So Scientists Are Implanting Human Brain Cells Into Rats Now

(ANTIMEDIA)  — This weekend, at an annual conference for neuroscientists in Washington, D.C., two papers will be presented detailing experiments where human brain organoids — small, lentil-sized blobs of human brain tissue created from stem cells — were implanted into the brains of lab rats and mice.

Health and science news outlet STAT, which was given summaries of the papers ahead of the conference, explained how brain organoids work in an exclusive published Monday:

“They give birth to new neurons, much like full-blown brains. And they develop the six layers of the human cortex, the region responsible for thought, speech, judgment, and other advanced cognitive functions.”

The idea is that if brain organoids can mimic the electrical activity of an actual human brain, researchers might be able to study the behavior of disorders like autism and epilepsy. To do this, though, the organoids would need to be the size of a human brain. The only way to accomplish that is for the organoid to have a blood supply.

As it happens, another paper being presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience will cover that very subject. That team of researchers, STAT reports, has successfully connected human brain organoids to blood vessels.

The notion that human brain organoids can not only function but, if allowed to, potentially grow — is raising all sorts of ethical questions. Bioethicist Josephine Johnston of The Hastings Center told STAT it comes down to consciousness:

“It brings up some pretty interesting questions about what allows us, ethically, to do research on mice in the first place — namely, that they’re not human. If we give them human cerebral organoids, what does that do to their intelligence, their level of consciousness, even their species identity?”

Legal scholar and bioethicist Hank Greely of Stanford University seems to agree, telling STAT that the rapid advancements are forcing scientists to ask themselves if they’re “creating something human-ish that you have to take seriously in terms of according it dignity and respect — and figuring out what that even means.”

Christof Koch, president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, told the outlet the world is “entering totally new ground here” and that “the science is advancing so rapidly, the ethics can’t keep up.”

Another part of the problem, as STAT explains, is that few people actually know such experiments are taking place:

“Although the National Institutes of Health has a moratorium on funding research that puts human stem cells into the early embryos of vertebrates, there is no such ban on implanting human organoids, and virtually no one outside the labs conducting organoid research has enough of an idea about what’s going on to, say, call for a commission to study what should and should not be allowed.”

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, you’re not alone. Greely, the Stanford bioethicist, noted to STAT that next year marks the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

“I think that story is relevant to what we’re talking about,” he said.

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RIP, Monty Hall: The Time Everyone "Corrected" The World's Smartest Woman

Monty Hall, the genial host and co-creator of “Let’s Make a Deal,” the game show on which contestants in outlandish costumes shriek and leap at the chance to see if they will win the big prize or the booby prize behind door No. 3, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Saturday. He was 96.

In memory of the great entertainer, we present:

The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman

Authored by Zachart Crockett via Priceonomics.com,

By all accounts, Marilyn vos Savant was a child prodigy.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946, the young savant quickly developed an aptitude for math and science. At age 10, she was given two intelligence tests -- the Stanford-Binet, and the Mega Test -- both of which placed her mental capacity at that of a 23-year-old. She went on to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the “World’s Highest IQ,” and, as a result, gained international fame.

Despite her status as the "world’s smartest woman,” vos Savant maintained that attempts to measure intelligence were “useless,” and she rejected IQ tests as unreliable. In the mid-1980s, with free rein to choose a career path, she packed her bags and moved to New York City to be a writer.

Here, she caught a break: when Parade Magazine wrote a profile on her, readers responded with so many letters that the publication offered her a full-time job. Shortly thereafter, she established “Ask Marilyn,” a now-famous weekly column in which she answered (and continues to answer, to this day) a variety of academic questions and logic puzzles. It was in the body of one of these columns that vos Savant ignited one of the most heated statistical battles of the 21st century.

When vos Savant politely responded to a reader’s inquiry on the Monty Hall Problem, a then-relatively-unknown probability puzzle, she never could’ve imagined what would unfold: though her answer was correct, she received over 10,000 letters, many from noted scholars and Ph.Ds, informing her that she was a hare-brained idiot.

