Community Archives - McGillespie

Business

When companies act like governments

By Guest Post June 7, 2019

by Erica Pandey

As Axios has reported, companies are taking ever more daring positions on social and political issues because of intense pressure from the public and their own employees. At a time of rock bottom trust in institutions and leaders, corporations are among the very few remaining bastions of public confidence, says Edelman, the public relations firm.

The latest example is Salesforce, which has recently barred certain gun sellers from using its e-commerce software, per the Washington Post. It follows a trend of companies targeting guns:

Amazon and eBay have both banned the sale of firearms on their platforms.
Shopify has stopped providing its software to merchants who sell semi-automatic firearms and silencers, among other weapons.
Walmart, the country’s biggest gun seller, has stopped selling the weapons to customers under 21. And Dick’s Sporting Goods has pulled all assault-style guns from its shelves.

Firms have waded into other debates, too: In an outcry over abortion rights, Hollywood studios are threatening to stop filming in Georgia. And two years ago, a backlash by PayPal, the NCAA, Bank of America and others forced North Carolina to repeal a “bathroom bill” that discriminated against transgender individuals.

“We are concerned by the rise of boardroom legislation by unelected corporate leaders,” says Lawrence Keane, SVP of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “It’s particularly troubling when the companies making the decisions have tons of market power.”

The big picture: While firms are well within their rights to take a stand, their actions take on new significance when unelected businesses have the same sort of power as government officials, says Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago.

In early 2018, Facebook and Google banned ads for cryptocurrency exchanges. That meant 60% of all online ads were off limits to cryptocurrency companies.
The combined actions of Amazon, eBay, Shopify and, now, Salesforce, have effectively banned the online sale of certain guns.

The bottom line: Look for continued corporate activism, as socially minded employees and consumers show no sign of wavering in their insistence on their companies taking such positions.

“It has a lot to do with the war for talent,” says Louis Hyman, a historian at Cornell. “In an age where the corporate talent is socially liberal, companies that do not take these positions are risking their key assets.”
“It’s not really companies who are making this difference. It’s the consumers who support these companies,” says Heather Cox Richardson, a professor at Boston College.

A new vehicle for grassroots politics

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Communication

Generation Zapped? The EMF Experiment We’re All Part Of

By Guest Post April 11, 2019

By Dr. Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

The primary hazard of cellphone radiation is systemic cellular and mitochondrial damage, which threatens health in general and can contribute to any number of health problems and chronic diseases
Three recent studies add strength to the claim that long-term, heavy cellphone radiation can trigger cancer. EMFs also impair reproductive function in men and women, and have neurological effects
Serving as an illustrative warning is the case of a young woman with no risk factors for cancer who developed multifocal breast cancer directly beneath the area where she’d been tucking her cellphone into her bra
Risk factors for electromagnetic hypersensitivity include spinal cord damage, whiplash, brain damage, concussion, chemical and heavy metal toxicity, impaired immune function and bacterial or parasitic infections such as Lyme
You can reduce your exposure by shutting off your Wi-Fi at night, keeping cellphones away from your sleeping area, using the speaker phone and not carrying your cellphone on your body

Mankind evolved on a planet where background microwave radiation was infinitesimal. Today, most live in a sea of microwave radiation and radio frequencies (RF) emitted from wireless technologies — routers, smartphones, tablets, baby monitors, smart TVs, appliances, smart meters and more.

Globally, there are now more than 6 billion cellphone subscriptions, which means we’re nearing the point where every single person on the planet has one of these devices, and most now get their first cellphone or tablet at a very early age.

According to the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of adults say their phone is frequently with them and rarely turned off. Americans are so attached to their smartphones and social networks that they check Facebook and Twitter an astounding 17 times each day on average, and many teens spend a mind-boggling nine hours a day on social media.

Many experts now warn that chronic, heavy exposure to these electromagnetic fields (EMFs) could be having severe repercussions for our health, especially that of children, who are being exposed in utero.

Fetuses and young children have never before been exposed to this level of pulsed radiation, and it’s still too early to determine the exact extent of the harm, as it may take decades for effects to manifest.

In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that mitochondrial dysfunction is at the root of most chronic disease, so in terms of public health, the effects of chronic EMF exposure may be far more profound than currently suspected.

We may not only face an avalanche of brain cancer in coming decades but also heart disease, neurological disorders, infertility and newly identified disorders such as electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS).

Generation Zapped

The featured documentary, “Generation Zapped,” investigates the potential health consequences of today’s wireless world, noting microwave radiation “is a very real environmental pollutant.”

The film opens up with the late Martin Blank, Ph.D., who was an associate professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University, who points out one of the most obvious reasons EMFs may cause physical harm, and that is because your body is bioelectrical. Many of your bodily processes involve the transmission of electric signals, and external interference can disrupt those signals.

As explained by Dr. Jonathan Samet, director of the Institute on Inequalities in Global Health at the University of Southern California, radiation can be divided into ionizing radiation and nonionizing radiation, the former having sufficiently high energy to break up molecules as it passes through your tissues.

EMFs have much lower energy, which is why the cellular industry has insisted cellphones and other wireless technologies have no biological effects. Alas, mounting science reveals this simply isn’t true.

Evidence of Carcinogenicity

The mobile industry’s own research in the 13-country Interphone study showed a 40 percent increased risk of brain cancer from 1,640 or more hours of cellphone use, and independent Swedish research published in 2007 showed a 540 percent increased risk of brain cancer from greater than 2,000 hours of cellphone use.

