Two Million Minutes
THE DOCUMENTARY
Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately?/p>
…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult?/p>
How a student spends their Two Million Minutes - in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off -- will effect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.
How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student's choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country's economic future?
This film takes a deeper look at how the three superpowers of the 21st Century ?China, India and the United States ?are preparing their students for the future. As we follow two students ?a boy and a girl ?from each of these countries, we compose a global snapshot of education, from the viewpoint of kids preparing for their future.
Our goal is to tell the broader story of the universal importance of education today, and address what many are calling a crisis for U.S. schools regarding chronically low scores in math and science indicators.
In many ways the six kids simultaneously fit and break national stereotypes.
Take Rohit in Bangalore. He is under intense pressure from his folks to get into a top engineering university but blows off steam singing with his "boy band" and dreams of sending demos out to record companies. In Shanghai we meet math whiz Xiaoyuan, who, while awaiting word from Yale to see if she gained early acceptance, tries out as a violinist for the top music conservatory in Shanghai.
In Indianapolis we go to school with Neil. The senior class president and former star quarterback who gave up football to focus more on his studies. He has cruised through school, but now, with a full academic scholarship to Purdue University, wonders if he is up to the college challenge. The other students profiled in the documentary ?Ruizhang, Brittany and Apoorva ?face many of these universal adolescent pressures as well.
To put these narratives in context we have assembled an array of interviews with specialists like former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, Congressman Bart Gordon, chair of the House Committee on Science, Harvard economist Richard Freeman as well as top Indian CEOs, and leading scientists in America.
Statistics for American high school students give rise to concern for our student's education in math and science. Less than 40 percent of U.S. students take a science course more rigorous than general biology, and a mere 18 percent take advanced classes in physics, chemistry or biology. Only 45 percent of U.S. students take math coursework beyond two years of algebra and one year of geometry. And 50 percent of all college freshmen require remedial coursework.
Meanwhile, both India and China have made dramatic leaps in educating their middle classes - each comparable in size to the entire U.S. population. Compared to the U.S., China now produces eight times more scientists and engineers, while India puts out up to three times as many as the U.S. Additionally, given the affordability of their wages, China and India are now preferred destinations for increasing numbers of multinational high-tech corporations.
Just as the Soviets' launch of a tiny satellite ignited a space race and impelled America to improve its science education, many experts feel the United States has reached its next "Sputnik moment." The goal of this film is to help answer the question: Are we doing enough with the time we have to ensure the best future for all?
THE FILMMAKERS
Executive Producer
The Two Million Minutes storyline was conceived by Robert A. Compton and he also has served as Executive Producer of the documentary. Compton has had a distinguished business career as a venture capitalist, as former President of a NYSE company, as the entrepreneur founder of four companies and as an angel investor in more than a dozen businesses. Compton has traveled the world extensively. His trips to India in 2005 and 2006 inspired him to author a blog , publish a book - Blogging Through India - and to create the documentary Two Million Minutes.
Director and Editor
Chad Heeter joined Compton on this film project in the spring of 2006, as he was completing his Master's degree in Journalism and Latin American Studies at U.C. Berkeley. Heeter has been the Senior Producer throughout the film making process.
Producer
Adam Raney joined Heeter as a Producer in January 2007. He also holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Latin American Studies from U.C. Berkeley. The two have worked as reporters and filmmakers in Latin America, Asia, Europe and the United States. Their last project together was a documentary on Brazil's landless movement for Frontline/World on PBS.org - http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/12/brazil_cutting.html
Both Heeter and Raney have been interested in education since spending two years teaching as members of Teach for America. Heeter was a high school science teacher in Georgia, and Raney taught junior high science, English and social studies in New York City. Heeter also went on to teach in Japan.

