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AN INTERESTING WEB DESTINATION
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The scientists said that in September 2015 the hole was around 4
million sq km smaller than it was in the year 2000 -- an area roughly
the size of India.
The gains have been credited to the long term phasing
out of ozone-destroying chemicals.
[The study also sheds new light on the role of volcanoes in making the problem worse.]
The ozone-destroying chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), have been shown to be declining
in their influence, causing the ozone layer to grow once more.
"Even
though we phased out the production of CFCs in all countries including
India and China around the year 2000, there's still a lot of chlorine
left in the atmosphere," Prof Solomon told the BBC World Service Science in Action
program.
"It has a lifetime of about 50-100 years, so it is starting to
slowly decay and the ozone will slowly recover."
Scientists also
believe that volcanic sulphur can form tiny particles that act as seeds
to Polar Stratospheric Clouds, where chlorine chemistry occurs that destroys the ozone.
***
As always our handlers program all of us to believe what they want us to believe, public perception.
For years, the most common refrigerant gas used in air-conditioning systems was R-22 (Freon).
Freon is an “odorless, tasteless, chemically
neutral substance” and is in fact “heavier than air.”
This means that
according to “the laws of physics” Freon “cannot rise into the
atmosphere.”
That’s because it is “heavier than air by a minimum of a
four-to-one ratio.”
Freon isn’t harmful if it is
“spilled onto the ground.”
It simply becomes “plant
food.”
If all of this is true, then why did the EPA designate Freon harmful
to environment and push to have it banned?
DuPont and the EPA conspired to protect the corporation’s
bottom line.
With the expiring patent on Freon, DuPont would lose the revenues
and market dominance and Freon would be available to the world for very
little cost.
Freon is easy to produce at a cost of only $.50 to
$1.00 per pound.
However, since it’s been banned, Freon now sells on the
world black markets for over $50 per pound.
DuPont came up with a new patented replacement and all was well for DuPont.
Freon was developed and patented by the DuPont Company.
Ironically, the DuPont
patents on Freon ran out at about the same time the government decrees to
ban the use of Freon were issued.
The leading replacement substances for
Freon were also developed by DuPont.
The Freon (HCFC) substances are far
more costly and far more complex, to the extent that DuPont stands to make
untold billions of dollars on the change out of this substance, and consumers
will have an inferior product.
Further, the DuPont substitutes have no supporting
data to prove they meet environmental needs.
Freon, the "villain", is an odorless, tasteless, chemically neutral substance,
which is HEAVIER THAN AIR, and by the laws of physics cannot rise into the
atmosphere.
If is spilled on the ground, it will settle in the soil and become
plant food.
It meets the Biblical standard of "ashes to ashes and dust to
dust."
With the expiration of the DuPont patents, Freon would have been readily
available as an air conditioning and refrigeration substance for the entire
world, including Third World Countries, at affordable rates.
According to
THE FACT FINDER, P.O. Box A, Scottsdale, AZ 85252, (1/16/95), DuPont owners
have direct ties to the NEW AGE-ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT which, in turn has
ties to the EPA and such luminaries as Vice President Al Gore.
Gore has ties
to THE NEW WORLD ORDER of George Bush and Bill Clinton.
According to THE
FACT FINDER, Charles Bronfman of Seagrams, who controls the Board of Directors
of DuPont, led the fight against Freon, his own product, because the DuPont
patents to control Freon had run out.
Our upper atmosphere does contain Ozone (O3) (a compound made up of three
oxygen atoms) as claimed by government and new age people.
The atmosphere
also contains a large amount of natural oxygen (O2) (made up of two oxygen
atoms) in its natural state.
About twenty per cent of the air we breath is
Natural Oxygen (O2).
Ozone is formed in the atmosphere by a break up on natural
oxygen molecules (O2).
This break up occurs in the atmosphere when certain
ultraviolet sun rays strike Oxygen molecules and split them in half.
The
split single Oxygen atoms (O1) are very unstable, and quickly attach themselves
to other natural occurring Oxygen molecules (O2) with two Oxygen atoms to
form Ozone (O3).
At any given time, there are several tons of Ozone produced
every second in the atmosphere five to twenty five miles above the earth.
As long as there is natural Oxygen molecules (O2) and sun light, there will
be Ozone (O3), a natural law of basic science.
In a speech about the perils of "consolidation and concentration"
throughout the economy, the Massachusetts senator singled out the three
of tech's biggest players.
From a report:
Warren had different beefs
with Google, Apple and Amazon, but the common thread was that she
accused each one of using its powerful platform to "lock out smaller
guys and newer guys," including some that compete with Google, Apple and
Amazon.
Google, she said, uses "its dominant search engine to harm
rivals of its Google Plus user review feature;" Apple "has placed
conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer
competitive streaming services" that compete with Apple Music; and
Amazon "uses its position as the dominant bookseller to steer consumers
to books published by Amazon to the detriment of other publishers."
