October 9-11, 2025
Judson University, Illinois

What Is MC2?
The Missions Construction Conference is a first-of-its-kind conference dedicated to bringing together gospel-centric organizations, churches, and individuals to edify, equip, and engage one another in the realm of planning, designing and constructing ministry facilities around the world.

V.C. Summer has a history of operating safely, maintaining what he said was an “exemplary’’ record. The recent NRC concern centers on a pipe that delivers fuel to one of the power plant’s two emergency diesel generators, he said. Dominion found problems after testing the piping system, according to the NRC. //

In this case, officials at the V.C. Summer plant learned about cracks in fuel pipes in the facility’s diesel generator system in 2003. Utility workers fixed the initial crack, as well as other cracks four different times in the years after the initial work was done.

But the NRC says the utility never adequately assessed what could be done to make sure the diesel piping system did not experience more cracking. The most recent cracks were identified in November 2022 during a 24-hour test of the system. Workers found a small leak on one of two diesel generator systems. The leak increased over time and workers discovered a 140-degree crack around a pipe, records show.

The cracking occurred mostly in the power plant’s “A” diesel generator system, although one problem occurred in the plant’s “B” generator system. The plant has two backup diesel generators.

The cracking that led to the yellow safety finding follows separate, electrical problems with the plant’s diesel generator system in 2022. The NRC said the company, in that case, also failed to promptly resolve problems, issuing a white finding last year. White is lower in safety significant than yellow, but still considered notable.

From million dollar slide shows to Steve Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone, a bit of showbusiness never hurt plain old business. //

To celebrate the launch of the 1987 Saab 9000 CD sedan, an audience of 2,500 was treated to an hourlong operetta involving 26-foot-tall projection screens, a massive chorus, the entire Stockholm Philharmonic, and some 50 performers.
DOUGLAS MESNEY/INCREDIBLE SLIDEMAKERS //

To call the Seagram-Vitarama a slideshow is an understatement. It’s an experience: hundreds of images of the distilling process, set to music, projected across five 40-by-15-foot screens. “It is composed of pictures, yet it is not static,” comments one awed witness. “The overall effect is one of magnificence.” Inspired by an Eastman Kodak exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, the Seagram-Vitarama is the first A/V presentation ever given at a sales meeting. It will not be the last.

The cure for our current ‘epidemic of loneliness and isolation’ lies not in futuristic technology but in ancient wisdom. //

Recently in the New York Post, Ariel Zilber discussed claims made by Mo Gawdat, former head of Google’s semi-secret research and development group X, that a combination of virtual reality and AI-powered robots will initiate a “redesign of love and relationships.” In essence, Gawdat is predicting the rise of the “sexbot,” an artificial sexual partner that will eliminate the “quite messy” issues that plague human interactions.

It is an open secret that any nuclear warhead should contain fissile material. For bombs, they take uranium 235 or plutonium 239. To make them work, the warhead made with the use of these metals should weigh more than one kilogram. In other words, the warhead should have a critical mass. When transuranic element was discovered - californium - or rather, its isotope with an atomic weight of 252, it was found that its critical mass was only 1.8 grams. In addition, the decay of the element would produce 5-8 neutrons at once. This is very effective fission, given the fact that uranium and plutonium produce only 2-3 neutrons. In a nutshell, it was enough to squeeze a tiny "pea" of the substance to cause a nuclear explosion. This led scientists to the idea of using californium in atomic bullets. //

A bullet with a californium core would produce about 5 watts of heat. The heat in the bullet would change characteristics of the explosive and the detonator. Too much heat was dangerous, because the bullet could get stuck in the chamber or in the barrel of a gun or spontaneously explode when fired.

To store such bullets, a special refrigerator was required. The cooling device looked like a copper 15-cm thick plate with slots for 30 rounds. Between the slots, there were channels made, through which pressurized cooling liquid would circulate - liquid ammonia. The latter would create the temperature of about -15C° for the bullets. //

it was possible to use "frozen" atomic bullets during only 30 minutes after they would be removed from a refrigerator. Within this short period of time, one had to load the bullet, take a firing position, find the target and fire the gun. If it was impossible to make a shot, the bullet would have to be returned to the fridge to be cooled and frozen again. If a bullet would be left outside the fridge for over an hour, it was strongly forbidden to use it. To crown it all, the unused bullet would have to be disposed on special equipment. //

Understandably, 700 and even 100 kilos of chemical explosives is a lot. Yet, the shock wave from the explosion of an atomic bullet was a lot weaker, but radiation, in contrast, was strong. Therefore, a nuclear bullet could only be fired at a maximum distance, but still, a shooter could be exposed to a significant dose of radiation. One could fire the maximum of three nuclear bullets.

