National Geographic’s International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year’s entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer’s Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 25 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (25 photos total)

Apparently, there’s a global oil scam making Bernie Madoff look like a petty thief.

If serial entrepreneur and Seeking Alpha columnist Philip Davis is to be believed, the world is being scammed out of $2.5 trillion, 50 times greater than the sum Madoff took from the duped investors.

According to Davis, the scam starts in 2000 with the formation of the ICE – the Intercontinental Exchange. The ICE – founded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BP, Total, Shell, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale – is an online commodities and futures marketplace that exists outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws.

After a Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003, the ICE was found to be facilitating “round-trip” trades. This is where one firm sells energy to another, and then the second firm sells the same amount of energy back to the first company, at the same time and at the exact same price, as told by Davis.

No commodity ever changes hands

Quite shockingly no commodity ever changes hands, but the transactions still send a signal to the market, artificially boosting company revenue. Angry yet? There’s more.

Because the trading is unregulated by Washington, its difficult to gauge the scale on which “round-trip” trading takes place.

But when DMS Energy were investigated by Congress, the company admitted that 80 percent of its trades in 2001 were round-trip trades. This means 80 percent of all trades in that year were false trades. Not a drop of oil changed hands, but the balance sheets showed increased revenue.

The idea is to hike up commodity prices. For example, according to Davis, after the ICE turned commodity trading into a “speculative casino game where pricing was notional and contracts could be sold by people who never produced a thing, to people who didn’t need the things that were not produced”, Goldman Sachs were able to triple the price of commodities in just five years.

ICE can create artificial shortages and drive speculative demand

The beauty (or rather the horror) of the scam outlined by Davis is that because they control the oil markets, the ICE can create artificial shortages and drive speculative demand in order to charge consumers an extra dollar per gallon of gas. And whereas this may not seem like much, this $1 soon becomes $50 billion A MONTH as global drivers consume 1.7 billion gallons of gas every single day.

Whereas, at this stage, it would not be accurate or indeed wise to suggest what Philip Davis claims is either true or false, one cannot ignore the issue. There have been concerns for may years that global markets are controlled by a monopoly of mega-organizations, but there could be a strong case for suggesting the ICE is close to becoming just that – a super-organization with the power to push oil prices up or down.

Good luck Washington, you might just be getting a deluge of mail demanding answers.

The slide show below comes from SlideShare.net and gives a breakdown of the global oil scam.

Friday Night Hot Spot – The KRESS Nightclub & Rooftop

Official Movie Release Party for the Cast and Crew of the New Warner Brothers Movie Ninja Assassin and Special LIVE Performance

FEATURING: DJ Twist & DJ Five Star
FREE SUSHI and OPEN BAR Till 11PM Every Friday.

For Guest List and/or Bottle Service & Table Reservations
Text: 646.294.0054 or E-Mail jeff@massappealpr.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/jefflombardo
Mass Appeal Website: www.massappealpr.com

-Dress to the nines! The door is tough so look your best.
-Keep a really good ratio. More girls than guys for this one.
-Bottle service suggested for guys that don’t bring girls.
-Arrive early. This is gonna fill up really fast.
-Tell them at the door that you’re on the Mass Appeal Guestlist

The Rooftop is known for high profile celebrity sightings and outstanding bottle service. The basement is known for performances and all night dancing.

*** Party Package 1 – $450 ***
*2 bottles of Marani Vodka
*1 bottle of Champagne
*6 comps

*** Party Package 2 – $700 ***
*1 bottle of Grey Goose
*1 bottle of Johnnie Walker Black or Hennessey
*8 comps/VIP admission

*** Party Package 3 – $800 ***
*1 bottle of Grey Goose
*1 bottle of Patron
*1 bottle of Champagne
*12 comps/VIP admission

