Disney’s adaptation of Education for Death, the making of a Nazi, is a fascinating piece of wartime propaganda. Convincing enough and expertly made, although a few years years later Disney hired a senior Nazi as one of their presenters.
Stuart Kauffman, biologist and complexity theorist, gives a talk about his latest book: Reinventing the Sacred. If you wanted to invent a religion that was much more interesting than outmoded simplistic ones like, oh, Judaism or Christianity etc. then Kauffman’s ideas would be a much better starting point.
A nice little animated film that explains the difference between science and superstition, showing, among other things, that the difference in the colloquial use of the word theory and the scientific use, leads people to dismiss scientific theories which have enough supporting evidence (such as evolution or spherical earth) that they are facts, in colloquial terms. In other words, colloquial theory = scientific hypothesis and scientific theory = colloquial fact.
Perhaps we should turn the argument around – there is no theory of God. In fact, based on the evidence, there is not even a true theory of the supposed historical figure, Jesus. Both are hypotheses, unsupported by evidence.
Running time: 10 mins.
Via Laurence Moran
The theory of Relativity might be more usefully called the theory of the constancy of the speed of light. So what if the speed of light wasn’t constant?
There is a general ground swell in physics towards exploring meta-laws which might govern the laws of physics themselves. These therefore might exist in different forms in different universes or at different times, within one universe. The heretical idea that the speed of light might vary, is part of this trend and has some serious proponents, who are interviewed in this Equinox special.
Running time: 50 mins.
60 minutes comes down firmly on the side of speculation vs demand as an explanation of last years oil price shock and traces the problem back to Enron and the deregulation of oil futures.
The analysis is good but non-conclusive. Unlike houses, both the equivalent boom and bust in oil happened together, in a much shorter period of time and in a more extreme fashion. This caused central banking policy moves which take 6 months to have an effect to switch from inflation concerns to deflation in a matter of weeks.
The Oil bubble was perhaps a bigger trigger of the market crash than housing and the fact that we have very little insight as to whether or not Wall Street speculation, Opec deceit about supply or BRIC economy growth determined oil prices, is terrifying.
If the words “pay no more than 99p” mean anything to you, then this documentary will make you dewey eyed.
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2008 was an early end to a decade with no name. The post millennium? The new century? The decadent decade, perhaps? It was an entire era of price without value, a zeitgeist that artists would surely try to capture, symbolically. But how to do it and still sell your work? Perhaps Damien Hirst knew how?
Damien Hirst is very rich and he is not stupid. His most daring work of art was an elaborate joke that could have become a symbol of this decade that closed down early – a platinum and diamond-crusted real human skull, the world’s most vulgar trophy. Like a gorilla hand ashtray or an elephant foot umbrella stand, this $100 million decorative, anatomical, bling trinket needed to be sold to someone very rich and very stupid for it to be complete, a tasteless prize that was bought and therefore self-awarded rather than given.
Who would be the recipient of this severed head which was completely covered in money, but in less money ($25M) than its asking price ($100M)? Would it be a Russian oligarch, a Manhattan property tycoon, a member of the Saud family, a London hedge fund manager, a vapid LA Youtube celebrity or any other of the monstrous avatars of the decadent decade. Sadly, even the diamond skull was a flop, and was rumored to have been bought by Hirst himself, to save face. Like the hedge fund managers, Hirst became rich but didn’t leave the legacy he wanted, and the contemporary art market, which peaked with his $170M takings at the “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale, was merely a bubble created by the recently rich who wanted new stuff rather than antiques and wished for the million dollar art equivalent of fast food, to buy taste, immediately.
But this bubble was particularly symbolic. The contemporary art market was leveraged beyond real estate and stocks and artists were part of the culture they could have been dissecting and rebelling against, they were collaborators rather than renegades. The sudden demise of famous living artists tells a better story than the art itself ever could.
Ben Lewis tells the story of the contemporary art bubble in Prospect:
“While British house prices took six years to double at the start of this century, contemporary art managed it in just one, 2006-07. (Over the same period, old masters went up by just 7.6 per cent and British 17th to 19th century watercolours actually lost value.) Contemporary art in the emerging economies did even better. The value of its sales in China increased by 983 per cent in one year (2005-06). In Russia they rose 2,365 per cent in five years (2000-05), while its stock market increased by “only” about 300 per cent…The Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang saw his work appreciate 6,000 times, from $1,000 to $6m (1999-2008); work by the American artist Richard Prince went up 60 to 80 times (2003-2008). The German painter Anselm Reyle was unknown in 2003; you could have picked up one of his stripe paintings for €14,000. Now he has a studio with 60 assistants turning them out for about €200,000 each.”
The full uncut interview originally filmed for Channel 4’s “The Enemies of Reason.” Nicholas Humphrey is a Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics.
Running time: 35 mins.
One of the surprising things about money is that the people who directly manage it are often tedious, but the subject itself is fascinating. In book form, J.K. Galbraith’s (no relation), ‘Money’ is my favorite, and this documentary comes close to what a film version of that might have looked like.
Obviously, current events make this series particularly important. For the embed, I have picked my favorite part: episode 5, which is about property. For those in denial about what happens with a property crash and zero interest rates, a Tokyo realtor shows us around a Tokyo apt. which was worth 3 times what it is now…a decade ago. The parallel between the UK/US property bubble and Japan is something which I was banging on about on my blog, in mean spirited fashion, before the crash.
Episode 5 of 6: Running Time 48 mins.
All of Niall Ferguson’s excellent 6 part series, the Ascent of Money, can now be viewed on Google.
The Ascent of Money makes it into the Smashing List
Episode 1.
Episode 2.
Episode 3.
Episode 4.
Episode 5.
Episode 6.
Thanks to Karl Hafer
A decades old interview with Chomsky, talking about linguistics. So much more interesting and important than politics.
Running time: 45 mins.