on Elon Musk. It reads like a partisan political tool itself.
Wikipedia is the product of Katherine Maher's priorities. "Consensus" and "getting things done" come before truth on her priority list. Vital information is missing from the article. There's no effort to acknowledge the legitimate views of the people who support it.
New tasks are accomplished every day at the Department of Government Efficiency, and they're published every day. You can go to the website and check on their progress--every day.
We who respect the responsible management of money are happy about this. We've known in a general way that the federal government was handling that management irresponsibly to some degree, but we discovered that it's much worse than we feared.
Take Social Security for example. Continuing work at DOGE reveals that the 3.7 million checks going out every month to people over the age of 120 (reported in this post) was just the beginning.
Yesterday the website said that so far a total of 9.9 million people listed as over the age of 120 were receiving checks. Correction has been made, so those people are now listed as deceased, and the checks will stop. Whether that should be called "waste" or "fraud" doesn't matter. All of us should be happy it stopped.
It was unjust. The only people who are unhappy about the stopping of those checks are the cheaters who were cashing them.
