Self-Driving Cars And Deciding Who Lives And Dies - Sacrificing Your Family For The "Greater Good"

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

As the establishment continues to declare that the era of “self-driving” cars is upon us, many Americans have been left wondering what the privacy implications for such a tremendous change in society will end up being.

Now, with the very real possibility that, in the event of an accident, these cars would literally make the decision between who dies and who lives, Americans have even more to worry about when it comes to handing over control of their vehicle to a supercomputer.

According to multiple reports, the cars themselves are being designed to make so-called “moral” decisions which, in other words, means that the programming would essentially allow say a car full of people to crash rather than a school bus.

USA Today reports:

Consider this hypothetical:

 

It’s a bright, sunny day and you’re alone in your spanking new self-driving vehicle, sprinting along the two-lane Tunnel of Trees on M-119 high above Lake Michigan north of Harbor Springs. You’re sitting back, enjoying the view. You’re looking out through the trees, trying to get a glimpse of the crystal blue water below you, moving along at the 45-mile-an-hour speed limit.

 

As you approach a rise in the road, heading south, a school bus appears, driving north, one driven by a human, and it veers sharply toward you. There is no time to stop safely, and no time for you to take control of the car.

 

Does the car:

A. Swerve sharply into the trees, possibly killing you but possibly saving the bus and its occupants?

B. Perform a sharp evasive maneuver around the bus and into the oncoming lane, possibly saving you, but sending the bus and its driver swerving into the trees, killing her and some of the children on board?

C. Hit the bus, possibly killing you as well as the driver and kids on the bus?

The article goes on to say that the above question is one that is no longer theoretical as upwards of $80 billion have been invested in the sector with companies such as Google, Uber, and Tesla all racing to get their self-driving cars onto a road near you.

Interestingly, the USA Today report, as well as those quoted within it, seems to outwardly worry that the questions surrounding self-driving cars will cause Americans to shun them and continue to drive cars operated by actual humans who can choose whether or not they wish to save their own family or someone else’s if an accident were to take place. Clearly there is an agenda at play here.

The article continued:

Whether the technology in self-driving cars is superhuman or not, there is evidence that people are worried about the choices self-driving cars will be programmed to take.

 

[…]

 

Last month, Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google’s self-driving car initiative, told Bloomberg that the cars will be designed to avoid accidents, but that “If it happens where there is a situation where a car couldn’t escape, it’ll go for the smaller thing.”

 

But what if the smaller thing is a child?

 

How that question gets answered may be important to the development and acceptance of self-driving cars.

 

Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, co-authored a study last year that found that while respondents generally agreed that a car should, in the case of an inevitable crash, kill the fewest number of people possible regardless of whether they were passengers or people outside of the car, they were less likely to buy any car “in which they and their family member would be sacrificed for the greater good.”

All in all the entire report is a must-read, especially when you consider that we are now directly talking about allowing either private companies or the government to decide whether or not ourselves or our families are worthy of being saved in a car accident.

This truly is a scary situation.

UC Santa Cruz "Liberals" Declare Mainstream Republicans Nazis: A Threat To Their Safety For Simply Existing

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

A meeting of the College Republicans at the University of California, Santa Cruz was taken over and subsequently shut down by hard-left students who literally screamed that the groups very existence was a threat to their safety.

The leftist group initially organized the effort to derail the free speech of Republicans on campus in a Facebook post that openly called for shutting down the groups “right of assembly” while also labeling mainline conservatives as white supremacists and fascists.

“White Supremacist, fascist-sympathizing College Republicans are having a meeting at McHenry library, room 0332. Everybody be aware of this violent racist activity happening everyday on this campus!” wrote a student.

 

“We need a movement of people on this campus that rejects the ‘right of assembly,’ or ‘right of free speech’ for white supremacists and fascists.”

The group then went through with their social media threats, banging on the meetings door and eventually barging into the room to full on disrupt the peaceful meeting while screaming about fascists, racists, and white supremacists. Remember, this was a meeting of mainline conservatives.

Details published by Campus Reform include the fact that the leftist group refused to have any sort of dialogue with the College Republicans.

According to the UCSC College Republicans, their offers to discuss the concerns of the protesters were met with exclamations that “dialogue is violence,” after which the protesters called the club’s presence a “threat to the library” and demanded that the CR members vacate the space immediately.

 

The protesters even reportedly berated library staff members when they refused to shut down the pre-approved meeting. One staff member eventually asked the CR members to leave in order to end the disturbance, but meeting attendees chose to respond by sitting quietly and refusing to leave the area.

One student protester laughably ran out of the meeting hysterically screaming about nonexistent “Nazis downstairs”.

