Apple CEO Steve Jobs Resigns

APV:  It will be interesting to see if Apple continues to innovate as they have been without Steve at the helm. I think they will.

Get well Steve. We’re praying for you.

Technology

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Resigns
Published August 24, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Steve Jobs, the legendary chief executive officer of Apple Inc., resigned Wednesday, effective immediately, according to the company’s board of directors.

The company named Tim Cook, its previous chief operating officer, to the post.

Jobs wrote in a letter to the board that “if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

Jobs submitted his resignation to the board Wednesday and “strongly recommended” that Cook be his successor.

He went on to say that he’d like to serve as the computer giant’s “chairman of the board, director and Apple employee.”

“I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it,” he said. “And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.”

Art Levinson, the chairman of Genentech spoke on behalf of Apple’s Board, and said “it has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Cook, 50, was widely considered as the leading candidate to run the company after Jobs, who has been on medical leave for undisclosed reasons since January.

According to the report, Cook is a 13-year veteran at the company, and ran the day-to-day operations during two prior medical leaves of absences.

Earlier, Apple shares gained 0.7 percent to close at $376.18.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant two years ago. He reportedly appeared at the iPad 2 launch in March and the annual developers’ conference in June, The Journal reported. But he appeared thin at both events.

Jobs is credited with being the mind behind the iPhone, iPad and other devices that turned Apple into one of the world’s most powerful companies

Colin Gillis, a financial analyst for BGC, told Reuters, “I will say to investors: don’t panic and remain calm, it’s the right thing to do. Steve will be chairman and Cook is CEO.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/24/apple-ceo-steve-jobs-resigns/#ixzz1W35839hM

Almost Everything We’re Taught Is Wrong

Opinion

Almost Everything We’re Taught Is Wrong
By John Stossel

Published August 24, 2011 | FoxNews.com

We grow up learning that some things are just bad: child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they’re not.

What I love about economics is that it can show that what seems harmful is actually good for society. It illuminates what common sense overlooks.

This was the subject of my Fox Business show last week. It was inspired by the eye-opening book “Defending the Undefendable” by economist Walter Block.

Most people call child labor an unmitigated evil. But my guests, David Boaz of the Cato Institute and Nick Gillespie of Reason.tv, said that’s wrong.

“If we say that the United States should abolish child labor in very poor countries,” Boaz said, “then what will happen to these children?

… They’re not suddenly going to go to the country day school. … They may be out selling their bodies on the street. That is not an improvement over working in a T-shirt factory.”

In fact, studies show that in at least one country where child labor was suddenly banned, prostitution increased. Good economics teaches that as poor countries get richer and freer, capital investment raises the productivity of labor and child labor diminishes. There’s no shortcut through government prohibition — unless you like starvation and child prostitution.

What about price-gouging? State laws attempt to prevent people from charging “unconscionable” prices during emergencies.
“If I’m in the neighborhood of Hurricane Katrina,” Boaz said, “what I want is water and ice and generators. … If you are in Kentucky (and) you’ve got 10 generators in your store, are you getting up at 4 a.m. to drive all day to get to Louisiana to sell these generators if you can only sell them for the same price you can sell them for in Kentucky? No, you’re going to go down because … you can sell them for more.”

Also, if prices rise during an emergency, that’s a signal for people to buy only what they most need. That leaves more for everyone else.

If the price remains low, an incentive to conserve is lost.

Ticket scalpers are seen as sleazy guys who cheat you by marking up the price of tickets. Profits go to middlemen instead of the performers.

What good could they possibly do?

“I like to think of ticket scalpers as the guy who stands in line so that I don’t have to,” Gillespie said.

Time spent in line is part of the ticket cost. Scalpers let you pay entirely in money, rather than partly in valuable time.
Most people say that selling body parts is wrong.

“It also seems wrong to have people dying because they can’t get a kidney,” Boaz said.

Some 400,000 Americans are on a waiting list now for a new kidney, and they are not allowed to pay for one.
“We sell hair. We sell sperm. We sell eggs these days.” Boaz added.

Gillespie added, “The best way to grow the supply and allow more people to live is to allow the market to price those organs.”
Maybe the most counterintuitive position argued on my show was that blackmail should not be a crime. Blackmail (unlike extortion) is the demand for money in return for withholding information. Robin Hanson, a George Mason University economist, defends blackmail.

“The thing you’re threatening when you’re threatening blackmail (is) gossip,” Hanson said. “If it should be all right to tell people, it should be all right to threaten to tell people.”

What we don’t like, however, is the blackmailer saying, “Pay me to keep quiet.”

“But the effect of that is to make people behave,” Hanson said.

“If we (allow) blackmail, people behave even more because they are even more afraid of what might happen if they don’t.”