*** Party Package 4 – $600 ***
*1 bottle of Grey Goose
*2 bottles of Champagne
*8 comps/VIP admission

**** Ladies Night Out” SPECIALS: ****

*** Party Package 1 – $500 ***
*2 bottles of Marani Vodka
*2 bottles of Moet “White Star” Chandon Champagne
*12 lady comps/VIP admission

*** Party Package 2 – $750 ***
*3 bottles of Marani Vodka
*3 bottles of Moet “White Star” Chandon Champagne
*18 lady comps/VIP admission

*** Dinner ***
Executive Chef Angel Guzman provides a full array of Pan-Asian and Japanese infused sushi and entrees from daily bento boxes to Kobe Rib Eye to Nigiri platters. Contact your favorite Whisper promoter today for dinner reservations

DINNER + BOTTLE SERVICE DEAL (pre-booked accommodations only)
10% off entire Bill for DINNER + BOTTLE SERVICE AFTER 10PM.

Choice of single bottle or any packages above.

KRESS – Known for his innovative and unique style, successful restaurateur and nightlife guru Mike Viscuso has created The Kress as the next Hollywood landmark. The Kress is an upscale dining and entertainment venue which boasts a full service restaurant lead by world renowned Executive Chef Travis Kamiyama with a carefully crafted cuisine menu with an Asian flare; a basement level lounge offering live entertainment and dance floor; a third level banquet and event center offering food and service, live entertainment and dance floor; and finally a spectacular design-driven rooftop lounge with cabanas and a 360 degree view of Los Angeles including the legendary Hollywood sign.

Hip-Hop & Top 40 Music by DJ Twist

*FREE Cover / No Line – All Night on the Mass Appeal Guest List
*Located on 7321 Santa Monica Blvd
*GIRLS – Dresses & Skirts
*GUYS – Button Ups/Jackets/Dress Shoes

Two Bottles of 42 Below for $400
Two Bottles of Grey Goose for $600

For Guest List and/or Bottle Service
Text: 646.294.0054 or E-Mail jeff@massappealpr.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/jefflombardo
Mass Appeal Website: www.massappealpr.com

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West Hollywood, Calif.

HOLLYWOOD sure loves a trilogy: “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Austin Powers” are perfect examples. The same is true in night life, where Crown Bar is the third cherry in a series of clubhouses to hit the jackpot with the on-the-make young turks in the entertainment business.

“I knew from TMZ it was one of the hot spots,” said Nataly Pierre, a 37-year- old fashion stylist, on a recent evening.Ms. Pierre goes out five times a week (“Is that bad?”) and had tried to get inside Crown Bar before, but with no luck.

On this crowded Saturday night she had two attractive French gal pals in tow from Paris — Voila! She was in.

Like its sister spots, the Dime (a dive that opened in 2003) and Winston’s (a two-year-old smaller lounge a few blocks away), Crown Bar lacks surface pretension. That is, except for the Alexander McQueen skull scarf the waitresses have to incorporate into their outfits.

“One of our friends asked, ‘Are those McQueen knockoffs?’ ” one of the owners, Chris Huvane, said of the accessories. “No, they’re the real thing.” (Mr. Huvane is also the West Coast editor of GQ.)

Despite the lack of laser lights or disco balls, sweaty guys with untucked oxford shirts and the women who love them danced to the Ting Tings and the Knife, with Ketel One and sodas in hand.

On weekend nights, the restaurant and lounge, with its upholstered walls and large banquettes that recall a hotel lobby from the 1940s, fills up fast.

Andy Fiscella, another owner, said he named Crown Bar after his favorite bar in Belfast.

“We don’t rely on celebrities,” said Mr. Fiscella, an actor who appears in a small role in the horror movie “Quarantine,” which opens next week. “I want neighborhood people.”

But neighborhood people here can mean anyone from the cast of “The Hills” — who seem to have commandeered Wednesday nights — to Ian Ziering of vintage “90210,” who held court recently, to A-listers like Keanu Reeves or Tom Cruise.

