Paris Olympics 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Security is always an issue at the Olympics. Grievance groups and terrorists would love to create drama at an event that will make headlines all over the world.

France has already experienced multiple attacks in the name of Islam, including "the Charlie Hebdo killings of 2015, the Bataclan attack of the same year, the Bastille Day murders in Nice in 2016, and a series of brutal murders of teachers." European sporting events have recently received threats from Islamic State. 

France's Interior Minister says these threats are nothing new, and they're prepared. Twenty-thousand soldiers will patrol and defend the games, along with 40,000 police and gendarmes. They are training in the south to defend, for example, against knife attacks and hostage taking.

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Two soccer fans expressed tough resistance against fear of terrorists: 

"If they are doing this communication campaign, it is above all to scare us and terrorise us, so that the French no longer go out. So we must continue to live and show them we are stronger than that." 

"You have to be vigilant but there is no reason to be more afraid than usual."

from BBC

Paris Olympics 1

Cleaning the Seine River has been a huge job for France. The Paris Olympics 2024 will begin late in July this summer, and some of the events will take place in the river--which has been very polluted for many years. 

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Even this close to the events, tests of the water still show pollution levels may be too high for swimmers. The problem is E-coli, bacteria coming from sewage. Potentially, it can result in various problems ranging from skin irritation to serious illness.

Sewage treatment has been updated and improved, but untreated water can overflow into the Seine after a rain. So an immense container to hold the potential overflow was built during the past three years. It's the size of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

About $1.4 billion has been spent on the effort to make the beloved Seine River clean. If all goes well, the public could be permitted to swim in it again by 2025.

from Forbes

Teacher quits 2

From two years ago:

This teacher wanted to help kids get on a good path. She taught traditional values that have worked for hundreds of years. But she didn't fit in anymore at her public school because they wanted her to teach students the same things that are alarming parents all over the country.

Deepfake 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Video technology that fakes a human person exists now and will only improve its ability to deceive, as per yesterday's post. Today's post was going to be about the ways that oppressive government could employ it. But it's a darker level than I wish to place on this blog. If you want to know how it could and probably will be used for propaganda, fear, and tyranny, you can find out here.

Check out this re-post from 2019:

Bias framing

One way to influence other people's opinions is to withhold information that would counter your argument. If the picture you paint for others is framed to your advantage, they can be fooled.

Everyone does it - that is, everyone frames the argument the way they see it.

But if you are the audience, make sure you ask some questions. Is anything important being left out of the way they frame it?

Deepfake 2

Follow up to this post

It's already hard to know whether reported news gives us an accurate picture of reality. Certain media are reliable, we think, but we wonder if we're right about that. 

We know media does follow government direction to censor dissent (example: release of the Twitter files) and does feed us propaganda mixed with factual information. So, what is accurate and what is not?

"When state propaganda is easily generated, millions will fully embrace their own hopeless inability to know the truth." It's easy to be cynical and give up trying to know. At least one millennial in my family did give up. 

Unfortunately, advancing video generation technology is almost certain to amplify the power of fake news to deceive us and control us. "AI human impersonation video technology" will get scary.

from Mind Matters

(cont'd tomorrow)

Happy 6

(cont'd from this post)

My yard is a happy place for me, definitely. Especially now, the "merry month of May."

There may even be a science-based element in it, per the article referenced here.

A re-post from 2018:

Dirt helps

"Most avid gardeners will tell you that their landscape is their “happy place” and the actual physical act of gardening is a stress reducer and mood lifter." And now there is science to back up that claim.

"There’s a natural antidepressant in soil . . . Mycobacterium vaccae is the substance under study and has indeed been found to mirror the effect on neurons that drugs like Prozac provide. . .The bacterium is found in soil and may stimulate serotonin production, which makes you relaxed and happier."

It "appears to be a natural antidepressant in soil and has no adverse health effects. These antidepressant microbes in soil may be as easy to use as just playing in the dirt."

photo: telegraph

Ben himself

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

As a boy in school, Ben was called "Dummy," and he agreed with them, says he was a horrible student. Poverty and racial discrimination pervaded his neighborhood. He expected he would die before his mid-20's.