From Loren Coleman's blog: copycateffect.blogspot.com

Monday, February 18, 2008

Dates & Dark Matters
On February 9th, I wrote: "Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages...." Will an assassination attempt be next? Another rampage shooting?On February 14th, the NIU campus shooting occurred. More events are coming.I have a strong track record for predicting. But few take notice.Now comes the wall-to-wall aftermath: CNN broadcasts the elusive first interview with the girlfriend of Steve Kazmierczak (kaz-MUR'-chek).DatesA blogger at Circle of 13, however, quoted me heavily on Sunday, February 17, 2008, in "Valentine's Massacre (Again) In Illinois":
Loren Coleman...noticed a change in pattern. “Change is in the air. And danger,” he wrote on Feb. 9, 2008. There have been “shifts in rampage shootings.” And, warned Coleman, “Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages for this spring, unfortunately. Look again, too, to the months of March and April, with the red zone of the ten days from April 16 through April 26, 2008, as especially dangerous.” (“Shootings Shatter Gender Barrier,” by Loren Coleman. )Coleman's “Red Zone” of ten days between April 16 and April 26 coincides with the April 19 special marker. On that day, in 1993, the Waco Massacre final event occurred. Also on April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City Bombings traumatized the nation. Latest news now surfacing is that Hillary Clinton (not Janet Reno) bears ultimate responsibility for the Waco disaster.Of course, the patterns are hiding in plain sight. "Circle of 13" remembers Oklahoma City and the Waco Massacre, but April 19th is also Patriot's Day (Revolutionary War) and the date the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. April 20th is Hitler's birthday; Hitler died by suicide. Also, it is the anniversary of the Columbine school massacre, which ended in two suicides. In 2008, April 16th will be the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings of 32 and the suicidal death of the shooter Cho. Vulnerable suicidal individuals who are thinking about homicide will be triggered by all the repeats on cable television as April 16th gets closer, and for ten days, through the anniversary of Columbine. The days through April 26th could be a dangerous time.The ending date I penciled in for this year's red zone is April 26th. That date is Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess's birthday, still celebrated by neo-Nazis in some locations in Germany. Hess officially died by suicide in 1987. On April 26th, 2002, in Erfurt, Germany, the school shooting with the highest body count before VA Tech occurred when Robert Steinhauser, 19, went to the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium (a secondary school), stalked the halls, and killed 12 teachers, an administrator, two students, one policeman, and wounded 10 other people before he killed himself. Seventeen people died.Dark MattersNow some concern must be expressed about other new dates: February 22 and April 11th, 2008.Double digit dates always seem to be attractive in this new age of domestic terrorism, which is only, after all, another label for school shootings, mall rampages, and urban bombings.February 22nd, 2008, is the release date for a presidential assassination film, Vantage Point. What concerns me is the obvious worries in the air in this year when some politically unique choices exist. Due to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, assassination fears are being expressed on the internet rumor mills. It will be noted that before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the book and movie Manchurian Candidate (film, 1962) were popular. The idea of a brainwashed assassin ~ a Manchurian candidate ~ gained much favor among theorists by the actions of Sirhan Sirhan before and after the Robert Kennedy assassination.Will the release of Vantage Point cause a more overt discussion of assassination in the USA? Will it trigger some unfortunate behavioral reactions from someone on the edge? February 22nd is rapidly approaching, at week's end. No doubt, the U.S. Secret Service should take note.April 11th, a Friday, will see the wide release of a new indie film, Dark Matter, starring Lui Ye, Meryl Streep, and Aidan Quinn, by New York-based Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. The movie was originally delayed last year because of the killings by a Korean-American at Virginia Tech. Dark Matter stars an Asian character, a graduate student, who goes on a "shooting rampage" at a Midwestern university. It was announced after the NIU shootings that the movie was going ahead with its originally scheduled release date.Dark Matter is more powerful than most narrative fiction films because it is based in reality. It is loosely the story of Gang Lu, born in Beijing, China in 1963, who was a graduate student in physics at the University of Iowa. On Friday, November 1, 1991, using a .38 caliber revolver and also carrying a .22 caliber handgun, he shot and killed five people on the Iowa campus in Iowa City, seriously wounded another, then died by suicide.Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the Gang Lu killings. The article "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker in 1996.The Sundance award-winning film Dark Matter will now appear on the 11th of April, at theaters around the country. The 11ths of the months are already touchy, so this "school shooting" movie coming out on this date, considering what just happened at NIU, has to be viewed as a new red flag.Dark movies. Steven Kazmierczak seems like he stepped out of Donnie Darko. River Phoenix's last movie, Dark Blood remains unfinished. I've already noted that July 18th, 2008, when The Dark Knight opens, the cultural spill over from Heather Ledger's final Joker may have some kind of unknown impact. I don't really know.