Maybe Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff would have been caught earlier?

“That’s right. … Blackmail is actually a form of private law enforcement.”

Also, since gossip is free speech, blackmail is simply selling the service of not engaging in free speech. Why should that be outlawed?

I subtitled my last book, “Everything You Know Is Wrong”. I was exaggerating, of course, but many things we’re taught are fallacies. That’s why I like economics. It explodes fallacies.

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. The show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. and midnight ET. It re-airs Fridays at 10 p.m., Saturdays at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight, and Sundays at 10 p.m. (all times eastern). He’s also the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.”

To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/08/24/almost-everything-were-taught-is-wrong/#ixzz1VxIW22vT

What We Don’t Know About History Can Hurt Us

By John Stossel

Published July 27, 2011| FoxNews.com

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”

That famous line, attributed to many authors but apparently said by humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw (aka Josh Billings), applies to history as much as anything.

What liberates oppressed people? I was taught it’s often American power. Just the threat of our military buildup defeated the Soviet Union, and our troops in the Middle East will create islands of freedom.

Unlikely, says historian Thaddeus Russell, author of “A Renegade History of the United States.”

“As a matter of fact,” Russell told me, “in general American military intervention has increased anti-Americanism and hardened repressive regimes. On the other hand, American popular culture — what was often called the worst of our culture in many cases — has actually done more for liberation and our national security than anything that the 82nd Airborne could do.”

I told him that I thought that the Soviet Union collapsed because the Soviets spent so much trying to keep pace with Ronald Reagan’s military buildup

On the contrary, Russell said, “it collapsed from within. … People simply walked away from the ideology of communism. And that began especially when American popular culture — jazz and rock and roll — began infiltrating those countries after World War II.”

I demanded evidence.

“American soldiers brought jazz during World War II to the eastern front. Soviet soldiers brought it back. Eastern European soldiers brought it and spread it across those countries. … Stalin was hysterical about this.”

The authorities were particularly concerned about young people performing and enjoying sensual music.

“Any regime at all depends on social order to maintain its power. Social order and sensuality, pleasures of the body, are often at odds. Stalin and his commissars understood that.”

American authorities 30 years earlier also feared the sensuality of black music, said Russell, attacking it “as primitive jungle music that was bringing down American youth. Stalin and his commissars across Eastern Europe said exactly the same things with the same words later.”

Then rock and roll came.

“That was even more threatening,” Russell said. “By the 1980s, disco and rock were enormously popular throughout the communist world.”

The communists realized they had to relax the rules or risk losing everything, but it was too late. One of the most amazing and significant spectacles was Bruce Springsteen’s concert in East Germany in 1988, when a crowd of 160,000 people who lived behind the Iron Curtain sang “Born in the USA.”

I’m skeptical. I don’t know how much effect Reagan’s military buildup had versus rock and roll, but I bet ordinary consumer goods had an ever bigger effect. People trapped behind communist lines wanted the stuff we had. When I was in Red Square before the fall of communism, I sold my Nikes and jeans to eager buyers.

People want choices, and you can’t indoctrinate that out of them.

Which leads me to the most destructive myth about history: the idea that if we are to prosper, government must make smart plans for us. I was taught that in college, and despite the failure of the Soviet Union, many government leaders still believe it.

It’s no coincidence that the countries with the least economic freedom, according to the Heritage Foundation — Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea — are the worst places to live. They not only lack freedom, they are also poor.

Who’s at the top of the economic freedom list? Hong Kong. (The United States is ninth.) Hong Kong has low taxes, and as I demonstrated in an ABC special years ago, they make it easy to become an entrepreneur. I got permission to open a business there in one day. In my hometown, New York City, it takes months.

Hong Kong doesn’t even have democracy, but because its rulers protected people’s personal safety and property and left them otherwise free, Hong Kong thrived. In 50 years, it went from horrible poverty to income levels that are among the highest in world. Prosperity, thanks to economic freedom.

We should try that here.

To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.
———————-
Visionary Note: You might have noticed I have re-posted two John Stossel Opinion pieces recently. The reason is, I found his opinion worth re-posting. They have been timely posts. Thanks John.

The College Scam

By John Stossel
Published July 06, 2011 | FoxNews.com

What do Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Mark Cuban have in common?

They’re all college dropouts.

Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and Peter Jennings have in common?

They never went to college at all.

But today all kids are told: To succeed, you must go to college.

Hillary Clinton tells students: “Graduates from four-year colleges earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates, an estimated $1 million more.”

We hear that from people who run colleges. And it’s true. But it leaves out some important facts.

That’s why I say: For many people, college is a scam.

I explored the scam on my Fox Business show with Richard Vedder, author of “Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,” and Naomi Schafer Riley, who just published “Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For.”