What ensued for vos Savant was a nightmarish journey, rife with name-calling, gender-based assumptions, and academic persecution.

The Monty Hall Problem: A Brief History

Imagine that you’re on a television game show and the host presents you with three closed doors. Behind one of them, sits a sparkling, brand-new Lincoln Continental; behind the other two, are smelly old goats. The host implores you to pick a door, and you select door #1. Then, the host, who is well-aware of what’s going on behind the scenes, opens door #3, revealing one of the goats.

“Now,” he says, turning toward you, “do you want to keep door #1, or do you want to switch to door #2?”

Statistically, which choice gets you the car: keeping your original door, or switching?

If you, like most people, posit that your odds are 50-50, you’re wrong -- unless, of course, you like goats as much as you like new cars, in which case you"ll win 100% of the time.

Loosely based on the famous television game show Let’s Make a Deal, the scenario presented above, better known as the “Monty Hall Problem,” is a rather famous probability question. Despite its deceptive simplicity, some of the world’s brightest minds -- MIT professors, renowned mathematicians, and MacArthur “Genius” Fellows -- have had trouble grasping its answer. For decades, it has sparked intense debates in classrooms and lecture halls.

Historically, the Monty Hall Problem was predated by several very similar puzzles.

In Joseph Bertrand’s box paradox (1889), three boxes are presented -- one containing two gold coins, one containing two silver coins, and the final containing one of each. Assuming the participant draws one gold coin from a box, the problem then asks what the probability is that the other coin in that box is gold. Bertrand, who concluded that the probability was ?, was lauded for his ability to look beyond the obvious.

A second iteration of this paradox, the Three Prisoners Problem (1959), presents a statistically identical scenario, with the same outcome. “[It’s] a wonderfully confusing little problem," its creator, Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner, later wrote, smugly. "In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory."

First presented in a letter to the editor of The American Statistician in 1975, the Monty Hall Problem was also counterintuitive. In this letter, Steve Selvin, a University of California, Berkeley professor, splayed out the situation in the intro of this article, and contended that switching doors yields a ? chance of winning the car, whereas keeping the original door results in winning only ? of the time. 

Over the next decade or so, the Monty Hall Problem made several appearances, first in a Journal of Economics Perspectives puzzle by Barry Nalebuff, and subsequently in a 1989 issue of Bridge Today, by Phillip Martin. Neither man’s logic was refuted, and the problem generated relatively little attention.

Then, after 15 years without incident, the Monty Hall Problem was resurrected by Marilyn vos Savant -- and an absolute shit-storm ensued.

Marilyn vos Savant’s Debacle

In September 1990, Marilyn vos Savant devoted one of her columns to a reader’s question, which presented a variation of the Monty Hall Problem:

“Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?”

“Yes; you should switch,” she replied. “The first door has a 1/3 chance of winning, but the second door has a 2/3 chance.”

Though her answer was correct, a vast swath of academics responded with outrage. In the proceeding months, vos Savant received more than 10,000 letters -- including a pair from the Deputy Director of the Center for Defense Information, and a Research Mathematical Statistician from the National Institutes of Health -- all of which contended that she was entirely incompetent:

You blew it, and you blew it big! Since you seem to have difficulty grasping the basic principle at work here, I’ll explain. After the host reveals a goat, you now have a one-in-two chance of being correct. Whether you change your selection or not, the odds are the same. There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country, and we don’t need the world’s highest IQ propagating more. Shame!

Scott Smith, Ph.D.
University of Florida

 

May I suggest that you obtain and refer to a standard textbook on probability before you try to answer a question of this type again?

