Offended

Students at Sewanee University, according to an opinion piece in the school's newspaper, were treated to a convocation talk that was, in the writer's opinion, "one of the most offensive and disgusting" ever.

So what did the speaker promote that disgusted this writer -  hatred of minorities, censorship of books, police favoritism, terrorism? 

No, the speaker's talk urged a climate of respect for other people's opinions, free debate of life's big questions, the classic liberal education. Oh, and he actually mentioned Jesus in the closing paragraph. Maybe that's what the letter-writer can't tolerate.

The author of the student piece may see him/herself as tolerant & open-minded. If that's the case, then the writer is seriously Un- Self-Aware.

Speaker Eric Metaxas says, "Is it too much to ask people to listen politely to those with whom they disagree? I hope not."

(Note: the Ten Commandments series will continue on April 17)

Still going

You have probably heard that millenials, current young adults, have quit going to church in significant numbers. But many still do go to church and continue in Christian practice and belief. Why?

A new study seems to have found the most predictive factor:

"For millennials who grew up attending church, having a strong Christian faith and practice today is linked to the quality of their relationship with their parents."

The usual disclaimer still applies of course - millenials (like all humans) have free will and may make a different choice in spite of a good relationship with Christian parents.

If you're a parent, or simply know a teenager, do your best to build an engaging and positive relationship. 

Hyperloop cont'd

(2nd of two)

It's been dreamed of before as a "pneumatic railway" dating back to 1812 in Britain, and by rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in 1912.  Along with the engineering challenge, political help will be needed to go into and through local jurisdictions.

But, surprisingly, cost is not much of a problem compared to California's fast-train plans. The cost to build a hyperloop between LA and San Francisco is estimated at $6 billion, while the proposed fast-train will probably cost the state about $80 billion: it would be cheaper.

photo: techtimes.com

"Basically, the system would work like those old pneumatic tubes that were used to move messages using air pressure in banks . .  "The Hyperloop design uses a combination of low air pressure and magnetic acceleration to get people from LA to SF in just about 30 minutes,"  . .  It would produce its own electricity from solar power."  The trip from LA to SF is about 400 miles.

Hyperloop

(first of two)

Some friends of Elon Musk, millionaires & billionaires among them, have gone public with their plan to create the "hyperloop" - yet another idea intended to change the world. And now they have financiers and politicians jumping on board.

It's transportation of cargo or passengers moving in a tube at hundreds of miles per hour. At one time not so long ago it really was science fiction, but now it's being funded and designed by serious people.

To get the idea, go to this link and look at the graphic complete with a diagram of the tube.

Hard thing

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations was published in 2008 by teenagers, and this (different) teenager below is an example of that very thing.  He's giving his TED Talk at the age of 17, about how he came to invent a unique new prosthetic arm.



Prosthetic arms already exist, but at a cost of something like $80,000. Easton started experimenting with motors, software, neural sensors, 3D printing in his bedroom, trying to find a better solution - trying to make a better product at a better price.

 Educating himself in a variety of ways, he accomplished his goal. His net cost (I'd guess this figure did not include necessary labor) was $400.

5th of Ten

Parents give society its next generation. They may do a good or bad job in that role, but this commandment tells their children to honor them. Interesting, it does not command those children to love their parents.

Reuseable

(2nd of two)

It's expensive (~$70 million) to go into space when you need a brand new rocket every single time. If the same rocket can be used twice, that cuts the cost in half.

But think about the obstacles that must be overcome - enormous pressure and heat of course, plus a very tricky landing. Last month SpaceX failed in the attempt to bring a rocket back to earth safely because it ran out of hydraulic fluid.

See the animation below of how the concept is going to work later this year when SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, and watch the rockets turn around to head back to the pad and land intact:

SpaceX

(first of two)

In addition to Tesla Motors, Elon Musk has another super-ambitious project: his privately-owned company with this mission: "to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets."

SpaceX is the first private company to ever return a spacecraft from low-earth orbit (2010), which only governments had done before. In order to make humanity "multi-planetary," vehicles will need to make roundtrips into space - and that's what they're working on.

www.collectspace.com

Today (6 p.m. ET) SpaceX is going to launch a satellite and then make "a second attempt to precision-land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a custom-built ocean platform of the DSCOVR satellite from Florida." You can watch the launch here.

Groundhog

Groundhog Day was a week ago. We own the movie, "Groundhog Day," and I have to recommend you see it. Imo, it is comedian Bill Murray's best role ever. And this, in a story that focuses on almost nothing but development of the "hero's" character.

Character growth is never on anyone's list of funny topics, but here it's hilarious.

What makes this a good film? Beyond the humor, it may be that the story offers hope if you feel  trapped in your circumstances, hope that you could actually change your own story, you could maybe move forward.

New nuclear

America's first nuclear plant in 18 years will start up in 6-12 months. Work has started & stopped since 1972, but construction is now complete, and it has passed important quality and safety tests including regulation updates after the 2011 Fukushima tsunami.

Construction safety features include 18"-thick doors that are tornado-proof, and "five sets of portable emergency equipment are maintained nearby" in Memphis TN. The "reactor vessel" has steel walls that are nine inches thick - yes, 9-inch-thick steel walls.