An analysis of known mechanisms of action, including DNA effects, was also published in November 2010 in “Non-Thermal Effects and Mechanisms of Interaction Between Electromagnetic Fields and Living Matter.”

Importantly, EMFs have been shown to increase oxidative stress, which can damage cell membranes and proteins, and break DNA bonds. EMFs also decrease ATP — the energy currency in your body, without which your cells cannot function properly.

Samet is familiar with the evidence against cellphone radiation, having served as chairman of the International Agency for Research on Cancer working group, which in 2011 classified RF-EMFs as a Class 2B “possible human carcinogen” based on the available evidence.

At the time, Samet said, “The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk.” Since then, the evidence has only grown stronger. Most recently, two government-funded studies — one on mice and one on rats — found evidence of heart tumors and damage to the brain and DNA.

This $25 million research, conducted by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) is said to be the most extensive to date, and it confirms that the heart and brain are key areas affected by high, chronic EMF exposure.

The connection between cellphone radiation and cancer became even stronger when the respected Ramazzini Institute in Italy published its lifetime exposure findings, effectively duplicating the NTP’s findings.

According to Fiorella Belpoggi, director of research at the Ramazzini Institute and the study’s lead author, RF radiation from cellphones should probably be classified as a “probable” human carcinogen rather than a “possible” carcinogen.

Carrying Your Cellphone on Your Body Is a Dangerous Habit

The filmmakers’ interview a woman named Donna, who developed multifocal breast cancer after habitually carrying her cellphone tucked into her bra. She had no family history or other predisposing risk factors for breast cancer.

Two cancer specialists, Robert Nagourney and John West, concluded her cellphone was the most likely cause, as the distribution of the cancerous cells lined up perfectly with the shape of her phone. Donna is far from alone in this habit. Many young women keep their phones in their bra for convenience.

As a general rule, you’ll want to avoid carrying your phone anywhere on your body. Breast cancer and heart problems are but two possible outcomes when carrying your phone in your breast pocket or bra. Research published in 2009 found that wearing a cellphone on your hip may weaken your pelvis.

Using an X-ray technique used in the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with osteoporosis, researchers measured pelvic bone density in 150 men who regularly carried their cell phones attached to their belts. The men carried their phones for an average of 15 hours each day and had used cell phones for an average of six years.

The researchers found that bone mineral density was lowered on the side of the pelvis where the mobile phones were carried, raising the possibility that bone density could be adversely affected by cellphone radiation.

Cellphone Radiation Affects Fertility and Can Triple Risk of Miscarriage

Studies have also linked RF-EMF exposure and impaired fertility in men, finding it lowers sperm count and the quality and motility of sperm. One such study, published in PLOS One found that:

“RF-EMR in both the power density and frequency range of mobile phones enhances mitochondrial reactive oxygen species generation by human spermatozoa, decreasing the motility and vitality of these cells while stimulating DNA base adduct formation and, ultimately DNA fragmentation.

These findings have clear implications for the safety of extensive mobile phone use by males of reproductive age, potentially affecting both their fertility and the health and well-being of their offspring.”

Wi-Fi equipped laptops have been linked to sperm DNA fragmentation after just four hours of use. Blank also cites research suggesting cellphone radiation creates DNA mutations in the sperm, and that these mutations appear to be yet

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Anarchist

John Galton Wanted Libertarian Paradise in ‘Anarchapulco.’ He Got Bullets Instead.

By Guest Post February 13, 2019

by Kelly Weill

John Galton and his girlfriend Lily Forester had finally made it. On a March 2017 evening, the young American couple sat on their balcony above Acapulco, Mexico, counting their blessings. They’d recently moved into a big house on a mountainside and were eyeing an ambitious push into the artisanal bong business.

Galton and Forester were anarcho-capitalists who slipped U.S. drug charges worth 25 years in prison, they said in a YouTube video that night. They’d hopped the border and resettled in what Galton called one of the world’s “pockets of freedom,” a community billed as a libertarian paradise.

Almost two years later, Galton was murdered.

Last week, gunmen burst into the couple’s mountaintop home, killing Galton on the spot, and seriously wounding one of the couple’s friends. (Forester survived, badly shaken.) The killers are presumed to be a drug cartel; Mexican authorities say Galton grew marijuana at the home.

Galton was part of a small community of fellow anarcho-capitalists formed by Jeff Berwick, who promised a drug-friendly haven and hosts the annual “Anarchapulco” festival. Berwick says Galton and Forester should’ve known what they were getting into.

“They started up a competing conference to Anarchapulco, called Anarchaforko and John continued to be involved in one way or another with the production or sale of plants,” Berwick told The Daily Beast in an email. “Unfortunately, that is the one thing that is very dangerous to do in Mexico as the drug cartels will attack anyone they see as competition and that appears to have happened to John.”

Anarchapulco will go on as scheduled next week and might be even bigger due to the murder, Berwick says.

“We’ve received nothing but love from attendees and expect this will not affect attendance in a negative way at all,” he said. “In fact, it could increase attendance as more people are exposed to our message this week due to media coverage of this tragic event.”

Berwick is a Canada-born anarcho-capitalist podcaster, who moved to Acapulco part-time in 2009 and became known for a hard-partying lifestyle. In 2015, he launched Anarchapulco, a festival for anarcho-capitalists, some of whom relocated to Acapulco full-time.

