Well, he wasn’t the least bit pleased about the idea of putting lessons online for people to see. He didn’t think it fair that “some kid in Oklahoma” could view the lessons and “learn for free”. Realistically, if schools like Yale, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, etc. all do this and see no threat, than Oakland University has absolutely no argument and no reason to be threatened. Lets take a look at why.

There’s nothing wrong with videotaping lectures and putting them online, and the lectures are property of the school not the professor, that’s how the real world works. My mom, who works for St. John Health System has to forfeit any and all rights over her intellectual property. If she invents something at home, St. John has the rights to it, regardless of what it is, unless she convinces them to sign an official release document releasing the rights to it.

Such things have been the way of the world for some time. When Steve Jobs and Steve Woz started Apple Computer, Woz worked for HP and as such, the Apple I belonged to HP. Woz showed it to them and they thought it was a joke and a toy, so they released the rights to it. While that was a massive mistake on HP’s part, they could have just as easily kept the Apple I and marketed it. Nonetheless, this is what happens.

Many colleges and universities offer course material online, and it doesn’t damage the school or the Professor’s integrity, on the contrary, it adds to it. A kid doesn’t get a degree for free via this method, but they do get to see what is being taught and it adds a lot of credibility to the school if people can go online and find, say, Oakland University experts for whatever they need. It builds a reputation and it’s just a fact that it does not decrease enrollment or anything else.

It doesn’t matter what they see, hear, or learn, without an actual degree it makes little difference other than for personal enrichment or research. Otherwise, we could put down “I spent 3 months in the library researching this, I know all about it” and that would be sufficient enough to land a job. But alas, in many cases it doesn’t matter if we have hands on experience, without the degree nothing matters in the eyes of Human Resources Departments around the world.

Take for example Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They offer what is called openCourseware.

Many other schools offer similar things online, and sure, anybody can just go online and look at lectures, course material, assignments, etc. To reiterate my point, I can’t put down “I looked at a bunch of courses online through MIT” on a resume and expect it to count. Not to mention, the “attendance” policy at Oakland is a joke. Anybody can just walk in there, sit down, and learn with the rest of the class. I know, I’ve done it before. If anyone can just stroll on in to class, what does it matter if material is online?

When I was prepping for grad school, I knew little, if anything about Urban Planning specifics. So what did I do? I went here and gave myself a crash course in undergraduate urban planning. I went though the lessons, not doing it all of course, but reading through the material, looking at maps, and ordering books to read through. One week into classes I can tell you that it has already paid off. There’s a good mix of people in my courses who are professional planners, and others who brand new to this, so thanks to the people at MIT and the fact that I can see their course material online, I’m prepared and, in many ways, ahead of the game as far as my classes go. I can answer questions and have intelligent discussion right away, while other students are obviously still adjusting, and I can keep up discussion with people who already do this for a living.

Online access to lectures and courses is also a great service to current students. Lets say you go to Oakland and are taking an early American History course. You wonder if the professor has some kind of bias or if there is another angle that isn’t being covered. It would be a great convenience to be able to pull up lectures from another school anywhere in the country to see what their angle is, get a different point of view, and enrich your learning experience. You can become better rounded and gain a deeper understanding of your subject with ease and convenience.

Published lessons also keep teachers honest and on point. People, especially parents who shell out hard earned cash for their kids to be educated, often wonder what really is being taught in college classrooms. This can give them direct insight into what is going on in these classrooms. Last week, I had my first course with a professor who wanted to spend a great deal of time picking a fight with someone who wasn’t on board with the Canadian health care system. Not only did this have nothing to do with the course, lesson, or material, but the girl whom he was engaging was Canadian and he was not. Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder if such a phenomenal amount of time would have been wasted had the class been recorded and put online (for now I’ll just chalk this up to being day one nonsense and we’ll see if it continues).

Such insight can also serve students when they go to choose a school or are looking to transfer schools. Let’s be honest, the “campus tours” and meetings with Professors and department heads are all the tip of the ice burg as far as what things will really be like. Maybe you’ve thought that chemical engineering was for you, if you watch a few lectures before you jump right in you can decide if you like it or not before you’re out time and money on a class you end up not liking. Maybe you don’t like the way that things are done at your school, wouldn’t it be disheartening and painfully frustrating to transfer across the state because someone else told you things are different, only to find out for yourself that it’s an even worse situation for you?