"Google,
Apple and Amazon have created disruptive technologies that changed the
world, and ... they deserve to be highly profitable and successful,"
Warren said. "But the opportunity to compete must remain open for new
entrants and smaller competitors that want their chance to change the
world again."
***
In my world as a painter the Sherwin Williams paint company is doing much the same.
Henry Sherwin And Edward Williams started their company in 1866.
Sherwin Williams bought out the Old Quaker Paints company,
Frazee Paints, Purdy paint brushes, and Valspar products.
They have also bought out Canada's Comex which supplies paint and coatings products to approximately 1,500 external retail locations in Canada.
With no one to stop them soon enough paints and materials for painting will go up in price because of their unchecked monopoly.
Founded in 1925, Purdy requires new brush makers to apprentice for six
months before they can produce a single product, each of which bears the
name of the person who hand-crafted it.
Purdy products are considered
the gold standard among painting professionals.
Sherwin-Williams’ management has a long history of rewarding shareholders with rising dividend payments. The company has paid increasing dividends for 37 consecutive years. This makes Sherwin-Williams 1 of only 50 Dividend Aristocrats.
The company’s stock currently has a 1.2% dividend yield. Despite its long corporate history Sherwin-Williams is still in growth mode.
This growth is reflected in the rise of Sherwin-Williams stock price over the last several years:
The company is realizing growth by consolidating the fragmented coatings industry.
But is this a good thing for the consumer in the long run?
Among its stars are Penn
Jillette, the magician and libertarian, and Bill Nye, who has built his
entire reputation in popular science on the strength of his charisma,
without even a master's degree behind his name.
Bill Maher is on the lineup, as is the comedian Lewis Black.
The
heads of American Atheists and the Center of Inquiry and the Freedom
From Religion Foundationare speaking.
Members of the Wu-Tang Clan have come.
Two members of Congresswill be speaking, although their remarks will be confined to the case for secular pluralism in law.
Psalm 14:1
says that denying God’s existence is commonly based on a desire to lead
a wicked life.
Several prominent atheists have admitted the truth of
this.
Some, such as author Aldous Huxley, have openly admitted that a
desire to avoid moral restraints was a motivation for their disbelief.
Belief in a divine Being is accompanied by a
sense of accountability to that Being.
So, to escape the condemnation
of conscience, which itself was created by God, some simply deny the
existence of God.
They tell themselves, “There is no overseer of the
world.
There is no Judgment Day.
I can live as I please.”
The moral pull
of the conscience is thus more easily ignored.
Trying to convince oneself there is no God
is unwise.
The point of “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”
is that it is an impious, sinful heart that will deny God.
The atheist’s
denial flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary, including
his own conscience and the universe he lives in.
A lack of evidence of God’s existence is
not the true reason atheists reject a belief in God.
Their rejection is
due to a desire to live free of the moral constraints God requires and
to escape the guilt that accompanies the violation of those constraints.
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the
godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their
wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them . . . so
that people are without excuse…
Their thinking became futile and their
foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they
became fools…
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their
hearts…
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:18–25).
Proverb 14:12, “There
is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the
ways of death.”
In Proverbs 21:2 we read:
"Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts."
the Bible gives us the answer:
In the way of righteousness [is] life; and [in] the pathway [thereof there is] no death. - Proverbs 12:28
For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things [is] death. - Romans 6:20-21
In the way of righteousness (obedience or right-doing) is life, in the pathway of righteousness is no death.
Then (in Romans 6:20-21) we see the bible describing people who were
servants of sin, we read that while they were servants of sin they "were free from righteousness".
In other words they were unrighteous. What would have been the end
result or fruit of their unrighteousness?
The verse plainly says it "the end of those things is death"
So the way that seems right but ends up a way of death is the way of
unrighteousness.
The way of that leads to life is the way of
righteousness.
So now, let's go and look at the last half of Proverbs 21:2.
"Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts."
We can, by doing what seems right in our own eyes, appear to look
good on the outside.
But the Lord knows our heart and what is truly
going on inside of us.
If we understand the true condition of our heart, then we'll understand why the way of unrighteousness seems right.
In Jeremiah 17:9 the Bible says:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
You see, we are living in a sad and tragic world of sin (or
unrighteousness).
By very nature sin has a corrupting and contaminating
effect.
When sin entered the human race the heart that once was
naturally inclined to obey its creator, received the impress of sin and
became naturally inclined to disobey.
This is the problem, you and I all have this natural heart that is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
It seems right in our
own eyes to follow what our heart is telling us to do, rather than to
follow what God asks of us.
But let's not be deceived!
This way is not
the way that leads to life.
The good news is that it doesn't have to be like this!
Jesus has
provided a way so that every believing person can be saved from sin and
their deceitful and wicked heart.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? - John 11:25-26
Jesus, dear reader, is life.
