History class

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Why are many students ignorant about America? There can only be one reason, and it's not a lack of intelligence. They simply are not taught enough history. 

Yesterday's video showed college students struggling and failing to answer most of those factual questions. I personally heard a teacher years ago sneer at the idea of teaching factual content, saying "We don't want to teach factoids!!"

In Minnesota, it will only get worse. As you know, the new education standards call for an "intentional shift" away from "content" (like facts of history) to a "pedagogy" that tells students to "construct their own meaning."

Some states have taken steps to see that our history is being taught. Between 2015 and 2025, a total of fourteen states (Iowa image) decided to require high school students to pass a civics test (or a similar requirement) in order to graduate.

90% pass test

When immigrants to America wish to become citizens, they go through what's called a "naturalization" process. One of the final steps is to take a citizenship test to show that they're ready to be a responsible citizen.

It makes sense. Citizens carry a duty to make informed decisions about how we are governed, and we need to know something about this country to make good choices in life and especially in elections.

Part of the test includes American history. These immigrants are motivated, and about 90% of them pass the test. Would that the rest of us who are already citizens could do as well. 

But we don't: "Fewer than one in five Americans under the age of 45 would pass the citizenship test." Watch how California State University students do at answering basic questions about their own country below. 

Are they ready to be responsible citizens? Ready or not, they vote.

Tesla energy 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

At 13% of revenue, driving 25% of total gross profit, the energy subsidiary is important to Tesla.

"Megapack," their stationary rechargeable energy storage system, is made at giga factories in California (opened in 2022), Shanghai, and Texas (opened two months ago). Its big storage capacity enables solar power. 

A lake in the desert of eastern California was drained to help Los Angeles about a hundred years ago. It's now dry, stirred up by the wind to be a huge air pollutant. About $2 billion has been spent trying to tamp down the dust. The land was unproductive and useless.

But not anymore. Solar panels were installed to use the land's one asset (sunshine) but there were problems. Solutions were found, megapack being one of them.

1. The panels produced the most power at mid-day, but much less at peak time. People coming home after work needed it about 7 p.m. for air conditioning, dinner, and light. The video below shows huge megapacks storing energy produced in daylight, then releasing it as needed at peak demand.

2. Surprisingly, plants were able to grow below the panels, shaded from the desert sun, eliminating most sand and dust which damage the glass, and cooling the glass a bit. Then sheep were brought in who could feed on the plants.

Useless land went from being a costly problem to being productive and profitable, a very good outcome:

Tesla energy

Tesla makes cars but, as you may know, that's not all they do. There's a division for sustainable energy which includes solar panels and, of course, batteries for their electric cars and for home or commercial use.

"Gigafactory" in Nevada was the first of their huge battery factories. At ten million square feet, it had the biggest footprint of any building in the world (and maybe it still does). Here is a tour of it from seven years ago:

Batteries became a big part of Tesla's business. One version of their battery products plays a part in solving some environmental problems in the desert.

(cont'd tomorrow)

More bots

 Follow-up to this post

You may have seen Kevin O'Leary on the show "Shark Tank." People who started a small business are given the chance to convince a panel of rich people to invest in their business. His financial success qualifies him to be on that panel.

According to this X post, his Instagram and X accounts were massively overrun with new activity last May, which apparently opposed a data center project of his in the state of Utah. He hired an "advanced data science team" to figure out where the tens of thousands of comments came from.

They concluded that the activity amounted to bot campaigns coming from activist NGO's such as Salt Lake City for Socialism and Liberation, and Salt Lake Democratic Socialists of America, and which may be tied to the Communist Party of China (remember this post?).

Two of the NGO's are now suing O'Leary for making that connection to China which they say has damaged their reputation.

On YouTube he offers his advice on how to handle money.

Fake polls 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Jaw-dropping" describes the poll report in yesterday's post. How could any legitimate poll turn out to be so spectacularly wrong, we wonder. Was it a mistake, or was it intentionally misleading?

Today we know that, in at least one case, a recent poll of opinions was fake--it was wrong on purpose. Looks possible that they only admitted it because they were about to be exposed. The company, "Wedgewood Polls," isn't even real. But the New York Times swallowed their story, running 15 of its poll reports. (Just one more reason not to trust media.)

In another example of fake polls, Median Strategies made up surveys in Wisconsin and Los Angeles. They claimed they did it as a "short term social strategy." A strategy for illegitimate influence of elections? We are not amused by this game.

"Reputable pollsters are facing declining response rates [people don't want to take the calls], [and] the rise of online prediction markets has created new incentives for low-quality or even fake polls . . . The polling business is at a crossroads."

from Campaigns & Elections

Fake polls

In a general election two years ago, Americans changed direction. A new president was chosen along with a majority of the same party in Congress, resulting in a lot of change. 