Online, open course platforms offer the chance for students to make the best, well-informed decisions about their education before they move far away, spend a ton of money, and end up in a world of frustration. Knowledge is power, even more important is having the power to control your knowledge.

Let us not forget as well that we are discussing Public Universities. As such, they conduct public research, take federal and state money, and are expected to make numerous contributions to our lives. Open course platforms do such things as a low cost and high volume solution. By doing this, we accomplish:

• More transparency as to where federal and state dollars go.
• Better and more informed choices in education
• More resources for students
• More resources for the general public
• A higher standard to meet and greater quality education

Literally nothing is lost except for the small cost it takes to set something up and the bandwith to keep it running, which is marginal at most. It’s win for everybody. More credibility for the professors, a higher profile for the University, and better education for the students.

So before we get all zealous about what we pay for our education as students, or what rights these tenured professors feel they deserve, let’s look at the big picture and see what good it does for everyone.

To see other schools that do this sort of thing, check out 101 Killer Open Courseware Projects and see for yourself.

How you ask? Well lets just look at the “findings” by congress right from the bill itself.

1) The use of tobacco products by the Nation’s children is a pediatric disease of considerable proportions that results in new generations of tobacco-dependent children and adults.

That’s all well and good. However Childhood Obesity (up to 33% of kids) is much more rampant than the number of high school seniors that smoke (up to 24%). Not to mention that studies are showing that teens are smoking at substantially lesser rates than in years past, and this figure continues to fall yearly. Other problems facing kids, such as childhood obesity, all the nonsense on the television and in the media, and the glorification of anti-culture culture is on the rise, and much more dangerous.

People like Lil’ Wayne are much more hazardous to the nations youth than cigarettes.

I Use To Tote A .38 Up In My Crack Days. I Tote That AK-47 In My Rap Days.

2) A consensus exists within the scientific and medical communities that tobacco products are inherently dangerous and cause cancer, heart disease, and other serious adverse health effects.

Remember the old days, when we all agreed on things like Eugenics and that Heroin was good for you? Times were so much simpler then.

5) Tobacco advertising and marketing contribute significantly to the use of nicotine-containing tobacco products by adolescents.

Yah! Remember this commercial from last year’s superbowl?

Me neither. Get real, nobody markets cigarettes to kids like they used to. Just because little Barry Obama got duped by some TV commercial on his way to nicotine and cocaine doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is this nieve.

9) Under article I, section 8 of the Constitution, the Congress is vested with the responsibility for regulating interstate commerce and commerce with Indian tribes.

Poor Indian Tribes can never catch a break. Sadly, this has no real meaning in the actual bill itself, it was just thrown in there to remind the indians how much better the white man is at getting things done than they are.

16) In 2005, the cigarette manufacturers spent more than $13,000,000,000 to attract new users, retain current users, increase current consumption, and generate favorable long-term attitudes toward smoking and tobacco use.

…So? Why is it a crime for a private enterprise to market their product? Cocoa Cola, a product which contributes to diabetes (which causes lots of cancers), unhealthy weight, dental problems, and more. But that’s OK. Think about this: When was the last time you saw a commercial with kids enjoying cigarettes. Now, when was the last time you saw a commercial with kids enjoying a sugar-induced, unhealthy beverage?

This glass is literally sitting on my desk as I write this post

17) Tobacco product advertising often misleadingly portrays the use of tobacco as socially acceptable and healthful to minors.

What congress cannot grasp is that this is not misleading: among minors, it IS socially acceptable to smoke. Despite anti-smoking campaigns and whatnot.

1 Tobacco product advertising is regularly seen by persons under the age of 18, and persons under the age of 18 are regularly exposed to tobacco product promotional efforts.

They’re also exposed to The Sham Wow Guy Vince, Billy Mays’ Oxyclean, Big Chief Chewing Tobacco, and a million other things. Not every kid owns a pair of Nikes because they’re on TV as much, and they sure as hell don’t rush out to buy a new Sham-Wow. Just because something is advertised, it doesn’t mean that people are going to go out and buy it.

21) The use of tobacco products in motion pictures and other mass media glamorizes its use for young people and encourages them to use tobacco products.

Like what, for example? Name 1 movie geared towards children that glamorizes smoking? The only thing I can think of is that  scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where Danial Hillard quits his job because the parrot is having a smoke.

You only see smoking in movies geared towards adults. And even then, it’s an accurate representation of the way we live: some people smoke. We can’t erase that by not including it in movies. Besides, people in movies who smoke aren’t usually the most oscar nominated roles. Typically we see the convict, the biker, the creepy eurpoean, the prostitute or the strung out crack addict reaching for a cigarette. If anything, Hollywood is unfair towards the normal everyday people who enjoy tobacco products.