But his mother believed in him. She stood in the way of disaster, when no one would have predicted his spectacular destiny. 

His story should inspire everyone, so I'm putting up one more post, this time in his own words:

Help them learn

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

From his life experience--events of his own life--Dr. Carson draws some inevitable conclusions about the value of education. His mother got things started when she enforced a habit in her home of reading books. He learned from those books and got excited about how it could empower and enable him.

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He calls education in America back to the vision of every child, including every black child, receiving a good education. Here's what it should include:

Homework - Some deny the value of homework, even claiming that it should be abolished for the sake of black children. But lowering the bar does not benefit them. Don't abolish it.

Discipline - Unlimited "self-expression" disrupts learning. Retain classroom discipline. See Dr. Carson's experience with chaos in the classroom in yesterday's post.

Books - Train kids to focus their attention on books. They can do it if you help them turn their attention from video games to books.

Respect - Reward and celebrate students who achieve at high levels, like schools do for athletic achievement. Dr. Carson and his wife founded the Carson Scholars Fund to do just that.

Other elements are listed in the interview. As a last comment to students, Dr. Carson says this:

"[T]he person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is you. You get to make the decisions. You get to decide how much energy to put into it. You don’t ever need to look for anybody else to blame."

from Bill Dembski's Substack

Just one mom 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Did this mom have economic or political power? No. But she was the mom of the house. She had the power to make good choices in her own home, and what she could do, she did do. Those decisions probably seemed small then, but this woman changed her family's lives--and many others--with her choices. She was not powerless to change things.

Her son, Dr. Ben Carson, earned his place in history. After graduating from Yale University, he became a famous neurosurgeon and eventually the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He influenced and blessed a whole lot of lives.

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His mom was no doubt tempted to take it easy watching television in the evenings after a hard day's work. But she had the quiet courage to make a better choice, even though it was not convenient and good results were not guaranteed.

"[H]istory is never a given. It is shaped by the courage or cowardice of people who can always make a choice...

(cont'd tomorrow . . because Dr. Carson has ideas for the reform of education)

Just one mom 1

Can just one person change the world? Yes, history shows that an extraordinary person can. But how about one poor, single, black mom with a third-grade education, living in Detroit about 60 years ago?

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This mom supported her family by cleaning houses and was, by today's standard, "powerless." But she had power in her own home. Noticing that her rich clients tended to do a lot of reading, she turned off the tv for her boys and created a new reading habit for them.

One of them says he actually started to enjoy those books, then the new habit changed his life. High school teachers spent more time disciplining than teaching, so he created his own learning opportunity:

"I would go back after school, talk to my teachers, and say, “What were you planning on teaching?” They would always look forward to seeing me and knowing that they could share their lesson plan with somebody. I got a lot of extra tutoring. So, even though I was in an inner-city high school that wasn’t known for academics, I was able to get the kind of preparation that allowed me to get through Yale University."

from Bill Dembski's Substack

(cont'd tomorrow)

Not savage

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

When boys really did get marooned on an island, it was 1965 and the boys were somewhat older. Six teenagers ditched school one day, took someone's boat, and went to sea for a joyride. A storm left them drifting for eight days without food or water before they found the island.

An Australian fisherman discovered them surviving after 15 months. "There was no chaos or anarchy." As teams, they managed rainwater, chickens, a garden, disagreements, and even found a way to make music. 

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A different author who published this story is more optimistic than the author of The Lord of the Flies. He thinks people are basically good, and that this explains these boys' good results.

The boys were students from St. Andrew's, a Catholic boarding school. Maybe Ayaan Hirsi Ali (yesterday's post) would credit their Christian training for the good results that were so in contrast to the darkness of The Lord of the Flies.

from Mamamia

Savage

Lord of the Flies was published in London by a schoolteacher in 1954. A group of boys are marooned alone on an ocean island. Without protection or supervision, they organize themselves to survive but eventually descend into fear and savagery.

Darkness in the human heart is said to be the author's theme, horrifying evil that's normally held back only by the imposition of civilization. He's not wrong (and the Bible agrees).

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While we can't deny that people of all ages are capable of evil, we don't live with horror every day. Why is that? 