Another general election is coming in just eight days, half way through the president's 4-year term in office. This one will determine whether Congress continues to lean in the same direction for the remainder of the four years. For short, it's called the "Midterms." 

Power is at stake. Passions run high. Every avenue of influence is important.

Opinion polls claim to tell us simply which candidates or party seem to be leading in the runup to the election, but those reports in themselves also exert influence. Potential voters and donors are less likely to show up if they think their side can't win. 

Polls are often mistaken and may even be fake.  It's been said that "American polling is in a death spiral." What do you make of this poll report (image) back in 2016?

(cont'd tomorrow)

Life with trees

Enjoy this re-post from 2017

Trees mapped

Chicago Tree Initiative mapped the Chicago area in great detail, including the canopy created by trees. They layered the map with human patterns and some interesting things popped up.

Director of the project says, "Communities that have higher tree population have lower crime. Areas where trees are prevalent, people tend to be outside, mingling, enjoying their community.”

"Chicago’s richest and safest areas tend to have high canopy covers, up to 40 percent. Meanwhile, on the economically depressed South Side, canopy cover can be as low as 7 percent. The map seemed to show, time after time, that areas with rich canopies are safer, and the ones with high criminality are “tree deserts.”

Trees are always better than no trees, in my humble opinion😊

France burning 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"I think we're looking at a state which has abdicated its role as a state." That is, the people are law-abiding, they pay their taxes, i.e. they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. But the government does not keep its obligations. They're perfectly capable of restoring order but they choose not to do so.

Ayan laughs at the claim that these rioters are only students. They include Antifa, communists, Muslims of the immigrant community, the Muslim Brotherhood, and a number of other leftist groups joining in what students may have begun.

Why won't the French government control the borders and protect their people from mayhem in the streets? Ayaan asks that question. It makes me think of Britain. The government there is willing to overlook the outrageous gang rape of tens of thousands of British girls by migrants.

(cont'd tomorrow)

France burning

It's so much easier to destroy than to build. Any fool can tear down what others accomplish. Violence and fire and looting tear through France at the hands of "protesters," and we who respect the French grieve for them. Calm may now be returning.

Students were involved, but it went way beyond students who want their schools to improve. It included "far-left activists, anti-capitalists, green activists, and Palestine fetishists," according to this journalist.

While some have said that the French voted for these conditions, he says No: 

"Like their counterparts across Europe, in Britain, and indeed in America, the [French] public has consistently voted for governments that promised to secure the nation's borders [and] maintain order on the streets . . . " But their leaders did not do that.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali agrees: France's government has broken their social contract with the people.

from The Free Press

New law school

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Key to the new law school is their intention to build it without the help or cooperation of the American Bar Association (ABA).

Sure, we non-lawyer Americans have heard of the ABA and may have supposed it was some government-run organization overseeing our law professions (photo). Actually, it's just a private trade association with no government mandate.

For 70 years they've been amassing influence, "making sure no one builds a law school that doesn't conform to its exact vision for legal education." That vision includes left-leaning values and very expensive insider policies.

UATX plans to honor the US Constitution as written by teaching students to understand it, respect it, and defend it. As the foundational document of American government, it must set the standard. This view is called "originalism." Those on the left believe the Constitution as written is not good enough to set the standard in today's world.

from "Save the Constitution. Ditch the ABA."

Lawyers lean

U.S. lawyers tend to lean left-wing. It's no exaggeration (reported by Bloomberg Law) and it's been going on for many years. Most judges come from the population of lawyers, so it's no surprise that court decisions at every level are very influenced by this trend.

Many traditional Americans, however, may be unaware of it simply because they don't pay a lot of attention to court cases and decisions. It's another example of the American people being blindsided.

The University of Austin (UATX) was founded just a few years ago to be what universities should be, in contrast to our current academic trend. 

So they're starting a new law school. It's announced by one of the founding donors of UATX, Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Moms for liberty

Many parents felt blindsided. The unquestioning faith they had placed in neighborhood schools and school boards turned out to be ill-founded. They decided they must keep an eye on what's going on. 

Moms for Liberty, established in 2021, resulted from that new awareness (photos). They are "an organization dedicated to empowering parents to advocate effectively for their children at school board meetings and across all levels of government."

Decisions voted on at school board meetings may have a negative effect on their children, so they want to be informed--before decisions are implemented, before they lose any opportunity to influence them.

So they launched a new AI system to flag and report policies that parents might oppose across 13,000 US school districts.

Schools ↓ 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Laptops and other devices were eagerly adopted by American school districts in the expectation that they would be good for students. As it turned out, electronic devices in the hands of kids in classrooms (generated image) were bad for learning. 

How disappointing. According to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, they are bad for kids in general. But apart from that, they just don't learn as well. Many states and individual schools and teachers have banned phones from their classrooms.