25) Comprehensive advertising restrictions will have a positive effect on the smoking rates of young.

Fallacy 101.

And, my personal favorite:

(35) Tobacco products have been used to facilitate and finance criminal activities both domestically and internationally. Illicit trade of tobacco products has been linked to organized crime and terrorist groups.

This takes the cake. Not only is this a danger to children and adults, but it FUNDS TERRORISTS!

"Welcome to Flavor Country" - Osama Bin Laden (Probably)

Where are all those people who cried foul during the Bush years for him using terrorism as an excuse to do everything under the son that he wanted? Well, it appears that as long as the terrorism gag is used in their favor, it’s okay. This is just plain disgusting.

Based on findings like this, how can HR 1256 not be a success? Gee, idk.

The bill goes on for pages and pages of nothingness, rambling on about how the FDA gets to flex their muscles, despite the fact that they’re done a traditionally poor job in a large number of things that they have tried to do.I could go on and on picking apart each piece of the bill, but anyone with a shred of common sense will be able to do that just by looking at it briefly. I just highlighted some of the fun points to get you started.

If you can stomach the BS, I encourage you to read the text in it’s entirety here.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1256

Till then, I’m going to go see if Thank You for Smoking is on On Demand.

Ooh, not to mention: if you go outside without sun block, you are at risk for skin cancer. Do we chastise the beach goers for damaging their body the way we damage cigarette smokers?

General Motors: Shattered.

Yesterday, while a dark and stormy sky had settled over the “Renaissance” Center in downtown Detroit, General Motors filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While for many in Detroit, this means a simple “We’re fucked”, the nice folks on TV were trying to hide their urge to an hero by saying that this was a new beginning, that GM will come back stronger and more poised to take a better market share. Realistically, if there ever was a good reason to an hero, crashing a company like GM is a pretty has got to be up there.

While it’s anybody’s guess if GM will actually survive this debacle, we have to question how it can happen when they have screwed up so badly in the past. To make matters worse, the people who are trying hardest to reassure us that everything will be OK are from the government, who have lied to us about all sorts of things for the past over 9000 years. Not to mention that they keep telling us that they have no interest in running the company, despite already installing a new CEO.

Either way, here’s a look back at a bunch of absurdly dumb shit GM has done to end up where they are. Lots of industries have issues with labor, costs, government regulations, and more. When we throw the excuses aside, we see lots of places where General Motors (and Chrysler), could have done much better.

Don’t make a fleet of “different” vehicles that are exactly the same.

Behold, the Chevy S10!

Also Available in Black

Behold, the radically different GNC Sonoma!

Ooh yah, I'm bad

It truely is amazing how ridiculous it is. It’s the SAME DAMN TRUCK. Turn one into an SUV, call it the Chevy Blazer. Turn the other into an SUV, and it’s the GMC Jimmy. It’s absurd to sell minimally different versions of the same product to try to accomodate everyone everywhere at any time. It would be if Coke started selling 12, 16, 20, 22, 24, 28, and 32 oz bottles of Coca Cola. We would laugh to see that on the grocery store shelves, but somehow GM (and the other members of the Detroit 3 are just as guilty) thought this was not only acceptable, but appropriate.

From the Wikipedia article for Chevy S10 (which is what comes up when you search for GMC Sonoma):

The Chevrolet S-10 was a compact pickup truck from the Chevrolet marque of General Motors. When it was first introduced in 1982, the GMC version was known as the S-15 and later renamed the GMC Sonoma. A high-performance version was released in 1991 and given the name of GMC Syclone. The truck was also sold by Isuzu as the Hombre from 1996 through 2000. There was also an SUV version, the Chevrolet S-10 Blazer/GMC S-15 Jimmy. An electric version was leased as a fleet vehicle in 1997 and 1998. Together, these trucks are often referred to as the S-series. In 2004, the S-series was replaced by new models: the Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, and Isuzu i-Series.

It should come as no surprise that the GMC Colorado, GMC Canyon, and Isuzu i-Series are all, the exact same truck. Ever had someone at Best Buy try to explain the difference between a HP ze6514 and ze6514-a in a way that makes you even remotely give a shit? Yah, me neither. This is no exception.

