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Monthly Archives: June 2014

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Even the Atheists Can’t Live Without a Religion

30 Monday Jun 2014

atheists_religion

Posted by bunchofopinions | Filed under Religion

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200 Years of Deadly Spiral “War-Prosperity-War”

30 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Wars

≈ 1 Comment

@pmarca_June27_14

Read more concerning the most recent stage of the above “spiral” https://opinions101.com/category/wars/

Amount Given to Religious Charities Represents a Fall From 53% in 1987 to 31% in 2013 of the Total

29 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Other

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AMERICANS are giving more to charity than ever before—but a smaller proportion of this money is going to religious organisations. Though the amount given to religious charities has risen from an inflation-adjusted $89 billion in 1987 to $105.5 billion in 2013, that represents a fall from 53% to 31% of the total, according to research released by Giving USA, a non-profit that researches philanthropy in America, and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Read more: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/philanthropy-america?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/thesqueezeddevout

Two key factors that makes Silicon Valley such fertile ground for startups.

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Social, Tech

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The most important legal factor is the California State ban on Non Compete Law:

    … a very special law was enacted in California in 1872. The law in question declared null and void any contract between a business owner and employee if said contract in any way restricted the employee’s freedom to change employers, even if that meant joining the former employer’s competition.

    In other words, any previously signed agreements—for example, an employee contract signed upon hiring—that could in any way limit the employee’s right to freely choose his or her place of work were deemed unenforceable in this 1872 law. More specifically, those clauses that were in conflict with this law were deemed unenforceable.

    This law was initially ratified in 1872 as part of California’s Civil Code. It is now listed under California Code – Section 16600, also known as CAL. BPC. CODE § 16600, and reads:

      Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.

    As a result of this cascade of direct and indirect consequences from the application of this law in Silicon Valley, today a number of generally operating U.S. legal standards, including some of the most important, are practically blocked (“de facto” canceled). Read more: From the Gold Mines of El Dorado to the “Golden” Startups of Silicon Valley

    The above California law was recently tested during the Hewlett-Packard special experimental research: NDA Experiment Set up by Mark Hurd.

The most important among Silicon Valley startups motivation factors is the “not afraid to fail” attitude:

    Perhaps one of the first practical application of this attitude was formulated about 22 centuries ago.

      “A mistake in choosing the right way of actions should be punished less than omission”
      ~ Roman army, 200 BC

     

    Two thousands years later people still continue to look for some of the alternative approaches that can bring the positive results as well:

      “When teachers tried to motivate students with scare tactics that reminded them of the negative consequences of failing, this backfired and resulted in poorer performance in high-stakes exams”.
      ~ School Psychology Quarterly. American Psychological Association Press Release.

    See also, a bit more detailed description of the same phenomenon:

      “Our results indicated that the frequency of omission increases when punishment is possible. We conclude that people choose omissions to avoid condemnation and that the omission effect is best understood not as a bias, but as a strategy”.
      ~ The Omission Strategy. Peter DeScioli, Brandeis University, Departments of Psychology and Economics

Open Path from Iraq to the New York

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Wars

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The Islamist extremist [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS Leader] some are now calling the most dangerous man in the world … said, ‘I’ll see you guys in New York,’” … Rad more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/isis-leader-see-you-in-new-york.html

[ ISIS] Islamic State of Iraq and Syria just got got extremely rich. As insurgents rolled past the largest city in northern Iraq, an oil hub at the vital intersection of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and into Tikrit, several gunmen stopped at Mosul’s central bank. An incredible amount of cash was reportedly on hand, and the group made off with 500 billion Iraqi dinars — $425 million. The provincial governor of Nineveh, Atheel al-Nujaifi, said that the radical Islamists had lifted additional millions from numerous banks across Mosul, as well as a “large quantity of gold bullion,” according to the International Business Times, which called ISIS the “World’s Richest Terror Force.” Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/12/isis-just-stole-425-million-and-became-the-worlds-richest-terrorist-group/

[For comparison]: Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the [911] event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars.” Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-nods-to-bin-ladens-stated-goal-2014-1

[President] Obama: I’m Concerned About a Nuke Being Detonated in Manhattan …

Howard Buffett and Nina Munk about “discouraging results” the U.S. efforts to help African villages.

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Social

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Howard Buffett—son of billionaire investor Warren—is a fascinating character. He is the hands-on owner and operator of a large-scale industrial corn farm in the Midwest and has been nominated by his father to take over chairmanship of insurance giant Berkshire Hathaway upon the aging magnate’s eventual retirement. He has also emerged as a leading philanthropist on the topic of agriculture in the Global South….

Howard Buffett delivered a blunt critique of Gates’ high-tech approach to improving food security in the Global South. He said that the Gates Foundation was essentially trying to recreate US-style industrial agriculture in Africa, an approach that he himself had tried early in his philanthropic career. “I don’t think it worked,” he said. “We need to quit thinking about trying to do it like we do it in America,” Buffett added.