Charles Reid, Ph.D.
University of Florida

 

I am sure you will receive many letters on this topic from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns.
W. Robert Smith, Ph.D.
Georgia State University

 

You are utterly incorrect about the game show question, and I hope this controversy will call some public attention to the serious national crisis in mathematical education. If you can admit your error, you will have contributed constructively towards the solution of a deplorable situation. How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind?
E. Ray Bobo, Ph.D.
Georgetown University

 

You made a mistake, but look at the positive side. If all those Ph.D.’s were wrong, the country would be in some very serious trouble.
Everett Harman, Ph.D.
U.S. Army Research Institute

 

You are the goat!
Glenn Calkins
Western State College

 

Maybe women look at math problems differently than men.
Don Edwards
Sunriver, Oregon

The outcry was so tremendous that vos Savant was forced to devote three subsequent columns to explaining why her logic was correct. Even in the wake of her well-stated, clear responses, she continued to be berated.

 “I still think you’re wrong,” wrote one man, nearly a year later.

 

“There is such a thing as female logic.”

Yet, the numbers behind vos Savant"s conclusion don"t lie.

Debunking the Monty Hall Problem

Since two doors (one containing a car, and the other a goat) remain after the host opens door #3, most would assume that the probability of selecting the car is ½. This is not the case.

“The winning odds of 1/3 on the first choice can’t go up to 1/2 just because the host opens a losing door,” writes vos Savant. Indeed, if you map out six games exploring all possible outcomes, it becomes clear that switching doors results in winning two-thirds (66.6%) of the time, and keeping your original door results in winning only one-third (33.3%) of the time:

Another way to look at this is to break down every door-switching possibility. As we’ve delineated below, 6 out of the 9 possible scenarios (two-thirds) result in winning the car: 

These results seem to go against our intuitive statistical impulses -- so why does switching doors increase our odds of winning?

The short answer is that your initial odds of winning with door #1 (?) don’t change simply because the host reveals a goat behind door #3; instead, Hall’s action increases the odds to ? that you’ll win by switching.

Here’s another way to visualize this. Imagine that instead of three doors, Monty Hall presents you with 100 doors; behind 99 of them are goats, and behind one of them is the car. You select door #1, and your initial odds of winning the car are now 1/100:

Then, let’s suppose that Monty Hall opens 98 of the other doors, revealing a goat behind each one. Now you’re left with two choices: keep door #1, or switch to door #100:

When you select door #1, there is a 99/100 chance that the car is behind one of the other doors. The fact that Monty Hall reveals 98 goats does not change these initial odds -- it merely "shifts" that 99/100 chance to door #100. You can either stick with your original 1/100 odds pick, or switch to door #100, with a much higher probability of winning the car.

Still, while the math and numbers back up vos Savant’s assertion -- that the odds of winning increase to ? when you switch doors -- one must consider other factors she doesn’t address in her answer.

The Psychology of Rationalization

Monty Hall, host of "Let"s Make a Deal"

In 1992, while the controversy over vos Savant’s answer brewed, Monty Hall -- the game show host, and namesake of the problem -- sat down for an interview with the New York Times.

Hall clarified that things worked a bit differently than the scenario presented by the Parade reader in vos Savant’s column. In the real show, for instance, he retained the authority to offer the contestant cash NOT to switch. Details like this, he said, altered the contestant"s mindset:

"[After I opened a door with a goat], they"d think the odds on their door had now gone up to 1 in 2, so they hated to give up the door no matter how much money I offered...The higher I got, the more [they] thought the car was behind [the other door]. I wanted to con [them] into switching there. That"s the kind of thing I can do when I"m in control of the game. You may think you have probability going for you when you follow the answer in her column, but there"s the psychological factor to consider."

The “psychological factor” Hall mentions carries over from the show’s rules to the variation of the problem we’ve presented in this article. For contestants and problem-solvers alike, the Monty Hall Problem causes cognitive dissonance, a term psychologists use to describe the “mental stress experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.” 

When people are confronted with evidence that is “inconsistent with their beliefs” (ie. the odds of winning by switching doors being ?, instead of ½), they first respond by refuting the information, then band together with like-minded dissenters and champion their own hard-set opinion.

This is precisely the mentality of vos Savant’s thousands of naysayers.