Leases? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Here’s a radical concept: Allow people to pay a chunk of money upfront to rent a car for a few years provided they give it back in as perfect of shape as they can and keep it under a certain mileage without paying some kind of costly fees. Yah, that’s the American Dream.

For as long as there have been cars there have been people who have wanted to own cars. This kind of pseudo-ownership is crap on all levels. You give the people a car that they don’t really own, stick the deal with terms, conditions and clauses making it hard to work with and wonder why they are unhappy. The dealers get these things back and have to try and sell a “Pre-Leased Vehicle” which is code to the general public for “A car somebody drove the hell out of because they knew they were giving it back soon”. You can easily abuse the engine and the trans on a car as long as you know that you won’t have to deal with the actual problem when it arrises. You will have had given the car back by then!

To top it off, the financial arms of the manufacturer get hit by making enticing loan offers to people who will never be able to afford them. This in turn, also created problems for the car dealers.

Growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, I remember seeing stuff like this on TV all the time. Mel Farr was hit by liens against Ford because people couldn’t pay for their cars.

Don’t design cars that are ugly as hell and expect people to be exited.

…I will never forget the gasp that audience made. Holy hell! This car could not have been more instantly hated if it had a Swastika tattoo on its forehead.

-Time Magazine’s 50 Worst Cars of All Time in 2007 from a reporter who was in the audience at the unveiling.

Gee, can you guess what car it was?

Pussy Magnet Sold Separately

The horrible brainchild of a piss-poor attempt to appeal to the Generation-X, Hippie Nuevo, Burning Man crowd was the result of “Design By Committee” and having absolutely 0 clue what your audience wants. This car was so bad that GM needed to sell 30,000 of these puppies a year to break even and they never even hit 28,000. The ultimate lowpoint was in 2007, where 25 new Azteks were sold. Not thousands, just 25. I can’t imagine how they sold so many.

I’m sure that the video shown at the unveiling was pretty similar to this one.

If it was even that exciting. The Aztek is so bad that it’s often compared with the AMC Gremlin, The Pacer StationWagons, The Chevy Chevette, and of course who can forget the Ford Edsel.

Over the past 25 years, we’ve seen some terrible car designs come out of Detroit.

For example:

Badass 1964 Ford Mustang

The 84 Mustang: 20 years is a long-ass time

Finally Ford got their shit together…about another 20 years later.

2010 Mustang GT

After you destroy such an iconic brand, is there really any real recovery? You just have to find out. The new Cameros, Mustangs, Challengers, Chargers, etc. are all starting to do well. People want cars that look like real cars.

Look at this:

SSRRRRRRRRawr!

What the hell is that? It’s as though the El Camino manufacturing plant and design team were revived and moved to Ferdnale. This car is garbage. It’s terrible when you try to re-do the El Camino and fail miserably.

The El Camino SS: More awesome than you

I could go on and on about the GMC Envoy, the Chevy Equinox, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the Ford Flex, or any other abomination, but I think you’ve all had enough. I know I have.

If it doesn’t make money, DON’T DO IT!

GM took a German brand and started to sell cars based on it’s design in the United States under a different name, different production plants, and made almost entirely out of plastic, aluminum, and styrophone. That’s right, saturn was born in 1993 and has never once turned a profit.

For cars that are plentiful, you’d think that they would have sold at some point in their lives. But something got lost in the translation overseas of  Opel to Saturn. Worse yet was GM trying to make these cars exciting when they end up in the “Under $3,000″ section at your local used car dealer pretty quick. It’s as though they were trying to deliberately steal the Dodge Neon’s market share

So much fail compacted into such a small space

But as the big three tried so hard to churn these out, they also did it at a loss across the board. So many sedan and small car sales were taken at a loss while they relied on Trucks and SUVs to keep the company going. Nonetheless, gas prices spike and bigger cars are no longer popular. There goes the money train, all aboard!

Forget Innovation, what we have is good enough.

With the way people like Castrol and Penzoil talk about their products, you’d think there was more R&D in synthetic oils than in the machines themselves.

Ultimately, the car has been much the same for quite some time. We’ve made great strides in many areas, but realistically speaking, Detroit has falled flat on innovation, focusing too much on holding on to what we had instead of being on the forefront of the next big thing. GM should have expanded into other areas of manufacturing, really be the motor that powers everything, not just cars.

Failing to truely adopt to new electric, hydrogen, or even ethanol products until recently is a joke. Check out this video of Jack Nicholson with his Hydro-Powered Chevy….in 1978!