Vedder explained why that million-dollar comparison is ridiculous:

“People that go to college are different kind of people … (more) disciplined … smarter. They did better in high school.”

They would have made more money even if they never went to college.

Riley says some college students don’t get what they pay for because their professors have little incentive to teach.

“You think you’re paying for them to be in the classroom with you, but every hour a professor spends in the classroom, he gets paid less. The incentives are all for more research.”

The research is often on obscure topics for journals nobody reads.

Also, lots of people not suited for higher education get pushed into it. This doesn’t do them good. They feel like failures when they don’t graduate. Vedder said two out of five students entering four-year programs don’t have a bachelor’s degree after year six.

“Why do colleges accept (these students) in the first place?”

Because money comes with the student — usually government-guaranteed loans.

“There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor’s degrees,” Vedder said. He says that 17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers. It’s hard to pay off student loans with jobs like those. These days, many students graduate with big debts.

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who got rich helping to build good things like PayPal and Facebook, is so eager to wake people up to alternatives to college that he’s paying students $100,000 each if they drop out of college and do something else, like start a business.

“We’re asking nothing in return other than meetings so we make sure (they) work hard, and not be in school for two years,” said Jim O’Neill, who runs the foundation.

For some reason, this upsets the left. A Slate.com writer called Thiel’s grant a “nasty idea” that leads students into “halting their intellectual development … maintaining a narrow-minded focus on getting rich.”

But Darren Zhu, a grant winner who quit Yale for the $100,000, told me, “Building a start-up and learning the sort of hardships that are associated with building a company is a much better education path.”

I agree. Much better. Zhu plans to start a biotech company.

For the record, I went to college. I got a BA in psychology from Princeton. But if I didn’t learn much. Well, I did learn from my seven roommates. I learned about poker, chasing women, etc. But I was bored by my professor’s tedious lectures. I think I succeeded in TV because the professors were so boring. I wanted to use video to make education better. I learned how to do that on the job, at a TV station in Portland, Oregon. Princeton didn’t help. I never took a journalism course. My business is filled with people who did not attend journalism school.

What puzzles is me is why the market doesn’t punish colleges that don’t serve their customers well. The opposite has happened: Tuitions have risen four times faster than inflation.

“There’s a lot of bad information out there,” Vedder replied. “We don’t know … if (students) learned anything” during their college years.

“Do kids learn anything at Harvard? People at Harvard tell us they do. … They were bright when they entered Harvard, but do … seniors know more than freshman? The literacy rate among college graduates is lower today than it was 15 or 20 year ago. It is kind of hard for people to respond in market fashion when you don’t have full information.”

Despite the scam, the Obama administration plans to increase the number of students getting Pell grants by 50 percent.

And even a darling of conservatives, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, says college is a must: “Graduating from high school is just the first step.”

We need to wake people up.

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. The show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. and midnight ET. It re-airs Fridays at 10 p.m., Saturdays at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight, and Sundays at 10 p.m. (all times eastern). He’s also the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.”

To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/06/college-scam/#ixzz1RQTMfhpn

He’s Back!

I’ve been away for a while, observing the insanity that is called Washington D. C.

Thomas Jefferson once said something about this country needing a revolution about every 20 years just to purge the rascals out of government that had entrenched themselves. We’re long overdue.

I’m not advocating the overthrow of the government, just running the charlatans from both sides, out of town. On a rail preferably.

I saw a poll that divided the American political landscape as such: 40% conservative, 20% liberal, and the remaining 40% as independent/undecided. As I see it, the future of our country is in the hands of people who can’t decide what side they’re on. We’ll see how this plays out, sooner than later I believe.

My parting thought today is this, people who think that the pen is mightier that the sword, never took a pen to a sword fight. The world is a dangerous place. Time to grow up and be the men and women we were created to be.

Thank you Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – Australia Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.. Separately, he angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation’s mosques.. Quote: “IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.” “This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, Learn the Language!” “Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.” “We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.” “This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE..” “If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.” American citizens, find the backbone and start speaking up for your country…

Good Morning Vietnam!

So welcome to the blog of another peripheral visionary.

As a first post, I need to get some house keeping out of the way.

Obama, Glenn Beck, O’Reily, Rush, Tea Party, White House, heath care, Democrats, liberals, progressives, black president, war, tree huggers, birth certificate, Pelosi, Reed, cap-and-trade, labor unions, VAT, taxes, IRS… and more to come.

Now that’s out of the way, I’d like to welcome the whoever at the White House now has the pleasure of reading my blog.

In future posts, we’ll talk about various topics that interest me. But mainly the survival of the United States of America as an entity that the Founding fathers envisioned. Where freedom was not a privalege that the gobernment allowed you to have, but what was guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Thank you for listening.

© Trimatrix Publishing 2010