Our Vision

Humanity already has the technology to implement a global energy revolution. We can now usher in a post-scarcity era while solving the most intractable problems that threaten life on Earth.
Our Mission

The Science Council for Global Initiatives, Inc. (SCGI) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to informing the public and policymakers about technologies and strategies that can lead to an energy-rich world. SCGI provides a forum for many of the world's prominent scientists, authors and activists to collaborate and share their knowledge regarding solutions to the world's energy, resource and environmental problems.

Music shapes our hearts and minds. What we fill our ears with—for better or worse—forms who we are and what we love. This is one reason why music has loomed large in Christian worship and catechesis throughout church history. In church, we don’t only rehearse our confession by speaking creeds and hearing biblical truths preached; we sing these confessions and biblical truths. And as we sing, God’s truth roots down deeper in our souls. //

New adult believers unfamiliar with (or understandably skeptical of) Christian music might not know where to start.

That’s why I put together this playlist of 100 songs with a catechetical flair to them: songs that teach Christian truth and yet do it poetically, with excellence.

Contrary to claims by opponents of nuclear energy that it is “unsafe,” “unclean,” and thus “unacceptable,” nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest, and among the most practical forms of power generation today. Unfortunately, opponents of this wonderful source of power are succeeding in their efforts to deceive people about it; and the deceived, in turn, are fueling legislation and regulations that shackle the nuclear industry. It is time to set the record straight and to defend this life-serving industry.

To watch Killers is to observe the slow progression of what Mollie calls a “wasting illness” (in literal and metaphorical terms) that surrounds her family. It’s the creeping, insidious, nature of sin devastating a community in real time, like an invasive weed gradually suffocating the life out of a thriving garden. //

The film ends with a brilliant, unexpected coda, set several years after the movie’s main action. It’s a scene of a true crime radio program recording that dramatizes the story in auditory form. We catch the end of the broadcast, as radio actors and sound-effects artists narrate the “what happened to” fates of the key players in the Osage Murders case.

The scene is brilliant narratively for how it informs the audience about where Hale, Ernest, and Mollie end up. But it’s also brilliant thematically, as a commentary on the importance of how stories get told in different forms, across generations. We’re watching a live radio program, filmed for a movie, adapted from a book, about a true story.

Most meta of all, Scorsese himself appears in a cameo, as a radio performer who reads the newspaper obituary printed after Mollie Burkhart’s 1937 death. After reading the obit, Scorsese’s character notes, as he looks soberly into the audience, that “There was no mention of the murders.”

It’s the last line of the film. It speaks to the ways we’re prone, in our fallenness, to whitewash history and edit out the uncomfortable episodes and the sins of our ancestors, even as (like Ernest and others in Killers) we’re prone to concealing rather than confessing our present sins. Our instinct to hide sin is as old as Eden. //

When future observers look back on our generation’s telling of the Christian story, may it never be said that “There was no mention of _____ [insert unpopular or difficult biblical teaching].” Let’s tell the whole truth, even if it means the audience dwindles. And let’s rejoice that the whole truth includes not only the guilt of our sins in the past but also the grace of Christ in the present and an unfailing hope for the future.

Amalekites don’t just happen to harm women and children as “collateral damage.” Amalekites don’t carry out the ban, as Israel did, destroying men, women, children, and animals in select Canaanite cities, on Yahweh’s orders. Israel didn’t attack Jericho, Ai, or Hormah when all the men were gone. They attacked fortified and guarded cities, conquered them, and offered them in smoke and fire to Yahweh. Amalekites specifically target women and children and the weak. Amalek is the anti-Israel, a people whose way of life, values, and military tactics are set in direct opposition to Yahweh’s purposes for humanity. //

Hamas isn’t Amalek. Hamas isn’t literally under Yahweh’s ban and curse. And Hamas certainly isn’t the same as the Palestinian people. Thousands of Palestinians are Christians, and many Muslim Palestinians oppose Hamas and its violence. To compare Hamas to Amalek isn’t to justify or even suggest genocide.

Still, the tactics Hamas used on October 7 were Amalekite tactics. Hamas isn’t the only terrorist group to fight like Amalekites.

