Christianity versus Capitalism

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Christianity versus Capitalism, a common battle… I, myself, am a Christian AND a capitalist!  This creates an interesting scenario and discussion especially with favorite authors such as atheist Ayn Rand.  The following video from CATO is great regarding this common confusion. This is by Jay W Richards, author of “Money, Greed, and God”.

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A day in the life of Visionary Photographer

Chase Jarvis is a personal fave in the photo world.  I really dig the video he submitted for Nikon’s 140 second film contest.  Check it out:

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Check out the new “Art” Blog

Well, I’ve decided to move the art and pics to another blog.  This one will be dedicated as a source to find what I’m working on. It is my way of getting this stuff out there so someone other than me and my camera see it.  It gets kind of lonely that way.  For now, the blog is found at www.artbybilly.com but may very well change soon.  Either way, this link will still get you there.  See the latest and give me some pointers if you wouldn’t mind! (You’d think I’d at least have a pic in this post to kick start it but no, that’s too much extra work, just click and see a bunch of them).

Art & Photo Blog

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The new “green” nuclear power

A recent article in Wired discussed a “new”ish method of nuclear power utilizing thorium instead of uranium.  It appears to be cheaper, safer, more efficient, takes up less space and goes forever.  So why can’t we get more buy in?  Nuke is nuke I suppose.  Lets forget the cap-n-trade crap or quit burning bundles of carbon to get to Copenhagen and develop this stuff! That’s my “global warming” answer.  Now only if the government will back off to allow it and hopefully some archaic nuclear utilities will explore it too.  One of the big proponents, Kirk Sorensen, runs a blog called “Energy from Thorium“.  Check it out, the first “open source project” for nuclear power.  The article is excellent and interesting. Check out this comparison sheet from the article of three possible reactors:

  • Uranium-Fueled Light-Water Reactor
  • Fuel Uranium fuel rods
  • Fuel input per gigawatt output 250 tons raw uranium
  • Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $50-60 million
  • Coolant Water
  • Proliferation potential Medium
  • Footprint 200,000-300,000 square feet, surrounded by a low-density population zone
  • Seed-and-Blanket Reactor
  • Fuel Thorium oxide and uranium oxide rods
  • Fuel input per gigawatt output 4.6 tons raw thorium, 177 tons raw uranium
  • Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $50-60 million
  • Coolant Water
  • Proliferation potential None
  • Footprint 200,000-300,000 square feet, surrounded by a low-density population zone
  • Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
  • Fuel Thorium and uranium fluoride solution
  • Fuel input per gigawatt output 1 ton raw thorium
  • Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $10,000 (estimated)
  • Coolant Self-regulating
  • Proliferation potential None
  • Footprint 2,000-3,000 square feet, with no need for a buffer zone
  • Well, I’m sold (at least enough to want to explore it further!)

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    John Stossel: Protocol for Climate Change

    John Stossel always levels the playing field a bit. In this clip, he discusses climate change with Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute. The key point is not an argument over whether it is good to live sustainably but whether the methods paraded by most are worth the paper they are written on! It’s not even an argument over whether your Hummer really hurts the environment, just a look at the realities of the proposed “solutions”. Check it out! under 10 minutes…

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    Pics from Utah and California

    The following are from our Thanksgiving in Southern California with family.  As you can see, the sunsets were just going off! It was gorgeous… Click on any of the pics to get a better view…

    AlisoCreekSunset

    Above is Aliso Creek Beach

    BeachHouseSunset

    Mussel Shoals Beach

    Prego4x6-2

    My lovely pregnant wife at Aliso Creek

    OilCities

    The oil platforms viewed from Mussel Shoals.  They are out there a ways.

    Oil Island sunset

    Mussel Shoals island which is an oil platform in disguise!