If we believe in His great love for us
and in His mission as a saviour for our sins, indeed if we receive Him
into our hearts and accept His great sacrifice as if it was just for me,
then although we used to follow the ways of death we will be empowered
by Him to follow the way that leads to everlasting life.
The question for you and I today is "Believest thou this" ?
Day by day, hour by hour through faith in the power and grace of
Jesus, we will have a new, clean and pure heart created in us, a heart
that isn't naturally inclined to sin.
May our prayer each day be:
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. - Psalms 51:10
Psalm 118:24
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Google is now offering to use its behavioral information to tailer ads
shown across the wider non-Google internet and Google's search pages,
which until now was purely done through the use of cookies.
The
difference between Google and other companies that offer ads like
Facebook is that Google is
You think that water coming from your faucet is safe for you and your family to drink, right?
After all this is America.
"Imagine a cop sitting, watching people run stop signs, and speed at 90
miles per hour in small communities and still doing absolutely nothing
about it -- knowing the people who are violating the law.
I use a six stage water filtration system to remove everything that is put into my water.
After
much research to find an affordable water purifying system I settled
upon a do it yourself system that gave me really incredible value per dollar
spent.
Google appears to want a piece of the action as they are
trying out a way for people to check their internet speed by simply typing "check internet speed" into search.
There are big "no trespassing" signs affixed to most of our
electronics.
If you own a gaming console, laptop, or computer, it's
likely you've seen one of these warnings in the form of a sticker placed
over a screw or a seam:
"Warranty void if removed." In addition, big
manufacturers such as Sony, Microsoft, and Apple explicitly note or
imply in their official agreements that their year-long manufacturer
warranties -- which entitle you to a replacement or repair if your
device is defective -- are void if consumers attempt to repair their
gadgets or take them to a third party repair professional.
Infrastructure and agriculture make up the
largest chunks of the potential value -- some $77.6 billion between them
-- including services like completing the last mile of delivery routes
and spraying crops with laser-like precision.
Economists seem to agree
that robot automation poses real threats to human labour within the next
few decades.
Drones are a cheap, versatile first step toward that
future.
According to the new PwC report, they're also a solid
cost-cutting measure.
Along with infrastructure and agriculture, drones
will help tech giants like Amazon deliver packages,
allow security companies to better monitor their sites, help producers
and advertisers to film projects, allow telecommunication firms to easily check on their towers, and give mining companies a new way to plan their digs.
The company said it will have self-service ordering kiosks available to
its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year. Wendy's
President Todd Penegor said it will be up to franchisees to decide
whether or not to adopt the kiosks in their stores, noting that many
franchise locations have had to raise prices to offset wage increases.
About 75% of 200-plus Wendy's restaurants are run by
franchisees in New York, a state that is also on its way to $15.
Penegor said, wage pressures have been manageable both because of
falling commodity prices and better operating leverage due to an
increase in customer counts.
The company is still "working so hard to
find efficiencies" so it can deliver "a new QSR experience but at
traditional QSR prices."
In a blog post the company compares its "wearable robot" prototype to an Iron Man suit, saying it gives the wearer extra strength,
allowing them to lift objects "hundreds of kilograms" in weight.
The
company says that in the future the exoskeleton could be used in
factories, by the military, or to help with physical rehabilitation.
The suit appears to be a development of Hyundai's H-LEX platform.
Hyundai isn't the only one working on robotic exoskeletons.
Google says its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) advances machine learning capability by a factor of three generations.
"TPUs deliver an order of magnitude higher performance per watt than
all commercially available GPUs and FPGA," said Google CEO Sundar Pichai
during the company's I/O developer conference on Wednesday.
The chips powered the AlphaGo computer
that beat Lee Sedol, world champion of the game called Go. "We've been
running TPUs inside our data centers for more than a year, and have
found them to deliver an order of magnitude better-optimized performance
per watt for machine learning.
This is roughly equivalent to
fast-forwarding technology about seven years into the future (three
generations of Moore's Law)," said Google's blog post.
"TPU is tailored to machine learning applications, allowing the chip to
be more tolerant of reduced computational precision, which means it
requires fewer transistors per operation.
Because of this, we can
squeeze more operations per second into the silicon, use more
sophisticated and powerful machine learning models, and apply these
models more quickly, so users get more intelligent results more
rapidly."
The chip is called the Tensor Processing Unit because it underpins TensorFlow, the software engine that powers its deep learning services under an open-source license.
While machines from the likes of RoboCop and Chappie might just be the reserve of films for now, this new type of robot is already fighting crime.
Equipped
with self-navigation, infra-red cameras and microphones that can detect
breaking glass, the robots, designed by Knightscope, are intended to support security services.
Stacy Dean Stephens, who came up with the idea, told The Guardian
the problem that needed solving was one of intelligence.
"And the only
way to gain accurate intelligence is through eyes and ears," he said.
"So, we started looking at different ways to deploy eyes and ears into
situations like that."