“Every year, as people would visit, they would be attracted to the freedom, weather and culture of Acapulco and many people would stay or move there,” Berwick told The Daily Beast. “This was not anything planned and happened quite organically. But there are likely in the neighborhood of dozens or hundreds of voluntaryists who now live in Acapulco.”

A former member of the community told The Daily Beast the community’s membership fluctuates, but is likely around 50 to 60.

This year’s Feb. 14-17 Anarchapulco promises a nudist pool, psychedelics, sex counseling, and sessions on radical homeschooling—as well as big-name Republican figures like former presidential candidate Ron Paul and Fox News personality Judge Andrew Napolitano.

The conference is located in a ritzy Acapulco hotel. Attendees will have shelled out $545 for tickets, with options to pay an additional $495 for an “investment summit,” $255 for the “Infinite Man” summit with a pickup artist, $140 for “De-Mystifying the Occult,” and $250 each for various drug ceremonies like “Jaguar Vision,” an hour-long DMT experience.

Anarcho-capitalists (“ancaps”) believe in dismantling the state and allowing unchecked capitalism to govern the world in its place. Even within the small anarchist world, ancaps are fringe. Anarchists typically describe their movement as inherently anti-capitalist. Their philosophy describes anarchy as the rejection of hierarchical structures, which they say capitalism enforces. Anarcho-capitalists, meanwhile, see money as a liberating force. They promote a variety of libertarian causes like using cryptocurrency, legalizing all drugs, and privatizing all public institutions like courts and roads. The movement reveres the novelist Ayn Rand, whose work outlines a philosophy of radical selfishness and individualism. Her best-known character, an idealized capitalist named John Galt, appears to have inspired Galton’s name.

Berwick is an unofficial leader in this movement that eschews leaders. And Acapulco is only his latest attempt at building an ideal ancap society.

A native Canadian, Berwick made his fortune by founding and selling the stock promotion website Stockhouse, and by investing in bitcoin before the cryptocurrency boomed in value. Then his ventures took a more experimental turn.

After moving to Acapulco in 2009, Berwick became something of an ancap pied piper, selling passports and real estate to non-Mexican anarchists who wanted to live in the city, according to a 2014 Wired profile. Today, Berwick’s real estate business appears dead. Its website, which advertised “paradise,” now redirects to the homepage for Anarchapulco.

“Jeff was always saying publicly that Acapulco’s not dangerous, that you can do anything, nothing will happen to you. People believed him.” — ‘Mike’

Berwick’s passport company, TDV Passports, also appears to have stumbled. The site used to sell “professional facilitation services for those seeking to establish citizenship in countries abroad.” In practical terms, that meant putting clients in touch with people who could fast-track immigration and citizenship applications. Various versions of the site charged from $12,000 for the Dominican Republic citizenship process to $40,000 in “legal fees” for U.S. citizenship. The company appears frequently on scam-reporting websites, where alleged TDV Passports customers complained of spending tens of thousands of dollars without ever obtaining immigration documents.

“Mike,” who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, is a former Berwick colleague who lived in Berwick’s Acapulco community for two years.

“The first Anarcapulco was funded by this passport scheme,” Mike said. “Essentially Jeff was selling Mexican passports to Middle Eastern people. I met Egyptians and a lot of Syrians… He promised to provide passports. I’ve heard of one or two who got them before the scheme collapsed.”

Berwick did not respond to The Daily Beast’s comment on TDV Passports.

The Creature from Galt's Gulch — The Creature from Galt’s Gulch

While running the passport business, Berwick was also eyeing anarcho-capitalist utopias in other Latin American countries. He tried to set up a free trade zone in Honduras, Wired reported. When that plan failed, Berwick poured his efforts into Galt’s Gulch Chile, an anarcho-capitalist farming utopia in Chile’s deserts.

Investors dumped millions into the project, which promised to be an ideal society of freedom-loving individuals. Instead, would-be Gulch residents found themselves part-owners of a mismanaged patch of desert. When investors visited the site in 2014 to pick out the plots where their homes and farms would go, they learned that the area had not been zoned for their habitation. One ancap investor defected from the project with a scathing blog post, accusing the Galt’s Gulch team of failing to secure water rights for the desert community. The project, now an outright failure, is the subject of lawsuits in Chile. Berwick, who is not a defendant in the lawsuits, claims he was duped by one of his colleagues on the project.

With Galt’s Gulch drying up, Berwick returned his focus to Acapulco, launching the first Anarchapulco festival in 2015. The event, a celebration of cryptocurrency, alternative health, and post-government politics, was a success, both in attendance and in establishing a year-round ancap presence in the city.

According to the forthcoming documentary “Stateless,” Berwick’s first festival “was designed to attract other ‘ancaps,’ libertarians, and crypto-anarchists to Acapulco, with hopes of encouraging many to become residents of the region and build a new community of government-evaders.”

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Business

Don’t bother inviting me to catch up over coffee — I’m done networking and I’m starting to think you should be, too

By Guest Post January 30, 2019

by Shana Lebowitz

Will networking help you build a successful career? I’ve never been sure.
Mostly, traditional networking seems to me like it takes a lot of time and effort.
Some experts say building connections is a practical strategy, in case you ever lose your job.
Other experts say you’re better off working and developing concrete skills than schmoozing.