[Deconstruction] has little to do with objective truth, and everything to do with tearing down whatever doctrine someone believes is morally wrong. //

it was very personal and it focused on the human beings who have come out of this, rather than on whether a certain kind of theology is right or wrong. //

If deconstruction means nothing more than changing your mind or correcting bad ideas, then I can say I deconstructed by switching from AT&T to Verizon. //

Deconstruction is not about getting your theology right.

On Monday, Israel shot down a ballistic missile in flight outside of the Earth's atmosphere. This marks a historical first time that an anti-ballistic missile has successfully intercepted a target in space during combat. The missile was fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen and was targeting Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used their Arrow anti-ballistic missile defense system, which is a joint American-Israeli project first deployed in Israel over 20 years ago.

Multi-functional power and energy meters meet ANSI C12.2 billing grade accuracy and are the ideal choice for the monitoring and controlling of power distribution systems. These revenue grade meters feature data logging capabilities, True-RMS parameter measurement, digital RS485 communication port, and are compatible with different current transformers.

Biggest Earthquakes Near Monrovia, Montserrado, Liberia

Welcome to the Fallacies Online Wiki, a project to collect and categorise known and frequently committed fallacies, misconceptions and unfair rhetorical practices.

If America’s foes quote critics of Biden, does it mean they’re wrong and their arguments can be dismissed? NR’s Jim Geraghty thinks so. //

Geraghty says if he ever wrote something that was quoted by Russian state media, he’d want to take a shower. Well then suds up, pal. Since 2018, Geraghty has been quoted at least five times by the state-run Russian television news network RT (here, here, here, here, and here) on topics ranging from intel leaks during the Afghanistan withdrawal, to social media censorship, to “Blade Runner” as an instruction manual for tyranny.

Not that Geraghty is special in this regard. RT is constantly talking about what NR writers have said, even on Ukraine. Here’s an RT post from June quoting Michael Brendan Dougherty, one of the few Ukraine war skeptics at NR, about low morale in the Ukrainian armed forces possibly causing problems in the planned counteroffensive (which never really materialized, so maybe Dougherty was on to something there). It seems RT has quoted or amplified National Review’s criticism of Biden and the Democrats hundreds if not thousands of times over the years, which is probably also true of every right-of-center publication that has been critical of the Obama and Biden administrations.

Do you know what that proves? Absolutely nothing. And only the most craven, dishonest hack would claim otherwise.

By destroying posters of Hamas’ Israeli hostages, radical leftists have denied that these hostages are victims or even people. //

The left’s destruction of the Israeli hostage posters tells us all their virtue-signaling signs are an utter sham. “Love Lives Here”? Not so much. “All Are Welcome Here”? Not if you are an Israeli or apparently even a Jew. “Reject Hate”? The left’s acts of destruction are nothing but hate’s acceptance in its vilest and most violent of forms.

This is what we are finding in Gaza.
A building where children play is a Hamas rocket launching site.
You have to see it to believe it: pic.twitter.com/KmMxfbYj93

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 6, 2023

the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has released even more footage from its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the territory Hamas controls. The video shows Israeli soldiers walking through an abandoned building that appears to be a school. The soldiers point out the rocket launchers that were strategically placed in areas where they could be used to launch rockets into Israel.
https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1721358756187951580

In another video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, the IDF highlighted the existence of a network of tunnels and storage spaces being hidden under a hospital.

Also, as RedState reported Sunday, the official State of Israel X account posted footage of Hamas fighters opening fire at Israeli forces from the Sheikh Hamed hospital in Gaza.

News surfaced over the weekend that a daycare center in Germany would be removing Anne Frank's name at the behest of "parents with migrant backgrounds." Frank is, of course, one of the most well-known victims of the Holocaust, and her diary is considered to be an important documentation of the plight of European Jews during World War II.

The "Anne Frank" daycare center in Tangerhütte, Germany, which has reportedly been in operation for decades, will be getting the name change because, according to the daycare center's director, "parents with migrant backgrounds feel uncertain about the name and find it challenging to explain to their children." //

The Western world, and particularly countries like Germany, have created a mess with their short-sighted immigration policies. Many of the migrants they accept refuse to assimilate into the cultures of their adopted countries, and woke politicians trip over themselves not to offend -- all in the name of "diversity."

Here's a short history lesson for those who want to erase the bad stuff or refuse to acknowledge it: Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. She was a 15-year-old Jewish girl.