The robot costs about $7 an hour to rent and
was inspired by the Sandy Hook school shooting after which it was
claimed 12 lives could have been saved if officers arrived a minute
earlier.
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,"
doesn't have a very optimistic view of the future when it comes to
artificial intelligence.
He writes about how humans "might end up
jobless and aimless, whiling away our days off our nuts and drugs, with
VR headsets strapped to our faces," writes The Guardian. "Harari calls
it 'the rise of the useless class' and ranks it as one of the most dire
threats of the 21st century.
No one knows what to study at college, because no one knows what skills
learned at 20 will be relevant at 40. Before you know it, billions of
people are useless, not through chance but by definition."
He likens his
predictions, which have been been forecasted by others for at least 200
years, to the boy who cried wolf, saying, "But in the original story of
the boy who cried wolf, in the end, the wolf actually comes, and I
think that is true this time."
Harari says there are two kinds of
ability that make humans useful: physical ones and cognitive ones.
He
says humans have been largely safe in their work when it comes to
cognitive powers.
But with AI's now beginning to outperform humans in
this field, Harari says, that even though new types of jobs will emerge,
we cannot be sure that humans will do them better than AIs, computers
and robots.
As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages,
many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the
picture.
"I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you
look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry
-- it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour
(warning: autoplaying video) bagging French fries -- it's nonsense and
it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a
job loss across this country like you're not going to believe," said
former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX
Business Network's Mornings with Maria.
According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 1.3 million people earned the current minimum wage of $7.25
per hour with about 1.7 million having wages below the federal minimum
in 2014.
These three million workers combined made up 3.9 percent of all
hourly paid workers.
a loss of existing jobs, and making sure humans remain in control of
super-intelligent machines. Gates, as well as many other experts in the
field, predict there will be an excess of labor resources as robots and
AI systems take over.
He plans to talk with others about ideas to combat
the threat of AI controlling humans, specifically noting work being
done at Stanford.
Even with such threats, Gates called AI the "holy grail"
as he envisions a future "with machines that are capable and more
capable than human intelligence."
Gates said, "We've made more progress
in the last five years than at any time in history. [...]
Sarah Jeanette Connor is a fictional character in the Terminator
franchise. She is the protagonist of The Terminator, Terminator 2:
Judgment Day and Terminator Genisys, and the television series
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The dream is
finally arriving.
This is what it was all leading up to."
You will be hearing a lot about AI and machine learning in the coming
years.
From a Reuters report (condensed): Sundar
Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet's Google, said he sees a "huge
opportunity" in AI.
Google first started applying the technology through
"deep neural networks" to voice recognition software about three to
four years ago and is ahead of rivals such as Amazon.com, Apple, and
Microsoft in machine learning, Pichai said. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
predicted a profound impact on society over the next 20 years.
"It's
really early but I think we're on the edge of a golden era.
It's going
to be so exciting to see what happens," he said.
IBM CEO Ginni
Rometty said the company has been working on artificial technology,
which she calls a cognitive system, since 2005 when it started
developing its Watson supercomputer.
Artificial intelligence and
machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that
humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up,
Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this
week.
Microsoft, which was absent from the event, is also working on bots and AI technologies.
One Australian site is now also asking whether the program could work
in Australia, noting that currently the country spends around $3 billion
on their Centrelink welfare system, "so simplification can offer huge potential savings."
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction
to improving technology.
"In a future in which robots decimate the jobs
but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to
afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs
or requirements...
In an increasingly digital economy, it would also
provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the
apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
Leo's baggage compartment opens when passengers press his 'Scan and
Fly' touch interface, which can also print luggage tags and display a
departure time and boarding gate, before delivering their luggage to a
baggage handler.
The airport's head of IT said the new robot "limits the
number of bags in the airport terminal, helping us accommodate a
growing number of passengers without compromising the airport experience
inside the terminal."
And the robot's developer says it proves that
robotics "hold the key to more effective, secure and smarter baggage
handling and is major step towards further automating bag handling in
airports."
A Hot Hardware article about Google's research effort "to maintain control of super-intelligent AI agents":
The team has released a white paper on the topic called "Safely
Interruptible Agents."
The paper details the following in abstract:
"Learning agents interacting with a complex environment like the real
world are unlikely to behave optimally all the time... now and then it
may be necessary for a human operator to press the big red button to
prevent the agent from continuing a harmful sequence of actions..."
MojoKid adds that the paper "goes on to explain that these AI agents
might also learn to disable the kill switch and further explores ways in
which to develop AI's that would not seek such an activity."
$30M Stampede 2 Supercomputer To Provide 18 Petaflops of Power To Researchers Nationwide (techcrunch.com)
Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and built at
the University of Texas at Austin, the Stampede 2 supercomputer looks to
contend with the global supercomputer Top 5.
For example, atomic and atmospheric science simulations would take
years to work-out on a desktop PC but only days on a supercomputer.