    The following are all in Utah:

    BridalVeilFallsBlueSky

    Bridal Veil Falls

    BridalVeilFalls2

    Another…

    October-AlpineLoop

    The Alpine Loop

    DeerValley ViewFromTop

    From the top of Deer Valley

    JordanelleFromDeerValley

    Jordanelle viewed from the top of Deer Valley

    Good times, fun pics…

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    Good Movies, bad messages…Top 10

    The following list is from a post found on Geek Dad here. These are a bunch of good movies that carry a base message that’s not so appealing.  Its interesting when you really think about them… Check out he original post again, here.

    10. If you’re not born with special abilities, you’re never going to be any good at some things, no matter how hard you try (from the Harry Potter movies, and, of course, books). In the world of Harry Potter, there are those who are born with magical abilities, and those who aren’t. There’s even a word, “squib,” for people born to wizarding families who can’t do magic. It’s made very clear in the stories that, if you’re unlucky enough to be born without magical talent, you’re never going to amount to anything in that world and might as well not try.

    9. No matter how appallingly bad conditions on Earth get, so long as there is one tiny plant on the planet, it can still be restored to its former beauty and sustainability (from WALL-E). In WALL-E, Earth is depicted as essentially one big desolate, deteriorated waste dump. Then WALL-E finds one tiny little green plant, and that is evidently enough to constitute proof that the planet can be reclaimed. That’s one small plant in the midst of millions of square miles of garbage and lifeless expanse. It kind of flies in the face of the desired message behind the film to imply that, no matter how badly we screw things up, one dinky little leafy green thing will constitute hope for all of humanity.

    8. Technology is fundamentally evil (from lots of movies, including the The Lord of the Rings trilogy). This message comes pretty much unchanged from the books, but it’s much easier to see it in the movies. You see the orcs destroying trees, building fires and operating machinery both to produce more orcs and to assist them in combat. By contrast, the various forces of good rely on intellect, magic, swordsmanship, archery and a fair helping of luck. Can there be a doubt about the message there?

    7. Arrogance, brash self-confidence and having had a heroic father are much more indicative of a competent leader than are experience and knowledge (from the 2009 Star Trek movie). Jim Kirk rises from a cadet with a disciplinary hearing hanging over his head to captain of the Enterprise in a matter of days, maybe even hours. This is due partly to his making an astonishingly unlikely connection between the report on the Romulan miner ship and what he remembers reading about the encounter when his father died. But it’s mostly due to Captain Pike’s experience working with Kirk’s father and the fact that Kirk acts like an arrogant jackass that he gets bumped up to First Officer so rapidly. Never mind the fact there have to be dozens, if not hundreds, of far more experienced officers (even if they’re not on the Enterprise) who would be better-suited to the captain’s chair than the alternate Kirk as presented in the film. So, even if Kirk did manage to become the ship’s captain towards the end of that adventure, how could he hope to keep the job (other than, of course, that it’s his destiny)?

    6. Kissing sleeping women you don’t know will wake them up and lead to them falling in love with you (from Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). We don’t really need to explain this one further than that, do we? I mean, we all know the stories.

    5. If you’re a really good person, but in a lousy situation, simply wait around and eventually good things will just happen to you (from Cinderella). Cinderella ends up living happily ever after, but not because of anything she did. If the Fairy Godmother (a deus ex machina if ever there was one) hadn’t appeared, it’s a sure thing Cinderella wouldn’t have done anything on her own to get out of the house. Yes, her stepmother and stepsisters treated her terribly, and one could argue that she deserves a Fairy Godmother. But — stop me if you’ve heard this before — life isn’t fair, so why should she get something just because karma says she deserves it?

    4. Unconventional creative play is very, very wrong (from Toy Story). Sid, the kid next door, is portrayed as basically evil. The movie makes him out this way because he pulls toys apart and reassembles them in strange ways, and likes to blow things up. In other words, he’s a geek. If the toys weren’t alive — and Sid can probably be forgiven for not realizing that they were — his behavior would be perhaps a little extreme, but not in any way wrong, especially for a boy his age.

