Fire survivors

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Not all those who suffered from the fire were ranchers. One who lost his home was John R. Erickson, author of dozens of children's fiction books about Hank the Cowdog. He's not exactly a rancher as his primary profession, but still an owner of cattle - and a Texan.

On March 6 John and his wife received a call warning that fire had broken out near his home. With winds gusting to 50 mph, they grabbed a couple of valuables and escaped safely. A day later they returned to find their home in ashes. Even with insurance, he says, "it’s tough to see your front porch under a pile of rubble … my writing office vaporized, all my books … all the quilts Kris [his wife] had made.” (Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

photo: world.wng.org

But sadder was the story of three men south of them who didn't make it. They "died while riding to open gates so their cattle could escape. One of them, Sloan Everett, placed a call to his pregnant wife and their two other children, advising them to leave their ranch immediately. They left, but never heard back from Everett and his friends."

Fire recovery

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

The Gardiners of Ashland KS have been a ranching family for generations. Ten days after the biggest fire in Kansas history, he was still burying cattle. "One by one, an orange loader scooped them off the bare sandy soil and trundled them to a pit being dug by a backhoe."

Insurance and government aid will help these ranchers, but there are caps on the amounts they can get, and of course it may not come as soon as they'd like. Prairie grass is what the cattle feed on, and cattle that survived still need to eat - but hundreds of thousands of acres are now charred.

So communities pitch in to help. "Thousands of donated hay bales . . have been rolling into town on the backs of tractor-trailers." Fencing has been donated. "Members of 4-H clubs and National FFA Organization chapters drove down to help with the cleanup, sleeping in guest bedrooms and on living-room floors around the towns of Ashland, Meade and Protection."

Neighbors understand the importance of the cattle herds to these ranchers. Three of the deaths in Texas during the fire were ranchers trying to get their cattle to safety.

Fire losses

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Roughly two million acres burned in the plains states earlier this month. It was the biggest fire in the history of the state of Kansas.

Ranching families now face "years of cleanup and crippling losses after wind-driven wildfires . . devoured homes, miles of fences and as much as 80 percent of some families’ cattle herds." Those ranches are both their homes and their income.

A cow would bring about $2000 at auction, but each is also "an engine that drove their farms and finances, giving birth to new calves every year .  .  ."

Then there was the fencing of all those acres. "[A]t about $10,000 per mile . . new fencing alone may cost [one] ranch about $2 million."

"We’re not asking for freebies here,” [a rancher] said. “We’re going to work our tails off to get this thing rebuilt. We’re going to get the blisters on our hands and roll up our sleeves and do the labor.”

(cont'd tomorrow)

Grass fire

The American Great Plains suffered a huge grass wildfire two weeks ago.  (This is the first I've heard about it, so I wonder about media coverage: was it un-important because it's not Trump-related?)

Colorado - five homes and 30,000 acres burned
Texas - four deaths and 480,000 acres burned
Kansas - eleven deaths, 40 homes and 650,000 acres burned
Oklahoma - one death, 882,000 acres burned

photo: travelksok.co.uk

Killing the fatally maimed cattle was just one of the unpleasant jobs to follow all this destruction.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Saved Ford

(cont'd from Friday's post)

Car companies were rocked by effects of the 2008 recession. GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. But their major American competitor, Ford, did not. Chairman Bill Ford credits their employees for making the difference.

He recently said, "“Why didn’t we go bankrupt? Well, you could say we made certain good decisions, but it was our employees. They would not let us.”

"Ford attributes his workers’ loyalty and grit for helping to allow the company to refuse government bailout money . . . 

“Our people were working, Saturdays, Sundays, until 1-2 a.m. in the morning, no extra pay, in fact not even sure they were going to have a job the next morning. In fact, some of them didn’t have jobs the next morning. But they were willing to do whatever it took to pull us through,” he said.

"Ford said that it was truly “awesome” to be able to hire most of those people back after it paid off its debt."

Ford Level 4

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Ford CEO Mark Fields is specific about his claim to put an autonomous car on the road by 2021.

He says in yesterday's video that this car will be "level 4" on the autonomous scale, which means that the car is driving itself but the driver must be in the driver seat and ready to take over in an emergency. "Level 5" would mean that the driver can "disengage (like, go to sleep)".

As I wrote in posts last fall (here and here), a level 5 autonomous car is thought to be much further out in the future compared to level 4 which is Ford's goal for their billion-dollar investment.

Ford Motor Co. has another interesting story to tell, this one not about their cars but rather about their employees . . 

(to be cont'd next Monday)

Ford daring

Ford Motor Company  is making an audacious investment. It's a daring bet of a billion dollars  over 5 years on the autonomous car concept.