***

More than 25 years later, arguments over the Monty Hall Problem’s semantics and vos Savant’s response still pervade -- mainly centering around the intricacies of the host’s actions. 

“Our brains are just not wired to do probability problems very well, so I"m not surprised there were mistakes,” Stanford stats professor Persi Diaconis told a reporter, years ago. “[But] the strict argument would be that the question cannot be answered without knowing the motivation of the host."

Eventually though, many of those who’d written in to correct vos Savant’s math backpedaled and ceded that they were in error.

An exercise proposed by vos Savant to better understand the problem was soon integrated in thousands of classrooms across the nation. Computer models were built that corroborated her logic, and support for her intellect was gradually restored. Whereas only 8% of readers had previously believed her logic to be true, this number had risen to 56% by the end of 1992, writes vos Savant; among academics, 35% initial support rose to 71%.

Among the new believers was Robert Sachs, a math professor at George Mason University, who’d originally written a nasty letter to vos Savant, telling her that she “blew it,” and offering to help "explain.” After realizing that he was, in fact, incorrect, he felt compelled to send her another letter -- this time, repenting his self-righteousness.

“After removing my foot from my mouth I"m now eating humble pie,” he wrote. “I vowed as penance to answer all the people who wrote to castigate me. It"s been an intense professional embarrassment.”

Which College Offers The "Best Bang" For Your Tuition Buck?

Is making the investment in a college education still worth it? How much debt can you expect to have after you graduate, and how much money will you make in your career?

As HowMuch.net details, Nitrocollege.com crunched the numbers from the top twenty public and top twenty private schools in the country and created a visualization to find out. The data was extracted from the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. News & World Report. 

We ranked each school according to the median salary someone can expect to earn ten years after enrolling. We then looked at the median student debt graduates typically carry. Focusing on median debt and median earnings makes a lot of sense - half of all students fall above these numbers, and half fall below. We then color-coded each school in a floating bar chart, making the private schools blue and the public schools yellow.

Several things immediately jump out of this visualization.

First off, private schools dominate the top half of the list while public schools by and large fall to the bottom. Graduates from private universities simply earn more money, which suggests that attending a private school pays off in the long run.

Source: HowMuch.net

Top Five Universities by Median Salary 10 Years after Enrollment

• Harvard - $95,500


• MIT - $89,200


• Stanford - $86,000


• University of Pennsylvania - $$79,700


• Princeton - $77,900

Something else stands out about our visualization: Harvard students take on significantly less debt compared to their peers from Ohio State. Nobody thinks Harvard is cheaper than Ohio State, right? More to the point, Harvard grads make more than twice as much money. From a financial perspective, it is by far and away the best school. In fact, the 11 universities with the lowest debt loads are all private. This suggests that many students come from wealthy families who can afford to pay the tuition without taking out loans. Perhaps this also affects their career outcomes.

Consider another way to look at the data. Suppose you want to find the best bang for your buck - you want the highest earning potential with the lowest possible debt, but you also want to avoid paying private school tuition. Where should you go?

The University of California, Berkeley offers the best opportunity. Graduates have the highest earning potential of all public schools at $60,800 with the lowest debt burden of $14,200.

There’s a lot that goes into picking the right school. You have to decide how much debt you are comfortable carrying, and ask yourself if the future earning potential is worth it. The most important factor you should consider, however, is how much you are willing to pay for the life-defining experiences that come with a college degree.

The American People Are The Number One Target: "They Are Tightening The Screws"

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

A little more than a week ago it was announced that Whole Foods was bought by Amazon.com for just under $14 billion.  One of the major problems with this is that Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon has deep ties with the CIA and the Federal government.

Wal-Mart being fully in the government’s pocket and now Whole Foods brought under thumb as well, how much longer before Kissinger’s “Food as a Weapon” principle is brought to bear?  A good article was just released by Jon Rappaport entitled Buy your food from the CIA: Amazon buys Whole Foods, that is worth reading.

