Biggest Thief Sues First, Again

For the last year or so, the US had been increasingly claiming of massive 'computer hacking' and 'computer spying' coming out of China and the Chinese had been stealing trade secrets etc through those hackings.

The US claimed their security experts found that most of the hackings were coming from 'IP addresses' known to be from a building in China 'associated' with the Chinese military (dumb Chinese fellas, do everything from one place unlike smart Americans - see below)

In the lead up to last week's China's leader Xi JinPing's visit to the US, media reports were saying that 'hacking' was going to be a major issue the US will raise at the meeting.

But just days before that meeting, news broke that the US government (through its National Security Agency or NSA) has been conducting large scale 'monitoring' (as opposed to 'hacking' or 'spying') of telecommunications inside and outside the US, and internet sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc were giving the NSA access to their user database.

US officials initially claimed that the monitoring were not targetted at American citizens, are 'focused' (i.e. not indiscriminate) and done only with 'court apporval', and are done only to 'protect the safety of Americans' (i.e not to spy on others etc).

Websites like Facebook initially claimed there was no such thing (but went quiet after that).

A day or so after the news broke, the 'whistle blower' came out in public in Hong Kong (of all places) and said (among others) that :
 - 97 billion 'pieces of information' was gathered worldwide in one month and 3 billion were from computers within the US (i.e. average 8 'pieces' for every US citizen)
 - people like him can tap into any e-mail or phone call of anyone including the president

With access to user data in those American 'social websites' they have access to who is related to who and was doing what at what time etc. All voluntarily provided by billions of suckers around the world! Only Chinamen needs to hack...

The whistle blower was an ex-CIA employee working for Booz-Allen, the private company contracted by the NSA to supply people to work on the monitoring programme operating out of countries all over the world (not just from inside the US) like Switzerland.

See, people so smart. They don't use military staff and they operate from outside the US so that it is harder to link the perpetrators to the US.

From the 'heat map' below, one notices that the 'most monitored' countries were Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and India. The next highest group included Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China and Germany!

But the US had never accused Eygpt, Saudi, Iraq, India and Germany (all supposedly friends of the US) as 'sponsors of terrorism' nor 'spying' or 'hacking'. So what sort of threat were those countries posing to the 'safety of Americans'?

According to Russsia Times TV, those countries are either key suppliers of oil or economic competitors i.e. the US were conducting espionage (that they accused China of doing).

John Boehner (Speaker of US House of Representatives) was shown today on Bloomberg TV saying that the monitorings are done under 'mountains of controls'. Well, the key word is 'mountains' - you believe mountains can do controls?

Additional Notes:

More than 10 years ago, there were reports that the US, UK and Australia operate a global eavesdropping system that can monitor and tap into any telecommunication around the world.

As the developer of ARPANET (the predecessor of today's internet), the US controls the entire world's internet system and has refused requests by other countries for control to be passed to an international body. There is a reason for that.

For example, the internet is supposedly 'smart' such that every data transmitted through it will find 'mulitple paths' to its intended recipient. Well, may be those data can also be directed by some 'smart' fellas to go pass some people's special servers and get 'saved' along the way?

Over the last few years, the US had also disallowed Chinese telecommunications equipment manufaturers like Huawei to bid for contracts to supply US telecom companies with Chinese made networking equipment including those used for internet data switching and routing. The official reason was for fear of Chinese using those equipments to spy. There are reasons for that too.

As example, how can they tell those Chinese fellas to send a 'copy' of everything to some special 'servers' somewhere without the Chinese knowing about it and telling the whole world?

When the below monitoring news broke, there was reports that since 1999 (if you believe it) the US government has special 'back doors' that allow them to get into the Windows operating system and take anything they want from any computer using that software even if the contents are encrypted.

A famous example was the Stuxnet virus (discovered in 2010) that the US used to 'attack' Iran's nuclear facilities via Windows. Only Iran? So nice?


Article from Zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-08/nsas-boundless-informant-collects-3-billion-intelligence-pieces-us-computer-networks

The NSA's "Boundless Informant" Collects 3 Billion Intelligence Pieces From US Computer Networks In One Month

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/08/2013

There's one reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should just keep their mouths shut as the PRISM-gate fallout escalates: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even more lies, more retribution against sources, more journalist persecution and so on.

The latest piece of news once again comes from the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald who this time exposes the NSA's datamining tool "Boundless Informant" which according to leaked documents collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide in March 2013 alone, and "3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period."

This is summarized in the chart below which shows that only the middle east has more active NSA-espionage than the US. Also, Obama may not want to show Xi the activity heatmap for China, or else the whole "China is hacking us" script may promptly fall apart.



Using simple, non-AES 256 breaking math, 3 billion per month amounts to some 100 million intrusions into the US per day, or looked at from another perspective, just a little more than the "zero" which James Clapper vouched announced earlier today is the applicable number of US citizens falling under the NSA's espionage mandate: "Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States." Oops.

But it gets worse for the NSA. As the Guardian reports, "Emmel, the NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian: "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address). Thus, we apply rigorous training and technological advancements to combine both our automated and manual (human) processes to characterize communications – ensuring protection of the privacy rights of the American people. This is not just our judgment, but that of the relevant inspectors general, who have also reported this."