A Year of Reckoning London, EnglandThursday, February 7, 2008 – Chinese New Year
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*** It all comes down to fear and greed...even great companies with unbeatable brands are going down...
*** Home prices are getting softer and softer...even at these prices, gold still looks like a good thing to hang on to...
*** More pain in our future...‘global disruptions’ cause the BOE to cut rates...and more!
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“Fear rules credit markets,” Bloomberg quotes a source at Goldman.
“Corporate loan market is reeling,” adds the Wall Street Journal . The WSJ does not mean ‘reeling’ in the sense of the Virginia reel...or of a Scottish reel...but reeling like a boxer who has just been hit by a haymaker.
In the battle between greed and fear – the latter seems to be landing the hard punches. Deflation is winning – not inflation...Mr. Market – not the market manipulators. Bust, not boom.
But let us back up to where we left off yesterday.
Were you paying attention, dear reader? We hope so.
Yesterday, we noted that Americans had misunderstood what capitalism is. It is not a system that makes people rich. It is only a context, in which people CAN get rich, if they do the right thing. It is a moral context, in which virtue is rewarded and error is punished. Given misleading signals by their financial authorities, Americans made a big error – they spent too much and saved too little. Now they are being punished for it, even while the feds tell them that they were doing the right thing all along...and that they’re going to get more money and credit so they can continue doing it.
But nature – whom capitalism allows to express herself – will have her way. Nature wants to correct the errors of the past five years, at least. Maybe she wants to correct the errors of the last 25 years...we don’t know. But she’s got a switch in her hand, and we’re staying out of her way!
Yesterday, the Dow went down a further 65 points. Even great companies, with unbeatable brands are going down. Harley Davidson, for example, is off more than 20%.
And now, it appears to us that Americans are learning their lesson. They are finally downsizing...cutting back...making do. Soon, we predict, we will read that they are saving more money. ‘Thrift’ will make a come back.
“More homeowners walking away,” says CNNMoney .
There’s even a website to help them – walkaway.com. It tells homeowners how to walk from their mortgages, but stay in their houses. That’s right, it tells them that they can live in their houses for ‘up to 8 months’ without paying their mortgages...and after announcing to their mortgage holder that they have no intention of making any further payments.
Nice deal for them. But not nice for the lenders. That’s why there’s so much fear in the credit market. They’re afraid they may never see their money again. By they time they get the family out of the house and put it on the market, for example, the house price could be well below the loan amount.
Even at the top end, house prices are getting softer and softer. Forbes reports that Hollywood celebrity Ed McMahon has cut the price of his Beverly Hills house three times, from the $7.7 million he asked in July ’06 down to $5.7 million today. Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash bought his house in Hollywood Hills for $6.2 million; he sold it last month for $5.8 million.
Toll Bros. announced its seventh straight drop in quarterly income.
And analysts are saying that the coming recession (maybe it is already here) will be “worse than recent downturns.”
It will be a “Year of Reckoning,” says a Wall Street Journal headline. Hey wait, that’s our line!
*** While deflation is landing most of the solid blows, inflation gets a jab in now and then. Yesterday gold rose $14.70 to over $905. The CRB rose to 506...and wheat cracked the $10 a bushel mark.
Our guess has been that if deflation takes down stocks, property and other assets...it will leave gold RELATIVELY unharmed. Because, though the feds’ efforts to counter deflation won’t really help the economy very much...they should light a fire under the yellow metal. On the other hand, if the feds were able to revive the boom, the inflationary pressures would probably drive gold up more than stocks. Sell stocks on rallies, we concluded. Buy gold on dips.