The commotion culminated in one of the student activists running out into the main library area screaming that there were “Nazis downstairs,” but while the gimmick drew several spectators, many of them expressed indignation at the actions of the protestors. 

 

“As a Democrat, I am embarrassed that some people on the left act this way,” remarked Phil Leonard Vogel, creator of the moderate campus news publication City on a Phil. “They give all of us a terrible name.”

 

After nearly two hours, school officials eventually called the police, who reportedly arrested three of the protesters.

Unbelievably, one of the protesters even claimed that the groups very existence was a disturbance.

You truly can’t make this stuff up.

“Your existence is a disturbance, your existence is a disturbance to every marginalized person in this country.”

This is apparently what it means to be a liberal (at least for some) in the year 2017.

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.”

“F**K Freedom of Speech”: Crazed Leftist Steals MAGA Hat, Claims Speech Is Genocide And that Trump Supporters Need To Be Gotten Rid Of

A Trump supporter attending the University of California, Riverside had his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hat stolen from him by a crazed leftist who then went on a psychotic rant that attacked everything from the very idea of free speech to the existence of too many white people in the country.

The shocking video, first released by Campus Reform, began with Trump supporter Matthew Vitale desperately trying to get his property back from the thief who was so lost (see crazy?) that she apparently believed that going to the school’s Student Life Department would help her cause, as if they were going to openly support her obvious crime.

After entering the department the student preceded to act like she was in the right, complaining that, “This guy thought it would be a good idea to go into a conference wearing this f***ing hat.”

“Look at the kind of sh*t he’s wearing. You know what that represents? This represents genocide of a bunch of people,” she ludicrously continued.

That’s right, in the new leftist orthodoxy, literally wearing a hat about making the country great again after years of globalist shenanigans is now openly labeled as support for genocide.

After threatening to burn the hat, the women goes on a disgusting rant against a variety of issues that most Americans cherish.

“F**K freedom of speech, it’s killing people,” she yelled as Vitale tried to explain that he simply wanted his property back and that he was only using his first amendment rights to wear it in the first place.

The so far unidentified women then continued her obvious Marxist screed, claiming that America was never great and that she has always hated the country itself.

“I f**king hate this country because we need to get rid of all ya all,” she continued.

It is unclear whether she meant get rid of all Trump supporters or all whites in general but either way these are some truly sickening, over the top comments that no one in the establishment media seems to even remotely care about.

An update to the original report by Campus Reform included a new statement from the university.

“The unfortunate incident that was recorded and shared on social media does not conform to UCR’s Principles of Community,” Director of News and Information JD Warren told Campus Reform. “Federal privacy laws prevent the university from commenting on student conduct matters but UC Riverside stands by its deep commitment to freedom of expression, civil discourse, and respectful interactions within our community.”

What the vague statement actually means remains to be seen but if the school administration did end up standing up for the Trump supporters rights you can almost guarantee that the leftist horde will soon be descending on the school.

The above exchange between an innocent student simply wearing the hat of his choosing and a crazed hyper leftist demanding censorship of ideas she disagrees with is sadly simply another example of the insanity gripping college campuses throughout the country. These universities are slowly but surely putting in different unilaterally passed “rules” that could eventually lead to the labeling of all conservative ideas as racist hate speech.

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Author: Alex Thomas
Views: Read by 132 people
Date: September 29th, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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"F**k Your F**king Freedom Of Speech" - Angry Student Steals MAGA Hat, Demands Victim Be Punished

Authored by Anthony Gockowski via CampusReform.org,

A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.

A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school’s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property.

“So this guy thought it would be a good idea to go into a conference wearing this f***ing hat,” the student who stole the hat states.

“Look at the kind of sh*t he’s wearing, You know what this represents? This represents genocide—genocide of a bunch of people.”

Vitale then tries to explain that “you do not get to take other people’s property that is legally theirs in this country,” to which the unidentified thief replies, “man, f*** your laws.”

“Do you have any f***ing conscience?” she goes on to ask, questioning why Vitale would dare to wear a MAGA hat on campus and telling him that his “f***ing freedom of speech is genocide, homeboy.”

“I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t,” she continues as several staffers look on.

“Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property,” Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes.

“We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about…” one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief.

“How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus?” the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that “the fact that you people haven’t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong.”

"That’s full of sh*t, because you all are just going to, like, mediate this and make it so like we’re all ok here, freedom of speech, whatever. How about we think about what’s actually going on in this country?” the thief subsequently responds to requests from administrators to “calm down.”

The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word.