In other words, Americans are absolutely the target of billions of monthly intrusions, but said data "mining" is exempted because it is difficult to identify in advance if a US citizen is implicated in any metadata chain.

Only it isn't as it is the whole premise behind Boundless Informant.

An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."

Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn.

Next up: more NSA lies of course.

The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.

At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

"No sir," replied Clapper.

Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."

Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.

IP address is not a perfect proxy for someone's physical location but it is rather close, said Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist with the Speech Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If you don't take steps to hide it, the IP address provided by your internet provider will certainly tell you what country, state and, typically, city you are in," Soghoian said.

...

At a congressional hearing in March last year, Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said: "No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States." He added that "nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information".

Turns out they do, and that perjury in the US is now merely another facet of the "New Normal." Plus what difference does it make that yet another member of the most transparent administration perjured themselves. Then again, when the head of the Department of Justice is being investigated for lying to Congress under oath, one can only laugh.

That laughter risks becoming an imbecilic cackle when reading the following veiled threat to the Guardian from the NSA's Judith Emmel: "The continued publication of these allegations about highly classified issues, and other information taken out of context, makes it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs."

In other words, the best discussion is one that would simply not take place as reporters should promptly stop actually reporting, and fall back to their New Normal role of being access journalists to important people (see Andrew Ross Sorkin's rise to fame on... nothing) with zero critical insight or investigative effort. Or else...

World Oil & Gas Reserves Update

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/bp-reserves-idUSL5N0EO1I720130612?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssEnergyNews

Wed Jun 12, 2013 11:26am EDT

* BP sees its first ever global gas reserves decline
* Cites lower reserves in U.S., Russian revision

* Leaves sanctions-bound Iran as top gas reserves holder

By Alex Lawler and Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Oil major BP cut its global natural gas reserves estimate for the first time in decades, revising Russia's still classified holdings down sharply and putting Iran at the top of the world league table.

In its Statistical Review of World Energy published on Wednesday, BP put global proven gas reserves at 187.3 trillion cubic metres as of the end of 2012, enough for about 56 years of global production at current rates.

BP's annual review of energy statistics, first published in 1951, is considered an industry benchmark. Last year's report put gas reserves at 208.4 trillion cubic metres. The cut of 21 trillion equals roughly seven years of global gas use.

Russia, the world's biggest gas reserves holder for many years, was responsible for the bulk of the reduction, with its reserves estimate downgraded to 32.9 trillion from 44.6 trillion in last year's report.

BP's chief economist, Christof Ruhl, said at a news conference the company decided this year to adjust its estimates for the former Soviet Union, including Russia, where data on reserves is classified.

"Traditionally countries of the former Soviet Union had different criteria than used elsewhere. So we used a conversion factor to convert that from those countries where we don't get direct data," Ruhl said.

"In some countries, reserves are still a state secret, so we have to rely on these data," he added.

BP also cut its estimate of gas reserves in the United States, where the energy industry has been transformed by shale oil and gas, due to lower prices and reduced drilling. U.S. reserves ended 2012 at 8.5 trillion cubic metres, down 0.3 trillion from 2011.

The downgrade left Iran at the top of the table of the world's largest gas reserves holders for the first time in decades, with its broadly unchanged reserves of 33.6 trillion.

Russia remains a much larger gas producer than Iran, which is unable to exploit the full potential of its resources, because U.S. and European trade sanctions over its nuclear programme have stalled energy projects.

BP has had a bumpy experience in Russia over the past decade. TNK-BP, its venture with Russian billionaires, generated billions of dollars in dividends for BP but also led to clashes with the Kremlin.

The company sold out of the venture this year to become a major shareholder in state-controlled champion Rosneft . The latter is pursuing an aggressive gas strategy to rival state-controlled Gazprom, Russia's gas export monopoly and holder of most of its gas reserves.

In its review, BP also steeply downgraded Turkmenistan's reserves to 17.5 trillion from 24.3 trillion and cut its reserves estimates for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.

OIL ESTIMATES

On the oil side, BP estimated global proven oil reserves at 1,669 billion barrels at the end of 2012, up slightly from 1,654 billion at the end of 2011 and enough to maintain current global production levels for 53 years.

In its report a year earlier, BP had revised global oil reserves sharply higher, citing new technology that made heavy crude grades in Canada and Venezuela economically profitable to extract.

Its figure for U.S. oil reserves rose to 35 billion barrels from 31 billion last year, more than 2 percent of global reserves.

A report from the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration on Monday pointed to the dramatic impact of shale on world energy. Shale deposits will boost total world crude resources by 11 percent, it said.

BP upgraded reserves for both Iran and Iraq by several billion barrels and kept them at their No.3 and 4 global spots, respectively. Venezuela and Saudi Arabia kept their first and second places with no major revisions over the year.

Ecuador, Norway and China were included in upward reserves revisions, while estimates were downgraded for South Sudan, Malaysia, Angola and Gabon.

Heaven By Way of Mars

According to followers of some religions, they will go to heaven when they die (supposedly because they got into the gods' good books because they 'believed in Him').