This scenario of kids, lost and alone and marooned, actually happened in reality. How did that turn out? . . in tomorrow's post.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Ali flip 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Brought up Muslim in Africa, she was taught to hate unbelievers, particularly Jews, whom they cursed every day. She feared going to hell, because she adored forbidden things like movies and music. 

Atheism looked good to her (especially after the appalling 9-11 attack) because it offered "a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people." 

Life in Europe and later as an American citizen created in her a love for Western Civilization, which she believes is threatened by aggressive Islamism, China and Russia, and woke ideology. 

She fears we could lose "everything," our whole Western way of life; and she identifies the reason we are losing to our enemies: it's that we have lost "faith in the Christian God." This she says in the first 6 minutes of this interview:

from "Why I am now a Christian

Ali flip 1

Another famous atheist has done the unexpected: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, respected intellectual with an amazing life story, converted to Christianity.

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In a public discussion event with Richard Dawkins last fall she said: 

"Like you, I did mock faith, in general, and probably Christianity in particular, but I don't do that anymore. ... I have come down to my knees to say that the people who always had faith have something that we who lost faith don’t have.”

“What you value in Christianity is something that really is absolutely necessary to pass on to the next generation,” she said. “And we have failed the next generation by taking [it] away from them . . and telling them it’s nonsense and false."

She, like Dawkins, admires the Western Civilization that Christianity built. But more than that, she found in Christianity the answer to her question, "what is the meaning and purpose of life?"

from Christian Post

(cont'd tomorrow)

Saudi worries

Saudi Arabia has a long Red Sea coastline that they want to put to good economic use. People like to vacation at seaside resorts. So that's why luxury resorts are an important part of the Vision 2030 Project known as Neom. 

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What if the war in Gaza escalates to the whole Middle East? Potential tourists will stay away altogether if there's a chance those resorts may become high-profile targets. 

What if security threats scare shipping lines into restricting delivery of materials and equipment to this hugely expensive building project? Billions of dollars' worth of construction investment can't pay off if construction can't be finished.

The enormous cost and effort behind the project make government officials nervous. Tensions, conflict, and outright war threaten the Vision; some citizens are sympathetic to the Palestinian side while the government tries to make friendly with both the U.S. and Israel. 

Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in a stable future and cannot afford current hostilities to engulf the Middle East. Maybe we'll see them try to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians.

from MSN

Happy 5

(cont'd from this post)

Here's a great story from 2022 about a happy guy who made a good, out-of-the-box decision at his business:

Work 14-hr day

Would there be any appeal in working a super long 14-hour day? When the owner/operator of a Florida Chick-fil-A offered just such a consistent work schedule, over 400 people applied for the job. Oh, and they work only three of those long days per week. That's the appeal.

When Justin Lindsey opened his shop near Miami, Florida, last year, he chose this way of expressing how he wanted to manage it: "One of the things I really set out to do . . was what I called "leading with generosity." This new way of scheduling his workers was well-received.

One of his managers told him that she could never have graduated from University of Central Florida if she had had to work the normal choppy schedule. Another told him that she had visited New York City with the time she had available, not having to take any vacation time.

Overall, there's been improved worker retention, work-life balance, and career growth. 

"I'm so incredibly happy and grateful that Chick-fil-A has given me the opportunity to do this. Because the impact that I'm able to have on my team, honestly, I mean, it's incredible."

from Business Insider

Dawkins flip 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Fundamentally decent," that's his description of Christianity as opposed to Islam. He feels at home in the Christian ethos, he loves hymns (what?!) and Christmas carols. He thinks Britain is a Christian country: "If we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful!"

photo

He's come to the same point that historian and atheist Tom Holland did, who said, "It took me a long time to realize my morals are not Greek or Roman, but thoroughly, and proudly, Christian." 

Do I attack Richard Dawkins for doing something of a flip-flop? No. He learned there's goodness in Christianity, and that many of the good things he appreciates in his own culture come from that source.  It's good that he's acknowledging the truth he learned.