Nevertheless, one bullet was still enough to destroy a tank. Modern tanks have strong armour, but the amount of thermal energy would be enough to melt tank armour: the track and the tower would be welded with the body together. When hitting a brick wall, a nuclear bullet would evaporate about a cubic meter of bricks. Three bullets were enough for a building to collapse.

However, it was noticed during the tests that if the bullet would hit a tank filled with water, a nuclear explosion would not take place, as water slows down and reflects neutrons. It turned out that a bucket of water could be most reliable armour against an atomic bullet.

Living as a foreigner taught me how to live as a Christian

Climate-related deaths are down 99 percent worldwide over the past 100 years — thanks largely to fossil fuels, capitalism, and human innovation. //

1. Wildfire Rates Have Declined Since 2001
2. Hurricanes Are Becoming Less Frequent
3. Climate-Related Deaths Are Down

So, let’s amend. It’s not that historical fiction is no longer published, it’s that the relatively few openings are designated for rather particular types of history. First, history is rewritten with fantastical elements or really a fantasy set in a historical setting. History is also rewritten altogether with “gender swaps” of key historical figures (e.g., King Arthur as a girl) or modern issues and ways of thinking implanted into characters from the past.

It’s enough to convince a young reader that praiseworthy women were always champions of feminist ideals, that every century grappled with the same racism spoken of today, and that every noble family had a progressive daughter who wanted everyone to be equal. All of which bends more toward fantasy than history. (Netflix’s adaptation of the highly engaging, highly beloved classic Anne of Green Gables, “Anne with an E,” was rendered unwatchable with the imposition of modern sensibilities not found in the book such as racism, sexuality, and feminism.)

Second, many agents willing to take on historical projects specify only “non-Western” historical fiction, fables, settings, etc. Ostensibly, the purpose is to write something new and increase the range of stories available to readers. Which would be a good thing if the “inclusivity box” had been widened, instead of merely shifted away from the Western world.

Third, only particular time periods with particular types of protagonists make the cut. If you’re an adult reader, you may have noticed the oversaturation of World War II stories on historical fiction shelves. Notably, these aren’t usually Holocaust stories (though those usually get published, too), but “untold” stories about the women of the war. Victorian England. The latter half of the 1900s. The occasional Greek gods and mythology, a dash from ancient India or Arabia, and that basically covers the entire range of historical fiction on offer. Moreover, any historical reference during war, tyranny, or other trying times is usually a simple narrative of “evil man was bad” instead of an introduction into some of the social and political complexities that encourage any particular event or era to come about. //

Like anyone, teens will pursue information about things they care about, and what better way to get them to understand what we went through to get to this point, what life was like before, and what was endured to build society, than connecting to a character living and dealing in the nuances of those times?

Let young readers imagine themselves in the shoes of their historical counterparts. Let them draw courage from those who fought and endured and dedicated themselves to something bigger. Let them live through characters who have to make tough choices because history isn’t black and white, but a whole gradient of gray. And, once they’re interested, let them go looking for more. See if they don’t get better at understanding history then.

Missouri v. Biden uncovered a ‘vast censorship enterprise’ throttling Americans’ ideas online at the behest of government officials.

Living our faith requires vigilance, but it also requires fearlessness, Tucker Carlson told a crowd of Christians in Ohio earlier this month. //

Yet we cannot let that silence us, for our suffering will have become meaningless. If the word of Christ is destroyed by enemies of the church and replaced with edicts from government, darkness will cover the world and countless souls shall be lost.

There is much at stake, but be not afraid, my friends. Trust God, lean not on your own understanding, and preach the good news to all corners of the world in freedom from fear. Amen.

The Gayle & Max Dillard Science & Engineering Research Centre (SERC) at the US Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas will research and develop molten salt nuclear reactors.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing ACU’s August 2022 application to construct a 1 MWt low-power molten salt research reactor – MSRR – at the NEXT Lab. A detailed design engineering contract has been awarded to Zachry Nuclear Engineering, part of Zachry Group. Natura Resources aims to deploy its first molten salt reactor system in the new facility by 2026, followed by larger factory-built modular reactors for commercial operations in the early 2030s.

The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. But to provide that kind of power takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators. //

Just as these charging stations find they can’t run without some fossil fuel backup, the retirement of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas is being delayed to accommodate the energy demands of an electric vehicle battery factory that’s under construction.

Blackmon said that these stories illustrate well the lack of thought going into the demands that will be placed on the grid with increasing amounts of electric vehicle adoption.

As those demands pile on, U.S. energy policy pushes to remove coal, nuclear and natural gas from the grid.