Syncthing Windows Setup provides a Syncthing installer for Windows, built using Inno Setup. It provides the following features:

• Installs the appropriate Windows platform (AMD64, etc.) version of Syncthing using a single installer

• Supports non administrative (current user) and administrative (all users) installation (see Administrative vs. Non Administrative Installation Mode)

• When installing for the current user, Setup creates a scheduled task that starts Syncthing at logon (if selected)

• When installing for all users, installs Syncthing as a Windows service using shawl (see Windows Service Installation)

• Supports adding a Windows Firewall rule for Syncthing (see Windows Firewall Rules)

• Installs a set of scripts for ease-of-use (see Scripts)

• Supports silent (hands-free) installation (see Silent Install and Uninstall)

• Allows localization of Setup and scripts (see building.md file for details)

The online backup works best for providing a long-term replacement for your domain. It can be used as a temporary replacement, but you cannot easily troubleshoot the failed domain DCs at the same time. Investigating the reason behind the failure of a Samba domain could be time-consuming and technically complex work. If, in the event of a catastrophic domain failure, you don't intend to investigate the problem and just want to revert back to a older copy of a working domain, then this is the best option for you. //

Online DC backup

To create an online backup, use:

sudo samba-tool domain backup online --targetdir=<output-dir> --server=<DC-server> -UAdministrator

This command can be run locally on the DC or remotely on another machine. If running the command remotely, you may want to specify a --configfile option so that the correct smb.conf settings get included in the backup (i.e. the local smb.conf file may not exist, or its settings may be different to your domain DCs).

In this tutorial, you will secure your website served by Nginx with an Origin CA certificate from Cloudflare and then configure Nginx to use authenticated pull requests. The advantages of using this setup are that you benefit from Cloudflare’s CDN and fast DNS resolution while ensuring that all connections pass through Cloudflare. This prevents any malicious requests from reaching your server.

Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson
Gaza and the Corruption of Language

“Apartheid”. Like most leftist smears, it reflects projection. Arab citizens inside Israel—over half of whom are Muslims—vote, run for office, and have organized political parties. As a fifth of the population, they enjoy more security, prosperity, and freedom than do their counterparts in the surrounding Arab nations.

In contrast, can one envision non-Arab Christian or Jewish residents of Gaza voting, running for office, forming political parties, or criticizing Hamas? This projected charge of apartheid, it applies to Hamas, which considers anyone other than Arab Muslims as inferiors to be kept out of Gaza.

“Ceasefire”. A ceasefire, truce, or armistice rarely ends the conflict for good unless both sides are worn out, and mutually agree that neither can win and the war is thus regrettable—a rare phenomenon in military history. More often, ceasefires are mere breathers for one or both sides to frantically resupply and rearm for rounds two, three, four…

Ultimately, wars—even those that last decades—end when one side loses and the other wins (often most clearly via‘unconditional’ surrender), or both suffer such calamitous losses that each believes victory is unachievable and will in the future continue to be so. Unless the antithetical political agendas that lead to war are resolved, then breathers and truces and time-outs eventually ensure lengthy or multiple wars. Victory leading to the loser’s abandonment of political agendas more often leads to lasting peace.

“Disproportionate”. Can anyone recall a war won by proportionate measures?

When war is proportionate it more often turns into a Stalingrad—or perhaps an Ukraine—until one side finds a disproportionate response that will change endless stasis to victory.

World War II was not won by a proportionate response to Pearl Harbor. And what would be a proportionate response to the murder of a thousand civilians?

Under the logic of “proportionality,” ought the Israeli state then invade Gaza and likewise murder a thousand of its civilians? The whole concept of a “proportionate" response to an unprovoked massacre of women and children asleep in their homes and during a peace is absurd.

“Civilian casualties”. In this war, almost all intentional civilian deaths are due to Hamas. The civilian dead consist of three unfortunate categories:

1) Over a thousand Jewish civilians, at a time of holiday, butchered by invading Hamas killer squads.

2) Gazan civilian shields whose homes and places of work are deliberately used to protect and enable Hamas rocketeers and shooters to wage war with impunity—in the expectation that Israel regards Gazan life as more valuable than does Hamas, and therefore won’t retaliate to missile launches by indiscriminately killing civilian shields. Hamas expects, even hopes, that they will be killed and thus bring them political advantage by their numerous deaths.