A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers at Business Insider created a Slack channel called #lunch-buddy. Anyone who joined the channel would be randomly paired with another BI employee; the two would then meet for lunch, or coffee, or maybe just a walk, and get to know each other.

This initiative seemed to me a brilliant idea. Generally speaking, my coworkers are lovely people, but I know only a sliver personally. And when it comes to employees in other departments — say, product or finance — I’m curious to know what they do all day because, as it stands, I have no clue. (I imagine the feeling is mutual.)

I typed “#lunch-buddy” into the Slack search bar. And then I closed out of it. It was a Monday morning and, already, I was behind on work. I imagined that, by the time my buddy and I arranged to meet up, I’d be even farther behind. Inevitably, I’d wind up nibbling nervously on a sandwich while sneaking glances at my phone to make sure no one was Slacking me. This buddy business was not going to work out, at least not for me.

I should mention that, when the email about the lunch-buddy program went out, I was in the middle of reporting a story about networking. My specific goal was to figure out whether networking was good for your career, as so many influencers would have it, or bad. Good because you meet interesting new people who can introduce you to interesting new job opportunities, clients, and projects. Bad because you spend so much time schmoozing that you forget to, you know, work.

I wasn’t sure where I stood on the subject. As the lunch-buddy incident had made clear, I theoretically supported networking, but wasn’t very adept at practicing it. On LinkedIn, I posed the question to my connections. Unsurprisingly for a networking website, several people who commented said their relationships had always benefited them in their career.

And maybe they’d benefited mine, too. A few years ago, I was looking for a new job and mentioned as much to an old coworker (who’d become a friend) when we got together for drinks. Days later, she emailed me a Business Insider job posting that I’d missed in my search and, well, the rest is history.

Does that count as networking? I’m not sure. I like to think it’s better defined as being a human being with human friends who are willing to help you out.

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Community

Killing Creativity With The Rise In Zero Sum Thinking

By Guest Post January 28, 2019

by Larry Robertson

Synopsis: Creativity has everything to do with mindset – beware the zero-sum mindset.

Pause a moment longer to take a more considered look at it, and it’s easy to discern that creativity is always, always, always a multiplayer game too. Indeed this is fact doubly true. Not only are breakthrough creative ideas a result of an accumulation of many smaller ideas, but inevitably those many contributing ideas come from many contributors too, rather than some single, mythical, creative genius source. To punctuate the observation, consider that MacArthur Fellows, those famous creative folks who have the moniker of genius thrust upon them, are the quickest to tell you that, in the words of mathematician and Fellow Maria Chudnovsky, whatever they create rests on the broad shoulders of others before them, and that their greatest hope is that what they create will do the same for other people and other ideas yet to come. In short, the multiplayer nature of creativity is true both in any individual creation and across creations and time.

If all of this strikes you as somewhat self-evident, you might be asking yourself, why make the point? Considered in a thoughtful moment, the answer is just as clear, though in the current environment, all too easily missed. Our world is increasingly dominated by the short view, the quick answer, and the implicit goal of finality. On a growing list of subjects, we humans are also increasingly leaning towards not only an us versus them view, but strategy, a textbook zero-sum strategy where I must win, and you must lose, and together we fail to advance. At the very least, if our endeavor is a creative one, with this mindset we’re pretty much done before we even begin. But as zero-sum spreads to an ever-widening number of endeavors, it’s important to do the math. Inevitably, the conversation is about far more than pennies.

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Purpose

3 Websites for Life (& Explaining the New Focus of McGillespie.com)

By Terence Gillespie January 18, 2019

Over the holidays I moved education-related articles on McGillespie.com to a new website created for that purpose. OutliersAcademy.com is a new full-blown educational website with a tagline of “Inspiring the Next Generation of Outliers.” It’s built for students of any age interested in courses, articles, curriculums, etc. that enable one to thrive in the artificial chaos of today’s world.

The Essence of Education

The essence of education is transformation and learning to live in ways that leverage the power of those transformations. The categories of materials on OutliersAcademy.com are centered around the theme of transformation: Education, Entrepreneurship, History, Creativity, Productivity, Economics, Legal, Alternative News Commentary.

New Focus for McGillespie.com

With OutliersAcademy.com to house educational materials, the focus of McGillespie.com will be shifted to Writing, Technology, Family, Health, Personal Experiences, Politics, and news commentary unrelated to my other sites.

By the way, if you’ve signed up for the McG newsletter for educationally related materials, there’s no need to do anything. I’ll re-tag your email so you’ll have access to the new resource library in OutliersAcademy.com (where I’ll be uploading lots a great new material!)

DivineCouncil.org at the Center

DivineCouncil.org is devoted solely to spiritual matters as I believe the essence of human nature (and the origin of physical reality) is spiritual.

DivineCouncil.org is a fully-featured website with a regularly updated article blog, an infrastructure to distribute theological materials to a large subscriber base, and a private forum that could run a large church.

The private forum on DivineCouncil.org provides extensive resource-sharing capabilities. The forum, alone, could serve a large mega-church with dozens of ministries (in fact, many websites with such a forum devote the entire site to the forum.) However, DivineCouncil.org’s forum is devoted to sharing and distributing theological resources, supporting missionaries, and facilitating conversations searchable by keyword & category.

Private threads are also available on the forum for planning, article critique and collaboration, and for matters not appropriate to the entire forum readership.

