The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Making the rounds. Pass it on if you agree with the philosophy of this Founding Father.
Who was Thomas Jefferson ?
This is amazing. There are two parts. Be sure to read the 2nd part (quotations).
Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.
Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Thomas Jefferson in Deeds and Words”
Cyber Deterrence against China? The only route left is an Open Source Approach
Is there a way to deter cyber attacks?
Yes. Two ways. One takes a moral high ground.
I won't waste any time discussing that option.
Why? After flame/stuxnet, and the unilateral escalation of the cyberweapons arms race by the US, that option is now closed.
The only option that's left is down and dirty open source warfare.
The key is understanding that large cybercrime networks (more) and significant government black ops programs (less) need government permission to operate at any meaningful scale.
Lots of governments (China, Russia, etc.) see permitting these activities as advantageous. They get economic benefit and they develop/perfect a level of expertise that is potentially useful in the future.
So, how do you deter this activity?
Target Value For Bitcoin Is Not$50 Or $100. It Is $100,000 To $1,000,000.
Swarm Economy: Bitcoin’s value is at an all-time high again. Following the hype peak and crash in 2011, many seemed to have thought it was just another dotcom fluke. But bitcoin was much more than that, and it has returned with a vengeance – its market cap is now twice what it was in the 2011 peak, and it is nowhere near its potential, which is four orders of magnitude above today’s value.
In this, a lot of people are confused at the fact that bitcoin has climbed 200% since the start of this year alone, and wonder what to make of it. It is currently at $41.50 and climbing fast, and I see a lot of people just looking at the numbers and guessing from charts how things will pan out.
I am seeing guesses of $50, $100, $150, even $1,000. These numbers seem pulled out of thin air from just looking at the charts – nobody seems to have done due diligence from the other direction, from the most fundamental observation of all:
Bitcoin is a transactional currency. As such, it is competing for market share on the transactional currency market.
Talking about bitcoin value is not about happily watching numbers go up and down while having popcorn. This is about identifying a global market, looking at its size and estimating a target market share based on the strengths and weaknesses of the competing product or service under analysis.
When you know the size of the target market, and have an estimate for your projected market share, you can estimate the value of your product or service as a percentage of the value of the total market. I haven’t seen anybody do that for bitcoin.
The total size of the transactional currency market is hard to estimate, but has been pegged at about $60 trillion (the amount of money in circulation worldwide). Seeing how this number is roughly on par with the world’s GDP, it is a reasonable enough number to be in the right ballpark. Based on my four earlier estimates (one, two, three, four), I think it is reasonable that bitcoin captures a 1% to 10% market share of this market.
The low end of 1% would be if it captures international and internet trade. The 10% would be if bitcoin also manages to capture some brick-and-mortar retail trade, which we are already seeing strong signs that it might – operations provide a 3% to 5% extra profit margin on sales when you can cut out the credit card processors, so the incentive to switch is immense: those 3% to 5% cost savings translate to 50% to 100% increased profits, as margins are typically very slim in retail.
Furthermore, some people will undoubtedly invest in bitcoin and keep their portion of bitcoin away from the transactional pool, like all people tend to hoard money if they are able. This decreases the amount of bitcoin that must fulfill the market share, further driving up value for each individual bitcoin. As a rough estimate, let’s assume that only one in four bitcoins is actually used in transactions, and the rest are in some kind of savings or investment plans.
This leads us to a target market cap of 600 billion to 6 trillion USD, to be fulfilled by about 6 million bitcoin, which makes for easy calculations. That means that each bitcoin would be worth $100,000 at the low market cap and $1,000,000 at the high market cap.
In the light of this, present-day projections of $100 that present themselves as “daring and optimistic” actually come across as rather shortsighted and almost dealing with peanuts.
So is the projected market share realistic? Bitcoin certainly has hurdles to overcome – scalability and usability being two of them – but it has done remarkably well in maturing in the two years since I started looking at it. My prediction of a mainstream breakthrough around the year 2019 remains, and it still depends on getting mainstream usability; a target market cap may be reached about a decade after that happens, as a technology typically takes ten years from mainstream breakthrough to maturity.
Now, there are definitely uncertainties in this projection and its assumptions – but it does indicate what kind of ballpark we are talking about.
This is both exciting and wonderful, it could be of enormous significance in medicine, and in near death experience research to cite just two areas. It could also be deeply alarming, because the shadow of this research is the thought police. You wouldn't be safe even inside your own head. Once again science and technology outstrip ethics and law. It is our curse.
Mental Picture of Others Can Be Seen Using FMRI, Finds New Study
SYL KACAPYR – Cornell University
This is a conservative, but brilliant analysis of several of the trends I have covered in SR. I agree with all of this except for the energy sector section, which I think is quite wrong. They do not properly take into account the quickening transition to noncarbon energy; and they make no mention at all of climate change, and its effects.
The net-net here though is an emerging trend of massive importance: How do we structure a society where human labor is rendered irrelevant by robotics? If profit remains our only essential priority, disaster will follow. Wellness must become our first priority if we are to survive and prosper.
China Robots Signal US Challenge
JOSHUA JACOBS and EFTYCHIS MOURGINAKIS, Founding Members – The Conservative Future Project – Asia Times (Hong Kong)
China-India: Chinese media reported that India and China have agreed to start a dialogue on Afghanistan. An “in-principle” agreement on official-level dialogue has been reached and dates for the first meeting are being worked out.
Earlier this week, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon travelled to Moscow for the first three-way dialogue between India, Russia and China on Afghanistan in an effort to build on common security concerns. At present, India has an institutionalized dialogue on Afghanistan only with the US.
Comment: The news commentary noted that China first offered India a wider dialogue on South Asia in general. India declined to hold talks about what it considers its sphere of influence with its primary competitor.
Afghanistan is different because India and China share an interest in preventing the return of the Taliban or another extremist Islamist regime. India was a primary backer of the Northern Alliance tribes that fought the Pashtun Taliban before the US intervention in late 2001.
As for China, Mullah Omar's Taliban regime allowed terrorism training for Uighur Islamic separatists from Xinjiang, China, and rejected Chinese inducements to terminate it. China is Pakistan's most important ally, but Pakistan also did nothing to stop the Uighur training by the very Taliban regime that Pakistan supported.
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: China-India-Russia Confer on Afghanistan”
Here is a relatively recent and thorough analysis of 9/11 created by Jeremy Rys. It had been posted on his channel, recieved tens of thousands of hits, and of course his page was shut down for “copyright infringement complaints.” I would rather not see this video wiped off the map; thankfully another YTuber managed to re-post it. Rys is deeply committed to actually identifying and collaring the criminals behind 9/11, beyond just speculation about Silverstein and the Bush family. If you have a little time to watch this I think you'll be very satisfied with the conclusions he draws.
Phi Beta Iota: The film accepts the official story about airplanes vanishing into the buildings despite vertical steel beams every 14 inchs. Much more likely is that the target offices were blown up from inside out, and that vaults (such as the empty Customs vault) were looted by pre-arrangement prior to the 9/11 exercise and event.
Below the line: books, DVDs, videos, and other.
The final entry is the earlier total recap including journal entries, related books, and more.
Continue reading “Worth a Look: 9/11 Books, DVDs, Videos, and Other”