In any event, gold still looks like a good thing to hold onto – even over $900. It’s gone up nearly 30%/year for the last six years. The bull market probably has a ways to go.
We’ve been telling you of a way to get gold out of the ground for just a penny per ounce for a while now – and the offer is still good. Don’t miss out...this could be the cheapest (and yet most profitable) to get in on gold’s rise. See here for all the details:
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*** There is a fair amount of talk in the financial press about how a recession might be not be in the cards...or how it might already be over. Stock markets around the world are down 10% to 20%. U.S. housing is down 10% or so. “The bad news is already all out there,” say the optimists. Then, they look at the banks and the builders and they think they see a bottom.
It could be, of course. You never know. But, the financial world badly needs correction. Housing prices rose 70% from ‘97 to ‘07. They should go down more than 10%. Stocks rose more than 1,100% from ‘82 to ‘07. You’d expect something more than a 10% give-back. And the 27-year credit expansion itself was the biggest the world has ever seen. You’d think it would be followed by more than six months of nervous headlines.
“I have a feeling there’s more pain in our future,” says our own Short Fuse this morning. “Just look at all the data that’s out today. Every time I check my inbox, I have another MarketWatch update. Here are just a few:
“‘Wal-Mart’s January sales come in soft’...looks like the thrifty are getting thriftier.
“‘Pending Home Sales Fall 1.5% in December.’
“‘Bank of England cuts key rate a quarter-point to 5.25% as ‘global disruptions’ continue’
“Hmm...I wonder what part of the globe these disruptions are coming from....”
*** With so much trouble in the northern latitudes, we’re beginning to look to the tropics for opportunity (more tomorrow). Our colleague in Buenos Aires, Horacio Pozzo, thinks he has spotted an opportunity – in Colombian coal. “Snowstorms in China (which is having its worst winter in 50 years), floods in Queensland, Australia, and energy problems in South African have affected the output of coal in these three countries, the world’s major producers of this fossil fuel, and provoked a record price last Friday,” he writes.
China counts on coal for nearly 70% of its energy, says Horacio. It’s the world’s leading producer...and its leading consumer. The country has had so much trouble getting enough coal to the right place at the right time, it has had to ration energy in 13 provinces, according to China Daily . In 2007, China was an exporter of coal. This year, it looks as though it will have to import 15 million tons.
Naturally, the price of coal has already reacted – up 73% in 2007. And, all of a sudden, the old, dirty business of coal mining has become much more profitable. Who will be the beneficiaries? Horacio is looking at Colombia. Coal exports from Colombia are known to be low in pollutants and high in energy. In 2006, Colombia was the 6th largest exporter of coal worldwide. Of course, the country has major infrastructure limitations. It will take a while to boost its exports considerably. But Chinese demand doesn’t seem to be slowing down and experts see the price of a ton of coal rising to $100 sometime in the near future. Colombian producers can take those kind of figures to the bank...
[Ed. Note: ¿Habla español? ¿Quiere ganar dinero?
Latin America is booming. And our colleagues in Buenos Aires, Argentina are well placed to help you profit from the many value opportunities south of the border. They have launched an email report service entitled Informe Moneyweek that covers both Latin American and international investment opportunities. It’s written daily in Spanish by South American market experts, Horacio Pozzo and Paola Pecora. If this is something you would be interested in, I encourage you to click here ....and by the way, it’s free!
*** Meanwhile, Byron King sees the whole world running low. Oil production is peaking out. American power is peaking out too – as primary industries leave on the Orient Express.
As goes America’s industrial might...and its credit...so goes its ability to protect itself, says Bryon:
“Our politicians and societal elite seem to believe that a strong house-building industry, knocking up McMansions from sea to shining sea, is a reflection of a robust economy and powerful, forward-looking culture. Somehow it is OK to neglect the upstream economy of primary extraction, milling, manufacturing and fabrication. They truly believe that just because the Fed can print money by the yard, then as a nation we can always buy our way out of any bad situation. Apparently they are so far removed from any understanding of physical scarcity that they cannot conceive of just not being able to accomplish something.”