On one evening in late summer, Crown Bar had an Emmy winner.

Education undeniably changes us. Learning new things completely alters our perception of life and the world around us.

But formal academic training is a touchy subject for some people. Going to school to learn a discipline is still not an option for everyone.

As someone who has worked in the graphic design field for quite some time without an advanced degree, I understand that self-education is not to be underestimated.

But just how far can this type of training get you in life before you reach an impasse?

We have all heard tales of such self-taught design heroes as David Carson, who single-handedly ushered in a new era of digital design. He didn’t go to design school. He had a gift and was disciplined enough to refine it.

But is Carson’s extraordinary story relevant to us? Is there even an answer to the question of whether design school is actually worth it?

Why Go to School?
We have to consider this question in the right context. Not all graphic designers want to pursue the same career path.

In today’s market especially, art and design are such diverse fields that colleges are finding it more and more difficult to keep their curricula up with the changes.

When I was going to school, my program focused mainly on print and had only two classes on web design. Now, only a few years later, almost all of the jobs I am offered are web-related.

Designers not only are expected to be aware of design principles and how to apply them to physical forms, but are also often expected to have detailed knowledge of many other subjects, including:
• Coding
• HTML
• CSS
• PHP
• RSS feeds

The acronyms are enough to make your head spin. Many top design schools still do not cover even the basics of these modern aspects of design. For example, Yale’s graphic design program does not have a single class covering web design.

This makes sense if design is studied as theory. Design principles are somewhat universal. However, it means that students have to obtain further education in their field of choice.

Degrees Help
I recently spoke to a colleague of mine who graduated from the graphic design program at Yale. I asked him where he learned his Flash, Dreamweaver and PHP skills, which are the cornerstone of his business and account for most of his income.

He told me that he got all of his knowledge of web design from free online tutorials. Hearing this, I asked whether he regretted spending so much money on his education at Yale.
He quickly responded that the contacts and portfolio that he built at Yale led directly to his success in business. He did admit when pressed, though, that he considers his MFA unnecessary for the actual work that he does.

Degrees Don’t Matter
Yale or Parsons or SCAD or NYU may be one person’s foot in the door to design success, but what about those of us who don’t have the opportunity to attend such prestigious institutions. Is our design career toast?

Let’s look at another example. A few years ago, I met Andrea Campbell, now Art Director of Orange Element in Baltimore. She told me that when she considers someone for a position, she bases her decision on the interview and the applicant’s portfolio, and that’s it.

If the position is an upper-level one, she also makes sure the applicant has some experience under their belt. But degrees don’t matter. Those words, “degrees don’t matter” are now stuck in my mind.

Here are some key points to remember:

Emphasize your portfolio. It is the key to your success.

If you are interested in a position, ask someone at the agency if you can send your work over. If they like what they see, you might just get an interview, even if you haven’t gone to Yale.

The most important thing is to know what you’re doing. If your portfolio looks good and you can talk design, you will be considered for the position.

Gaining an Edge
Getting your foot in the door is not the only battle, though. The job market is tough, and the graphic design field is extremely competitive.

According to Linda Katz , an employment specialist, the key to gaining traction in the job market is to have an edge. For graphic designers, that edge could be different things, but the main challenge is to show the employer why you are the best person to fill that position.

The simple truth is that, in some situations, a college degree is an edge.

Another fact to remember, especially if you’re a freelancer, is that teaching is one of the best side occupations.

Teaching pays well, and some colleges even offer benefits to their long-term adjunct faculty. Freelancers often need this, but a degree is almost always required for these teaching positions.

No School?
But let’s say design school is not an option for you. Perhaps your situation doesn’t allow it. Perhaps you’ve already gone to school for something else and don’t want to go back. Or perhaps college just isn’t your thing.

Whatever the reason, fear not. Many successful graphic designers are self-taught. In fact, skipping design school has some definite advantages. You learn how to educate yourself; you avoid a big debt; and you can take advantage of market segments that are not over-saturated.