That's why their obituaries in the papers are littered with claims like 'called home to be with the Lord'. In fact, they are 'a dime a dozen' - you find them all the time. Cheap thrill.

But I have yet to see an obituary that claim that some one had been 'called home to be with the Lord by way of Mars'. That would be something to brag about, wouldn't it?

Which is why this woman below has my respect...

First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova wants to go to Mars

Russia News.Net Wednesday 12th June, 2013

Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space, said that she willing to make a one-way trip to Mars.

The 76-year old made the statement in Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) outside Moscow, home to a cosmonaut training centre, adding it is her favourite planet, reports News.com.au.
Tereshkova, who became a national heroine at the tender age of 26 when she made a solo space flight in 1963, said that she had been part of the group who studied the possibility of going to the Red Planet. (ANI)

- See more at: http://www.russianews.net/index.php/sid/215137125/scat/723971d98160d438/ht/First-woman-in-space-Valentina-Tereshkova-wants-to-go-to-Mars#sthash.WoRJLAEP.dpuf

20 Completely Ridiculous College Courses Being Offered At U.S. Universities

Below article from Zerohedge dated 7 June 2013

CCK Notes:

1. Schools sell what students demand. So the courses below are a reflection of the simple mindedness of their young which is a reflection of their parents' way of thinking (blind leading the blind). That in turn is a reflection of the entire country's way of life.

2. That country had lost sense of what it takes to maintain a high standard of living i.e. a high standard of living can only be achieved by way of producing real stuffs of high value. That's because for 40 years (at least) they found that they could bluff the entire world by buying things that they consume by printing money (instead of producing real goods) and robbing other countries (e.g. attacking and robbing resource rich countries like Iraq, Libya etc)

3. Overtime, that led their people (parents and children) to think that wealth can come by way of doing anything they like as long as they 'enjoy' it instead of asking the question 'how does this improve my REAL skills/knowledge to enable me to live productively and out-compete billions of other people?' every time they do something.

4. That is the risk to children of people that steal instead of produce - the thieving parents do not know what it takes to earn a living by way of real work themselves and so they cannot teach their children how and what it takes to make an honest living. As a result, their children think that everything in life comes easy and they look for 'the easiest way' to everything (no stress, little work, little thinking etc.) or go for 'cheap thrills' ('no brainers' that anyone can do without thinking). Worse, people/governments that rob/steal will never tell their children about it. Instead they are very generous with money (since it does not belong to them) and that generosity spoils their kids even more.

5. Since their economy is basically a hollow shell the country finds that there is not enough real jobs for their young. So they try to keep them out of the job market as long as possible by encouraging their kids to go to 'college' (university) so as to delay the disappointment the young will encounter with joblessness. It is called 'buying time' or 'kicking the can down the road'.

6. Furthermore, having kids and families spend or borrow money to spend on university education helps support one part of their economy i.e. the 'education sector' and keep some people mistakenly taken as 'teachers' employed (schooling like running prisons is now big business in the US and many countries).

7. Worse, their banks (encouraged by their government) lend more than the students need because it is a 'scheme' to encourage people to borrow and spend. The 'hope' is the increased spending will help 'grow' their economy. But economies do not grow by people borrowing (or stealing) and spending more but by producing more.

8. But 'living a lie' can only last so long. Sooner or later, their young will have to go out to earn a living but will find out that what they 'learnt' in school (or at home) is of little value and do not help them pay for the expensive way of life they were used to and the huge student loans they are saddled with. (40-60% of youths i.e. people under 25 years old and 17-20% of the population in the US and many countries in the EU are jobless or under-employed)

9. That then lead to massive riots by those disillusioned people looking for some one to blame. All the riots we read in the news everywhere around the world the last few years and years to come have similar origins.

10. So young people of the world be careful with who you learn from and the choices you make with your lives. Think, think, think...

20 Completely Ridiculous College Courses Being Offered At U.S. Universities

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-07/20-completely-ridiculous-college-courses-being-offered-us-universities

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economc Collapse blog,

Would you like to know what America's young people are actually learning while they are away at college? It isn't pretty. Yes, there are some very highly technical fields where students are being taught some very important skills, but for the most part U.S. college students are learning very little that they will actually use out in the real world when they graduate. Some of the college courses listed below are funny, others are truly bizarre, others are just plain outrageous, but all of them are a waste of money. If we are going to continue to have a system where we insist that our young people invest several years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars getting a "college education", they might as well be learning some useful skills in the process. This is especially true considering how much student loan debt many of our young people are piling up. Sadly, the truth is that right now college education in the United States is a total joke. I know - I spent eight years in the system. Most college courses are so easy that they could be passed by the family dog, and many of these courses "study" some of the most absurd things imaginable.

Listed below are 20 completely ridiculous college courses being offered at U.S. universities. The description following each course title either comes directly from the official course description or from a news story about the course...

