OIL IS UP 10% LAST 5 DAYS Saudis are blamed but actually there has been a developing dearth of oil in the last 6 months. The bigger problem is gov’t spending. Budget deficit for fiscal 2023, ending end of Sept., is $1.74 Trillion= 6.5% of GDP. That’s the highest percent GDP deficit since WW II. Reagan presided over 5.9% but that was fighting the 1978-1982 recession. This one is happening when the economy should be in recovery and unemployment is 3.6%. There is no justification for such a deficit unless it’s WW III or a Great Depression. Thus fuel will rise from low supply and an inflating dollar. And when that happens, inflation elsewhere will re-arise, unless we fall into a nasty recession where no one has money to buy. Because of our fiscal madness that I hardly trust R’s who passed the omnibus porkulus last December along with the dysenterial spending D’s. It even worries me about Trump and several of the other R’s running. You can rah-rah a new program all you want but economics and numbers don’t lie. Get ready for stagflation—good to run against politically—but hell to pay when the bill comes due,, and wicked to stop for whoever gets to be President. Are there any real men and women to stand in the gap?
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Saturday, August 26, 2023
About those UAPs and aliens
Here are the problems with “Aliens” coming to visit us. First is the idea that a lot of complex life
is out there. We don’t think it occurs all over the place. In order to have a complex organism (brain,
arms, eyes, stomach, etc.) you have to have cell differentiation. Cells have to know if they are a liver cell
or a toe. And that means that a simple bacteria cell without a nucleus is not enough. You have to have a
nucleus and a ribonucleus and mitochondria.
The only theory for these that astrobiologists have come up with for
the presence of all these things within our cells are two extreme chance
events, the snowball earth episodes. The
first one 2.7 billion to 2.2billion years ago featured an ice age so long it
covered all or most of the earth, and for 500 million years. After this it seems that nuclei appeared (hard
to verify). The second snowball earth
evolved the ribonucleus and mitochondria.
The thinking is that individual cells of bacteria were so distressed by
the cold conditions that some symbiosis occurred that caused one cell to live within the other. If that is true, we should
find bacteria everywhere but complex life only once or a few times in a galaxy.
Since
the galaxy is so large it is unlikely that this happens closer than 10,000
light years apart.
Secondly,
to travel such distance would require travel faster than the speed of light.
But that creates time travel problems.
Going faster than the speed of light means going backwards in time. So you have the Back To The Future
problem. What if you go back in time and
change something? When you travel
forward then, the world becomes a different place than it was when you
left. And that causes violation of
casuality and other problems. So some
have said that any backwards time travel would be highly restrictive to not
change the future and maybe even won’t allow awareness of what you observed
from the past.
Put
this together, and say there is 1000 light years distant from you and a planet
you find you want to investigate. You’ve figured out how to violate the speed
of light. Likely you will use an unmanned drone to do this in which case you
have to transmit back at the speed of light and can travel at whatever speed
you can achieve. Whatever the case it
will take >1000 years to find results of your
investigation. Are you willing to wait
that long? What if the transmission is forbidden? What then? Are our UFO events really just drones from
somewhere else? If on the other hand, if the transporters contain real life, that presents a huge problem with our
current understanding of general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Evangelicals and Politics
Since
the 80s Evangelicals have tended to vote 70-80% Republican. A new study by
Duke’s Mark Chaves and Joseph Roso found that their clergy are pretty much in
sync with those views, while other Christian groups have other stories. First they did a study asking clergy
if they were more or less or much more liberal or conservative than church
members.
More liberal same more conservative
Evangelicals 12%
74% 14%
Black
Prot. 15% 70%
16%
Catholic 53% 28%
20%
Mainline 53% 33%
16%
For
years it has been known that mainline clergy are more liberal and 21% call
themselves much more liberal. Only 1% of Catholic clergy say they are much more
liberal. So as it turns out
Evangelical and Black Protestant clergy
say they pretty much the same as their parishioners. True in practice? They asked how clergy and
laity voted in 2016 how many voted for Trump
Laity clergy
Evangelicals 66%
80%
Black
Prot. 1% 5%
Catholic 49% 24%
Mainline 49% 16%
So
in fact, Evangelical pastors voted more for Trump than did parishioners. Blacks
voted very low for Trump but note that pastors voted more conservative than the
laity. Catholic clergy were half as likely to have voted for Trump and Mainline
pastors were 1/3 as likely. What this shows is that in his first election,
Trump did not get very many black votes at all and fewer evangelicals than most
R Presidents, only 66%. This was much
hyped in the media. What the Black and Evangelical politics shows is that when
there are many like-minded pastors the church can function well in GOTV
efforts.