I know of several designers who, upon finishing school, did not learn how to self-educate. Either you quickly learn to adapt and update your knowledge of the field or you quickly become obsolete.

Graphic design changes rapidly. If you don’t pay attention almost constantly, you can easily lose your competitive edge.

No Problem
What kinds of opportunities are available for graphic designers who have chosen not to go to design school? Some of the best ones are often overlooked. For example, outsourced work from big agencies.

Big agencies often make short-term commitments with designers to see if they are a good fit. Because the position is not permanent, they often pay less attention to degrees and more to the quality of work.

Another opportunity is direct competitive design. This is a growing model for many online graphic design studios. The most well-known example is CrowdSpring. CrowdSpring allows any designer to submit mockups for the projects listed on its website.

At the end of a competition, the client chooses the designer whose work they like best. I have gotten some work through CrowdSpring, and it is a wonderful opportunity to get criticism and feedback.

It is also a potentially good money-maker. One of my colleagues makes an excellent salary solely from his CrowdSpring work. He treats it like a full-time job. He puts in 40 hours a week and treats each client as if they had hired him for the design. He makes $60,000 a year, and his degree is in business administration!

In the end, you can do very well without going to design school, if you know what you’re doing.

Know Your Stuff
One of the biggest challenges of forgoing a traditional education is to actually get an education at all.

Self-taught designers must be extremely well disciplined. In addition, they must have the resources to be able to study graphic design and learn any skills they will need. The Internet is both a blessing and a curse. We’re so used to finding everything instantly that we forget the importance of internalizing information.

Attention to detail is of utmost importance. People will judge you harshly because you don’t have a degree, so you have to show them why they are wrong. Know your design principles and practice them well, and the critics will shut up pretty quickly. In addition to tutorials and online information, read books on graphic design. Some recent research-based design books introduce new principles that are here to stay.

Like it or not, people have a bias for academia. You need to prove why being self-taught gives you an edge to better engage your audience. Don’t forget the importance of the portfolio as a tool to earn people’s trust in your skills. In addition to conventional projects, make sure to showcase work that is somewhat academic in nature and that shows off your knowledge of sound design principles.

Again, if you know what you’re talking about, people will listen to you and respect you.

Professionals
Whether or not you have a degree, remember that you are a graphic designer; to maintain your standards and keep up with developments in the field, self-education is imperative.

Good designers forever seek out resources to update and hone their skills. The Internet is a vast bank of shared knowledge; you just have to know where to look.

Aside from free resources online, classes won’t set you back too much. The classes I teach in graphic design and typography at McWeadon Education, for example, are college level but cost only $99 each. Similarly, eclasses.org offers inexpensive online classes taught by seasoned professionals.

Not all professionally written resources cost money, either and there are literally endless resources online.

Google Tips
Google is often the best place to start pinning down resources and sorting them by subject.Be specific in your searches.

For example, if you need free resources, be sure to include the word “free” in your search. You can often find exactly what you are looking for by phrasing your query right. For example, “standard packaging templates” would probably return jumbled results. But“standard package design templates for Adobe Illustrator” would return more helpful websites.

The same is true of web design. If you need a specific code for a website, don’t just search for “HTML code.” You would quickly get lost in the sea of information. Try something like“HTML code for bullet points” or whatever it is you are looking for.

Also, remember to archive good information when you find it. Bookmarks are great, but if you have space, save the pages on your hard drive. Information, especially on blogs and message boards, can disappear rather quickly.

Plenty of Hard Work to Go Around
We must always remember that good design communicates something.

Training ourselves to be able to research and develop solutions to design problems that we face every day is essential. Training is the launching point for any successful career in design.

Whether at school, at work or on the Internet, continually expanding our knowledge base is crucial, not only to keep up with changes but to maintain the edge we need to win clients and wow employers.