As if that connection is not nefarious enough, there is more: it appears a new cloud technology is being produced for the CIA from…you guessed it…none other than the CIA, as is excerpted here:

The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The Details About the CIA’s Deal with Amazon,” - www.theatlantic.com    6/17/17

Guess the data center that ran taxpayers billions that is in Utah is not enough, nor the fusion centers in every state.  Did you like “…a new era of cooperation and coordination…” between the friendly agencies?  And all to “avoid intelligence gaps,” just for your protection, right?

Wrong.

They are tightening the screws, little by little, while they refine all the control mechanisms and place that security web over their number one target: the American people. 

They are taking control of the food supply incrementally.  Water?  Yes, here in Montana, the state just sent out a form for property owners to declare their water rights…as the CKST (Confederated Kootenai &Salish Tribes) Water Compact was passed into law in Montana in 2014.  Actions will be taken within the next two years.

As enumerated in other articles, Montana kicked in $3 million after the liberals in the state House and Senate, as well as the liberal governor, Bullock (D, MT) signed the water compact into law.  The shortfall is $8 million, as the total state commitment was $11 million.  They are just waiting for the Senate to ratify this as a Federal treaty, and then they can (ostensibly on “behalf” of the Indian Tribes) place meters on everyone’s wells…off of the reservation…and “manage” the water on behalf of the Indian Tribes…enforced by DHS.

This is a small slice of the country as a whole.  They are following full speed ahead with the Agenda 21 Directive to take over everyone’s food, water, land…everything.  A war will surely enable them to throw the Executive Order 13603 into action to confiscate and control every resource in the United States, including human labor…slave labor, to be precise.  Incrementally they place these laws into effect, and the stultified public, thinking only of the next barbeque and fireworks party is dumbed down into inactivity.

There’s enough going on in the international arena that is capturing everyone’s attention, such as North Korea’s missile tests and threats, China’s aggressive South China Sea/Senkaku islands maneuvering, and the Syrian debacle unfolding with the U.S. ratcheting up the tough-talk of blaming Russia and Iran for any “Syrian chemical attack” that comes along.  Russia also just deployed a new satellite, and there is the possibility that in a televised broadcast, he sent out a message to “sleeper” agent in the West.  See the article by Stefan Stanford entitled Vladimir Putin sends message to ‘Russian Sleeper Agents’ in West as Russia Launches Top Secret Military Satellite.

“Hammer and Anvil” usually refers to a military maneuver to crush an enemy force between two friendly elements.  This maneuver is being employed here and now, as well: either crush the United States and enslave its people domestically, with an economic collapse or civil war, or just initiate a war with another country and enslave the citizenry afterward.  Either way, they are pushing their agenda forward each day.  It is just a matter of time to find out which of the two vehicles…international war or domestic tyranny…that they will employ to obtain their globalist and totalitarian objectives.

Is This WalMart 'Free-For-All' A Taste Of Things To Come?

by Stefan Stanford via AllNewsPipeline.com,

In the new story over at Survival Dan called “During The Collapse: Where To Go And What Places To Avoid”, he reports that when IT hits the fan, America’s ‘population hubs’ will likely explode with violence, looting and the total breakdown of law and order as resources become next to impossible to get and the masses suddenly realize the government isn’t coming to save them.

Whether that be via total collapse, WW3 coming home to roost upon US soil or a ‘grid event’ that leaves tens to hundreds of millions either without power or access to the money in their bank accounts, the video directly below from a WalMart in Mexico gives us a very small taste of what that world without law and order can quickly devolve into.

Showing what happens when suddenly ‘lawless people’ realize that there aren’t enough security guards in a Wal Mart store to stop them, we witness the kind of all-out ‘free for all’ that we’ll likely see in a collapse event, though the smart people would be carrying out food, toilet paper and other necessities instead of flat screen TV’s. And in an all-out SHTF event, we’d expect that the people will likely be fighting with each other for the few remaining resources as they are now in Venezuela where children are literally starving to death.