In short, DC’s forum is everything Facebook is not.

What They Have in Common

There are three things that all three websites have in common: a course library, a private forum, and a store.

Course Library

Given that all courses, regardless of subject, will be housed on OutliersAcademy.com the categories for McGillespie.com and DivineCouncil.org will inevitably spill over to OutliersAcademy.com when courses become available in their respective areas of focus.

Private Forum

The forum on DivineCouncil.org is expensive and requires considerable administration. For that reason, I’ll be leveraging the forum to support OutliersAcademy.com and McGillespie.com, as well. Please see the bottom of the forum on DivineCouncil.org to discuss articles or courses related to OutliersAcademy.com and McGillespie.com.

Online Store

The “Store” button on the menu of all three websites will take you to the online store for that website.

The store was installed to make it possible to sell digital downloads without having to update expiring links for security. However, there are lots of possibilities I’m looking forward to exploring.

Life Admin & Web Cockpit

I have two large computer screens in my office formed into a kind of life-administering cockpit. Between logos, writing tools, and all sorts of apps and gizmos that make it easier (read possible) to administer life and three fully-blown websites there’s usually something interesting on the screen.

Every once in a while a friend is in my office to discuss something in private, and they see something on the screen that prompts them to ask what I’m working on. While answering their questions I become aware, again, how extensive is the infrastructure that keeps my life on track, websites administered, and materials published for their respective purposes.

Everything is Easy?

Far from complaining, I find my work to be thrilling and a joy. However, I also know something about websites that most people don’t: the “cockpit” and tools on my screen are similar or identical to those on the desks of thousands of other website administrators. There are many great choices for tools “out there”, but the best of the breed are usually obvious. Equally well-known is how many tools (dozens or more) are necessary to accomplish the work and still carry on something of a normal life. And those knee-deep in using them know something else that need rarely be mentioned or discussed: The oft-heard advice that “having a website is easy” or “just throw it up online” or “my friend makes $10k a month on his blog and does almost nothing” is worse than bad; it’s defeating and destructive.

Just recently, I learned of a good man who was lured into a one SAS-(software as service)-does-all program for administering the totality of his business website needs. As of 2019, no such automated service can fulfill this promise. Such a promise can only be made (let alone fulfilled) by an actual person (or persons) doing the work. Yes–even in 2019– actual people still have to do the grunt work to keep a good website going; piece-by-piece, update-by-update, integration-by-integration, codemod-by-codemod, glitch-by-glitch, support-call-by-support call.

Automations like drip marketing are awesome, spreadsheets can do wonders, google drive is cool as long as it’s free, and there are lots of great courses out there to help. My new favorite beast(s) are Zapier integrations to take the drudgery out of inter-app coordination! But, don’t be fooled: there’s still a SWAMP of technology to wade through to keep everything in place for a functional website that fulfills its purpose well.

Pro Tip: Before you start a website for your business (or pay for an automated do-all-service) ask, beg, or purchase the advice on everything it really takes from someone already doing it. . . .successfully.

Library on McG Will Remain

The free-resource Library on McGillespie.com will remain and another one created on OutliersAcademy.com for resources related to the OA categories listed, above.

3 Websites for Life!

In retrospect, the unfolding of these three websites (over ten years) was natural and inevitable. Now with the “birth” of OutliersAcademy.com, I have the same feeling with regards to websites as when our second child was born. There is an indescribable feeling of “completeness of platform.”

In 2019, I’m more committed than ever to nourishing my family … and these three websites … for life!

Survival

Solved Twice in 4 Words: World Hunger

By Terence Gillespie July 12, 2017

World hunger is solvable in four words because it’s not a hard problem.

The first solution is “Sardines, crackers, water filters.” These four things could be made available to the world’s population with little more than existing manufacturing and distribution channels.

The second (and better) 4-word solution is to “grow and harvest locally.”

Grow and Harvest Locally

The challenges of providing food to difficult places on earth are best framed as they would be in providing food for astronauts engaged in interplanetary travel. Bringing food to a distant planet is unfeasible. Therefore, what’s transported are seeds and knowledge. Food is harvested at the destination from those ingredients.

On earth, food comes from land, water, sun, work, and education. Everywhere people are currently starving, the first three of those ingredients are already present.

Is it feasible to harvest or grow food in all of the world’s biomes?

If viewed from the vantage point of intra-planetary “space” travel, then, yes, of course, it is.

Then, Why Does World Hunger Persist?

Because stated desires are mistaken for intent, an unchallenged shortage mentality, the mistaken belief that personal contributions don’t matter, and lack of knowledge about how to harvest food from local land and waters.

Still, world hunger will not end until the usual suspects abandon artificial prosperity blocks. The only thing powerful enough to do that is overwhelming abundance.

Stated Desire vs. Intent

A stated desire to “end world hunger” is not the intent to do anything, at all, about hunger. Unless the speaker has a grocery bag in their hands, it’s virtue signaling.

Virtue Signaling

Virtue signaling is like wind past the ear; pleasant, but empty except for any action the listener might take. The speaker withdrawals from the Bank of Elegance to purchase the listeners good will. “Rather than pay in action, or in fact, they enchant with the grace of their salute. The true courtesy is the performance of duty: the spurious, and especially the useless, is deceit. It is not respect but rather a means to power.”¹

“Leaders” touting a desire to end world hunger ought to be accountable for grocery deliveries in proportion to the loudness, and reach, of their speech.