Earlier in the segment, he championed low-tech, inexpensive methods for increasing farm productivity—a stark contrast to the high-tech seeds and pricey synthetic fertilizers favored by Gates. Buffett emphasizes that Gates’ efforts in African ag aren’t “all wrong” and adds that Gates is the “smartest guy in the world, next to my dad.”
~ Warren Buffett’s Son Schools Bill Gates on African Ag By Tom Philpott

Nina Munk, journalist and author of The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book. Munk spent six years following Jeffrey Sachs and the evolution of the Millennium Villages Project–an attempt to jumpstart a set of African villages in hopes of discovering a new template for development. Munk details the great optimism at the beginning of the project and the discouraging results after six years of high levels of aid. Sach’s story is one of the great lessons in unintended consequences and the complexity of the development process.
~ Nina Munk on Poverty, Development, and the Idealist

Jim Clark, Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Eric Schmidt and … Steve Jobs

13 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Tech

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Android_VS_iPhone_08-14png

 

Netscaoe_IE_1996

What are these two images clarify? Any Bill Gates – as well as Eric Schmidt – will finally win a competition with any Jim Clark or even Tim Cook. This is a matter of time only. As people sometimes say in UK, association “football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win”.

For these reason Steve Jobs had to – and would be able – create a new niche every 3-5 years, and this is a main challenge for Tim Cook now…

“Three Modes of Cognition”

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Other

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There are, … three modes of cognition: analytical, intuitive, and the mode that was known to the Biblical prophets, revelation. What distinguishes poetry from other forms of literature is that it uses all three of them at once (gravitating primarily toward the second and the third). For all three of them are given in the language; and there are times when, by means of a single word, a single rhyme, the writer of a poem manages to find himself where no one has ever been before him, further, perhaps, than he himself would have wished for. The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience; one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or on alcohol. One who finds himself in this sort of dependency on language is, I guess, what they call a poet.

~ Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Lecture December 8, 1987.

U.S. Jobs Market: What’s Going On …

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, US Economy

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An Optimistic View:
Civilian_Unempl_Rate_84-14

A Bit More Realistic Data:
Civil_Employm_Ratio_84-14

What is Really Going On:
Civil_Labor_Particip_Rate_8
Source: Federal Reserve Economic Research – FRED.

  • The labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the civilian non-institutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one, hit a record low in April 2014. In other words, U.S. Jobs market is in the worst situation since last 30 years.
  • In the United States, the civilian non-institutional population refers to people 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 States and the District of Columbia who are not inmates of institutions (penal, mental facilities, homes for the aged), and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.
  • To Those Who are Concerned About the “Global Warming”

    10 Tuesday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Science, Tech

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      According to astrophysicist Joseph Shklovski (lectures, 1981) the total level of energy produced by human civilization during the last 300 years of industrial revolutions, is still about one hundredth of a percent of the total energy flow that reaches the surface of the earth from the sun. Meanwhile in recent decades of info-tech revolution, the total level of energy that earth irradiates to space comes to a million times more than it would have done naturally as the planet heated to 300 K. From this point, for the last couple of decades, Earth outran planet-giants Jupiter and Saturn and became comparable to Sun. So, for a radio-telescope’s observer from outer space, the earth’s info-tech revolution looks like the birth of a new bright star on the cold Earth-planet. Source: ‘National Information Resources‘, by Gregory Gromov,  Nauka, 1984, p.15

    On top of radio transmissions discussed in 1981, there are now 6 billion active cellphones worldwide…

    In spite of all of the above, there are still so many people who generously and selflessly donate their time, energy and money to so-called “Global Warming” initiatives and … nobody cares about the real issues like “self-destruction as a result of a thermonuclear catastrophe or some other discovery which may have unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences“.
     
    See also: Al Gore’s Pileup on the Information Superhighway

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    Smartphone Operating Systems Market Share: 2005-2013

    08 Sunday Jun 2014

    smartphone_OS_2005-13

    Posted by bunchofopinions | Filed under Tech

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    Hierarchy of the Road Safety Risks: Mobile Phone, Cannabis, Drunk-driving

    08 Sunday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Science

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    It found that a driver’s reaction times slowed by 46% when he or she was making a call on a hand-held mobile, by 37% when texting while driving and by 27% during hands-free calls.  For those on the drink-drive limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, reaction times were reduced by 13%. For those who had used cannabis it was 21%
    ~ Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), UK

    Pot Legalized in Colorado : Success, Disaster, … Timebomb?