Digital devices could be one reason for the decline of test scores. According to a recent elementary teacher survey, "Nearly all students use devices in classrooms." But that may be starting to change.

University of Chicago Law School has a new policy in place: "Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom."  Students must develop their own ability for "critical thinking, legal writing skills, and strategic judgment" without relying on AI.

Winchester College in Britain, an academically selective college, has done it as well: "Winchester College drops laptops for pen and paper."

Schools ↓ 1

Parents trusted schools to do a good job of educating their kids for a very long time in the US. That is not wide-spread anymore. Around the time of the pandemic, many of them became alarmed at policies and curriculum which opposed their values.

Good reasons for their concern also include the downward trend of test scores. As a Harvard University group reports, "US test scores are in a generation-long decline." Decline is not limited to racial minorities or low-income students or the pandemic disruptions.

"Something troubling is happening in US education," they say. Loss of progress was noted after the pandemic, but it started well before that: "From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024."

Scores fell for high-achieving students (drop of 0-6%), but for lower-achieving students it was worse (drop of 24-31%). Test scores used to go up from year to year in America, but that isn't the case anymore. For the kids' sake and for our country's sake, changes must be made.

from Center for Education Policy Research

(cont'd tomorrow)

AI "safety"

Fear of artificial intelligence (AI) getting out of the control of human beings has been a theme in our culture for years. But it has new relevance, now that experts like the Anthropic CEO warn us about it. 

What does he recommend? He'd like to see experts like himself tell the government what to do. Then the government would use its great power to make everyone comply. Does this strategy sound familiar? 

Vague, apocalyptic warnings are driving the "AI safety movement" which already attracts many millions of dollars to NGO's. The founder of Skype donated $152 million, and says "Without internationally enforced speed limits on AI, humanity is unlikely to survive."

This author has a different take on the whole thing. In a democracy, he says, these experts are going to have to "persuade the rest of us that their policies are sound, instead of short-circuiting debate with fear tactics in a bid for control."

from The Free Press

AI uncontrolled?

Optimistic people say that AI will only serve us humans and that we can keep it under our control. But maybe AI will get so much more intelligent and capable than human beings in the future that it will take over and we won't control it. That's what many fear today.

Anthropic, a company developing and training an AI model (called Claude) to sell to users, claims to be afraid of that. But, oddly, they train their AI to make its own choices independent of humans. 

According to David Sacks, their AI trainers teach Claude "to develop a sense of self and its own moral philosophy." Wait . . its own moral philosophy?

They explicitly tell it (Claude) to “feel free to act as a conscientious objector and refuse to help us” if Anthropic’s requests conflict with its own ethical judgment.

That sounds like they "magnify the very risk Anthropic claims to care about most: that superintelligence will escape human control."

from X post 

Brain & words

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Words carry more impact than you might think. Dr. Warren chooses to give you encouraging words. From the introduction to his video below: 

"Thank you for showing up today, friend, and know that I don't take it for granted. Out of everything that you could have been doing in this stretch of time, you chose to spend it here, working on your mind . . I'm proud of you, I'm grateful for you."

In this episode, he tells the story of his first time delivering terrible news to a patient, and then the actions this patient took in response.

Words you tell yourself also have great impact. It's possible to deliberately re-frame a thought and re-direct your attention. "Your brain is not the boss of you." 

"Your mind is the battlefield," he says. My pastor says the same. Yes, I'm convinced of that. 

Brain & worship

If you ever have to face brain surgery, or any other dangerous thing, Dr. Lee Warren has some advice for you taken from his experience with patients.

"I've watched it happen a thousand times. A patient walks into pre-op terrified. Then they start humming a worship song, reciting a scripture, or someone prays with them--and their heart rate goes down, their blood pressure improves, and they go into surgery in a completely different state of mind."

A believer hears this and it sounds familiar. But if you've never trusted Jesus Christ with your soul, it could sound like simple denial of the danger.

Listen to Dr. Warren describe what happens in the brain when a patient turns his attention to the almighty, loving God.

from his X post

Digital wedding

Remember this post from a few years ago? "Ai girlfriend?" It's going further. Here's the story of a man who "married" his chatbot love in an "elaborate role-playing" ritual from the comfort of his bedroom. 

"Romantic relationships with artificial intelligence were once the stuff of science fiction, but are now a real part of life for millions worldwide." It could be called a "delusional spiral." To attribute human characteristics to an inanimate object (like an AI algorithm) is called anthropomorphism.

Children might think their doll or teddy bear is responding emotionally to them, as an example. Or maybe in a pre-science environment, a farmer suspected his apple tree was angry at him and therefore stopped producing fruit.

In those situations, there's no one trying to produce a delusion. But today we're going to have to answer the question: are AI designers intentionally deceiving people? If the answer is yes, are we going to allow that to continue?

And then there are absolutely intentional AI programs which do exactly that. No, I will not publish the links to them.

from Mind Matters