Shortage Mentality

Is there a shortage of sardines, crackers, or water filters?

If you don’t know the answer, then shortages aren’t the problem. Anyone with a spare $900 could ship a ton of sardines to Venezuela, today!

Price controls, and a lack of imagination cause shortages. Free markets resolve most shortages. Those that remain require imaginative substitutes. If sardines come up short, substitute a can of spam. Starvers can’t be choosers.

The First Best Solution is You

Personal steps taken towards the resolution of large problems are not meaningless; nor are they mere gestures. They’re the first best solution because the need is met:

Personally, imparting knowledge and experience to the doer.
Locally, improving the immediate environment.
At the least possible cost as people make sure of that when their time and money is at stake.

Passing the buck to a group masks the reality that doing so gives it to another person. Unless people (who make up every group) have the expertise, the price of the solution increases and the likelihood of success, or any action at all, is decreased.

‘Wars’ on Effects

Wars declared on effects, rather than causes, are guaranteed (designed?) to never end. Even my 4-word solutions to end world hunger presume that hunger, itself, is the problem.

Hunger is an effect of a shortage of food, not eating food that’s available, or not digesting food that’s eaten. Hunger doesn’t cause these conditions. However, where there are no medical, or psychological, problems, making food available to the hungry is the solution because it addresses the cause.

Sadly, more food than needed to feed the world must be made available to the world, to overcome artificial prosperity blocks by the usual suspects.

Prosperity Blocking by the Usual Suspects

Western countries are using aid to Africa as a smokescreen to hide the “sustained looting” of the continent as it loses nearly $60bn a year through tax evasion, climate change mitigation, and the flight of profits earned by foreign multinational companies, a group of NGOs has claimed.

Attempts to make the population less hungry are direct threats to the rackets that profit from hunger. From the vantage point of the scoundrel, world hunger is not a problem, but an opportunity. A hungry population is a controllable, and profitable, population.

Any good thing can be blocked, or destroyed, with a tiny fraction of the energy it takes to create it. Therefore, worldly power is obtained, more quickly and easily, by blocking the good than it may be obtained by producing the good.

Prosperity blocking is widespread, efficient, and predictable. I was tempted to say the resolution to world hunger is in three words: “Stop Blocking Prosperity.” But abundance, not the blocking of it, is the correct solution.

Food Like Air

Recent attempts to outlaw the collection of rainwater proves that nothing is outside the scoundrel’s willingness to block. The more precious the good, the more profitable the block. But, where abundance reigns, prosperity blocks fail.

Rainwater blocking fails only where the abundance of rain overwhelms the block. The second 4-word solution to end world hunger is best because it leads towards making food available in overwhelming abundance.

Only when food is available like air will world hunger come to an end.

Conclusion

196 countries would have plenty to spare after gearing up factories and transportation to provide 7.5 billion people with sardines, crackers and water filters. The unchallenging project would realign providers and channels to tackle more challenging problems like getting fresh fruit and vegetables on the plates of everyone in the world!

The better solution is to frame the challenge of food provision as intra-planetary travel where it must be harvested from, or on, the ground of the hungry. Only when food is available in such abundance that it overwhelms the prosperity blocks from the usual suspects, may attempts to end world hunger be successful.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom, by Balthasar Gracian, page 115, “cxci Do not take Payment in Politeness”. ↩

Communication

McGillespie Private Forum & Community

By Terence Gillespie May 20, 2017

One of the conclusions coming out of writing “12 Things to Consider Before Starting a Virtual Community” is how powerful these new platforms are. The forum software I’ve purchased and installed on DivineCoucil.org could handle the needs of a large corporation (And actually does serve in that capacity for many large companies). Under the right circumstances, one forum could easily be shared by multiple groups, just as branches or departments are handled on one corporate forum.

McGillespie Private Forum

To fully exploit the many wonderful features of the platform, I’ll be setting up private forums for McGillespie on the DivineCoucil.org forum.

You might have noticed a new “Forum” menu item on the top of this McGillespie blog page. That will take you to the DivineCouncil forum where you can interact with myself, and other McGillespie readers, on things such as articles, courses, books, products, etc.

Features & Benefits

There’s a special resource manager setup to disseminate materials and make it easy to find things. Each resource can be reviewed, and have discussions formed around them, so people know how they can be used, the ideal audience, attributions, etc.

There’s also a live chat area, so you might be able to catch fellow listeners online for a brief chat while you’re on the forum.

Better Than Facebook

Facebook is fun, but if you’re tired of conversations scrolling off the screen (and other FB pitfalls) the private forum environment is more conducive to organized and focused discussions that can be searched later by yourself and others.

So, if you’re looking for a more private and trusted environment for discussions around this material you have another option available in which to do that.

What Next?

Over 50 people have signed-up to the forum in the first week, and the platform will scale up to as large as it needs to be.

Once you’ve signed up for the forum, please e-mail me at tg@McGillespie.com to request access to the McGillespie private forum area so you’ll have access to the entire forum.

I’m Looking forward to seeing you there, and please bear with me as I make this into a seamless experience for all visitors!

Belief

FaceBook Announce of DivineCouncil.org Website & Forum

By Terence Gillespie May 20, 2017

After more than two months of prayer, council, and “counting the cost” over on the FaithLife forum, the DivineCouncil.org website and forum is up and running!