1. "What If Harry Potter Is Real?" (Appalachian State University) - This course will engage students with questions about the very nature of history. Who decides what history is? Who decides how it is used or mis-used? How does this use or misuse affect us? How can the historical imagination inform literature and fantasy? How can fantasy reshape how we look at history? The Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring all of these deeper questions. By looking at the actual geography of the novels, real and imagined historical events portrayed in the novels, the reactions of scholars in all the social sciences to the novels, and the world-wide frenzy inspired by them, students will examine issues of race, class, gender, time, place, the uses of space and movement, the role of multiculturalism in history as well as how to read a novel and how to read scholarly essays to get the most out of them.

2. "God, Sex, Chocolate: Desire and the Spiritual Path" (UC San Diego) - Who shapes our desire? Who suffers for it? Do we control our desire or does desire control us? When we yield to desire, do we become more fully ourselves or must we deny it to find an authentic identity beneath? How have religious & philosophical approaches dealt with the problem of desire?

3. "GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity" (The University Of Virginia) - In Graduate Arts & Sciences student Christa Romanosky's ongoing ENWR 1510 class, "GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity," students analyze how the musician pushes social boundaries with her work. For this introductory course to argumentative essay writing, Romanosky chose the Lady Gaga theme to establish an engaging framework for critical analysis.

4. "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame" (The University Of South Carolina) - Lady Gaga may not have much class but now there is a class on her. The University of South Carolina is offering a class called Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame. Mathieu Deflem, the professor teaching the course describes it as aiming to “unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga with respect to her music, videos, fashion, and other artistic endeavours.”

5. "Philosophy And Star Trek" (Georgetown) - Star Trek is very philosophical. What better way, then, to learn philosophy, than to watch Star Trek, read philosophy, and hash it all out in class? That's the plan. This course is basically an introduction to certain topics in metaphysics and epistemology philosophy, centered around major philosophical questions that come up again and again in Star Trek. In conjunction with watching Star Trek, we will read excerpts from the writings of great philosophers, extract key concepts and arguments and then analyze those arguments.

6. "Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond" (The University Of Texas) - Why would anyone want to learn Klingon? Who really speaks Esperanto, anyway? Could there ever be a language based entirely on musical scales? Using constructed/invented languages as a vehicle, we will try to answer these questions as we discuss current ideas about linguistic theory, especially ideas surrounding the interaction of language and society. For example, what is it about the structure of Klingon that makes it look so "alien"? What was it about early 20th century Europe that spawned so many so-called "universal" languages? Can a language be inherently sexist? We will consider constructed/invented languages from a variety of viewpoints, such as languages created as fictional plot-devices, for philosophical debates, to serve an international function, and languages created for private fun. We won't be learning any one language specifically, but we will be learning about the art, ideas, and goals behind invented languages using diverse sources from literature, the internet, films, video games, and other aspects of popular culture.

7. "The Science Of Superheroes" (UC Irvine) - Have you ever wondered if Superman could really bend steel bars? Would a “gamma ray” accident turn you into the Hulk? What is a “spidey-sense”? And just who did think of all these superheroes and their powers? In this seminar, we discuss the science (or lack of science) behind many of the most famous superheroes. Even more amazing, we will discuss what kind of superheroes might be imagined using our current scientific understanding.

8. "Learning From YouTube" (Pitzer College) - About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments. Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video of himself juggling.

9. "Arguing with Judge Judy" (UC Berkeley) - TV "Judge" shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years. A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked "Did you hit the plaintiff?" respondents often say, "If I woulda hit him, he'd be dead!" This reply avoids answering "yes" or "no" by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called "a fortiori" argument ["from the stronger"] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on "Judge Judy" and "The People's Court" and discussing why such strategies are so widespread. It is NOT a course about law or "legal reasoning." Students who are interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the application of law or the operations of the court system in general.

10. "Elvis As Anthology" (The University Of Iowa) - The class, “Elvis as Anthology,” focuses on Presley’s relationship to African American history, social change, and aesthetics. It focuses not just on Elvis, but on other artists who inspired him and whom he inspired.

11. "The Feminist Critique Of Christianity" (The University Of Pennsylvania) - An overview of the past decades of feminist scholarship about Christian and post-Christian historians and theologians who offer a feminist perspective on traditional Christian theology and practice. This course is a critical overview of this material, presented with a summary of Christian biblical studies, history and theology, and with a special interest in constructive attempts at creating a spiritual tradition with women's experience at the center.

12. "Zombies In Popular Media" (Columbia College) - This course explores the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur discussion and exploration of the figure's many incarnations. Daily assignments focus on reflection and commentary, while final projects foster thoughtful connections between student disciplines and the figure of the zombie.

13. "Far Side Entomology" (Oregon State) - For the last 20 years, a scientist at Oregon State University has used Gary Larson's cartoons as a teaching tool. The result has been a generation of students learning — and laughing — about insects.

14. "Interrogating Gender: Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing" (Swarthmore) - Do clothes make the man? Or the woman? Do men make better women? Or women better men? Is gender a costume we put on and take off? Are we really all always in drag? Does gender-bending lead to transcendence or chaos? These questions and their ramifications for liminalities of race, nationality and sexuality will be our focus in a course that examines dramatic works from The Bacchae to M. Butterfly.