Fucking 1978! And of course, the prototype was in California, not Michigan. The unwillingness of Detroit to adapt to new technologies and push these on consumers has been a total nightmare for their development. Instead of leading the way, they now trail behind, with GM’s only real hopes in this department lying in the Chevy Volt.

In 1978, they prototyped the Hydrogen powered Chevy. In 2010 or 2011, we’ll see the first electric Chevy. How does it take you over 30 years to go backwards?

Just because you have the biggest dick in the room doesn’t mean you act like it.

Or that it will always be that way. If you have the balls to say that you shouldn’t be allowed to fail because you’re too big, then obviously you’re not too big at all. What a joke. For years GM ignored customer complaints, new technology and foreign competition as just minor things to deal with on the road to success. Now, they’re seeing it first hand. Their market share has been swept out from underneath them, putting the consumers in an uncomfortable position: buy an inferior domestic product or buy a less expensive, superior foreign product and piss off my neighbors. You didn’t need a crystal ball to see what was coming, just the need to pull your head out of your ass for a few minutes.

Things got way too slow, and nobody had the foresight to realize the trends of the future or to see that the good times just wouldn’t last forever. Especially when we’ve seen Chrysler have to get bailed out before. Now, they just get passed around like the red-headed step child of the auto world. From Germany to Canada and now Italy, who knows if the car maker will ever find a real home, or just end up like Packard and AMC.

Which would be a shame, since I really want a new Dodge Challenger.

Ooh so Sexy

But alas, we shall see where the cards lie. Maybe nobody will become an hero after all.

I thought about explaining why this is a terrible idea. Why this can not and will not work, and how this is the beginning of the way things started to fall in Atlas (when problems get bad, government “solutions get worse), and what we can do about it. However, there are already too many articles about that subject online already (even the LA times knows this isn’t a fantastic idea), and most people have done it better than I ever could.

So instead, I’m making a plea. I am begging and pleading with my fellow Americans to learn what made our economy strong to begin with. What makes our economy different from others, and what makes our country strong as a whole. Strong economies aren’t build on money being manifested for the sake of helping failing entities. They aren’t build on investing in institutions that have failed. And they certainly aren’t built into scaring the American people into believing that something MUST be done, or else.

I implore my friends to look into Austrian Economics and at least the very basic principles that the markets work best when the markets decide the value of goods and commodities. That getting involved does more harm in the long run than help. There’s been a lot of talk about “wall street mumbo jumbo” and things that do not translate directly to “main street”. Which is their way of saying that people are too stupid to understand how things affect them, and as such say “Well if X happens here, Y happens there” without any real correlation as to how or why. And we are all expected to just eat it up and say “Ok, well as long as you are fixing it then we should be all good, right?”. Because we, as a people, no not know better. At all. We are expected to just say “ok” and have that be that and we’ll be all alrigtht. But we’re not all alright. Because we don’t know what they’re saying or what it means.

Discover why free markets work compared to command and government controlled markets. Learn that when not interfered with, the market will fix itself, since the market is CONSUMER driven. Why are so many houses selling for less than they were 5 years ago?  It’s not because the property is worth less, but because it wasn’t worth as much to begin with. It doesn’t take a seasoned economist to walk around many newly built homes and see that their quality does not warrent the high price. I can’t tell you how many $200,000 + homes in Michigan I’ve seen where I’ve just said to myself “there is no way in hell this house is worth so much money”. This is how the market works. When prices are too high for something, people will pay it if it is the percieved actual value. However, it is becoming more and more apparent that the percieved value is not the actual value, and that’s part of price fixing.

These big banks WANT to keep the price of homes high. Not only then do they make more money on the home sale, but they get larger comissions, higher closing costs, etc which all transletes into them making more money. Oil is also something that has a higher percieved value than an actual value, but we know that OPEC has been fixing oil prices for years now. If oil costs $4 a gallon, it’s because somebody wants it to cost that much, not because it’s worth that much. Same with the housing market. The difference between now and 10 years ago is simply that now, the economic situation as a whole is even more desolate than it was a year ago.

So my friends, find things out for yourselves. Look into this and see what is going on. Start here, at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute and go from there. Learn about markets. Learn about economic cycles. Learn about what causes depressions. Learn what people like Lew Rockwell have to say. But more importantly, learn the role of government in economics and learn what how economics really works.

Goodnight, and good luck. Just don’t be surprised if in years from now, thins are substantially worse than they are right now, despite the bailout.