They're going to partner with a start-up artificial intelligence company that will develop "the brains - a virtual driver system" for their self driving cars. The company is Argo AI, and its two founders are not new-comers to this technology.

One of them is Bryan Salesky, who headed up hardware development for Google's self-driving car project. The other is Pete Rander, a former engineer at Uber Technologies.

Their goal - to bring a fully autonomous Ford vehicle to market in . . 2021.



(cont'd tomorrow)

Conversions

Hundreds of Muslims have been turning to Christianity in Europe, but some churches are cautious about that. There could be at least three reasons for the uncommon conversions.

Churches have generally been welcoming and charitable, so the Muslim conversions could be from just a sense of gratitude and a desire to assimilate.

A second reason could be that they hope for a better chance of being granted asylum and not being transported back to their native country.

But in at least some cases, the reason is heart-felt faith.

"By getting baptized we have to say goodbye to our home country because we can never go back. But we accept this. The Muslim god in Iran was angry and strict, but Jesus accepts us as we are.” 

photo: timesofisrael.com

DST

World War I marked the first implementation of daylight savings time (DST) in Germany, then Great Britain and the U.S., for the purpose of conserving energy. Because of its "fantastic unpopularity," it was dropped after the war.

Though brought back for the Second World War, it was still unpopular, especially with farmers. But America adopted the policy after the Chamber of Commerce fought for it:

"That’s right. National daylight saving policy wasn’t developed for the benefit of farmers, it was actualized based on lobbying on behalf of department stores."

"[D]epartment stores . . loved the extra hour of daylight in the evening. They saw “a huge uptick in business” as laborers headed home from work had more time to stop and shop without worrying about returning home in the dark. 

"“At Congressional hearings on daylight savings in 1985, 1986, the golf industry– by itself– said that one extra month of daylight savings would be worth $400 million in additional green fees and equipment sales. The barbecue industry said it would be worth $200 million in additional sales of grills and barbecue briquettes.” 

Now you know.

Flat tax

Have we achieved tax fairness in America? If everyone above a certain income were taxed 17%, without exceptions or deductions, maybe that would be fairer.

Steve Forbes (yes, that Forbes) untangles some of the complexity around our income tax structure here:

Motivating #2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

A genuine plan to take people to Mars has captivated - even electrified - some people. That's because no serious, credible problem-solver has ever taken on this mission and promised a completion date so soon. Elon Musk is unique.

Those two volunteers who paid mega-bucks to hold their place on the first crewed mission to Mars (yesterday's post) are betting their lives that it will really happen. 

Here's a comment posted when SpaceX made the announcement on its fb page:

"Make this happen while it still can. I don't want our descendants to see us as the only civilization that could have colonized Mars, but in the end didn't bother, but instead sat around watching streaming video on their phones."

Peter Diamandis, head of X Prize Foundation, says SpaceX "has a mission and transformative purpose to make the human race a multiplanetary species . . That vision is intoxicating and powerful.”

Motivating

"What’s the number one work motivator for Millennials? Making an impact."  Every millennial working for Elon Musk at SpaceX, Tesla, or Solar City must be convinced that his or her company is making an impact.

Their boss has been very public from the start about what drives him: protecting earth from fossil fuels, and going inter-planetary for humanity's future.

From the website of SpaceX:

"SpaceX is like Special Forces… we do the missions that others think are impossible. We have goals that are absurdly ambitious by any reasonable standard, but we’re going to make them happen. We have the potential here at SpaceX to have an incredible effect on the future of humanity and life itself."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Elon Mus

To the moon

As a followup on my February 21 post, here is some new information coming from SpaceX.

Not only do we know that they intend to send people into space in 2018, but we may soon know some of their names, as announced on the website:

"We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the Moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a Moon mission." (dependent on health and fitness tests as well as some training)

"Designed from the beginning to carry humans, the Dragon spacecraft already has a long flight heritage. These missions [several cargo/crew planned missions this year and next] will build upon that heritage, extending it to deep space mission operations, an important milestone as we work towards our ultimate goal of transporting humans to Mars."

2nd religion

In sheer numbers, Christianity is still the biggest "religious tradition" in each state. The graphic below shows which other religion follows Christianity in numbers:

You might have guessed that Judaism would be second in many states. But would you have guessed Islam would be second in 20 states? Or Buddhism in 13 states?

Click on the image enlarge it.

Hero grandma

She saw a policeman in a struggle with a suspect as she was driving by. She stopped, called 911, then got out of the car and jumped on the suspect to help the policeman, who is much bigger than she is.

Who would do that?? A hero.