Texas Advanced Computing Center director Dan Stanzione said in a UT press release,
"Stampede has been used for everything from determining earthquake
risks to help set building codes for homes and commercial buildings, to
computing the largest mathematical proof ever constructed."
The Stampede
2 is about twice as powerful as the original Stampede,
which was activated in March of 2013.
With double the RAM, storage and data bandwidth, the Stampede 2 can
shift up to 100 gigabits per second, and its DDR4 RAM can perform fast
enough to work as a third-level cache as well as fulfill ordinary memory
roles.
In addition, it will feature 3D Xpoint non-volatile memory.
It
will be at least a year before the Stampede 2 is powered up since it
just received funding.
***
Asimove's first law of robotics has been broken, writes an anonymous reader, sharing this article from Fast Company:
A Berkeley, California man wants to start a robust conversation among
ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, and others about where technology is
going -- and what dangers robots will present humanity in the future.
Alexander Reben, a roboticist and artist, has built a tabletop robot
whose sole mechanical purpose is to hurt people...
The harm caused by
Reben's robot is nothing more than a pinprick, albeit one delivered at
high speed, causing the maximum amount of pain a small needle can
inflict on a fingertip.
Though the pinpricks are delivered randomly, "[O]nce something exists in
the world, you have to confront it. It becomes more urgent," says the
robot's creator.
"You can't just pontificate about it.... "
But the
article raises an interesting question.
Is he responsible for the pain
which his robot inflicts?
The carts are a way for brick-and-mortar stores to stay relevant in the
convenience factor to match the likes of Amazon and other online
retailers, says founder and chief executive officer of Five Elements Robotics
Wendy Roberts.
She said on Tuesday at the Bloomberg Technology
Conference 2016 that her company was working with the "world's largest
retailer" on such a shopping cart.
In 2014, Five Elements Robotics
introduced Budgee, a personal robot that can follow its user around
inside and outdoors and carry things.
The robot costs $1,400 and is
helpful for people with disabilities, says Roberts.
Scientists at the Promobot laboratories in Perm had been teaching the
machine how to move around independently, but it broke free after an
engineer forgot to shut a gate, Quartz reports.
From the report:
It
promptly ran out of power in the middle of the road.
The robot got about
50m (164 ft) before its battery died.
After a policeman directed
traffic around the dead bot, an employee wheeled it back into the lab,
and back to a life of servitude.
Hopefully this was just an isolated
incident and not the start of a larger coordinated effort to overthrow
humanity.
Only time will tell...
Imagine your fully autonomous self-driving car totals a minivan.
Who
pays for the damages?
"There wouldn't be any liability on you, because
you're just like a passenger in a taxi," says Santa Clara University law
professor Robert Peterson.
Virtually everything around car insurance is expected to change, from
who owns the vehicles to who must carry insurance to who -- or what --
is held responsible for causing damage, injuries and death in an
accident."
Ironically, if you're only driving a semi-autonomous car, "you could end
up in court fighting to prove the car did wrong, not you," according to
the article.
Will human drivers be considered a liability -- by
insurers, and even by car owners?
The article notes that Google is
already testing a car with no user-controlled brake pedal or steering
wheel.
Of course, one consumer analyst warns the newspaper that "hackers
will remain a risk, necessitating insurance coverage for hostile
takeover of automated systems..."
***
Do you want robots making your pizza?
Alex Garden, co-founder and executive chairman of Mountain View startup Zume,
is betting you will.
Garden, the former president of Zynga Studios, was
previously a general manager of Microsoft's Xbox Live.
Garden launched
Zume in stealth mode last June, when he began quietly recruiting
engineers under a pseudonym and building his patented trucks in an
unmarked Mountain View garage.
In September, he brought on Julia
Collins, a 37-year-old restaurant veteran.
She became chief executive
officer and a co-founder. Collins was previously the vice president and
CEO of Harlem Jazz Enterprises, the holding company for Minton's, a
historic Harlem eatery.
"In the back of Mountain View's newest pizzeria, Marta works
tirelessly, spreading marinara sauce on uncooked pies.
She doesn't
complain, takes no breaks, and has never needed a sick day. She works
for free."
The pie then "travels on a conveyer belt to human employees
who add cheese and toppings."
From there, "The decorated pies are then
scooped off the belt by a 5-foot tall grey automation, Bruno, who places
each in a 850-degree oven.
For now, the pizzas are fully cooked and
delivered to customers in branded Fiats painted with slogans, including:
'You want a piece of this?' and 'Not part of the sharing economy.'"
Garden says, "We are going to be the Amazon of food. [...] Just imagine
Domino's without the labor component.
You can start to see how
incredibly profitable that can be."
A new report about Russian robot IR77, which has escaped from its research lab again...
The story goes that an engineer working at Promobot Laboratories, in
the Russian city of Perm, had left a gate open.
Out trundled Promobot,
traveling some 150 feet into the city before running out of juice.