We hope DC will be the first, and a role model sister-site, around the territory mapped out by Michael Heiser in his recent book, the Unseen Realm.

Facebook is fun, but if you’re tired of conversations scrolling off the screen (and other FB pitfalls) the forum part of the site is built on a wonderful platform that enables the best means of discussions, fellowship, resource sharing, and live chat, available, today.

We love the new forum, and yet DC is a full-blown website, blog, etc. It’s a multi-author website (with three contributing writers, so far). If there are any believing writers, artists, photographers, small group leaders, etc. looking for a place to share, DivineCouncil.org could serve as an outlet for you.

We pray it may fill a need for the Kingdom, empower small groups, and be a worthy site for the Church.

Over 50 people have already signed on to the forum in the first week!

See you there!

DivineCouncil.org Website
DivineCouncil.org Forum

Belief

The DivineCouncil.org Forum & Website is Born!

By Terence Gillespie May 20, 2017

A few months ago, there was a 60-day preview of Unseen Realm on LOGOS and Michael Heiser asked some of his more veteran readers to help shepherd newcomers to the material on the FaithLife Forum.

Growing out of those discussions has been what I hope to be the first sister website and forum for writers, artists, and those looking to interact with others on the material: DivineCouncil.org.

What is it?

It’s a full website & forum with three writers contributing to the front page blog. I hope the site may also serve as an outlet for others. So, if there are any believing writers, artists, photographers etc. Looking to contribute, this might be a good fit for you.

The forum part of the site is structured around the Unseen Realm in terms of the overarching missions of Jesus.

So What?

There’s a special resource manager setup to disseminate materials to small groups and make it easier to find things to bring to your church. Each resource can be reviewed, and have discussions formed around them, so people know how they can be used, the ideal audience, attributions, etc.

There’s also a live chat area, so you might be able to catch fellow listeners online for a brief chat while you’re on the forum.

Better than Facebook!

So, if you’re looking for a more private and trusted environment for discussions around this material you have another option available in which to do that.

What Next?

Over 50 people have signed-up to the forum in the first week, and the platform will scale up to as large as it needs to be.

Nathan, Terence, and Zechariah hope DivineCoucil.org will fill a need for the Kingdom, empower small groups, and be a worthy site for the Church.

Over 50 people have already signed on to the forum in the first week!

See you there!

DivineCouncil.org Website
DivineCouncil.org Forum

Admin

12 Things to Consider Before Starting a Virtual Community

By Terence Gillespie April 11, 2017

If you want to start a virtual community, don’t. If you have to start a virtual community then what I’ve discovered, after three weeks of exhaustive research, may help you create a good one, and realize the benefits.

#1 Facebook for the Masses

Facebook is the best and worst of the social media community platforms. They all have one thing in common: you are the product. You are the value they “provide”. Your data, your community, and anything Facebook can gather through your interactions, is the product they sell back to … You.

In return for the value you provide, you’ll be constantly reminded that your presence on Facebook is a privilege. In return for that privilege, you agree to:

Lose control over your data.
Forfeit exclusive copyrights of your data.
Be unable to locate threads, links, or documents of interest after they’ve scrolled off the main screen.
Put up with the ebbs & flows of FB’s politically correct censorship.
Be subject to the collapse of your community at their whim.

If need compels you to “go where the people are” then start a FB group (Not a personal or business page, but a group). Don’t get too attached to your “likes”. What may take you years to build, Facebook can, has, and will, collapse overnight. And just like that, thousands of conversations, links, documents, and stories disappear down the memory hole.

#2 A Forum for Serious Matters

If you’ve decided to run a virtual community on a serious subject, with people that matter, then skip Facebook and start interacting with the actual people. If you can’t do that in person, install a private forum on a private server and encourage people to join.

Facebook, and most other social media outlets, are best used as a supplement to a garden that already feeds your community. That primary garden is either personal “real life” interaction, or, a private online virtual community. Both are under the stewardship and control of the community, itself.

#3 Forum Software

The time, people, and data involved in maintaining and participating in a forum is so precious, it’s foolish to compromise on platform or functionality, if you don’t have to. Happily, the costs and capabilities of the software and servers that host it are such that compromise is unnecessary.

I recommend myBB as a “free” starting point, and XenForo as your final platform. If cost isn’t a factor, skip myBB and start your forum on Xenforo. Otherwise, there’s an import function built-in to Xenforo, enabling the import of your myBB forum data, later. There’s also a professional service that will perform the migration for you, cms2cms.

My research on forum platforms was comprehensive and inspired by my own desire to start an online community. I have no skin in the forum software game, other than that. However, if you want to do your own research, here’s a good starting point comparing the features of 67 forum platforms: forummatrix.org.

#4 Why Not vBulletin?

With it’s large installed user base and functionality, I thought vBulletin was a slam dunk as the optimal platform. I was wrong.

Four leading developers of vBulletin split from gelsoft because they wanted to re-write the code from scratch rather that keep adding patches (per vB mgmt.) Sure enough, after the lawsuit was settled vB has had difficulties keeping pace with bugs and new developments. The latest V5 version has a terrible reputation and they stopped supporting version 4.3, which is what most of their large installed user base is using.

On the other hand, XenForo (which has all of vB’s functionality and the benefit of having been re-written on a new platform) is sailing smoothly due to their re-write. The developers “won” the lawsuit because they re-wrote new code from scratch during their 365-day non-compete clause.