Going to design school and self-educating both take dedication and effort. Even the best curriculum doesn’t contain everything you need to succeed. Gaining that edge entails crafting your own personal program of sustained education.

Written exclusively for WDD by Christian Hurst. He has an MFA in Graphic Design. He is currently senior designer at Kristag Design and teaches graphic design at McWeadon Education.

Did you attend a school or are you self educated designer? How has your choice impacted your career?

This is one of the big questions in the world of graphic design: is design school worth the time, money and effort? Does it pay off?

Today marks the end of an era, as The Pirate Bay team announces that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is shutting down for good. Although the site will remain operational for now, millions of BitTorrent users will lose the use of its tracker and will instead have to rely on DHT and alternative trackers to continue downloading.

In the fall of 2003, a group of friends from Sweden decided to launch a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. It soon became one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, coordinating the downloads of more than 25 million peers at its height.

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Aside from this shutdown, there is also another major development quietly under discussion.

TorrentFreak has learned that behind the scenes the Pirate Bay operators are talking to other BitTorrent site owners to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can easily replace traditional torrent files.

“We’re talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links and DHT+PEX for all sites. Moving away from torrents and trackers totally – like pick a date and all agree ‘from this date, we’ll not support torrents anymore’,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak.

Switching to trackerless and torrentless downloading on public BitTorrent sites does indeed seem to be an option. Previously, many people thought that BitTorrent would collapse if a dominant tracker like the Pirate Bay went down, but this doomsday scenario never unfolded. In fact, the recent downtime of the tracker did not slow down or stop many transfers, as DHT and PEX seamlessly took over.

Those BitTorrent users who don’t want to go trackerless just yet can of course still use OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, or indeed one of the many other alternative trackers currently available.

Whether or not The Pirate Bay and others will move away from torrent files in the future, the closure of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is nevertheless a milestone in the history of the Internet. Starting today, the Pirate Bay has changed its tagline from “The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” to “The world’s most resilient (magnetic) BitTorrent site.”

Comparison of both economic and financial indicators between the two countries.

Recent news articles have brought to light the fact that almost 47% of households in the US currently have zero or negative federal tax liability. We take a closer look at this lack of liability across each income level, highlighting the percentage in each range that will not pay any taxes. Also shown is a full breakdown of who is paying the bulk of all taxes collected by the Federal Government each year.

Personal Finance
Software – Mint.com

What would you do if your net worth were $22 billion? If you were Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani, you might build yourself the world’s most expensive home. As designed by Chicago architecture firm Perkins + Will, the in-progress glass-tower is estimated at $1 billion and is known to feature, at the least, a health club, multiple “safe” rooms, 3 helipads, 168 parking spaces and require 600 servants to maintain, and physically, the structure stands at 27 stories, or 570 feet tall.

According to the Mumbai Mirror, the tower will also contain:

Floor for car maintenance Sources said the Ambanis would prefer to have all their cars serviced and maintained at an in-house service centre. This centre will be set up on the seventh floor.

Entertainment floor
The eighth floor will have an entertainment centre comprising a mini-theatre with a seating capacity of 50.

Balconies with gardens
The rooftop of the mini-theatre will serve as a garden, and immediately above that, three more balconies with terrace gardens will be independent floors.

The ‘health’ floors
While the ninth floor will a ‘refuge’ floor — meant to be used for rescue in emergencies — two floors above that will be set aside for ‘health.’ One of these will have facilities for athletics and a swimming pool, while the other will have a health club complete with the latest gym equipment.

Family
The four floors at the top, that will provide a view of the Arabian Sea and a superb view of the city’s skyline, will be for Mukesh, his wife Neeta, their three children and Mukesh’s mother Kokilaben.

Air space floor
According to the plan, two floors above the family’s residence will be set aside as maintenance areas, and on top of that will be an “air space floor,” which will act as a control room for helicopters landing on the helipad above.

New research shows the economic importance of home-based businesses: They account for more than half of all U.S. businesses and employ more people than venture-backed companies.

