Doubts?

If you have doubts about your Christian faith, don't be ashamed of that. Doubts are good questions that you don't know the answers to yet. 

Greg Koukl has made a career out of finding answers. He doesn't like to use  "cookie-cutter" methods when talking to people, but rather to be flexible and adapt to each person.

His interview below (about 15:45 and following) advises us to:

• ask what the alternative to Christianity is
• ask what different worldview answers all your questions
• ask what different religion explains reality 

Yes, it's good to believe strongly, to get to the point where you're strong in your faith. But the way forward is not to repress or stuff or ignore every doubt. 

You want to know what's true. God put that desire within you and you're not wrong to pay attention to it. So start looking for answers. That leads to stronger faith.

Go to his website and put your question in the search bar. 

"Witchy"

What do you want your kids to learn in school? Probably your answer is reading, science, history, math, maybe some life skills . . but not witchcraft, right?

Parents in the Orlando area were surprised to learn that a video series on "witchcraft rituals" was broadcast to students in the morning announcements. 

"The series, called “Witchy Wednesday,” featured weekly segments with instructions on spells, moon worship, and other occult practices."

Last month Liberty Counsel sent a letter to Orange County Public Schools demanding that students be able to opt-out of this instruction, and that Christian students be allowed to teach their faith to the school -- since teaching witchcraft was allowed.

Fortunately, that was the end of "Witchy Wednesday." 

from Florida's Voice

US ag innovation 2

(cont'd from yesterday's 2021 re-post)

Vertical farm 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) can yield crops at 100x the per-square-foot productivity of a flatland farm by scaling vertically. They use much less water, no pesticides, and weather has no effect.

But light is available to traditional farmland for free in the form of sunlight. Not so for vertical trays or towers of lettuce indoors. Light, in fact, is expensive. Recent advances in LED lighting (a doubling of its efficiency coupled with a big drop in its cost) have cut the operational expenses of these farms to the point where they can now provide about 5% of all our produce.

In a mostly-free market like ours, individual customers choose which businesses will survive. They pick the product which serves their needs best and which is offered at a price they are willing to pay. That's the sweet spot these farmer-entrepreneurs want to find.

US ag innovation

America, like The Netherlands and a number of other countries, has been using alternative farming methods for years now.

Check out this post on "vertical farming" from four years ago:

Vertical farm 1

Over 330 million people in the United States are fed by our efficient, productive agricultural system. But the system has been changing as entrepreneurs figure out how to make it better. 

"Vertical farming" breaks traditional farming methods by going vertical (up) instead of horizontal (across the flat ground). These "farms" are located in city buildings where compact plants grow in high stacks of trays or in vertical towers.  

City stores and customers have access to produce that's much fresher than regular produce often coming from hundreds or thousands of miles away. A supply chain that long drains 45% of the produce's nutritional value.

photo

Water usage is an issue: global agriculture uses 70% of the world's fresh water. But vertical farms need much less, up to 95% less water than farms growing produce in the ground. That's a significant difference.

But vertical farming doesn't solve every problem. Trade-offs must be figured in if they are to survive.

(cont'd tomorrow)

from Inc.

Tiny ag exporter

The Netherlands is the size of the American state, New Jersey. But the country exports more food than any other country in the world, except the United States. 

How do they do that? The people were motivated after World War II to make food security a very high priority. When Nazis invaded and seized their country, farms were disrupted and about 20,000 people died of starvation. It made an impact.

The Dutch applied their human potential for solving problems to the issue of food security. Growing high quality tomatoes and peppers, for example, is highly mechanized. Water use is a fraction of water use on a more normal farm though crops are grown hydroponically.

"Inside large greenhouses, farmers grow millions of tons of tomatoes and peppers with the help of bees, robots, and custom LED lights."

Nigeria ignored

Take a look at the trouble Christians face in their home country of Nigeria. Attacks on their farms and churches and schools, including murder, are horrifying and they're not few in number. 

My posts about the attacks go back for over a decade. I've gotten the information mostly from Christian sources. Big media continually highlights civilians dying in Gaza at the hands of Israel military, and it's called genocide. But Nigerian mass murders are usually ignored.

Surprisingly, an openly non-Christian entertainer heard about all this and called it out on his show. Watch the clip here. Here's what he says:

• "They are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria."
• "They've killed over 100,000 since 2009."
• "They've burned 18,000 churches."
• "These are Islamists, Boko Haram."
• "They are literally trying to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country," more of a genocide than Palestine
• "Where are the [university] kids protesting this??"