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Things unexplained in Oppenheimer
I KNEW I’D GET MAD WATCHING OPPENHEIMER, because I know Hollywood. They spent much angst along with Oppie, replete with all the worries about the New World it started (20-20 hindsight), managed to insert sex and infidelity, but spent no time on an explanation of the atomic bomb. It’s not hard and here is a quick primer. Radioactive elements have nuclei with elevated states. When they decay they give off a lot of energy and sometimes the nucleus fractures. To make a bomb, you have to have a chain reaction, that is, self-sustaining reaction where one atom’s decay shoots off particles that cause more reactions and constant fission (nucleus splitting) If you can’t figure out how to make this chain reaction, there’s no bomb and no nuclear reactors. Next you have to have enough pure uranium 235, and make a charge that will suddenly implode i.e., bring all the reaction material together for a split second and activate all the reactions in an explosion.
Sunday, August 13, 2023
Bringing American Jobs back
BRINGING AMERICAN
JOBS HOME EASIER SAID THAN DONE. Taiwan semiconductor has built the world’s
largest chip factory in Phoenix. But
they are delaying opening a year because of worker shortages. Other plants in
Ohio have the same story. Trump wanted
manufacturing and especially electronics & chips to come home for our
security. Obvious strategy is to have control of chips and let the rest of the
world supply us with things chips go into. Congress passed the CHIPS Act for
huge federal subsidies. Trouble is, USA
has a deficit of 67,000 engineers and STEM workers and there are only 70,000 who
graduate each year. This is big stuff
since deficiency makes the difference between good productivity and labor costs stable
vs. high costs and low productivity in our STEM industries.
It’s more than a slim workforce. If you put tariffs on China, you might score
new contracts with India and Thailand.
But what if the plants there are buying lots of the parts from China? In
some cases, stuff from China gets repackaged and a third world country simply
acts as the middleman. Mexico, our supposed ally does a lot of this. Supply
chains get more complex, stuff gets higher priced from another middleman. And now many of the smaller Eastern countries
are becoming good friends with China, the supplier, and not USA. They distrust USA who won’t work on new trade
agreements.
What to do? First, work with Puerto Rico,
once the chief source of pharmaceuticals. They are us and need jobs. Next
tariff content. If parts came from China
in a device made in India, assess ‘em.
Third, work on trade agreements with the Far Eastern countries. (Yet
Trump didn’t want these and Biden/Blinken are too stupid to do them). Fourth fix the broken borders and fix the
visa program to allow educated foreigners to come here for jobs. (Biden
tolerates chaos and Trump didn’t want many foreigners getting Visas) 40% of semiconductor jobs are filled by
foreigners since US kids don’t take enough STEM classes (Ungh! Too hard! I
wanna party through college!) Fifth, concerning Defense, the manufacturers are
dragging feet about replenishing weapons and ammo we gave the Ukrainians. That’s because Dems defunded for years. This also risks losing our edge in new
military technology if research investment is stifled. A more steady purchase stream needs to be
worked out with weapons manufacturers (lest in time of war we suddenly have
idled plants).
There is more to this than Trump and
Biden’s tariffs. We need to play this game smarter.
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
Decline in US churches
METHODISM, ONCE USA’S
LARGEST DENOMINATION, IS IN CRISIS as are many churches with declining
membership. This year, 16% of the UMC
churches have quit and by 2025 an estimated 25% will leave over leftist
doctrine. This doesn’t count the many
individual conservatives who will likely leave (44% of members call themselves
very conservative). Estimates that the 11 million in 1969 will decline to about
4 million in 2025. A major obstacle,
ownership of all church properties by the UMC, has now been relaxed allowing
churches that don’t want to stay to keep their place of worship.
Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists and many
others have faced similar splits and declines. Even the American Catholic church was shrinking until
the Latino surge. What should Christianity do? I Thessalonians 1 has the
key. Scholars say that of all the
churches Paul started, only 2 thrived, grew and became large centers of
Christianity in the second century—Ephesus and Thessalonica. So Paul’s letter
to Thessalonica was to a thriving church and was full of thanksgiving and
praise. Thessalonica’s key on the personal level is in chapter 1 verses 9 and
10, “for you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and wait
for His Son from heaven.” An important
word is “wait”. That, to the Hebrews
meant to talk to God a lot and then wait for the answer. In present
terminology, “have a real close relationship with God.” Watch Him answer. This fits with my own observations
from being in 4 interdenominational groups: Christians who involve themselves
in much confession, prayer and reading of the Word often become rock solid in
faith and the happiest people. Once a
Christian realizes that God has done the work (saving you), yet one remains a
messed-up person in practice, it’s obvious God is after more. Those
who start finding answers to personal problems in passages they’ve read a dozen
times before chance upon new meaning. Hearing
His voice nudging your thoughts, hearing it echoed from like-minded friends, perhaps
even some wildly cool experiences creates a deep unforgettable bond to God. And
nothing can take that away. This is the
Holy Spirit at work. Knowing God is near gives confidence unlike anything else.
If then a church has a nucleus of such humble believers, such people often find
they can’t shut up about the faith, the experiences, the delight in serving
others. When the group focus is Jesus (vs. 8), quibbling mostly stops. When they
imitate good leadership and their Lord, despite obstacles(vs.6), they grow. Such
was the Thessolonians and many other Christian groups since.
Face time in confession to God is critical.
It is there that the Christian realizes how spiritually dependent they are and
the frequent conversation with God comes
about. Theology isn’t just theory. Church isn’t just allegiance. Justified by
faith in God’s grace means that you must utterly accept His definitions and
rules. If He says it is sin, it is. To deny that, to label some sins non-sins takes
that sin off the table for forgiveness. In political compromises or indulgence, faith dwindles. The dystopic
can’t reach out to God if he/she sees no problem with the self (a recipe for
despair). Yet in God’s upside down
economy, a murderer is in the same boat as a the gossip spreading dirt about
the neighbor.
Good News! God’s pushing your boat.
This writer thinks the problem is more
than just leftist views in the churches.
It is more like the seed that fell among the weeds in Jesus’ Parable of
the Sower. The weeds, cares of the world,
are choking out Christian belief. The popular
culture convinces that all mankind’s longings are likely to be solved only by
science, economics, politics, etc. But
Christians realize that there’s more than just the physical universe. There’s a force beyond that reveals Himself
to us. And in the still small voice of
God inside, He wants to weld you to Himself to revolutionize the world.
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Florida Black History guidelines
FLORIDA’S BLACK
HISTORY GUIDELINES
state that slaves often learned new things that gave them personal benefit.
This is a well-documented but ironic historic fact. Former slaves that returned
to African Liberia were received as highly skilled and leaders by the tribes
that were indigeonous. Venture Smith’s
biography of living a slaves life is the story of a smart guy who learned so
much about European tools, weapons, finances, and business that he bought
himself and his wife and children out of slavery and established a refuge farm
for other former slaves to learn. If someone refuses to accept Florida’s
guideline, just ask this question, “Did colonialism allow Africans the ability
to learn new things to benefit themselves?”
Because the Africans resoundingly agree with this. Hated every minute of colonialism but picked
up a lot of new techniques and learning from their European masters. When the English left Nigeria, there was
great celebration (like there was all over Africa with independence) but then
everybody realized that very few people could make the trains work. In fact, the Ibos from SE Nigeria, who had
been on poor farms, managed to shinny up to the Brits and learn new
skills. A 10% minority of Ibo people ran
up running everything. And they were
highly resented by Muslims and farmers from the SW where the soil was
good. A civil war ensued in the 1970s
resulting in killing off half the Ibos.
Result, Nigeria fell even further behind. Such resentments played out in Rwanda and all
over Africa. Similarly, chattel slavery
from 1820 to 1860 was very cruel in the South, but unlike the Caribbean and
Brazil, slaves often had opportunities to learn new stuff and made it pay. And why was slavery different in USA? Life spans were longer with no sugar fields
full of mosquitos. The country had a
Christian culture that frowned on freeing elderly slaves who couldn’t sustain
themselves. Turningn the elders loose
out in a forest was a death sentence and churches railed against the
practice. Third there was a lot of
illegitimacy making half bloods, and masters and overseers felt guilty and made
such offspring house slaves educating some alongside white children. But laws and culture was against the freed
slaves after 1865 because the poor anglos saw those slaves as rivals and
demanded Jim Crow. I need to stop writing.
There’s much complexity to American slavery that the Democrat activists
won’t listen to.