Stephen Labuda, 35, is planning to hire a fifth employee for the Web development firm he runs from his home in Cambridge, Mass. CARBONARO PHOTOGRAPHY

More than half of all U.S. businesses are based at home. These companies often are dismissed as quaint hobbyist ventures, but new research suggests that’s a mistake. An estimated 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income. Together these “homepreneurs” employ one in 10 private-sector workers, and by many measures they’re just as competitive as their counterparts in commercial spaces.

Ask Stephen Labuda, the 35-year-old president of Agency3, a Web development firm he runs from his home in Cambridge, Mass. A former programmer at Deutsche Bank (DB), Labuda started building Web sites as a side job in 2003 and took the venture full time three years later. Agency3′s revenue is in the millions, and Labuda is about to hire his fifth employee, who will work remotely, like the rest of the staff and the slew of contractors he taps. “I’m not intending to go rent office space,” he says.

You can trace the rise of home-based businesses to the early days of telecommuting in the 1980s and the mass adoption of the Internet in the 1990s. Cloud computing, online collaboration, and smartphones have accelerated the trend, and recent research clarifies the economic significance of companies like Labuda’s. “We’re seeing more and more home-based businesses that are real businesses,” says Steve King, who coauthored the new report with his wife, Carolyn Ockels. (The couple runs Emergent Research, a small research and consulting shop, from their home in Lafayette, Calif.) The pair analyzed U.S. Census data and Small Business Administration research, along with data from the Small Business Success Index, a survey of 1,500 companies sponsored by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

WIDE ACCEPTANCE AND LEGITIMACY
Here’s more of what they found: The 43% of home-based businesses that provide at least half of the owners’ household income are, on the whole, smaller than non-home-based companies. Only about 35% have revenue above $125,000, compared to 75% for non-home based businesses. But they measure up to other small companies on key aspects of doing business, including access to capital, benefits to workers, marketing, and innovation. On average they have two employees, including the owners, and together they employ more than 13 million people—more, King notes, than venture-backed companies. (Venture-backed companies employed 12.1 million people in 2008, according to the National Venture Capital Association.)

In some of these companies, the operations are concentrated in the owner’s home. Others use their residence as a headquarters but do most of their work at clients’ homes or offices. The variety of home-based businesses cuts across industries, but the top sectors are business and professional services, construction, retail, and personal services.

A few trends are driving the growth of sophisticated home businesses. First, technology has made it easier to start and run a business from anywhere. But just as important, there has been a change of consciousness in the business world to recognize home-based enterprises as legitimate.

Labuda has seen that shift at Agency3. “When I first started, I really felt compelled to go rent an office. I felt like in order for me to be taken seriously as a business, I had to have an office that my clients could come to,” he says. It didn’t matter—clients didn’t want to visit him. Labuda meets most of them at their businesses or at coffee shops. He also uses on-demand office space, where he can rent a conference room by the hour, if needed.

LOWER COSTS ARE A COMPETITIVE EDGE
Now, Labuda never feels that his working from home damages Agency3′s credibility. Instead, it’s a selling point. “It’s reflected in our pricing that we don’t have the same kind of infrastructure costs and fixed costs that some of our competitors do,” he says.

Indeed, the most obvious financial benefit for home-based entrepreneurs is lower operating costs. A 2006 SBA study compared tax returns of sole proprietors who deducted home-office expenses with those who deducted commercial rent. That analysis found that home businesses, on average, had lower sales and net profits than companies in commercial spaces. But profitable home-based ventures retained a greater share of their total receipts as net income: 36%, vs. 21% for non-home-based businesses.

King predicts that as large companies try to reduce their fixed costs by outsourcing business functions, small home-based enterprises will play an even larger role in the economy. “Over the next 20 to 30 years, you could see the percentage of people who are self-employed and home-based double, potentially,” he says.

[Via: BusinessWeek]