Google admits it

Google has been accused multiple times of suppressing political views they don't like, of favoring the left in their search algorithms. They always denied it. 

Back in 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai (photo) stressed that they operate without political bias.

As late as last October, he claimed Google's innocence for almost four hours before a congressional committee. He said they are as objective as possible.

Now . . everybody knows the accusations were correct and the denials were lies, because they've admitted it in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. The previous administration pressured them repeatedly, they say, to remove content from Youtube and they did it.

They admit it was "unacceptable and wrong," and they "will allow creators banned for political speech on COVID-19, elections, and related issues an opportunity to return to the platform."

Maybe they're sorry. Or . . maybe they're just complying to the "vibe shift" and they'll do it again as soon as it's convenient to do so.

Nuclear & NASA 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Nighttime is quite different on the Moon. Since it rotates more slowly than Earth, darkness lasts for two weeks . . and there are craters in perpetual darkness that will have to be explored. For those reasons, solar power production won't be sufficient though it will be used.

We'll need nuclear (image). According to remarks made last month by the interim NASA administrator, the new goal is to deploy a 100 kilowatt fission reactor on the Moon by 2030. A question to answer soon is: exactly where will it go? 

"In order to be useful, the reactor must be close to accessible, extractable and refinable water ice deposits." Yes, they believe water ice exists in some of those dark craters. Lunar orbital missions are finding it. Then lunar rover VIPER will come and investigate the best prospects.

from Space

(cont'd tomorrow)

Nuclear & NASA

It's not only tech companies that invest in new applications of nuclear power. NASA (American Space and Aeronautics Agency) is researching how to make nuclear energy our reliable power source for use on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Getting astronauts there is not the entire challenge. When they get there, they'll need power for living and exploring. There won't be a back-up electrical grid using natural gas or coal or any fossil fuel. A nuclear plant will have to support the Artemis mission's goal, a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

It's called the fission surface power project. The fission reactor will have to be relatively lightweight, self-contained, and small compared to what we have on earth. How powerful must it be? At least 40 kilowatts. In earth terms, it could "continuously run 30 households for ten years."

from NASA

(cont'd tomorrow)

Season 6

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Just as Season 5 of "The Chosen" is released on their app, they've completed the filming of Season 6 (that's a wrap). Its focus is the last 24 hours before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There will be just one more season to come afterwards.

The production of Season 6 is taking much longer than all the previous ones, Dallas says, because of logistical and physical challenges and because most of the scenes had to be shot overnight. We won't see it until 2027.

Actor Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus, says: "It's brutal. This is the most difficult thing I think I've ever done . . . I don't know anything else that could be more challenging to me as a performer." Making this season took a lot of emotional energy from everyone involved:

Go here to see many short videos on the making of Season 6.

from Forbes 

Watch Season 5

Follow up to this post

Creator of "The Chosen," Dallas Jenkins, has said on multiple occasions that "The Chosen" will always be available to watch for free. 

Season 5 opened in theaters last spring. It was exclusively on streaming platform Amazon Prime a couple months later for subscribers. A cost was involved for both of those releases. 

Now the free streaming is about to release soon: September 28.

How to watch? It's announced and explained below (3-min video) so that we can all watch for free. The story arc is described here.

RIP Charlie 3

(cont'd from these posts)

Reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk have flooded social media. I didn't realize how well known he was, how many people loved him, people who felt like they knew him though they hadn't met him personally. 

Turning Point USA, which Charlie founded at the age of 18, has received tens of thousands of applications to start local high school and college/university chapters since the assassination last week.

On the other hand, some people on the left--not everyone--react with hatred by celebrating the death of a husband and father who went out of his way to respectfully dialog about issues with students. Do we share any values with them? Do we even live in the same country? 

Here he is in action, unscripted, authentic, interacting for real:

Don't pray 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Prayer could be unlawful, illegal, in New South Wales, Australia, says the Attorney General there. He seems to say that the government could identify a prayer as a "conversion practice," and then it would be illegal.

A member of the legislative council tries in this video to get clarity, but the answer to the question of whether some prayers could be a "conversion practice" may simply be up to individual judges. 

According to the words of the relevant law, if the prayer is said "over or with a particular person in an attempt to change or suppress that person's sexuality or gender," then that's unlawful. It could be punished with five years in prison.

It's almost as if they think that prayer might have influence or some sort of power.

Don't pray

Laws exist to restrict bad actions, and of course we want that. Even words can be illegal in certain circumstances. But there can't be a law against silent thoughts. Wait . . maybe there can.