Dawkins flip 1

Something unexpected has happened in the world of atheism. Richard Dawkins, that relentless enemy of religion, calls himself a "cultural Christian." 😮

It's not that he believes in God now or believes that Jesus rose from the dead. But it appears that he despises the faith a little less than he used to. Let's hear his 4-minute explanation:

(cont'd tomorrow)

Hot Bread 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

No matter how good an idea may be, it may fold because of any number of problems. Somehow Hot Bread Kitchen has overcome the inevitable challenges to continue, and even to grow in its mission.

Starting out in the founder's kitchen, they celebrated a 15th anniversary last year, "creating economic opportunity through careers in food" and funded by $6 million in annual donations.

Through training and support, they claim they've put "1500 individuals on the path to economic mobility" whether as employees or entrepreneurs in the food industry. They like to call their members "Breadwinners." 

Hot Bread 2

 Re-post from 2017

Hot Bread Kitchen is both a bakery and an on-the-job baking school in New York City. They specialize in training immigrant and low-income women for a culinary career.

Helping people learn the skills to sustain themselves--and others as well--is an American value.

(cont'd tomorrow)

It should be

Higher education wasn't always corrupted to the degree that it is today. Universities and colleges earned a genuine, admirable reputation in the past by pursuing worthy goals. Cultural memories of that past keep prestigious schools going today, even though they are changed.

What should a college be? A long-time professor answers that question here:

• diverse opinions are discussed civilly, respectfully, rationally
• virtues like fairness, forgiveness, love, justice are the standard
• crime is not tolerated
• administrators maintain a stable, safe environment
• both administrators and faculty set a good example
• wisdom of the past is passed on to students 
• students are treated like adults, not like irresponsible children

from "What College Should Be: The Question Lurking Behind the Current Wave of Campus Unrest"

Flag upheld

Too many students have swallowed the anti-American Kool-Aid at their universities and colleges. But not all.  

Many current pro-Palestinian protests went so far as to take down the American flag and put up the Palestinian flag in its place. It's outrageous, and even the NYC mayor says it's unacceptable. 

Here is a picture of push-back against the law breaking and violence and hostility of the protestors. When the U.S. flag was brought down last week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, some fraternity brothers had the courage and conviction to stand against the mob and re-hoist it. 

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Well done, men.

Columbia profs

Columbia University in New York is another globally prestigious institution. Founded way back in the 1700's around the founding of America, its good reputation may rightly suffer because antisemitism is being revealed.

"Pro-Palestinian," antisemitic protests on American campuses began after the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli civilians last October and Israel's counterattack in Gaza. Three university presidents couldn't condemn genocide before congress. 

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But the protests at Columbia shouldn't be a complete surprise, according to this author and former Columbia student. One professor called Israel a “key actor” in “every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world.” Professors have "saturated them with an ideological hatred for the Jewish state and university administrators . . have tolerated it for too long. At least some of the student protestors are just acting on what they've been taught.

Antisemitism, left-wing indoctrination, admissions scandals, plagiarism, all are part of the ongoing discovery of wide-spread corruption in our universities. 

from MSN

DEI & Stanford 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Instead of openness to information and different opinions, rewards and punishments enforce the official left-wing ideology. Students and faculty will get the message that there is no "inclusion" for you if you don't see things their way. That's what DEI is for.

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Investigative journalist Christopher Rufo based his report on the observations of an  undergraduate and journalist on campus. 

"'I’ve observed as students are reported by their peers for constitutionally protected speech,' and professors are denounced and accused of discrimination by other students 'for the crime of not being PC enough in their research or in class,' she says. 'Who fits or doesn’t fit into the DEI caste system determines a student or professor’s summary judgement.'" 

A professor says, "a Trojan horse ideology, labeled DEI, has been introduced, promoted, and institutionalized . . [that] attacks three fundamental values of Western culture: equality before the law, freedom of expression, and due process."

At least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats carry out their mission at Stanford.

from "DEI Conquers Stanford"

DEI & Stanford

Parents have made some progress in calling local schools back to their values. But higher education institutions don't have the platform of school board meetings where parents can show up. Far left ideologies dominate at that level.

Woke ideology often operates under the banner of DEI, just a euphemism for left-wing racialism. It stands for "diversity, equity, inclusion" as described in a positive sense here. But it displaces merit and intellectual inquiry.