    3. Even tough women who aren’t afraid to fight aren’t as important as the men they fight alongside (from the Star Wars movies). - Princess Leia, despite being very comfortable giving orders and shooting at stormtroopers, always hands off the really important jobs to men. Luke tells her that she’s his sister and Darth Vader is their father, and by the way he’s going off to confront daddy to try to turn him back to being a good guy, and she doesn’t insist on coming with him or joining him later. On Hoth, Luke and Han are out scouting on Tauntauns, but she’s back at the base where it’s nice and warm. And then there’s Padme, who kicks a fair bit of butt, but only until she and Anakin get secretly married, at which point she essentially vanishes except to talk about her pregnancy and her worries about her husband. As we know, of course, pregnant women are incapable of doing anything except sitting around worrying, right?

    2. It’s OK to completely change your physical appearance and way of life for the person you love, even if he makes no sacrifices at all (from The Little Mermaid). This movie has the single most appalling ending of any Disney movie ever made, which is a shame because, apart from that, it’s a great film. I just cannot comprehend how anyone could make a movie in the late 1980s with this message, which is not exactly subtle: Ariel gives up her home, her family, and BEING A MERMAID because she loves Eric so. And he gives up … nothing. Yeah, that marriage is off to a great start.

    1. If you’re not a member of the elite, you’re basically inconsequential, even if you die heroically trying to save your people and your way of life (from the Star Wars movies). This crops up time and time again in the series, but nowhere is it more clearly demonstrated in the assault on the first Death Star. We mentioned it a few months ago, but here it is again: There are somewhere between 20 and 30 one-man fighters in the assault, right? And of all of those guys, only Luke, Wedge and some guy in a Y-wing make it back (and Han and Chewie, of course, but they weren’t part of the original team). So that means that in this fight, despite its amazing success, the rebels lost somewhere between 17 and 27 of their very best, bravest pilots. Yet all they can do is cheer as Luke descends the ladder of his X-wing. Luke cheers, too, hugs Leia, and is absolutely ecstatic … until he realizes that R2-D2 got badly damaged in the fight, at which point he is nearly distraught. Losing fellow human beings, including a good friend of his, that doesn’t matter; possibly losing a cute but replaceable machine, now that’s sad. And of course then there’s the whole matter of Vader being redeemed because he saved his own son’s life, never mind the thousands of people whose deaths he was responsible for.

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    Cartoon: the biggest ponzi schemes?

    I haven’t posted a cartoon for a while and decided I’m overdue. I ran across this a while back and that it was awesome:

    This is found over at the Freeman Online, here.  It makes you think about the morality of the system!

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    Book Review: FREE, The future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

    Free: The Future of a Radical Price Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars
    Chris Anderson did a wonderful job with this book. It is fascinating to see the economic trends of today’s digital age. What I find interesting with Chris as well is the fact that he is editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine, periodicals being one of the most damaged industries by “free”. Chris, however, is embracing free and incorporating it into Wired’s business model. He identifies many forms of free in the marketplace and how business models have and are being developed around it. A few reviews and criticisms I’ve read about the book make me wonder if these critics have even read it! The idea is not some interesting version of radical social reform where we ought to give everything away and frolic in the meadows holding hands. It is a very productive economic innovation that is naturally occurring as the marginal costs of digital information fall to near zero. The trick is simply to identify and accept it, thus opening the creative capacity to find unique and new innovations to traditional business modeling. We simply have to turn the ol’ brain back on and think a bit! What happens is a universal win/win. Innovation is more rapid, consumers have more affordable (free) choices for services, and business continues to expand in new ways. There definitely exists an element of creative destruction as some industries are dismantled by new technologies, making way for new businesses or simply requiring old businesses to adapt more readily (some have, some haven’t and are toast). I highly recommend this book.

    View all my reviews >>

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    Living “small” is cool…

    This dude is awesome! I couldn’t do it, live in 96 square feet but I respect anyone who can. He’s even an entrepreneur, turning his passion into a niche business. Respect… I found this on 37 Signals’ Blog Signal vs Noise (sweet blog of course). Check out the vid:

    Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company designs and builds small houses ranging from 65 to 837 square feet. He’s spent the last 10 years living in his tiny houses. In this video he gives a tour of a 96 square foot house.

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