15. "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing (Belmont University) - Students must write papers using their personal research on the five senses. Entsminger reads aloud illustrated books The Simple People and Toby’s Toe to teach lessons about what to value by being alive. Students listen to music while doodling in class. Another project requires students to put themselves in situations where they will be distracted and write a reflection tracking how they got back to their original intent.

16. "The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur" (University of Washington) - The UW is not the first college with a class dedicated to Shakur -- classes on the rapper have been offered at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard -- but it is the first to relate Shakur's work to literature.

17. "Cyberporn And Society" (State University of New York at Buffalo) - With classwork like this, who needs to play? Undergraduates taking Cyberporn and Society at the State University of New York at Buffalo survey Internet porn sites.

18. "Sport For The Spectator" (The Ohio State University) - Develop an appreciation of sport as a spectacle, social event, recreational pursuit, business, and entertainment. Develop the ability to identify issues that affect the sport and spectator behavior.

19. "Getting Dressed" (Princeton) - Jenna Weissman Joselit looks over the roomful of freshmen in front of her and asks them to perform a warm-up exercise: Chart the major moments of your lives through clothes. "If you pop open your closet, can you recall your lives?" she posits on the first day of the freshman seminar "Getting Dressed."

20. "How To Watch Television" (Montclair) - This course, open to both broadcasting majors and non-majors, is about analyzing television in the ways and to the extent to which it needs to be understood by its audience. The aim is for students to critically evaluate the role and impact of television in their lives as well as in the life of the culture. The means to achieve this aim is an approach that combines media theory and criticism with media education.

Are you starting to understand why our college graduates can't function effectively when they graduate and go out into the real world?

All of this would be completely hilarious if not for the fact that we have millions of young people going into enormous amounts of debt to pay to go to these colleges.

In America today, college education has become a giant money making scam. We have a system that absolutely throws money at our young people, but we never warn them about the consequences of all of these loans. The following is an excerpt from an email that one reader sent me recently about the student loan industry...

For example, one woman told me that her and her husband sat down and thought of every possible expense they could when they were applying for parent/student loan for their daughter. When the approval came back, they were approved for 7k more than they asked for…how about ****! Of course at 7%, why not! Funny thing is they kept the 7k, because she’s in wealth management and said she could “easily” get more than 7% in the stock market……awesome! I have another example of a younger friend of mine who graduated law school from Vanderbilt with 210k in student loans. I asked if tuition was that much there. She said kind of, but they kept offering more than the actual tuition, so she took it and used it for a better lifestyle. Now 20% of her income goes to pay those loans, and it’s still not enough to touch one dollar of the principal…so all she is doing is paying interest, and building on principal…like a revers amortizing mortgage. To make it worse, she was able to save 25k, so she is going to buy a house somehow. Having explained to her that the best investment in the world is to pay off a high interest loan, she said I’m tired of waiting to have a life.

In a recent article entitled "The Student Loan Delinquency Rate In The United States Has Hit A Brand New Record High" I detailed how nightmarish our student loan debt bubble is becoming. According to the Federal Reserve, the total amount of student loan debt has risen by 275 percent since 2003, and it just continues to soar.

A college education can be a wonderful thing, but right now we have got a system that is deeply, deeply broken.

So what do you think about our system of higher education?

You Are About to Become Obsolete; Perhaps You Already Are (But You Don't Realise it Yet)

Article from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis dated 31 May 2013

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/05/you-are-about-to-become-obsolete.html#3F4YV8AiWQQDUhPM.99

A friend of mine sent a thought provoking link to a book-in-progress called Robots Will Steal Your Job But That's OK.

The author, Federico Pistono, periodically writes a new chapter and I just signed up for updates.

The introduction caught my eye.

Introduction

You are about to become obsolete. You think you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is impossible to replace. You are wrong. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by computer scientists are frantically running on servers all over the world, with one sole purpose: do whatever humans can do, but better. These algorithms are intelligent computer programs, permeating the substrate of our society. They make financial decisions, they predict the weather, they predict which countries will wage war next. Soon, there will be little left for us to do: machines will take over.

Does that sound like some futuristic fantasy? Perhaps. This argument is proposed by a growing yet still fringe community of thinkers, scientists, and academics, who see the advancement of technology as a disruptive force, which will soon transform our entire socioeconomic system forever. According to them, the displacement of labour by machines and computer intelligence will increase dramatically over the next few decades. Such changes will be so drastic and quick that the market will not be able to abide in creating new opportunities for workers who have lost their jobs, making unemployment not just part of a cycle, but structural in nature and chronically irreversible. It will be the end of work as we know it.

Most economists discard such arguments. Many of them don’t even address the issue in the first place. And those who do address this issue claim that the market always finds a way. As machines replace old jobs, new jobs are created. Thanks to the ingenuity of the human mind and the need for growth, markets always find a way, especially in the ever-connected and globalised mass market we live in today.

In this book I will try to avoid picking either side based on belief, gut feeling, or hunch. Rather, I will attempt to engage in informed logical reasoning, based on the evidence we have so far.