“F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there. That’s what it is, because you’re out there wearing hats like these that promote laws and legislations that literally kill and murder in the masses people of color,” she stated, before the two eventually walked off with separate mediators.

Campus Reform reached out to the university and Vitale for comment on the matter, and is currently awaiting responses.

Milo Returns To Berkeley, Will Spend "Whatever It Takes" On Security

Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos says he will spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on security during an upcoming event at the University of California-Berkeley.

Yiannopoulos being led away from a 2016 event that was cancelled by violent protesters.

In an interview with Campus Reform, Yiannopoulos said that he is “prepared to spend whatever it takes” to provide security for the “Free Speech Week” that is scheduled for the end of September, underscoring his sincerity with the six-figure commitment.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the September 24 event at UC-Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza is slated to feature a lineup of popular conservative firebrands, including Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, and former White House strategist Stephen Bannon.

Despite the university’s recent pledge to hold a “free speech year” and crack down on those who use violence to shut down speakers, however, the administration has come under increasing pressure to derail the upcoming event.

Earlier this week, for instance, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin asked Chancellor Carol Christ to reevaluate her commitment to allowing the conservative speakers on campus.

“I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus,” Arreguin told The San Francisco Chronicle.

“It’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have it potentially spill out on the street.”

Other local lawmakers also echoed the remarks of the Berkeley mayor, citing security concerns as the primary danger of allowing Yiannopoulos and others to hold the event on a university campus.

"We don’t want the moral, psychological and fiscal expense of having these agents of hate coming to our town,” Berkeley City Councilman Ben Bartlett told The Los Angeles Times.

"We know the contest of ideas is at the very heart of freedom, but at the same time when the ideas are certain to cause bloodshed I’m inclined to err on the side of protecting the population, and I say that with a heavy heart.”

Councilwoman Cheryl Davila likewise told the publication that she does not “appreciate that there are racists coming to UC Berkeley to spew hate.”

A UC-Berkeley spokesperson told Campus Reform in an email that the speakers for the upcoming event are being hosted by independent student organizations, and that the school therefore does not have “the legal right or desire to interfere with or cancel their invitations based on the perspectives and beliefs of the speakers.”

“Where we do have discretion is around everything that has to do with the safety of our communities,” the spokesperson said.

“That priority, along with our commitment to Free Speech, remains at the center of our planning and preparations for future events.”

Yiannopoulos, for his part, is well aware of the severity of the threat posed by Antifa and other leftist groups, having been driven from Berkeley’s campus by violent rioters last time he was scheduled to speak at the school earlier this year.

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.

California Public University Fires 79 IT Workers; Replaces With H-1B Visa Holders

It seems that a group of 79 recently fired IT workers at the University of California San Francisco, whose jobs have been replaced by H-1B visa holders from India, may have finally found an issue on which they can agree with Trump.  According to the University Professional and Technical Employees CWA Local 9119 this mass firing is the first time a public university has offshored American IT jobs. Per ARS Technica:

In a statement sent yesterday, UPTE-CWA says the layoffs could spread, since the HCL contract can be utilized by any of the 10 campuses in the University of California system, the nation"s largest public university. "US taxes should be used to create jobs in the US, not in other countries," said Kurt Ho, a systems administrator who was quoted in the union"s press release. Ho was required to train his replacement as a condition of getting his severance pay.

Meanwhile, the laid off IT workers from San Francisco, who almost certainly backed Hillary, have suddenly had a change of heart on immigration, at least as it relates to H-1B visa issuance which is primarily utilized to attract IT talent from India.

Ho, who earns about $100,000, told the LA Times that he spent two days training his replacement in a process that UCSF called "knowledge transfer."

"He told me he would go back to India and train his team and would be sending me e-mails with questions," Ho said.

Audrey Hatten-Milholin, who earned $127,000 at her job, says other replacements were around for two weeks. "What was shocking is that the system is so complex there’s no way you can learn it in two weeks," she said.

Thirteen of the workers are considering filing a lawsuit, saying the way they were fired amounts to discrimination, Computerworld reported.

"There’s talk about fixing things, and no [one] has done it yet,” laid-off worker Bizhan Tabatabaian told Computerworld. "And I’m the proof."

Of course, this latest mass firing follows calls from the Trump administration to restrict the H-1B  program which Trump described as "neither high-skilled [labor] nor immigration; these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay."

Now, a draft of a new Trump executive order related to the issuance of H-1B visas, viewed by Axios, reportedly directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to consider ways to "make the process of H-1B allocation more efficient and ensure the beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest."