Cat Cafe

This is business "innovation" - in a different sense. The Blue Cat Cafe of Austin, Texas, inspires both lovers and haters (who "defaced the property with obscene graffiti and glued the door locks shut" on the cafe's first anniversary).

Surprisingly, the source of this passion is just cats, supplied by the local humane society. They have the run of the place. Food is prepared outside in a food truck to comply with health regs, and tables and floors are wiped down morning and evening. 

The owner says she “wanted to provide a positive place for people and cats—and to get the cats adopted.” Since the cafe opened in 2015, over 200 cats have found a home.

A Canadian student enjoys cat cafes in Japan:

Paul Revere

"Paul Revere," does that name sound familiar? It may not - if you  had a public school education in the last decade or two.

This post will acquaint you with a story from America's founding. If you are an American, you have a right to know the stories involved in your heritage.

Lunar XPrize

Last month Google's XPrize announced the five teams that will continue to compete for their Lunar XPrize. The teams are privately funded (at least 90%) and come from India, Japan, Israel, America, and include an international team.

The grand prize will go to the first team that:

• lands a spacecraft on the moon's surface which then:
• travels 500 meters and:
• "transmits high-definition video and images back to earth"

That team will receive $20,000,000, while second place will receive $5,000,000. They have until the end of this year to launch.

Who are these people who competed in the Lunar XPrize? Some of them talk about their project and their passion below, in one of several videos about the competition:

Drought over

After five long years, California's drought is over. The mountains received 6-12 feet of snow so far this winter, in addition to flooding rains at lower altitudes. Reservoirs have filled to the level of normal or even better. 

photo: strangesounds.org

Ski resorts should be happy. Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows announced they won't close for the season until July 4. Since January 1, they've had 460 inches of snow.

Even if you're used to winter snow, it's hard to imagine that much. Go here to see some great pictures of it, including buried cars and homes.

Egypt too

Last week there were posts on Christians in danger in Nigeria and Iraq, now there's news of more Christians on the run - this time in Egypt.

"Egyptian Christians fearing attacks by Islamic State group militants are fleeing the volatile northern part of the Sinai Peninsula for a fourth day, after a string of sectarian killings there sent hundreds fleeing . . .

"[An o]fficial . . of the Evangelical Church in Ismailia . . east of Cairo says Sunday that over 100 families from the city of el-Arish and nearby had passed through the church since Friday, some 500 people.

"He says the families arrive scared, exhausted and in need of supplies, which were being stockpiled at the church via donations from several parishes. They are then transported to be housed in and around the city, in private homes and now also housing provided by the government." Donation boxes arriving for them at Evangelical Church in Ismalia below:

photo: stream.org

Return home

"The first Christian families are returning to their recently liberated villages on the Nineveh Plain . . Without electricity and water but happier than ever, sisters Nidal and Janan are home at last. “We believe in Christ. He will help us through this period. He keeps us strong.”

Mosul, on the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq, was captured by Islamic State back in 2014. Its 60,000 Christians were given the choice to convert, pay an extra tax, or bow to "the sword." Most of them left - as fast as they possibly could, leaving homes and possessions behind, often winding up in refugee camps.

Those sisters mentioned above are happy to come back, but it's not the same place. Click on "Iraq" under Labels for details about the destruction under IS. 

"Father Gabriel warns not to expect things to return to normal now that IS is gone. “The liberation was just step one. The next step should be the protection of Christians. We can’t do that ourselves; we need the help of the rest of the world. Like when Europe in the 20th century needed the help of the world to cast out evil and to liberate and protect people, in the same way this region needs international protection now. IS may have been defeated, IS’s ideas are still very much alive.”

No protection

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So villages in northern Nigeria are in trouble.

But who will help them? Their government appears to be helping the attackers with weapons and supplies. "The complicity between the army and the Fulani is obvious . . The world’s indifference gives the Nigerian government the advantage in what looks like a quiet effort to rid northern Nigeria of its Christians."

All U.N. member nations adopted the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) in 2005. It's a commitment to protect populations from genocide and ethnic cleansing. If the Nigerian government can't or won't do that, then it seems like the U.N. security council has given itself some responsibility.

One woman's story: 

"Deborah, now 31 and living in a camp for the internally displaced, was captured by the Boko Haram terrorist group and held captive for a year and a half. The Islamists came to her village and slaughtered her husband and family before abducting her and “marrying” her off to a 20-year-old Muslim terrorist . . . After Deborah was recaptured following an escape, she received 80 lashes as punishment. She told journalist Douglas Murray that she no longer fears death.