The book is divided into three parts. First, we will explore the topic of technological unemployment and its impact on work and society – I chose to focus on the US economy, but the same argument applies to most the industrialised world. In the second part we will look into the nature of work itself and the relationship between work and happiness. The last part is a bold attempt to provide some practical suggestions on how to deal with the issues presented in the first two parts. Doing a thorough examination of each section would require a monumental effort, possibly resulting in thousands of pages, far exceeding the purpose of this book. My intention is not to write a complete academic report, but rather to initiate a discussion about what I think will soon be one of the biggest challenges that we have to face as a society and as individuals. Too often we treat various issues as separate subjects, not realising the interconnected nature of our reality. This mistake has made us weak and vulnerable. Over the last 70 years, we have set the stage of our own demise. We have become increasingly discontent, the quality of our relationships have diminished, and we have lost track of what really matters. Today, as the comedian Louis CK has noted: “Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy!” It is time to take a step back and think about where we are going.

Let us begin the journey. ...


Part I is on Automation and Unemployment, and consists of five chapters. Parts II and III are not yet posted. Inquiring minds may wish to follow the journey.

What If?

In the following short 4-minute video Federico Pistono asks "What if the jobs cannot come back? What if it is intrinsically impossible for the jobs to come back? What if unemployment is structural?"



Here is a 17 minute video that is also worth a look. Pistono argues "no one is safe" while asking "what happens if Walmart fully automates?"



Here is my favorite snip from the video: "As much as 80% of the people hate their job. That's four out of five spending most of their useful life doing something they don't particularly enjoy. We are in kind of a work paradox because we work long and hard hours, on jobs we hate, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like. Genius!"

Structurally High Unemployment

For several years I have been writing about the concept of "Structurally High Unemployment" but Pistono goes far beyond that. He explores the idea this is not just another creative destruction phase that will be followed by another job boom, but rather this is the end, computer intelligence is why, and that's a great thing!

Pistono's socialistic vision of the future is that robots will do everything, there are infinite resources, no one has to work, and we all live happily ever after.

To say I disagree about that Pollyanna endgame is putting things mildly. And since I believe there is no work-free nirvana, here's the key question: what if Pistono is half-right, that no job is safe, that no jobs are coming, but robots do not provide the "But that's OK" nirvana Pistono imagines.

9 Things You NEED to Know to Survive the New Economy

My mail to the kids in family (WL/LL/Tian/Le) dated 6 June 2013:

 

Read below and try to understand what this man is saying about the future.

Although he is talking about the US (because he is American), the other 'first world' countries are no different.

A lot of young people thinks that going to university (known as 'colleges' in the US) will guarantee them a good paying job. So they borrow money from banks etc to pay for their courses.

Because they think that once they enter a uni, the uni will guarantee them a 'cert' which will guarantee them a good paying job, most of them just have a good time and are not serious about acquiring knowledge (one can go to school and yet learn nothing!).

When they come out many either cannot find jobs or get jobs with salaries they expect. So they end up jobless or feeling poor (because the big student loan repayments take away a big chunk of their salaries).

In the US and Europe, 40-60% of youths (people aged below 25) are now jobless! Around the world 17-20% of youths are jobless. (5-10 years later when more and more people like you join the job market looking for jobs, it will be worse).

Because they cannot think properly, ignorant, and do not understand what is happening in the world (no big picture), they blame their governments for not doing 'a good job' of making sure every uni graduate gets good paying jobs. (People always blame others for their problems).

The typical uni graduates in Singapore, for example, expects pay of S$2,500/month and do not know that a uni graduate in China is willing to work for $1,000/month (therefore employers and jobs would go to China!).

A typical garment factory worker in poor countries like Bangladesh works for US$50 to $60/month!

Go around your city and you will see that many youths are working as salesgirls, hairdressers, beauticians etc. Those jobs will never pay much.

In addition, there are already 7 billion people in the world and it is still growing (because science and modern medicine will 'save' more and more from death from diseases etc).

With technology progress, manufacturers and companies will require fewer and fewer people to do the same amount of work (because they can use machines and computers instead)!

As more and more people compete for jobs, salaries will go lower because people will accept lower pay to out bid other job seekers.

On the other hand, the resources available will become costlier because of 2 reasons.

More people will be fighting for the same amount of resources, and the easy to get resources (like oil, iron etc) have already been mined and used by past generations. What resources are left for future generations will be harder and harder (i.e more costlier) to extract.

The combination of costlier resources and lower pay will combine to make life very difficult for people at the bottom 80%.

Remember, the 80/20 Rule.

The top 20% of the people control/own 80% of the wealth. The bottom 80% of people have to fight for the remaining 20% of wealth.

If you live like the bottom 80%, your life will be very different from the top 20%...

 

Additional Note:

Because university costs are so high nowadays, many smart young people decided not to go to uni and use the money to invest instead.

As example, going overseas for uni can cost more than $300,000 (including fees, food, housing etc.).

After that, if the person repays $1,500/month (because salary is only $2,500), it will take 20-30 years to finish repaying the loan and have only $1,000 left for own use.

On the other hand, if the person invest that $300,000, he/she may be able to get an income of $30,000 per year (if person is a smart investor, can get 10% return or more per year). In that case, the person does not even have to work but still get $12,000 to use every year (the other $18,000 for loan repayment).