Following Alt Market’s Brandon Smith warning that ‘a full spectrum crisis is about to take place’ a Wal Mart in Mexico gives us a small glimpse of what might happen here once it all comes crashing down amid more signs that what we’re witnessing in Venezuela may be coming to America.

As commenters on the live leak video clearly point out, we’ve already witnessed events in America similar to what happened in the video above with packs of roving gangs showing up in malls and convenience stores ‘en masse’, taking whatever they want and parading out as if laws don’t matter to them. Knowing such events are already taking place in 2017 America, how much worse might things get when SHTF? As Susan Duclos reported this morning on ANP, parts of America are already a boiling cauldron read to boil over. How many Americans are the frogs in the simmering water?

In this December 2016 story on ANP called “Map Shows Us Where We Don’t Want To Be When It All Turns Ugly”, we reported that nearly 50% of Americans live in very small geographical locations. According to this story from the Daily Mail, half of the US population live within 146 counties while the other 157 million are scattered across the other 3,000+.

The map seen directly below gives us a visual representation of what that looks like with the counties seen below in blue making up approx. 50% of the US population while the remaining 50% of Americans live across the rest of the country in counties seen in gray. When SHTF, does anyone want to be in the blue areas?

As we also reported back in December, the map seen above showing the US counties with the biggest populations coincides quite eerily with the map of US counties won by Hillary Clinton during the last election seen below.

The next map below from James Wesley Rawles’ Survival Blog shows US cities with approx. 100,000 population in yellow circles with the shaded areas surrounding them indicating the distances from those cities with each shaded increment representing approx 40 miles. Showing that most of the East coast and eastern half of the US are within 120 miles of big cities, it’s easy to understand why videographer The Prepared Mind selects some of the areas seen in the final video below as his ‘go to’ areas for when SHTF.

As M.D. Creekmore over at the Survivalist Blog has previously brought to the attention of preppers, getting out of the cities may not be possible for some who are tied to their jobs when SHTF and many of the same areas mentioned in that videohave such low populations for a very good reason – a major lack of jobs in areas long ago hit by the globalists economy that has decimated much of America.

According to Brandon Smith in this recent story over at Alt Market, “I continue to believe that a greater crisis is brewing that is economic and global in nature. With numerous financial bubbles artificially inflated over at least eight years of central bank stimulus, the question is not “if” but WHEN the system will enter the final stages of its ongoing collapse.“

Smith’s warnings echo the warnings given by Doug Casey who recently stated “a civilization always collapses from within. World War 1, in 1914, signaled the start of the long collapse of Western Civilization. Of course, termites were already eating away at the foundations, with the writings of people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. It’s been on an accelerating downward path ever since….”

Commuter-In-Chief: Obama Sets New Single-Day Clemency Record On Last Day In Office

As a final parting gift to the American people on his last day in office, earlier today President Obama commuted the sentences of another 330 federal prisoners, shattering his previous single-day record and bringing his total to 1,715, more than the previous 13 presidents combined.  In addition, the President has pardoned 212 federal prisoners bringing his total acts of clemency to 1,927. 

Of course, just as with previous announcements the President quickly took to twitter to celebrate the "accomplishment."

BREAKING: @POTUS has now commuted the sentences of 1,715 men and women, more than any president in history. https://t.co/3NRkJnCEy4 pic.twitter.com/j7gCdigJqD

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 19, 2017

This latest move concludes Obama"s mission to aggressively use his clemency power to release 100"s of violent criminals serving time due to what he has described as "outdated and overly harsh drug sentencing laws."  But, while the President often claims publicly that his commutations are only for "low-level" and "non-violent" criminals, 568 of the 1,715 commutations were offered to people serving life sentences...which typically aren"t given to "low-level" criminals caught with a couple ounces of drugs on them.

Here is how Obama"s acts of clemency stack up against other Presidents...can anyone spot the outlier?