A psychologist and author objects to DEI saying that it: "forces many academics to betray their . . duty to the truth . . ." So he resigned from his professional organization because he would not back down from his duty to speak what he believes to be true.

Prestigious Stanford University, with a global reputation for excellence, is now dominated by DEI. 

from "DEI Conquers Stanford"

(cont'd tomorrow)

Gen Z richer

Despite their lack of a "play-based childhood" (last week's posts), somehow Generation Z has turned out to be better off at their age than millennials or baby-boomers were at the same age.

Globally, youth unemployment is way down. When millennials came of age in the U.S., they faced the economic downturn of a recession with reduced opportunities for jobs and careers. Gen Z youth are starting their careers now in different circumstances. It's more of a workers' market, with many jobs going un-staffed for lack of laborers. 

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Hourly pay increases for American youth 16-24 years old recently hit 13% (year over year), compared to just a 6% increase for workers 25-54 years old. 

They pay a little less of their income for housing and education compared to what millennials did at their age, and their home ownership rate is higher.

In short (according to The Economist),"In financial terms, Gen Z is doing extraordinarily well."

from The Economist

Happy 4

(cont'd from this post)

Parents want their children to be happy and to live satisfying lives. Good relationships are critical toward that end. 

So let's hold relationships in high regard. Marriage is statistically a good goal, even in today's cultural climate. Here's the next in this "Happy" series, a re-post from 2018:

Married & Happy

Yale's most popular class, "Psychology and the Good Life," teaches students social skills and gratitude. Good lessons, yes, but studies say that marriage itself is also a predictor of happiness.

"Numerous studies have associated marriage with a lower risk of disease, from diabetes to cardiovascular and respiratory problems – particularly if you are a man. “Married people tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, and eat more healthily . .

"People who get married and stay married have roughly double the wealth of those who never marry"

"Additionally, married couples who attend church together are more likely to live longer, avoid depression and stay married."

"Studies consistently show that children raised by happy, committed parents are less likely to have behavior problems, drop out of school, be abused, use drugs, commit crime, become pregnant as teenagers, suffer poverty or become sick."

Anxious Gen Z 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Right now, children are going off to college and into the workplace without having been given the opportunity to risk, fail, and have the stamina to try again. That, Haidt says, is setting them up for a much deeper and tragic kind of failure," and widespread anxiety.

image

Between 2010 and 2015 childhood went through a great re-wiring when "adolescents traded in their flip phones for smartphones, which were loaded with social media platforms . . "

Author Jonathan Haidt is attempting to start a movement toward "rolling back phone-based childhood and restoring play-based childhood."

from After Babel

Anxious Gen Z 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

All that unsupervised play that children did decades ago actually built some important skills into their lives, like risk-taking and independent decision making and problem solving. 

The amount of time that kids daily spend with friends is sharply down from twenty years ago (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). It was replaced with screen time, of course. 

Instant gratification grows from screen time, but not self-control or independence or self-reliance or people skills. Generation Z seem to have more social stressors on them today, coupled with fewer strengths and learned virtues to handle them.

Anxiety, depression, loneliness are more common to this generation than to previous ones. Yesterday's author, Jonathan Haidt, put his explanation in his book.

What's a parent to do? "For parents, raising healthy kids doesn’t just mean limiting screen time, but encouraging their freedom. They must practice becoming independent so they can more easily transition into adulthood when the time comes."

from Mind Matters

(cont'd tomorrow)

Anxious Gen Z

My neighborhood has children, but I rarely see or hear them. Maybe you remember, as I do, long summer days "playing outside" with friends or by yourself, making up games and discovering things and riding bikes. My neighborhood is quiet even in the summer.

But there are lots of kids at a nearby park where grownups organize sports, and the kids wear uniforms. Other than that, they're at home watching some screen on some device. Are they missing something? Lots of voices today say that they are. One of them wrote this book:

 

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Last month Haidt's book came out and is getting a lot of attention. Partially that's because he's an expert😉-- and partially it's because many of us adults already feel that something's wrong when kids don't go outside to play.

The theme is that we've "drastically overprotected children in the real world and woefully under-protected them in the virtual world." This social psychologist has lots of company in his worry about Generation Z (born 1996-2013).

from Mind Matters

(cont'd tomorrow)