Blackmon said he watched all summer as the Texas grid, which operates separately from the rest of the county, nearly collapsed with the incessant heat. //

Musk has also been taken to task for his solar promises. Energy expert Alex Epstein ran a fact check on Musk’s claim that we could power the world with a small area of the Sahara Desert and “some batteries.”

Epstein calculated that enough battery storage to create a reliable grid would cost $590 trillion for the batteries alone. It doesn’t include the cost of all the transmission infrastructure. And the batteries would have to be replaced every decade.

Television has been around for a long time, but what we point to and call a TV these days is a completely different object from what consumers first fell in love with. This video of RCA factory tours from the 1950s drives home how foreign the old designs are to modern eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQS58t39_U //

The next youtube video that came up is a great watch also if you’re interested in the cathode ray tube alone details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp6tNaUvfNI

For those of us who lived through the Cold War, there’s still an air of mystery as to what it was like on the Communist side. As Uncle Sam’s F-111s cruised slowly in to land above our heads in our sleepy Oxfordshire village it was at the same time very real and immediate, yet also distant. Other than being told how fortunate we were to be capitalists while those on the communist side lived lives of mindless drudgery under their authoritarian boot heel, we knew nothing of the people on the other side of the Wall, and God knows what they were told about us. It’s thus interesting on more than one level to find a promotional film from the mid 1970s showcasing VEB Fernsehgerätewerk Stassfurt (German, Anglophones will need to enable subtitle translation), the factory which produced televisions for East Germans. It provides a pretty comprehensive look at how a 1970s TV set was made, gives us a gateway into the East German consumer electronics business as a whole, and a chance to see how the East Germany preferred to see itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0xMK6UZBys

Making an oscilloscope is relatively easy, while making a very fast oscilloscope is hard. There’s a trick that converts a mundane instrument into a very fast one, it’s been around since the 1950s, and [CuriousMarc] has a video explaining it with an instrument from the 1960s. The diode sampler is the electronic equivalent of a stroboscope, capturing parts of multiple cycle of a waveform to give a much-slowed-down representation of it on the screen. How it works is both extremely simple, and also exceptionally clever as some genius-level high-speed tricks are used to push it to the limit. We’ve put the video below the break.

We all know, at least intellectually, that our computers are all built with lots of tiny transistors. But beyond that it’s a little hard to describe. They’re printed on a silicon wafer somehow, and since any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, they miraculously create a large part of modern society. Even most computers from 40 or 50 years ago were built around various inscrutable integrated circuits. On the other hand, this computer goes all the way back to first principles and implements a complete processor out of individual transistors instead.

The transistor computer uses over 2000 individual transistors to implement everything comprising the 11-bit CPU. //

AzagThoth says:
September 30, 2023 at 10:34 am
wow that is most definitely the 10th level of hell.

-Moore’s inferno

Michael Girdley @girdley
I considered moving out of the USA.

After some research, I realized leaving is stupid.

There is no chance the USA will stop being the global superpower.

And the best country for opportunity.

The reason surprised me:

When Isaacson asked Musk later that day whether he thought he’d been too harsh with Hughes, Musk replied, “I give people hardcore feedback, mostly accurate, and I try not to do it in a way that’s ad hominem … Physics does not care about hurt feelings. It cares about whether you got the rocket right.”

Physics does not care about hurt feelings, and it also does not care about DEI standards. Musk’s hiring policy is as simple as it is effective: “I believe in a strict meritocracy. Whoever is doing great work, they get more responsibility. And that’s that.”

He worries that unchecked, “the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally antiscience, antimerit, and antihuman in general,” could lead to civilizational decay and AI domination of the human race. In his words, which apply to the regulators and the critics, “Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.”

Musk is not perfect, and there are plenty of decisions to criticize, whether his bizarre family life, his Starlink refusal, or his sophomoric tokes and jokes. But perhaps, as Elon deadpanned on “Saturday Night Live,” it might be too much to expect that a man single-handedly transforming society would also be a “chill, normal dude.” If we end up on Mars, we’ll know who to thank.

When Microsoft released Windows 8, a lot of users were disappointed with the lack of built-in games. Microsoft did release a collection of modern Xbox card games based on the classic Microsoft Solitaire and Freecell. However, a lot of people weren’t impressed with the deep integration with Xbox and the online gameplay. The Microsoft Solitaire Collection stills exist in Windows 10, and it is possible to install the Windows 7 Game Space Cadet Pinball on Windows 10 however, if you’re like me and enjoy the classic old school card games and others like Minesweeper, Mahjong Titans, and Purble Place, we have an unofficial third-party solution for you.