While that directive could be accomplished in a variety of ways, one likely solution would be to replace the current lottery system with one that prioritizes visas for those earning the highest salaries.  And while such a solution will have wide-ranging impacts on various companies and industries seeking foreign workers, one key takeaway is that it will pit India"s large IT-staffing firms against Silicon Valley"s tech giants.

MY POSITION ON VISAS#MakeAmericaGreatAgain #Trump2016https://t.co/JGmOd5gr5z pic.twitter.com/OLg6N3Ug9U

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2016

Per the graphic below, large Indian consulting firms are by far the largest users of the H-1B visa program.  That said, most of the jobs created by those companies tend to have lower salaries than those created by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook.  

Of course, the University of California San Francisco downplayed the firings by saying that their efforts to outsource their IT work would save taxpayers $30 million.

In its statement on the matter, UCSF says that it was pushed to hire outside contractors due to "increased demand for information technology and escalating costs for these services." The university says it will save more than $30 million by hiring HCL, after seeing IT costs nearly triple between 2011 and 2016, "driven by the introduction of the electronic medical record and increased digital connectivity."

The university says 49 UCSF employees were laid off, and it will eliminate another 48 jobs that are currently vacant or filled by contractors. "UCSF will not replace UCSF IT employees with H-1B visa holders, nor will HCL," the university wrote in a statement e-mailed to Ars.

Of the 49 laid-off UCSF employees, 34 have either secured other employment or are retiring, the university said.

Seems that the left"s love of open borders only extends right up to the point that it impacts them personally.

Professors Pledge To "Use Regular Class Time" To Protest Trump

A national “teach-in” movement is asking professors to set aside class time between Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration to “protest” oppression and challenge “Trumpism.”

As CampusReform"s Anthony Gockowski reports, so far, 17 American colleges and universities have signed on to participate in the campaign originating out of UCLA, including such prestigious institutions as Princeton and UC-Berkeley.

The movement, known as “Teach, Organize, Resist,” is set to kick-off on January 18, strategically “poised between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration” as an explicit means of “challenging Trumpism.”

“Transform your classrooms and commons into spaces of education that protest policies of violence, disenfranchisement, segregation, and isolationism,” the organizers urge educators on the movement’s homepage, clarifying elsewhere on the site that participation “is an opportunity to affirm the role of critical thinking and academic knowledge in challenging Trumpism.”

“On that day, we intend to teach about the agendas and policies of the new administration, be it the proposed dismantling of economic and environmental regulations or the threatened rollback of the hard-won rights that form the fragile scaffolding of American democracy,” a description for the teach-in explains, later accusing Trump of institutionalizing “white supremacy” and allegedly proposing the “expansion of state violence targeting people of color” and other marginalized groups.

“On that day, we intend to organize against the proposed expansion of state violence targeting people of color, undocumented people, queer communities, women, Muslims, and many others,” the description continues.

“On that day, we intend to resist the institutionalization of ideologies of separation and subordination, including white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and virulent nationalism.”

The movement, which has been spreading on social media under the hashtag “J18,” was started by “departments, centers, and collectives at UCLA,” but has since amassed the support of 18 other institutions, many of them public.

Professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for instance, are asking “all UCSB faculty to actively support” the teach-in, even suggesting that they “insert a note” about it in syllabi or “use your regular class time to attend a panel with your students.”

Those professors who elect not to require their students to attend the events, however, are still asked to “not penalize students for a missed class if they intend to attend panels.”

Scripps College, on the other hand, will be hosting a teach-in on “conservatism and right wing movements,” which will discuss Republican “strategies and tactics of mobilizing support, producing consent, and fragmenting opposition” in order to “help fellow students understand our present political moment.”

Other prestigious institutions, including Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, are also among the 17 American institutions participating (two others are foreign, and another is the American Anthropological Association). All told, nine of the participating schools are public, and a total of 46 teach-ins are currently scheduled to take place.

“Let it be known that on #J18 and beyond, universities, colleges, and high schools refused to bear silent witness to the politics of hate and fear; that in these times, these places of teaching and learning not only served as a sanctuary for its students and workers but also stood up to proclaim the power of knowledge on the frontlines of social justice,” the organizers declare optimistically.

Why Has The White House Suddenly Released A Strategy For Dealing With A Catastrophic Meteor Impact?

As SHTFPlan.com"s Mac Slavo notes, we should take notice at the government preparations for disaster, and the possibility of a cataclysmic collision with damaging objects in space.

At the same time, we should take notice at what they are preparing for with all the billions of dollars thrown at defense and survival, it comes in secretive infrastructure for a reclusive sect of power, and in top-down plans to contain the unrest.