If you go with vBulletin, I think it will lead to a boxed canyon in the mid-term. New plug-ins, and integrations with new internet functionalities, will be slow in coming, if they come, at all. If some functionality comes along that’s crucial to your business, you’ll have to migrate to Xenforo to get it. Therefore, why not just start with Xenforo from the beginning?

Surprisingly, myBB is has almost every feature vBulletin has. It’s also free, open-source, and well-designed. Still, if you have the money, skip myBB and start building from the start on Xenforo.

#5 Scalability

Here’s a Xenforo forum with 56 million posts.

Enough said on scalability.

#6 Time

20 hours per week in administration and board moderation is a good rule-of-thumb for a forum that has enough visitors to pay for itself. The maximum amount of time I could spend is between 3 and 10 hours per week. Therefore, if the forum I’m considering ever “took off” I’d need immediate help so it would not detract from larger purposes.

Including this article, I’ve put 20 hours of research into vetting platforms, and the possibility of starting, a virtual community. That’s time well spent in avoiding getting stuck on the wrong platform. It might turn out to be time well spent in deciding not to start a virtual community, at all. If I do move forward, it will be with the experiences of others informing the implementation so the whole enterprise doesn’t become unwieldy or detract from larger purposes.

#7 Money

Between the cost of the software and the cost of the servers, the monetary cost of putting on a sustainable private forum is $460 per year.

If you install myBB on a server you’re currently using for another website, the additional monetary cost of your forum will be ZERO. That is, until your forum starts to attract users, or you post things on the forum that require disk space and network bandwidth to downloaded by many simultaneous users. To account for that growth — which you, presumably, are trying to make happen — I estimate a mid-term monetary costs of $460 per year.

Xenforo is $140 – $290 for the initial purchase (varies with plug-ins needed) and perhaps 1/3 of that for upgrade privileges per year, thereafter. Since forums tend to eat server resources, I estimate a cost of $20 to $30 per month for server hosting for a moderately busy forum. Your other websites (with moderate to large traffic) could be hosted on the same dedicated server. Therefore, you could consolidate them onto the same dedicated server making the effective increase in server fees be less.

#8 The Hassles of an Online Community

For a birds-eye-view of the kinds of hassles a popular online forum can present, read Steve Pavlina article explaining why he shut his forum down. This article is a MUST-READ for anyone seriously considering the start of a virtual community.

#9 Monetization

All forums are monetized. Here’s my proof: All existing forums cost money and someone is paying for them. The only question is: who pays?

If a forum is paid for, directly, by one person or entity, the forum is sponsored. Sponsorship is a form of monetization.

Forum participants only view a forum as being monetized if they see ads or have to pay an entrance fee of some kind. There are many more ways than that to monetize a forum:

Sponsorship
Display ads
CPM – Cost per Impression
CPA – Cost per Action
CPC – Cost per Click
Classified ads
Affiliates
Premium Memberships

That’s not to say that a forum will ever become profitable. Most of the forums I’ve read about are considered to be doing well if they break even.

My view on monetizing a forum is that a community worth having is a one worth paying for. What I’m not sure about (that Steve Pavlina’s article has me contemplating) is whether a community that doesn’t pay for itself is worth having.

#10 One Forum, Multiple Communities?

Could one forum handle multiple communities?

Yes, but the communities that work best in that scenario are sub-communities of a larger purpose. A good example of this is a corporate forum handling company-wide categories and topics. Employees would log-in to keep abreast of the two or three categories of their interest. The remaining categories would be unread, or specifically reserved, for groups with other interests or responsibilities.

Another example of one forum serving multiple communities is a forum for a church. Only one forum need be created, and maintained, to accommodate a large church. Still, very few members would be interested in every category on the forum. A hundred or so ministries, and all activities, within one church could be easily handled by one forum.

The limit to the number of sub-communities a single forum can accommodate is a function of the coherence of governance between sub-communities.

#11 Customer Service Platform?

This is an interesting use of a private forum: For each product you sell start a new support thread on a forum. This enables all your customers to see the latest status of the product. Theoretically, it could save a busy retailer, or consultant, from being overwhelmed by individual customers asking the same questions. It could also be a great place to put FAQ’s for your company, service, or product.

The comment section of your product page could function in the same way. However, as most product pages are now designated landing pages, they no longer include comment sections. Starting a forum around your products might be a great way to serve that need.

#12 Should I Start a Forum, or Not?

With all the costs, time, and hassles involved in running a private forum, why have one, at all? This is a question I’ve not yet answered, for myself.

SM Comparison Table
Service	Capability
	1 to 1	1 to Many	Many to 1	Many to Many
E-mail	Y	Y	Firehose	N
Twitter	N	Y	Clumsy	N
FaceBook	Y	Y	Confusing	Share Rules
Forum	Y	Y	Y	Y

There are four things a private forum does, extremely well. They:

Provide a means for communicating with people you want to talk to, or have to talk to, for which the conversations are most beneficially conducted in a group setting.
Serve as a rare, nearly optimal, vehicle for all four types of interactions with people: 1 to 1, 1 to many, many to 1, many to many.
Function as online knowledge and resource repositories. I’ve greatly benefitted from forums around subjects I didn’t become interested in until the most active phase of the forum had already passed. Such forums, to me, were like floating spaceship libraries I was very thankful to find in “outer space”.
Facilitate group conversations with people that matter.