Better if they use family's money.

If they spend the family's $300,000 on uni education, they are giving the money away to their 'professors' and have to work for 20 years (assuming they save $1,500/month) just to get back the $300,000 they started with!

On the other hand, if they invest that $300,000 they will keep that $300,000 and get $30,000 (returns) every year without having to work! In the meantime they can take on jobs they really like or enjoy but may be less pay (but who cares about your job's pay if you have additional income from elswhere?).

So make sure you think properly and talk to smart people before making big decisions that involve spending a lot of money. Be the 20%...


 

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Casey Research subscribers@caseyresearch.com
Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2013 1:18 AM
Subject: Casey Daily Dispatch - Nine Things You Need to Know to Survive the New Economy

Our guest contributor this week is a fascinating man. He once founded a web design company and sold it for $10 million, only to squander every penny. Starting over from zero, he founded another company – Stockpickr – and sold it, too, for $10 million.

He has been a hedge fund manager, a financial columnist, and has written eleven books. Today, he's director of Formula Capital, where he manages a portfolio of twenty angel investments, and is on the board of several companies. Oh, and he's also a chess master and a prolific blogger.

Personally, I've been a fan of James Altucher's writing for years. In my opinion, the most impressive part of his story is that he became successful by bucking convention. James didn't languish in a cubicle waiting to be promoted or try to claw his way up the corporate ladder. Instead, he generated ideas and created businesses out of them – a Doug Caseyesque approach to life.

James weaves this important message through his various books and blog posts: break the chains of convention that are restricting your life and career.

While society tells us that we're supposed to borrow money to go to school and buy a house, student and mortgage debt beholden you to a biweekly paycheck to remain afloat financially. When you're paying $2,500 per month combined on your mortgage and loans, you can't take some time off to explore a passion or build a business. You have to keep running on the hamster wheel.

It's better, James argues, for many people not to go to college at all. Instead, take the money and time you would have spent and build a business. Ditto for buying a house, which, beyond skewing the average person's portfolio far too heavily into real estate, also anchors you to a specific geographic location, limiting your job opportunities to that area. Not to mention the vampiric effects a 30-year mortgage has on your finances.

These burdens and others prevent most people from reaching one of the most rewarding positions in life: working for yourself, where your earning power can be a direct result of your ideas, drive, and effort, rather than your boss' estimation of how much your time is worth.

Having followed and enjoyed James' writing for years, I contacted him to ask if he'd be interested in writing an exclusive piece on the US economy for our audience. Happily, James replied that he's a huge fan of Casey Research, that he'd love to contribute, and that the timing is perfect for him, as his eleventh book was just released on Monday.

So here we are. You'll notice the piece has a different flavor than the typical articles that appear in this space, with more of a contemplative rather than analytical perspective. Since the mind doing the contemplating has created so much value, I consider that a good thing. James' perspective is both valuable and unique, and I hope you'll enjoy it.

Read on for his fascinating take on some of the stark realities that exist for the average worker in today's and tomorrow's economy. And if you're so inclined, check out his book, which he discusses at the end.

See you next week!

 

Dan Steinhart
Managing Editor, The Casey Report

 

 

Nine Things You NEED to Know to Survive the New Economy

By James Altucher, Managing Director of Formula Capital

I almost had $8 million stolen from me yesterday, so I'm in a bad mood. Someone wanted to borrow $8 million and use $18 million worth of stock certificates as collateral. I found a way to lend him the $8 million. The borrower had legal opinions from the companies involved (all big companies). He had bankers verifying his accounts. He had lawyers with bylaws, trilaws, whatever laws, to his corporations. He had access to material he would only have if he was intimately involved with the companies involved. He had lots of things to prove he was who he said he was.

Using our own detectives, we found out at the last minute that he'd forged everything. And his whole operation (lawyers, brokers, etc.) disappeared as soon as we uncovered the fraud.

When we found out, we all started laughing. Sometimes you can't help but laugh at the entertainment the world throws in your face. Thank god we didn't wire the money!

I wish I could say this story is just a metaphor for US economics, but it really happened. And it stings. It was a great deal. As they say, "It was too good to be true".

OK, but now I'm going to also say: the US economy is a fraud also and often too good to be true.

What happened to me in the past day on a micro level is exactly what is happening on a macro level to the entire country and to every government that is using paper money and fraudulent tactics to kick the can down the road. The government wants to borrow a piece of our lives, hypnotize us into thinking the collateral is good, and forget about us later when it comes time to pay us back. And then we die.

You read Doug Casey because you're the type of person who won't be fooled and won't be robbed. That's why we are here. We want to be successful because of the flaws in the system. We want to be free from the shackles of prison. And we want to stop being lied to.

Nine Things You Need to Know

1) The average cubicle dweller is becoming impoverished.

Let's take a look at the basic graphic: your income is going down versus all the things you need: food, shelter, energy.

 

2) Supply and demand is starving the middle class.

Population is going up, but high-quality jobs are being outsourced, globalized, mobilized, and roboticized.