Preparations for the individual to survive, and be resilient are not being put in place in this government, though many other governments have made such an investment into the lives of individuals. Time and again, these people are told to brace for the worst, with little to show for it. A few have made their preps, and it may yet prove useful in this or some other disaster.

Why Has The White House Suddenly Released A Strategy For Dealing With The Threat Of A Catastrophic Meteor Impact?

Authored by The End Of The American Dream"s Michael Snyder,

Does the White House know something that the rest of us do not? As the Obama administration draws to a close, the White House has suddenly released a major document that details a multi-pronged strategy for dealing with the threat of a catastrophic meteor impact. Most of us remember movies such as “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” that attempted to depict what such a crisis would look like, but up until fairly recently the U.S. government has never seemed to take this kind of threat very seriously.

So what has changed?

Of all the things that the White House could be focusing on, why this?

And this new report is just the latest in a series of measures that the government has taken over the past couple of years to help prepare us for incoming meteors and asteroids. The following is an excerpt from a recent Gizmodo article…

Concern over an apocalyptic asteroid strike has risen all the way to the top: The White House released a document this week detailing a strategy for National Near Earth Object (NEO) preparedness. Morgan Freeman would no doubt be proud, although honestly, the nation might have more pressing apocalypse concerns closer to home.

Last year brought renewed interest in handling humanity-ending impact events. After a 2014 audit showed that NASA had a cruddy NEO preparedness system, the agency founded a new Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) last year to detect all of our potentially nasty NEO neighbors. The office quickly escalated talk to action, running preparedness drills with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), launching spacecraft to gather asteroid information, and even drawing up plans to nuke the bad boys out of the sky if things get dicey.

NASA continues to assure us that no threat is imminent, so why spend so much time, energy and resources on a non-existent crisis?

If you want to read the 25 page document that the White House just released, it is entitled “National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy” and you can read it for yourself right here.

The document was put together by the Interagency Working Group for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects, and it outlined seven key objectives that the authors believe are important…

1. Enhance NEO detection, tracking, and characterization capabilities
2. Develop methods for NEO deflection and disruption
3. Improve modelling, predictions, and information integration
4. Develop emergency procedures for NEO impact scenarios
5. Establish NEO impact response and recovery procedures
6. Leverage and support international cooperation
7. Establish coordination and communications protocols and thresholds for taking action

And without a doubt, we definitely do need to enhance our detection abilities. Just the other day, a very large asteroid barely missed us, and we had only discovered it two days earlier…

Early Monday morning, while the US East Coast was pouring coffee, dropping kids off at school, and cursing in traffic, a space rock as big as a 10-story building slipped past Earth.

The asteroid, dubbed 2017 AG13, was discovered only Saturday by the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, according to an email from Slooh, a company that broadcasts live views of space.

We were very fortunate this time, but the truth is that our planet crosses paths with other giant space rocks on a very regular basis.

In fact, a near-Earth object that is being called “a cross between an asteroid and a comet” will come fairly close to our planet in February…

The latter “object”, dubbed the 2016 WF9, was detected by NASA in late November and has left scientist’s scratching their heads.

They have described the celestial rock as a cross between an asteroid and a comet.

It’s in the middle of its of.9 year orbit between Jupiter and Earth and will approach us on February 25, flying by at a distance of 32million miles from the planet.

Currently, approximately 10,000 major near-Earth objects have been identified by scientists, and about 10 percent of them are one kilometer or larger in size.

If one of those monsters directly hit our planet, we truly would be facing an extinction-level event.

For example, just imagine the kind of devastation that would happen if a large asteroid or meteor hit the Atlantic Ocean. Tsunami waves hundreds of feet tall would be sent racing toward the coasts of North America, South America, Africa and western Europe, and millions upon millions of people would die.

This is something that scientists have actually studied. According to a study conducted at the University of California at Santa Cruz, if a giant meteor did strike the Atlantic Ocean we could potentially see tsunami waves as high as 400 feet slam into the east coast of the United States…

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

Depending on where the meteor strikes, we could potentially see New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Charleston, Miami and countless other major coastal cities all wiped out on a single day.

Right now, 39 percent of all Americans live in a county that directly borders a shoreline.

To say that we are vulnerable to a massive tsunami caused by a meteor impact would be a massive understatement.

And scientists assure us that it will happen someday. In fact, I don’t know if you have noticed, but our area of space seems to have a lot more “traffic” in it these days. NASA tells us that there is nothing to be worried about, but others are concerned that something may be coming toward us or that we are moving toward something.

Ultimately, we need to remember that we are essentially a speck of dust hurtling through a massive galaxy at incredibly high speeds, and our galaxy is only an extremely small part of an absolutely enormous and ever changing universe.