And here is the full statement from the President"s White House blog released earlier today:

Today, the President granted commutation to 330 individuals. The President has now granted commutation to a total of 1,715 individuals, including 568 people who had been sentenced to life in prison. The vast majority of these men and women are serving unduly long sentences for drug crimes. With today’s action, the President has granted more commutations than any president in this nation’s history and has surpassed the number of commutations granted by the past 13 presidents combined. The President set out to reinvigorate clemency, and he has done just that.

In 2014, the President directed officials at the Department of Justice to undertake an ambitious effort: encourage federal inmates serving sentences imposed under outdated laws to apply for clemency. With assistance from the Clemency Project 2014 and volunteer attorneys throughout the country, federal inmates applied for clemency in staggering numbers. The Deputy Attorney General and the Pardon Attorney – and their respective offices – worked vigorously to review these applications. Less than three years later, the President has now granted commutation to more than 1,700 individuals, the overwhelming majority of whom were serving sentences under outdated and overly harsh drug sentencing laws. Many of these individuals were assisted by Clemency Project 2014, and many will be assisted by the Stanford Justice Advocacy Project in their reentry efforts. The President’s vision could not have been realized without this support.

To the President’s 1,715 commutation recipients and 212 pardon recipients – you have been granted a second chance because the President sees the potential in you. After reviewing each of your stories, the President concluded that you have taken substantial steps to remedy your past mistakes and that you are deserving of a second chance. You and your stories have been essential to the President’s successful exercise of his clemency authority. Stories of rehabilitation and growth, of families reunited, and lives turned around – these are the stories that demonstrate why our nation is a nation of second chances. As the President has written to you, your example will influence whether someone in similar circumstances will get his or her own second chance in the future.  Make the President proud with how you use your second chance.

Generally a full list of the drug dealers that will be released back on to the streets in the near future can be viewed on the Department of Justice website.  That said, Obama seems to be  releasing criminals faster than the DOJ can update their site, so you"ll have to check back later for the official list. 

And Just like that Democrats pick up 1,927 lifetime votes...perhaps even more depending on how many times these folks vote in each election cycle.

Harvard Is 'Billionaire-Making' University

Want to learn about the history of economics, how to code with Ruby on Rails, or the essentials of string theory? It’s all out there for free on the internet, and anyone who has the time or energy can learn it directly from the experts.

The Information Age grants us an unprecedented amount of access to the world’s knowledge – and some thinkers like James Altucher or Peter Thiel see this leading to a path where the role of colleges and universities will continue to diminish.

We share that sentiment. The most recent crop of successful entrepreneurs like Evan Spiegel or Mark Zuckerberg already proves that entrepreneurs can make billions without spending a full four years in the classroom. The forthcoming generation will be even less tied to attending brick-and-mortar institutions.

However, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, there’s one caveat to this line of thought, however, and it coincides with this week’s chart. While one can say that the actual academic value of these institutions may be undermined by access to the digital world, the value of these as places to “rub shoulders” with up-and-comers still remains entrenched.

A BILLIONAIRE MAKING MACHINE

Talk to any successful person in business and they will tell you that developing a strong network is half of the battle. As far as schools go, Harvard is the perfect example of the “network effect” at work.

To date, a total of 35 of the richest 500 people in the world have emerged from the storied halls of Harvard. In fact, more billionaires have graduated from Harvard than all of those hailing from Saudi Arabia and Spain combined.

The total net worth of the top 35 Harvard billionaire graduates? It’s $309 billion – roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hong Kong or Ireland. With alumni like Charlie Munger, Meg Whitman, John Paulson, Steve Ballmer, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, and Michael Bloomberg among the ranks of Harvard graduates, it’s a powerful hub to tap into. Today’s Harvard students and professors take advantage of this prestigious network every day.

Elite universities still serve as filtering mechanisms that only bring in students that are smart, well-connected, or both. Top schools like Stanford or Harvard have acceptance rates less than 6%, and this exclusivity gives graduating students a connected and privileged network from the get-go.

One hundred years from now, will these institutions still have the same track records from the exclusivity factor alone? It remains to be seen, but for now they are still undisputed billionaire making machines until proven otherwise.