Its energy output will equal the capacity to power 650,000 homes - free of carbon emissions.

from RealClearEnergy.org

4th of Ten

That commandment to "remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy," that's kind of insignificant, isn't it? No, watch as Dennis explains the benefits of keeping the Sabbath Day -  benefits for everyone who follows it.

AI worries

Check out my previous posts about artificial intelligence here, here, here, and here. Many people are enthused by the development of it, but some big names have become nervous about the future of human interaction with forms of AI.

Now the names of Stephen Hawking,  Bill Gates, and Elon Musk can be added to that last group.

Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, donated $10 million to a research program to keep AI beneficial to humans and not evil. (I'm curious as to what kind of research they think would keep something good as opposed to evil.) 

Says Gates, ""I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."

Gloves off

Looks like the gloves have come off in the dispute between Houston pastors and their mayor Annise Parker over a proposed gay rights ordinance.

Civility is hard to maintain.

Reliable

What would it be like to live in a society where everyone had integrity, where you could believe everything they said? A revolution of good relationships and creative productivity. 

Forbes' thought of the day (yesterday, that is):

"Confidence is the foundation for all business relations. The degree of confidence a man has in others, and the degree of confidence others have in him, determines a man's standing in the commercial and industrial world." -  quote from William Boetcker

Stamped on

What are people doing as economic misery in Venezuela gets worse? Mary Noriega has been bartering with her neighbors to get the basics. She says, "this is super bad." Hospitals can't do surgeries because they lack drugs, says the NY Times.

Many people like Mary supported the socialistic "revolution" of Hugo Chavez in 1999, but it didn't turn out well. She says, “the other day, I found a Chávez T-shirt I’d kept, and I threw it on the ground and stamped on it, and then I used it to clean the floor. I was so angry."

3rd of Ten

Dennis Prager has a singular interpretation of the third commandment based on his knowledge of Hebrew.  It's much more far-reaching than the usual reading of this commandment.

Respect them

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli is a passionate Italian, passionate about what helps the people of developing countries. He spent seven years with an Italian NGO (non-governmental organization) trying to help several African nations - and they failed in every project.

Those seven years shaped the rest of his life.  He explains his conclusions in his TED Talk:

Westerners have related to the people of Africa in one of two ways and he doesn't like either:

• paternalistic - you are our children
• patronizing - you are our servants

"If people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid. The first principle of aid is respect."

"I invented a system called "enterprise facilitation." You never initiate anything, never motivate anyone, You become a servant of the local people who have a dream to become a better person. We meet at local cafe and become friends, find out what that person wants to do with their own money and their own energy. The passion that person has for her own growth is the most important thing. We help them go and find the knowledge."

"For once, why don't we listen to them?"

R & D freedom

"Research and Development" is the segment of a company where discoveries and product breakthroughs happen. Sometimes this department gets the short end of the budget because there's no guarantee that there will be a resulting profit any time soon (like next quarter) - but innovation is essential to the long-term growth of any company that involves design or engineering.

Bloomberg reports significant innovation being done at Samsung (So. Korea) and Nokia (Finland) and others, but global investors are most focused on American business innovation this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

CEO of Audi (Germany) says his company does all its work on automatic driving systems in America because "there is more freedom . . to do it." An economics prof in California says that "the best thing a government can do to promote innovation is get out of the way." Apparently Germany's regulations inhibit innovation in this area of R & D.

CEO of Merck (Germany) says, "No country on earth is investing as much in innovation" as the U.S.

Finest hour

(2nd of two)

Most of the country was ready to throw in the towel. Pressure to do a deal with Nazi Germany must have been enormous. A safe answer to the question of whether to continue fighting the Nazis did not exist. Either way they faced suffering, and the people were scared - for good reason.

But Winston Churchill inspired a whole country with his "Finest Hour" speech, one of the bravest, most inspiring ever:

"What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over … the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. 

"If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. 

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Churchill

(1st of two)

Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill. who was called by the author of this piece, "The Man Who Saved the World."  Inflated description? There have been others who changed the course of history at other points, but history really did turn around his choices and his personal character in the early 1940's.

wi

photo: theguardian.com

In his photo above he doesn't look like a fighter, a warrior. But he saw plenty of action as a young army officer, going into "no man's land" during World War I thirty-six times.  And his courage saved Britain from German conquest, Europe from who-knows-how-many years of Nazi tyranny.

Hitler had already overcome Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg when Churchill became Prime Minister in May of 1940. Britain was seriously considering giving up the fight. "Britain was alone, and the pressure to do a deal was overwhelming. The City wanted it; much of the media wanted it; Halifax wanted it; Chamberlain wanted it; Labour would have gone along."

But Churchill somehow turned them around. His "finest hour" speech tomorrow.

2nd of Ten

The second commandment is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," Exodus 20:3. Contrary to the modern assumption that we don't worship idols anymore, Dennis argues that there is a lot of competition for first place in our thinking today - and if one of those things, like power or education or even romance,  etc., comes before God and his moral standard, then it's a path leading to cruelty.