    08 Sunday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Politics, Science, Social

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     Economic benefits from legalizing marijuana will draw interest
    … With state taxes at 35 percent and the ability for cities to add their own sales tax, the legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana in Colorado will bring in about $70 million in revenue this year, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue-division of taxation. The first $40 million in income will be spent on education and schools, while the remaining will be spent on marijuana regulation… Jeffrey Miron from Harvard University decided to figure out the law enforcement savings from the legalization of marijuana and concluded that the savings would be about $8.7 billion nationwide, an MSN.com article published in 2012 reported. Miron also believes the nearly 750,000 marijuana-related arrests could be significantly reduced to nearly zero.
    ~ By Travis Eubanks, Daily Nebraskan.

    Thousands Not Arrested for Marijuana, Millions of Dollars Saved.
    Nationally we average over 750,000 marijuana arrests each year…  Police make far more arrests for marijuana possession each year than for all violent crimes combined. Colorado has removed itself from this immense waste of resources….  The voters of Colorado did the right thing last year. They helped lead the nation to a new way to control marijuana, focus scarce law enforcement resources and increase fairness in the criminal justice system … We mark this one-year anniversary of hard-won freedoms and declare that Colorado has already won.
    ~ By Art Way. Colorado Manager, Drug Policy Alliance. Huffingtonpost.com

    Some of the Other Opinions:
    According to a recent study, fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in the U.S. … marijuana was the main drug involved in the increase. It contributed to 12 percent of fatal crashes, compared to only 4 percent in 1999.
    ~ Study: Fatal Car Crashes Involving Marijuana Have Tripled

    … those on the drink-drive limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, reaction times were reduced by 13%. For those who had used cannabis it was 21%.
    ~ Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), UK

    – About nine percent of [cannabis] users will become dependent, compared with 32 percent for nicotine and 15 percent for alcohol. Withdrawal may trigger insomnia and depression.
    – Chronic bronchitis can develop, as cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke. Heavy users are at higher risk of problems with verbal learning, memory, and attention. Use is also linked to poor educational attainment, but the experts say that the cause and effect of this relationship is unclear. It may be caused by pre-existing risk factors as well as cannabis use.
    – Because cannabis can slow reaction time and coordination, it brings an increased risk of road accidents. Its use in pregnancy could reduce birthweight, but does not seem to cause birth defects. Cannabis users are also more likely to go on to use other illicit drugs, including heroin and cocaine.
    – The potential link to schizophrenia causes widespread concern. Studies suggest the risk is more than doubled for people who have tried cannabis by age 18. An analysis published in the Lancet in 2007 found a 40 percent increase in risk of “psychotic symptoms or disorders” in people who had used cannabis, with the highest risk among regular users, particularly those with a vulnerability to psychosis. For depression and suicide attempts, the evidence is less clear.
    – The University of Queensland experts conclude that, “The most probable adverse effects [of cannabis] include a dependence syndrome, increased risk of motor vehicle crashes, impaired respiratory function, cardiovascular disease, and adverse effects of regular use on adolescent psychosocial development and mental health.”
    ~ Published in the ‘Lancet‘, the report focuses on nonmedical use……

    List of 200 highest-paid CEOs contains only 10 women

    05 Thursday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Markets, Politics, Social

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    The WSJ data proved once again that even at the top-management level of America largest corporations the “War on Women” is a severe reality of the U.S. business environment …

    WSJ_Women_CEO_Pay_2013

    for comparison:

    women_on_board_corp

    See also:

  • U. S. Labor Force Structured by Occupation, Race, Gender and Education
  • Libyan Women Will Have Only 10% Representation in Government Assembly
  • Google Search Tips &Tricks For Non-Techies

    04 Wednesday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Tech

    ≈ Leave a comment

    • 5 Google tips and tricks
    • Top 10 Clever Google Search Tricks
    • 15 Awesome Google Search Tips and Tricks
    • Ultimate Google toolbox: 20 tips, tricks, and hacks
    • Google Tips and Tricks Every Student Should Know
    • 5 Best Google Search Tricks for Increasing Productivity
    • Google Search Tricks That Make Life A Whole Lot Easier

    See also: Gmail Shortcuts, Tips, and Tricks: Latest Secrets for Hacking Your Email

    U. S. Labor Force Structured by Occupation, Race, Gender and Education

    03 Tuesday Jun 2014

    Posted by bunchofopinions in Markets, Politics, Social

    ≈ Leave a comment

    Earnings_Education

    File Jan 31, 11 18 43 AM

             U.S. 2012 Employed Population by Occupation and Race
    occup_by_race_2012_sig

    Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012 Population Survey (CPS).

    unemployment_race_2012_sig
    Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012 Population Survey (CPS).

    weekly_earnings_2012_sig
    Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012 Population Survey (CPS).

    management_earni_2012_sig
    Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012 Population Survey (CPS).

    asian_domin_silva_sig
    Data sources: Census Bureau; San Jose Mercury News.

     

    See also: 

  • List of 200 highest-paid CEOs contains only 10 women
  • How the Asians became white
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