Back on my new bike today. Another beautiful morning.
Today’s Bike Ride
Quote for the Day
The difference is stark: for my grandfather, job satisfaction was empirical, outwardly directed, and unrelated to his psychological state; for members of mine and subsequent generations, the issue of feeling is central. Carl Trueman
Today’s Sermon
Quote for the Day
Indeed, in characterizing the modern age as that of psychological man, Rieff makes a point very similar to that of Charles Taylor in his understanding of the human self: that psychological categories and an inward focus are the hallmarks of being a modern person. Carl Trueman
Today’s Bike Ride
A glorious morning. My only disappointment was a flat tyre just 2 km from home.
Quote for the Day
Few people have read Nietzsche, but many intuitively think in Nietzschean ways about their relationship to the natural world precisely because the highly technological world in which we now live—a world in which virtual reality is a reality—makes it so easy to do so. Self-creation is a routine part of our modern social imaginary. Carl Trueman
Australia is Sinking!
Sea levels are rising, apparently. We should be closer to the beach in time for summer!
This is actually a map showing forecast of above average rain for this winter due to La nina and the Idian Ocean Dipole.
School Chaplains To Be Defrocked
In Narrabri, we have always supported our Schools Ministry through the churches. After all, the Government giveth and the Government taketh away. It is absolutely no surprise that within weeks of gaining power Labor want to remove school chaplains.
From news.com.au
Education Minister Jason Clare to overhaul school chaplaincy program
The federal Education Minister is moving to dump one key component of a scheme in place at schools across the country.
Supplied video obtained Tuesday, May 8, 2018 of Treasurer Scott Morrison, delivering his 2018 budget speech at Canberra’s Parliament House.
The Albanese Labor government is moving to dump the compulsory religious element of the national school chaplaincy program.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the major change was aimed at giving schools greater choice around pastoral care.
The voluntary scheme supports more than 3000 school communities across Australia.
“The government will open up the program to give schools the option to choose either a chaplain or a professionally qualified student welfare officer,” Mr Clare told NCA NewsWire.
“We believe that principals and school communities are best placed to understand their students’ needs, so we will give schools a choice about the services they need and the staff they hire.”
The $60m-a-year school chaplaincy program was introduced under the Howard government.
Its religious streak has been a point of contention ever since.
Australian Education Union boss Correna Haythorpe welcomed the news.
“Public schools are no place for religious proselytising and instruction,” she said.
“The AEU has always said that students and families who need support should be able to access evidence-based mental health, social and wellbeing assistance from qualified professionals.”
Reflection on Judges 1:19-36
Scripture
The Lord was with the people of Judah, and they took possession of the hill country. But they failed to drive out the people living in the plains, who had iron chariots.
Observation
As the people advanced into the countryside, The tribes had varying levels of success in driving out the prior inhabitants. For some of the tribes, they could take some of the land, not all of it. For others, the best they could do is take the Canaanites as slaves.
The worst was the tribe of Dan, who were confined to the hill country and were not allowed onto the plains. Later, when they grew more numerous, they were able to take the Amorites as slaves.
Application
The Lord had promised the land of Israel to His people. They had been instructed to kill all the inhabitants of the land. Yet, they were unable or unwilling to do this, and the pagan customs of these people would be a stumbling block for the Israelites for generations to come.
The gift of the land was both a promise and a task. It was given to them by the Lord, but they had to take possession of it.
In the same way, our maturity as disciples is both grace and responsibility. The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to be holy people, but we also have to repent, or turn away from, our sins.
God gives us the land, but we have to destroy the inhabitants. We have the promise of holiness, but we have to choose God’s way.
This is a lifelong battle, but the rewards go beyond this life and into eternity.
Prayer
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for making it possible for me to live without sin. Please help me to dedicate myself to you each and every day. Amen.
Jo Nova on the Current Madness in Australia
Holy Battery Powered Australia: Chris Bowen thinks we can store electricity “like water in a dam”
Someone needs to tell the Australian Energy Minister the bad news about batteries
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says we just need more renewables and more storage:
Bowen says we can store water, we should be able to store power
“You can say the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Well, the rain doesn’t always fall either but we managed to store the water,” Bowen said.
Is this Chris Bowen’s Zuma-numbers moment with electricity?
He doesn’t seem to realize that electrons won’t politely sit in a shoe box waiting for the day they run your toaster. When South Australia got the worlds biggest battery in 2017 everyone got excited but few realized it would only power the state for two whole minutes before it ran out. South Australia is just 6% of the total National Energy Market, but if we were trying to make it truly 100% renewable with a reasonable battery backup Paul Miskelly and Tom Quirk calculated we’d need 7.5 million tonnes of lead acid batteries and a spare $60 to $90 billion dollars.
In a recent “record winning moment” in solar and battery powered excitement one of the smallest and sunniest towns in Australia made headlines when it managed to run off 100% solar and battery power for a whole 80 minutes. Onslow is a metropolis of 847 people. As I said at the time, we’re only 520,000 minutes short of a year.
Last year one new Tesla Megabattery in Victoria caught fire soon after it started operating. Since it took 76 hours to stop the fire we can honestly say it burned for three times longer than it provided electricity.
That’s how ready we are to power a nation of 26 million people on solar and wind and big batteries
Storage can be more than batteries, but we’re already spending $10 billion plus on Snowy Hydro 2.0 — the giant renewables-storage scheme that will waste 20-30% of the renewable energy fed into it so we can make a non-despatchable generator into a partly-despatchable one.
Hydrogen is hardly the answer. As David Archibald says it’s is such a reactive gas that there is no source of it in nature. The only naturally occurring hydrogen is the flammable part of farts. Otherwise, the cheapest way of making hydrogen is a water shift reaction with natural gas. But about 60% of the energy contained by the natural gas is wasted in the process — if you just wanted a source of energy, obviously, you’d use the natural gas.
As a fuel, hydrogen has some big shortcomings. It’s has low energy density, so a big, high-pressure tank of the stuff doesn’t take you far. It has an explosive range in air of 18% to 60%. It causes embrittlement of steel. There is a plot at the moment to add hydrogen to the natural gas distribution system — which then might start leaking like a sieve. It has a colourless flame, so leaks that have caught fire can’t be seen. In the days before infrared cameras, workers at a rocket fuel factory in Texas used to detect hydrogen leaks by walking with a straw broom in front of them. When the broom caught fire they had found the leak.
— DAvid Archibald
There’s more information on why Hydrogen is not the answer either here, thanks To Rafe Champion.
Like a third world nation we’re rationing electricity in winter:
Last night hospitals were ordered to reduce electricity use and millions of people urged not to use basic appliances.
The potential for mass blackouts has increased with about 1800MW of coal-fired power not operating in Queensland and 1200MW of capacity offline in the states of NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
The Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW, the country’s biggest electricity user, was also forced to cut production to reduce the chance of a blackout.
Read the article here