Spreading

CNN reported Tuesday that there were "10 killed, churches torched in protests" because of the satirical French magazine's latest offense against Islam. Many other protests took place around the world, but this one was in the African country of Niger (in red below).

"AFP, the France-based news wire service, said police reported that 173 people have been injured; at least 45 churches have been "set ablaze in the capital (Niamey) alone," and a "Christian school and orphanage were also set alight." Numerous sites were pillaged before being burned."

If you look carefully at the map above, you'll see that Niger's southern border is Nigeria's northern border.  Here are my posts regarding Nigeria. Terrorist group Boko Haram has now overcome and taken territory the size of the country of Belgium in that northeast quarter of Nigeria, just across Niger's southern border.

Food line

It might be hard to picture those long lines of Venezuelans waiting for the privilege to buy food and necessary staples like detergent and diapers (see yesterday's post and Monday's). Here's what it looked like to someone driving past one of those lines:

Bad results

Venezuela's government under Hugo Chavez (below, before his death in 2013) nationalized many privately held companies, pursuant to his socialist ideology. This was followed by "silencing of anti-government media" and increasing government control of the market place including price controls.

Nearly two years ago, as his replacement Nicolas Maduro took over, the currency was "crumbling," paper products and food were missing from store shelves, inflation was soaring.  A local attorney called the situation "depressing" and "pathetic."

Pathetic, because even then Venezuela was "a country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves and oil prices at nearly $95 a barrel, yet unable to supply basic goods because of its crumbling local currency and a shortage of U.S. dollars."

With the price of a barrel of oil this year about half that amount, Venezuela's economic problems look unsurmountable.

HuffPo says, "The self-acclaimed "socialist" regime, which in principle, stands for redistribution of wealth, has been irrefutably inefficient at converting oil profits into tangible social improvement . . [but] Hugo Chávez's fortune was estimated at 500 million US dollars."

Collapsing

That food shortage in Venezuela we read about in October is now even worse. The military has been deployed to protect shoppers and keep some order, while lines at the stores may be half a mile long.

Forbes and Bloomberg both report that the country's economy is on the brink of collapse. Adding to the factors reported last October, it appears that the plunging global price of oil will take them to the breaking point.

1st of Ten

As a Jew, Dennis Prager takes the "ten commandments" as the "ten statements," and so "I am the LORD thy God" (Exodus 20:1) is the beginning of the ten statements.

Two things to notice:

1. Significance of "ethical monotheism" - changed the world
2. Significance of freedom - American founders knew God wants people to be free

You don't have to agree with every point he makes, but these two are important.

Real help

(third of three)

Doug has been trying to carry out Jesus' command to love our neighbors by asking that question from yesterday's post, "how can I best love my neighbor?"  His organization empowers people to provide for their own families and bring productivity to their communities.

Fourteen women provide for their 94 dependents through a chicken business in Swaziland (Africa). One of them, Busisiwe, had ten children to support when her husband died seven years ago. This poultry "value chain" lifted her out of poverty.

"Busisiwe still works very hard, but, for the first time since her husband died, she is able to say she is providing for her family with dignity. She says she is “emotionally free” to dream about her children’s high school graduations and their future because she is able to pay their school fees. Instead of thinking of where her family’s next meal is coming from, she spends her days tending her chickens and expanding her farm. She can afford to hire a tractor to cultivate her land, and purchase high quality seeds."

This is long-term sustainable prosperity.This is "loving my neighbor."

Best love

(second of three)

"How do I best love my neighbor?"



Yep, that's the question.  Doug Seebeck has focused on that question for years while he built global partnerships that support enterprises around the world. In the last ten years these partnerships have created and strengthened 100,000 sustainable jobs.

Like Rudy Carrasco (yesterday's post), he believes in ordinary people who develop their God-given abilities. He tells this story of an African man:

“ A voice from Uganda, Andrew, spoke at the leadership summit last August and he followed a compassion guy on child sponsorship, and he gave a startling message. He said, he said, “Why won’t you let Africa develop like you guys developed?”

East LA kid

(first of three)

Rudy Carrasco grew up without his parents as "a displaced Mexican kid" in East Los Angeles. But he sees God's grace in his life, and he has a passionate heart for the urban poor.

Drawing on his experiences, he believes certain things can make a permanent difference in the lives of the poor - he'll explain it to you in this video.

As a ten-year-old in Sunday School, he had the revelation that God cares about cities. So he decided, "‘Okay. I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of a God who loves me and cares about a place in order to transform it.’”

More terror

The murderous group Boko Haram continue to terrify the people of northeastern Nigeria; their goal is to force them into submission to Islam.

Over the past week they bombed a marketplace with a wired 10-year-old girl, and they wiped out a village, with the dead estimated at 2,000.  Nigeria's carnage, however, didn't get the press that went to Paris.

In Paris, last week's attacks left about 16 victims killed, the terrorists identified, and three of them killed by police.

In Nigeria, last week's attacks left about 2000 victims killed -  and the terrorists not stopped, found or apprehended.

Where was the Nigerian military in all this?  Amnesty International suggests that they were there but ineffective; whether it was due to fear, corruption, or lack of ammunition is not known.