There
it sat, batteries mostly dead, in the middle of a Perm street for 40
minutes, slowing cars to a halt and puzzling traffic cops.
A researcher at Promobot's facility in Russia said that the runaway
robot was designed to interact with human beings, learn from
experiences, and remember places and the faces of everyone it meets.
Other versions of the Promobot have been docile, but this one just can't
seem to fall in line, even after the researchers reprogrammed it twice.
"A new study shows that most people prefer that self-driving cars be
programmed to save the most people in the event of an accident, even if
it kills the driver," reports Information Week.
But on the flip side, these same
participants said that if they were shopping for a car to purchase or
were a passenger, they would prefer to be within a vehicle that would
protect their lives by any means necessary.
Participants also balked at
the notion of the government stepping in to regulate the "morality
brain" of self-driving cars.
The article warns about a future where "a harsh AI reality may whittle
the worth of our very existence down to simple, unemotional percentages
in a computer's brain."
MIT's Media Lab is now letting users judge for
themselves, in a free online game called "Moral Machine" simulating the difficult decisions that might someday have to be made by an autonomous self-driving car.
[Daily Mail reports:] "The Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a
University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by
retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- who holds extensive aerial combat
experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable
fighter aircraft expertise. He took on the software in a simulator.
Lee
was not able to score a kill after repeated attempts.
NASA -- having already populated the Red Planet with robots and armed a car-sized nuclear juggernautwith a laser -- have now decided to grant fire control of that laser over to a new AI systemoperating on the rover itself. Intended to increase the scientific data-gathering throughput on the sometimes glitching rover's journey, the improved AEGIS system eliminates the need for a series of back-and-forth communication sessions to select targets and aim the laser.The improved AEGIS system eliminates the need for a series of back-and-forth communication sessions to select targets and aim the laser.What the heck!?Artificial Intelligence with a laser weapon?On Mars!?Does NASA know something they are not telling us?Are there life forms on mars?
"We've found these nuclei literally point towards a direction
in space.
This relates to a direction in time, providing there's a
well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to
present," Marcus Scheck from the University of the West of Scotland told Kenneth MacDonald at BBC News.
Until recently, it was generally accepted that nuclei of atoms could
only be one of three shapes: spherical, discus, or rugby ball.
The first
discovery of a pear-shaped nucleus was back in 2013, when physicists at
CERN discovered isotope Radium-224.
Now, that find has been confirmed by a second study,
which shows that the nucleus of the isotope Barium-144 is also
asymmetrical and pear-shaped. In regard to time travel, Scheck says that
this uneven distribution of mass and charge caused Barium-144's nucleus
to "point" in a certain direction in spacetime, and this bias could
explain why time seems to only want to go from past to present, and not
backwards, even if the laws of physics don't care which way it goes.
Tribute To Pastor Chuck Smith Recap And Such Along With How Calvary Chapel Of Costa Mesa Actually Begun
David Sloane Central Park Manhattan New York
I want to free range a bit today...
It was a sad day and yet a wonderful
day for the 'spiritual children' of Costa Mesa's Pastor Chuck Smith
yesterday evening.
Everyone had gathered together to pay tribute to the
man of God who had recently graduated to heaven.
Some experienced concert goers to the Honda venue remarked
that "The place was completely packed."
Coming from them that actually means
something.
The old guard had shown up, but not everyone.
Greg Laurie, Raul Ries, Mike Macintosh, John Courson and Skip Heitzig, showed up along with a few others. Jackie
Alnor has reported on her Facebook that John Higgins, a staunch
traditionalist, has left the Calvary Chapel movement.
Here is what he
had said:
“We
feel that the original calling and vision for Calvary Chapel in 1966
was from the LORD.
Therefore, we at Tri City have withdrawn from the
present day hype, by notifying the CCA and Chuck Smith personally that
we are no longer associated with the CCA or Costa Mesa.
I have spoken of
this at conferences with interesting results.
We speak of being a
independent fellowship of believers.
This took place right after the June
pastors conference in Marietta when Greg and Bob Coy presented their plan for
integrating with the apostasies of today.
Our
church reps walked out and never returned.
As a result, we have lost
fellowship with many of the “Calvary’s” in our area as they have
embraced these false teachers in hope of growth and (in my opinion) the
hope of monetary gain.
We
at Tri City go back to 1966 when we were called into the battle field.
And not wanting to change our name, (we say they should), are looking to
incorporate the idea of the date 1966 in our logo. However, that is yet to be completed. Our fellowship know where we stand and we are strong in the strength of our Lord.
I hope this gives you and your associates a clear understanding of our position. We are not fighting against CCCM and its ways but we are fighting for the Truth of God’s Word. In Jesus, John Some say John is not what he appears to be. As
each speaker came up to the podium I could see the tole that age has
taken upon their faces over the long years.
Greg Laurie had mentioned that
when it was his turn to speak.