3) The general population of Gaza. The charter of Hamas ensures that its apparat will wage perpetual war at any cost against Israel. Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution, lasting armistices, or using billions of dollars in foreign aid to ensure modern power, water, and sewage plants for its people. Instead, it treats its own population as expendable and subordinate to its own tunnel-making and rocket-launching.

“Cycle of violence”. This phrase almost suggests that violence is organic, autonomous, without culpability, and thus not incited by one side. War, however, never works that way. Instead, there is usually definable 51% and more culpability on one side.

In the case of October 7, who invaded the country of another to enact a year-long preplanned plan of savagely murdering and mutilating women and children?

Was Israel intent on violence or was Hamas? Did Hamas call up their intended targets and urge them to flee before they arrived? Is that IDF trait even conceivable within Hamas?

While Hamas spent the year planning the precivilizational massacres of Jewish women and children, Israel—naively convinced that Hamas was concentrating on domestic affairs rather than its usual savage agenda of torching, stabbing, and shooting Jews—was at the time negotiating détente with Saudi Arabia and inviting nearly 20,000 Gazans a day to enter Israel to work and earn a living?

“Innocents”. All collateral damage is tragic, and, for example, children in Gaza are obviously innocent. But, while any noncombatant can be an innocent civilian, not all innocent civilians are created equal. Their collective innocence or guilt may not be absolute, but it can be fairly determined by their support for the agendas of its combatants and government. That is—whether they are empowering something like the SS or trying to stop it.

If bands of Israeli soldiers surprise-invaded Gaza with orders to grab hostages and focus on murdering women and children and then desecrating their corpses in hopes of psychologically devastating Gazans, they would likely be brought up on charges by the IDF or shunned and ostracized by their own people.

In contrast, when hostages were paraded in Gaza, civilians there seemed to enjoy spitting on and striking them. The return from Israel of the Gazan hostage-takers and murderers was met by ecstatic crowds.

The German population, similarly ruled by a “one man, one vote, once” dictatorship, was ebullient over Hitler’s success from 1939 to 1941, but lost their enthusiasm from 1942 to 1945, and feigned innocence (out of alleged ignorance or powerlessness) after the war was over.

So too, Gazans on Saturday, October 7 were enthralled on news of a thousand murdered Jews—only two weeks later to pose as innocent civilians not deserving retaliation for the inhuman violence against the innocent that they had so recently and so eagerly supported and cheered on.

ThorCon is a thorium converter. The initial fuel charge is largely thorium. During the eight year fuel cycle, a portion of the fertile thorium is converted to fissile U-233 which then becomes part of the fuel. Each ThorCon will require 5.3 kg of 19.7% enriched uranium and 9.0 kg of thorium per day, on average.

ThorCon clobbers coal on fuel cost. An extreme lower bound on coal fuel cost is 2 cents per kWh. Even at $90/kg U3O8, about double the current yellowcake spot price, ThorCon’s fuel cost is less than 0.6 cents per kWh.

Even on a once-through basis, ThorCon is uranium efficient. Averaged over 8 years, we annually feed 1,930 kg of 19.7% enriched uranium derived from 72,500 kg of natural mined uranium. This equates to 145 tonnes of natural uranium per full power GW-year compared to about 250 tonnes for a standard light water reactor (LWR).

After 8 years ThorCon will have been fed 3 tonnes of fissile U-235 fuel, but its “spent” fuel will still contain 1 tonne of fissile fuels U-233 (408 kg) and U-235 (624 kg). ThorCon’s net consumption of fissile uranium is less than half that of a LWR, due to higher thermal efficiency, removal of Xe-135, and U-233 production from thorium.

In the future, re-enriching this back to 19.7% would take about 48 SWU per kg U-235. At competitive enrichment costs of $50/SWU, $2400 for 1 kg of U-235 is cheap. Such future re-enrichment would cut ThorCon’s uranium requirements by a third.

ThorCon generates reliable electric power cheaper than coal, competitive with natural gas, cheaper than LNG, cheaper than storage-buffered wind and solar. //

• 1 GW ThorCon: 280 tons fuelsalt every 8 years
• 1 GW coal plant: 10,000 tons coal every day
  ...
  Overall the resource cost of the ThorCon is half that of the coal plant. Assuming efficient regulation, ThorCon capital cost will be cheaper than coal.