A woman was confronted by police officers while standing in the street in Birmingham, England. They suspected she might be silently praying. It's happened to her before, twice. She was standing in front of an abortion clinic, where it could be illegal to have influence of any kind. Do they believe a silent, peaceful person who is praying has influence? Interesting assumption.

She says, "Silent prayer cannot possibly be a crime--everyone has a right to freedom of thought."

She must be thinking of the old England, not the England of today where the government represses freedom of speech and even freedom of silent thoughts.

from Right to Life UK

(cont'd tomorrow)

Hopeful AI 5

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So . . maybe AI won't take over the world and make us into slaves because the real-world requirements (power, size of servers, infrastructure stability) are limiting, as the scientist author predicts in yesterday's post.

But "brain atrophy" is a true danger if people will not develop their own human wisdom and intelligence. It's already happening in schools. 

Even when we all use AI to mine information (image), your distinctive humanity will be needed. Good decisions will have to be made, and good hands-on skills will construct homes and infrastructure.

Prepare your children. Train them to read from physical books, because--amazingly--comprehension is 6-8 times better than from e-books. Train them in how to think for themselves and how to make their own good decisions. Train them in people skills and how to develop friendships. 

from "The Miracle and Menace of AI Part 5"

Hopeful AI 4

Follow up to these posts

We're going into a new paradigm, according to most experts, where artificial intelligence reaches into all our lives. Opinions abound but nobody really knows all the effects it will have on us. Some are optimistic; many (including experts) are afraid.

Maybe there's "real world" reasons to be hopeful, to believe AI will not bring in dystopia.

Killer robots, for example, would require enormous amounts of power. "AI programs simply can’t run on your work computer, smartphone, self-driving car, smart appliance, or any kind of robot." 

Any disruption of our infrastructure could take it down: disruptions like another pandemic or a breakdown of the electrical grid or war. The development and maintenance of AI systems depends on all our other systems to function.

from "The Miracle and the Menace of AI"

RIP Charlie 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Yesterday it started: Charlie's friends and fans pouring out what he meant to them. Here are a few posts that I saw on my X account: handling an encounter with a trans person with love and truth; sharing the gospel; and my personal favorite, this one, where he cites evidence showing that America had a Christian founding.

To my regret, it never occurred to me to pray for his safety before yesterday. But he knew there was danger from those who hated who he was and what he stood for, so he actually had a security detail.

He's with his Creator now. Rest in peace, Charlie; your life was a blessing to us.

RIP Charlie

Yesterday Charlie Kirk was doing what he so often did and loved to do: dialoging with people who disagreed with him on a college campus. He would invite questions/challenges and then respond respectfully, with civility, with honest and frank answers. 

Thousands of fans came out to watch and hear the debate at Utah Valley University. One individual came with evil purpose in his mind and hate in his heart.

Charlie was murdered. At the age of 31, he leaves behind his wife and two babies.

Bible Project 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

With such a big book, well over a thousand pages long, curiosity alone won't get you through the whole thing to find out what the story is.

But this video from The Bible Project condenses the narrative so you can get the overall point of it in five and a half minutes.

Bible Project

Central to the worldview and foundation of Western Civilization is . . The Bible, a big book comprised of smaller books written over centuries. But who studies it anymore? In many cases, not even Christians or Jews -- and it's not in public government schools, as it once was. 

Maybe even you and your family have a fuzzy understanding of what it's about. The Bible Project was created to help. Short videos explain the smaller books and ideas within it, using animation.

Here's a description of what it actually is:

3YO reads The Hobbit

If you could educate your child or grandchild in any way that you believe to be most effective, would you pick a public school? A private school? Would you homeschool? What is the very best education a child can have?

According to this author, the very best method has been around for a very long time and it's not a secret. But it's not acceptable because it's inequitable. It's one-on-one tutoring (image), typically by a paid/adult/expert tutor. It's inequitable because it costs a lot. Aristocrats used to do it.

This author had the available time, so he taught his 3-year-old son to read and has a video of the child reading the first paragraph of The Hobbit. 

Maybe it's not for everybody. But the boy now has: the ability to learn on his own, the lifelong pleasure of reading, and more time to play instead of participating in the total "time suck our inefficient school system has become."

from The Free Press

Phone bans

Our children's welfare concerns all of us. When a book explaining that they're in trouble because of smartphones was published last year, the message went viral across America. A state governor thought it so important that she sent a copy of the book to every state governor.

Screens are addicting. Students really need to pay attention in school, but there's a phone in their pocket tempting them with instant gratification. Which is more fun, classroom work or TikTok?

Maybe that governor had a big affect on the country, because a total of 22 states took steps to restrict phones in school just this year (image).