Scarcity is something that Byron understands quite well – especially when it comes to oil.
Everyday, the world consumes more oil than it produces. The oil left in the ground is getting scarce, harder to find and extract and far more precious than in the past. Simple economics tells us that when supply is reduced, prices will rise.
Until tomorrow,
Bill BonnerThe Daily Reckoning

David Fuller is right. What we are really watching is the decline of the United States of America...its currency...its capital base...and its competitiveness in the world economy.
The feds can try to play out more lines of credit to strapped families, but what they are really doing is giving them more rope with which to hang themselves. The real problem is that American wages have not kept pace with inflation...which means, the average American is not as rich as he used to be. He can only pretend to be rich...by exchanging more of his leisure time for dollars...and by borrowing. Both of those “coping mechanisms,” as Robert Reich called them, are now exhausted. Now, he’s going to swing.
Over the last 30 years, Americans believed they were on top of the world. Everybody said so. And, logically, they should have been. It was post Reagan Revolution, with the most modern, most capitalistic economy in the world...with the latest technology, with the world’s best brains, with the top schools, and with Wall Street to “allocate capital” in the best possible way. If workers couldn’t get ahead in this economy, they couldn’t get ahead anywhere. At least, that was what people believed.
But capitalism is a jungle, we keep saying, not a zoo. It lets animals get fat, but only so they can be eaten by hungrier beasts.
To us here at The Daily Reckoning , it was fun listening to the conceits and pretensions of the zookeepers. At the end of the ’80s, they announced their triumph over communism, apparently unaware that their biggest potential rivals had just cut themselves loose from a ball and chain. It is not even 20 years later, and both Russia and China are already formidable competitors. China’s reserves of foreign currency, for example, are nearly 20 times those of the USA. And now, if the Red Giant decides to dump dollars, America’s economy will be hit by a major crisis...and possibly paralyzed.
Then, near the end of the ’90s, the dreamers thought they had found some magic formula. America no longer needs savings, said the pundits, because now our information technology allows us to create wealth using ‘virtual’ capital...brain capital. “They sweat; we think,” said one genius, as if the Chinese and Russians couldn’t think too. If this insight weren’t hilarious enough, Ed Yardeni went on to say that there was a whole new species of human – those who understood this important new truth...those who “got it.” Those who “didn’t get it,” were destined to be left in the dust, he said. We were happy to remain in the camp that was left behind.
Later, after the dotcoms blew up, another hallucination developed. One that sophisticated financial engineering, combined with enlightened macroeconomic management, had made market crashes and recessions obsolete. The geniuses went to work with computers, proving that those fancy derivative contracts (which they were selling) were completely foolproof. They were supposed to run into problems only once in a blue moon. “You’re talking about sigma 25 events,” they said, as if they had a clue. Scarcely three years later, the moon was blue.
It was all great fun. Watching the show, that is. And it’s not over.
Yesterday, the Dow rose more than 200 points. Richard Russell, the keeper of Dow Theory flame, says the stock market is no longer pointing to deflation...but to inflation.
Of course, the price of gold has been pointing to inflation for a long time. It rose again yesterday – up to nearly $930. In Europe, too, inflation is making headlines – it’s at a 14-year high. Many people in France, for example, think the euro (EUR) was a plot to increase prices; they want the franc back. Painted on the wall of a Paris building yesterday, we saw the citoyens’ complaint: “Euroshima” it said.
And consumer inflation in China, at nearly 7%, is said to be “China’s latest export.”
But we are not writing today about the war between inflation and deflation. Today, we’re focusing our attention on a bigger story.
*** The headlines rarely tell you much about what is really happening. They are like dispatches from the front. Inflation scored a victory in the oil market. Deflation advanced on the retail stocks. One company got killed. One trader blew himself up. A trendline broke through resistance.