I'm on the board of a $600-million revenue company in the temp staffing space, Corporate Resources (CRRS). Revenue growth last year was 35% despite job growth being about 0%. There's a reason for this.

 

3) The Fortune 500 is firing you.

All big companies are systematically firing all of their employees. I'm exaggerating, of course. Maybe.

But that's why temp staffing as an industry is going through the roof. The big companies don't want employees. Why not? They don't want to deal with Obamacare. They don't want to pay the high salaries that aging baby boomers demand, and too many employees are having sex with each other. With temp staffers, they don't have to deal with all of the issues.

 

4) Senior citizens are being starved to death.

Now I'm not exaggerating. First off, everybody under the age of 50 should just say goodbye to eventual Social Security. Even better, say "good riddance."

But for those age 65 and above, a promise has been made to them all of their lives. Well, unfortunately the promise is a lie. Social Security gets adjusted according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which excludes food and energy. Guess what: food and energy are going up faster than the CPI... which is why senior citizens have about ten years left before their basic needs can no longer be met by the money promised them all of their lives. Part of the reason I am about to announce that I'm considering running for Congress is to stop this trend.

 

5) Your job is not satisfying your needs.

The only time I've had a job that did satisfy my needs was when I had to do little work so that I had time on the side to either write, start a business, have fun, or spend time with friends. When I didn't have time for those things, I was working too hard, dealing with people I didn't like, getting my creativity crushed over and over, and so on. When you are in those situations, you need to plot out your exit strategy.

Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now, your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.

One can argue, "Not everyone is entitled to have all of those needs satisfied at a job." That's true. But since we already know that the salary of a job won't make you happy, you can easily modify lifestyle and work to at least satisfy more of your needs. And the more these needs are satisfied, the more you will create the conditions for true abundance to come into your life.

 

6) Your retirement plan is a joke.

Nobody can retire anymore on their retirement plan. It's sad but true: humans as a species are living longer. 401ks, IRAs, and the other little plans your corporate masters and bank liars have put together for you are built on lies. They use fancy phrases like "laddering" and "the stock market has never had a 20-year down period." All of these things are lies.

Here's the truth: when you need the money the most, it won't be there.

And even if it's there, ultimately the government needs more money to take care of its wars. The last legally declared war was in 1941. Your taxes have paid for the rest of the military actions and the 170 countries we have military bases in. These wars have directly come out of your retirement plan and have directly conflicted with your attempts at happiness, if not even worse by directly killing a member of your family.

 

7) You were lied to about "The American Dream."

"The American Dream" was a marketing slogan created by Fannie Mae in the 1960s to sell you the idea of a suburban house with a white picket fence and a big fat loan from the bank, backed by the government which skims its greasy froth off the top.

The white picket fences are prison bars telling you that you can't move. You can't escape your bimonthly paycheck. Your job opportunities suddenly shrink with those two prisons forced upon you.

I've done the math on various blog posts on my blog. Housing has all the characteristics of an ugly investment. It's too much of your portfolio, it's illiquid, there are hidden, unknown costs when you make the purchase, and when you need the money you can't get it. Good luck.

The American Dream has turned into a nightmare for too many people. And yet, we insist on it. It's one of the biggest commitments most Americans ever make. So "commitment bias" forces them to rationalize that they were right, and they will argue it to their death.

 

8) You were lied to about college.

More than 50% of graduating seniors can't get jobs right now. And yet for the first time ever there is over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. The government was really nice to back that debt.

But they forgot to tell you: you can't get rid of that debt. Not even in bankruptcy. Hmm, so jobs are going down, income is going down, debt is going up.

You're a slave. Now that you're stuck underneath a pile of inescapable debt, you have to do whatever they say and like it.

 

9) There is a way out.

You have to hustle. It's hard. But there's nothing else. You have to choose between being a temp staffer (and I can see this from the front lines) or being an entrepreneur/artist. It's going to sound corny, but you have to stay physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy.

You have to work on coming up with ideas every day. You have to be around positive people who love you. You have to be grateful for the abundance you have and invite more into your life. This is not economics. This is the real world and how to survive in it. Not the fantasy land of cubicles and fluorescent lights.

I write about how to achieve these goals in my latest book, Choose Yourself.

I believe so strongly in my message that I don't care if I make a dime on the book. If someone proves to me they bought the book and read it, I will pay them back, losing money in the process (since Amazon takes its cut). I am doing this because people often don't value what they get for free, and many people don't read the books they buy.

I hope you make it through this period. The opportunities will be there for the people who escape the lies of the system. Innovation is still abundant. But you have to rely on your own skills, guts, ideas, and health. I have confidence that the people who subscribe to Doug Casey's services are the ones best prepared to do that.

Join me in choosing yourself for success in the new economy, for better or worse, that we find ourselves in.

 

James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, chess master, investor, and writer. He has started and run more than 20 companies, and sold several of those businesses for large exits. He has also run venture capital funds, hedge funds, angel funds, and currently sits on the boards of several companies. His writing has appeared in most major national media outlets (Wall Street Journal, ABC, Financial Times, Tech Crunch, Forbes, CNBC, etc.). His blog has attracted more than 10 million readers since its launch in 2010. This is his eleventh book.