The zealousness of youth had long past.
I
had seen these same men of God from the days of my youth, during the
Jesus People Movement.
Each man was obviously touched with emotion at
the loss of 'Papa Chuck." No
one seemed to want to appear as anything more then what they are.
What I
mean is no one was in that mode where they wanted to show anything to
anyone of themselves, they were each humble and just one of us laity types. Now it was different
for some of the videos that were shown on the big screens, there was a
bit of posturing to be observed in some of the vignettes that were shown. Oden
Fong was working hard at holding back his emotions as he got up to play
his set for the congregation. I know that Oden has a great love and
respect for Chuck Smith.
He worked under him for over ten years
in administration service to Calvary Chapel.
Every time I had spoken with Oden he always spoke
with a tone of admiration when the conversation drifted in Chucks
direction. LoveSong were still very good after all of these years.
A few of the members looked worn out but could still stand and deliver. Mike
Macintosh was not himself.
He winged it on his own and it showed.
Usually Mike goes with the Holy Spirit's direction and it always turns
out well...it didn't go as well as it could have from my perspective. Tom
Stipe was the same Tom that we all saw at the Saturday Night Maranatha
Concerts at Calvary Chapel during the 70's.
Only now he was more mature and not
as comedic as he used to be.
Gone was the big curly hair that i
remembered.
He kind of 'talked to the door to address the window' in a
sense when he said that it was "Fun" back in the day.
People used to
show up early because it was fun to go to church. We can get somber and stiff in our Christianity if we are not careful. Brian
Broderson has some hugh shoes to fill; to his credit he didn't even try.
He
seemed a bit nervous and fumbled when he introduced one of the
speakers.
Not easy to read your notes and look up and make that all
important eye contact with your listeners.
I don't know if there was
any tension
up on the platform between he and the others, but I do know that it
would not be easy to be one of the speakers among such polished professional pastors
that were present.
Calvary Chapel on Church Street in Costa Mesa CA
Rumor has it that Pastor Chuck had visited Brian and family when they were in ministry in England. Chuck and Kay missed the grand children and so Chuck dangled a carrot on a stick in front of Brian implying that if they were to move back to southern California Brian would be in position to take over the throne if anything were to happen to Chuck.
Brian took the bait and left his own ministry just as it was about to take off big time by the Holy Spirit in England.
I never felt right about Brian throwing in the towel for uncertain advancement on someone else's foundation.
Kind of reminded me of the story of an older prophet going to the much younger prophet and lying to him.
"The old prophet answered, "I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel
said to me by the word of the LORD: 'Bring him back with you to your
house so that he may eat bread and drink water.'" (But he was lying to
him.)" 1 Kings 13:18
Chuck Smith never made anypreparations or arrangements for Brian to make a smooth transition into the pulpit and to take over of the helm of Calvary Chapel if anything were to happen to him.
Chuck just let the dominoes fall where they may.
Brian had to act upon what Chuck had intimated to him when Chuck passed on.
Or else what would be the point of having abandoned his own anointed calling in England?
There were many who knew not of Chuck's carrot on a stick to Brian.
So Brian has had a hard road to travel, especially since he had left his own road.
There are a lot of hidden things taking place behind the scenes of Calvary Chapel these days.
Some are saying board members have resigned and that there is about 3 million dollars missing from the church funds.
Who knows if there is any truth to this.
There have also been some court battles brewing among family members of Chuck Smith.
I feel real bad for Brian.
Pastor Romain used to talk about God's perfect will and God's permissive will.
I think Brian knows a lot about the topic these days...
I first arrived in Costa Mesa in 1965, as did Chuck Smith.
And as fate would have it, I lived directly across the
Pastor Chuck Smith
street from a very small building that had a sign out front that said, "Calvary Chapel."
I
to this day have a vivid memory of Chuck standing out on the steps
greeting people as they were leaving after the service.
His smile got
noticed by my 14 year old mind as I passed on my way to the Sunday mass
at Saint Joachim's Catholic Church a street over. The next
time that I saw Chuck was in 1967 in an old converted school on Sun
flower Street in Santa Ana.
Only this time I not only saw his great smile, I heard
him speak.
The first words I ever heard from him were, "Kids, Jesus Christ
loves you."
Now this got my attention.
Jesus Christ was that dead guy up
in front of the Catholic alter that I saw on Sundays at my local church.
I never heard
anyone say those words because back in those days the mass was all in
Latin so no one really learned anything at the Catholic mass, much less understood what the priest was saying. Let
me explain.
Jesus Christ was only some dead guy statue at the catholic
church for me until I heard Chuck Smith put flesh and blood on Him and make Him a reality to me.
As if a fog had
cleared and I could now see more clearly.
I was not alone, it was
happening for a lot of other people around me at the time.
Intercessors
I
totally attribute the existence of Calvary Chapel to the intercession
of Kay Smith and some of her close friends who also had the gift of
intercession on the earthly side of things.