Behind these news stories is the story so big that scarcely anyone notices it. The United States is losing ground. Its people are getting poorer. Why? Because now, it’s America that drags around the ball and chain.
How much do Russia and China owe the rest of the world? How big are their trade deficits? How many trillions have they promised their retirees? Their sick? Their former employees? How high are their taxes? How much do their people save?
On almost every score, the former communist hellholes have a huge advantage over their North American competitor. The Chinese save nearly 50% of their incomes; Americans save nothing. Russian tax rates are less than half those of the United States. Both have positive trade balances. Even in high tech, America has a negative trade balance with the rest of the world.
Like Europe, America is chained to an aging population and democracy. Both are bad for business. The baby boomers are beginning to retire. They’ve already been promised the sun and the moon... And, once they’re retired, they’re going to vote for the stars too.
That’s why Republican strategists are telling their candidates: No more tax cuts! The voters want to be sure there’s money available for them when they retire.
A little late for that. The government didn’t really set aside money in a ‘lock box,’ as Al Gore used to put it, for Americans’ retirement. It just took the money out of the general fund and put an I.O.U. in the retirement fund. Now, those I.O.U.s are coming due. And what politician is going to stand up to the biggest block of voters in the country and suggest that they be cut back?
And unlike Europe, America has low savings rates...a negative trade balance with the rest of the world, and few industries that can stand the challenge of competition. Germany is still making cars at a profit; the United States is not. France has its luxury products. Switzerland has its precision tools.
In addition to the social charges, there is the big, leaden ball of military expenses. The U.S. military budget is half of the entire world’s military spending, and represents 80% of the increase in world military spending since 2005. The whole point of having such a big military is to be able to push people around. But you have to make it pay. Empires traditionally demanded tribute from the peoples they conquered and/or protected. But the U.S. never got the hang of it. It maintains garrisons of troops all over the world – at its own expense. It thinks it is doing the world a favor; and it thinks it is rich enough to afford it.
The biggest U.S. outposts are in Afghanistan and Iraq, which aren’t even in the military budget. When the war in Iraq began, we estimated that it would end up costing a trillion dollars. And now that the numbers are coming in, we have to admit that we were wrong. Instead of $1 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the war will cost $1.7 trillion; the National Bureau of Economic Research puts the tab at $2.2 trillion; and the Congressional Joint Economic Committee thinks it will come to $3.5 trillion.
A trillion here...a trillion there...pretty soon, you’re out of money.
But this is a story only the invisible man of the U.S. presidential election, Ron Paul, is willing to tell.
*** Who ever heard of a stock market without corrections? Don’t prices go up as well as down? And isn’t it normal from economies to take a breather every once in a while? Why the panic at a slight market pullback and first signs of a coming slump?
What is most astonishing about the situation is that there is so little astonishing about it. Bear markets and recessions – like the poor – will always be with us. It’s not the end of the world when they come...because they go, too. Why then the feds’ desperate attempts to avoid them? As we pointed out yesterday, the stock market was barely down 15% from its all-time high and already the Bernanke Fed was taking emergency measures. And hardly has a slowdown begun, and both the House and the Senate have rushed through proposals to send out checks. What kind of economics is this? What theory tells you that you should send out $1,000 checks as soon as GDP growth rates fall to 2%? And if $1,000 checks are supposed to make things better, why not send out $2,000 checks...and make them wonderful again?
As we point out above, the United States is in danger. But the danger cometh not from a bear market in stocks or a recession. Those things are normal, natural and inevitable. Even if you could prevent them by sending people money...you wouldn’t want to. You’d just be making the situation worse.
Americans’ problem is that they’ve spent too much, borrowed too much, and saved too little. That problem will not go away. It needs to be corrected.
*** “That guy they nabbed in the Societe Generale scandal. He’s just a fall guy,” explained a friend yesterday. “A sacrificial lamb. They made a deal with him to cover up the bank’s losses elsewhere. At least, that’s the rumor going around town. And it’s probably true. You can’t believe anything the banks say. ”