Grown-ups build boundaries around school children for their protection in situations where they may not be prepared to protect themselves.

Inequality

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

As they start their second year, the new president gave a Convocation address that might deeply "offend" anyone from Harvard. He says that inequality is good and unavoidable.

As the American Declaration of Independence says, we are created equal, which we understand to mean equal in value and dignity. But we're not the same. "We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement."

Nobody is excellent in everything. But we must enable people to excel in the strengths they have. They must aspire to a high standard. Our country needs scholars who study and speak excellently, as well as carpenters who measure and build excellently. 

Everyone benefits from the strengths of others . . and they're not all the same.

UATX not Harvard

Follow-up to these posts

No phones or laptops in class, no grade inflation, no TA's leading discussion instead of professors. Students planted 2,977 American flags on 9/11 without anyone telling them to. They debate Aristotle, dress up for the symphony, and cook for each other.

This is the University of Austin (UATX). It was founded because places like Harvard totally dropped the ball in educating our young adults, and something had to be done. UATX was created to be what a university ought to be: "dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth."

Last year was their first year and they've just started their second. They've begun well. Time will tell whether they can survive the critics and establish success.

from If You Don't Want to Go to Harvard

(cont'd tomorrow)

Pencil 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It's no small thing to trace the making of the common pencil. 

A child could tell you about its parts. But when you think about what it would take, no individual person could actually create a pencil or even knows how.

You'd have to find a cedar on the west coast of the U.S., take it down, transport it to the mill--using saws and rope and equipment and trucks--which would have to be created from hemp that you grew in a field and metal that you mined from underground.

A lot of people at the lumber mill manage cutting the logs until they're in 1/4" strips, which are kiln-dried and tinted and waxed which requires belts and motors which require heat and light and power which require the hydro-electric plant which required the men who poured the concrete . . . It's endless. 

No master mind organizes the creation of a pencil. But millions are created . . through the mutual cooperation of millions of workers . . who don't know the others in the process or where their product is going. 

Our economy is almost miraculously run by skilled and creative people acting freely for their own benefit.

Pencil

Who cares about a pencil? 

Back in 1958, every child in America needed a pencil for school work. It was common and under-appreciated. An economist that year used this totally overlooked item to wake Americans up to the wonder of their economic system.

He wanted them to think about their pencil's genealogy - how did this common, cheap thing actually come into existence?

Test flight #10

Win or lose, "the goal is always to collect as much data as possible," to learn what works and what doesn't, to test for weaknesses. Test flights take place so SpaceX can intentionally stress Starship.

If you want to fly to Mars, you have to get out of the office and up into real space so you can learn what you don't know: like how to build the world's first "reusable orbital heat shield." It's never been done. But it will be.

After two scrubbed launch windows, Starship test flight #10 got off the ground Tuesday evening. SpaceX posted a two-hour live video full of information about work they did after the last flight and what they hope for in this flight. Actual launch starts at 46:45.

ADU 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Another use for an ADU would be to post it on Airbnb if you live in a popular destination area.

In fact, the co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, also co-founded Samara. If you want an ADU in your California backyard, they will come and install a prefabricated small house for you in just 6 weeks on your property. The whole process takes about seven months including your design choice, off-site build, land prep, on-site installation, permitting, and financing. 

Fyi: last week's "Nuclear Now" series told the story of Brazilian model Isabelle Boemeke, who made herself into a nuclear influencer. She happens to be married to Joe Gebbia.

ADU

Housing is getting more expensive. In some cases, building an ADU can help. 

ADU is an "accessory dwelling unit." It's a residence added to the lot which already has a bigger primary residence on it, to which it may or may not be attached. Local regulations vary, but there's usually at least a kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping room. 

It could be sold or it could be rented, in either case providing financial help to the primary property owner. It might be attractive to someone looking for a unit more affordable than a single family house on its own lot would be.

Another reason to have an ADU could be to provide housing to a relative or to a visitor. It could be your own work space, or studio, or a guesthouse.

(cont'd tomorrow)

AI & Nuclear 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Staggering" amounts of energy are needed for the coming build-out of artificial intelligence. Here's a comparison from the CNBC video below to illustrate it: just one ChatGPT query takes about 10x the power required for an ordinary Google search.

Even when new power plants come online, either public or privately owned by a tech company, our electricity grid is a concern. The average transformer is 38 years old.

Even water becomes a challenge. It's often used to cool down the servers so they can operate 24/7. One alternative is to use big air conditioning units instead of water.

It all adds up to huge consumption of resources.