“What sort of death would I be running from?” Deborah asks. “I have already died once.”

photo: indianexpress.com

Nigeria burns

Christians of Nigeria in Africa have been targets of violence for years. Islamic terror group Boko Haram often attacks villages at night in the north. This is where the attack on a school resulted in 200 girls kidnapped (#Bringbackourgirls) in 2014.

The country is roughly half Christian and half Muslim. After an ineffective Christian president, they now have a Muslim president - who happens to be of the Fulani tribes.

"A few days before any attack, a military helicopter is spotted dropping arms and other supplies into the areas inhabited by the Fulani tribes. Then the attack comes." Elements in the Nigerian military are arming and supplying Fulani fighters.

"When challenged after a massacre, soldiers often claim that they didn’t receive any orders — or had been commanded not to intervene."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Really, Mars?

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Falcon 9 was designed by SpaceX to be the first reusable rocket. In the past, rockets were always destroyed by their first flight. The obvious advantage is that every flight doesn't require a whole new rocket worth tens of millions of dollars. And if going into space can cost less, it can advance much faster.

Launch Complex 39A (yesterday's post), having a great history, has been leased to SpaceX (a private company) for 20 years and they've spent a millions to get it ready for their own rockets.

It's all in the service of Elon Musk's vision to make humanity an "inter-planetary species." by building the transport system to colonize Mars. He gave a talk in Mexico recently to explain how he sees that happening.

The talk is on youtube but it lasts about an hour and a half. Here's a 7-minute summary, including some big questions yet to be addressed:

Returned

Kennedy Space Center's current director, Robert Cabana, flew the space shuttle four times as commander. He has sadly watched the pad from which he took off, pad 39A, lay unused and "rusting away" since the last shuttle launch in 2011.

But yesterday that changed. After a horrible failed launch last summer, SpaceX successfully launched a cargo re-supply mission to the International Space Station right there on 39A. After about 10 minutes, the first stage of the re-usable Falcon 9 rocket came back down safely at Cape Canaveral Air Force base - SpaceX's second such landing at this place.

If everything goes according to plan, SpaceX will launch a mission crew - people - in about a year from this spot. 

It's all part of CEO Elon Musk's goal to take human beings to Mars.

(cont'd tomorrow)

$20,000

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

American seniors face a financial challenge partly because they retire at the traditional age but have a longer life after retirement now than in the past. Here's another important factor:

"The median amount middle-lass Americans have saved for retirement is $20,000 . . ." That's a bleak prospect for the rest of one's life. "34% of the middle class expect to work until they are 80 because they will not have enough saved for retirement."

Advancing age can sneak up on you. Quoting author Kurt Vonnegut, "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." Yes, been there 😲

(from "Aging in America," Retirement Advisor)

Graying USA

Many Western countries have birth rates per woman that are well below replacement rate, so their societies are changing (check the "Demography" label on the right).

America's birth rate has been right at replacement (2.1 per woman) until recently; but we, like them, have a graying population. Raleigh NC is "going gray the fastest" with an over-65 population that has nearly doubled from 2000-2013. Austin TX is right behind them, followed by Atlanta GA.

The biggest challenge with much of the population over 65 is financial:

"As people age, the cost of keeping them alive rises with them, and the ability of modern science and technology keeps them living longer. People need a plan. People need to know how they're going to pay for staying alive so long, and they need to know who's going to foot the bill."

(from "Aging in America," Retirement Advisor, cont'd tomorrow)

Comparing

Comedian Tom Shillue says he's a pretty happy guy . . because he stopped comparing himself to other people like Jerry Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon.

He recommends we all stop comparing ourselves to whoever we think is better.

Kind

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to yesterday's article from The Atlantic, couples who have happy long term relationships are couples who have - diligently, over the long haul, regardless of not feeling like it - chosen to be kind to their partner.

"Kindness . . glues couples together. Research . . has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage.

Kindness shows up when you:

• generously interpret your spouse's action in a positive way 
• share in the joy of his/her happy news together
• choose to communicate fact, not sarcasm

You could give dozens of situations that come up in your own relationship! Happy couples look "for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully."

photo: listdose.com

Unkind

It's probably safe to suppose that few people get married expecting divorce. But about half of all first marriages fail, then more of second or third marriages. There's been some research to discover how it happens that love turns into rejection.

According to this report. rejection starts way before the divorce. Maybe both partners actually feel "love" at the beginning, but that wasn't enough. There's a behavior that can lead to unhappiness and breaking up. It's un-kindness.

"Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there."

photo: therelationalmarketer.com

How long can you stay excited about a spouse who will only focus on their own concerns, who must always be right, who's indifferent to your happy or sad news? Not very long. The relationship is shredding.

(Valentine's series #2)