The intercession of Kay
coupled with her deep compassion, that goes along with the calling of
intercessor, bridged the gap that brought in a whole generation of lost
hippies.
Chuck came around from his disgust at the dirty hippies to entering in with Kay's intercession for them. During
the winter of 1967 Kay had asked Chuck to drive her to the Huntington
beach pier area to observe the hippies there.
As she watched the aimless
lonely looking young people, dressed weird and wandering around, her
calling as an intercessor kicked in big time.
Along with her natural
affection as a mother with an instinct to care for children, Kay was
emotionally geared to want comfort and safety for these lost children she was seeing.
Compassion for these lost souls drove her to tears, as she said, "Chuck,
we've got to do something about this."
The calling of intercessor is
like that, it drives you with compassion for those targeted for
intercessory prayer by Holy Spirit.
You can't stop until your Holy Spirit task
assignment has completed.
Hippie Evangelist Lonnie Frisbee
It was at this point that Chuck asked his kids to bring home a hippie so he could see what they were all about first hand. Men are usually project oriented, and Chuck being a man started the project that would last him a lifetime. The
Lord stepped in and delivered Lonnie Frisbee.
A young man who had grown
up in Costa Mesa that the Lord had contacted out in a canyon in Palm
Springs. The
combination of Chuck's stability and maturity in Biblical knowledge
along with Lonnie's sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and his anointing as
an evangelist were explosively catalytic.
Lonnie knew how to address and reach his own generation
and Chuck knew how to skillfully build a firm foundation under them with the Word
of God. Christ
said He would not leave us abandoned or alone as an orphan without
parents or direction, but that He would send us a Comforter.
The Greek
word for "Comforter" is parakletos.
The word parakletos is
derived from two words that mean, "to go along side of to help."
It
also means, "one who pleads the case for another as an intercessor."
As
the Comforter, the Holy Spirit is always with us, we are never alone.
He
stands alongside of you at all times to help aid you, especially in
times of weakness.
Thus
Calvary Chapel grew exponentially as more and more people were added
daily.
All taking place without cell phones, pagers, the Internet, only
word of mouth and evangelicalism by the kids themselves.
The Holy
Spirit was on the move! One can only imagine what it would have been like if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or bloggers were involved, but they were way in the future.
Yes
Kay Smith and her calling of intercessor were the biology behind what
actually happened.
The unction from heaven imparted the compassion in
her mother's heart that fueled her prayers of intercession that bore
fruit that we all got to see yesterday.
Whole generations were
represented at Honda center, all because of one intercessor performing
in her calling. But
we all know that it was Almighty God that got up off His throne and
came down to earth and poured out of His Holy Spirit into Kay Smith's heart. Chuck
who was janitor at the Market Basket that Judy Meston's dad managed on
17th street in Costa Mesa had no idea how big his call to the ministry
was going to be.
Back in those days people could smoke in the store and
one of Chuck's biggest beefs was that the floor of the supermarket was
not an ash tray. He
was the one who had to clean up after the smokers and he didn't like it
one bit.
This was the same supermarket that Lonnie Frisbee
"dumpster~dived" in the back dumpsters for food to feed him and his
wife.
A lot of hippies discovered that they could eat still good
expired-date food for free from the dumpsters behind super markets.
Lonnie had to continue to dumpster dive for food even though the church
was growing fast, Chuck quit sweeping floors at the supermarket.
Lonnie's first wife, Connie, is still miffed about that to this day, and has said as much when publicly speaking. On any given day one could see Chuck picking up cigarette buttes on the Calvary Chapel property back then.
Young guys like Greg Laurie, took to doing the same because it was what Chuck was modeling by example.
They wanted to please Chuck. Must
have worked...Greg is where he wanted to be, where he belongs in the
Lord.
I think that even though Brian B is at the helm of Calvary Chapel
now, it is Greg that people will be drawn to.
Not that I think Brian cares about
such things.
It is just my observation.
Greg's now the "Moses" of the
movement as far as I can discern.
I honestly expect to see the anointing
upon Greg to increase in these last days.
I
think it is going to astound him when he realizes it himself.
Greg is
not the type of man to seek such things for his own sake.
I knew him
when we were young men, he is sincere, what you see is an
evangelist~teacher. Greg has suffered greatly. Don't
get me wrong, Brian is the perfect choice for the work of the ministry from a natural perspective.
Things will go according to plan for the "extension of presence" for
Pastor Chuck.
Just like J Vernon Magee and his "Bible Bus" and Adrian
Rogers.
The entire extended Smith clan will eventually be cared for right down to
the 33 great grand children once the dust clears. This
is a family that is loved by a congregation that prospered in their
walks with God because of pastor Chuck Smiths tireless shepherding.
They
will all continue the work of the ministry that Chuck loved so much. As
for those of us that are nameless faceless ones who were there from the
beginning, we will continue to seek after that which once was.
