Keep Your Mouth Shut (1944)

The talking Nazi skull's plan for victory:

1. Give all the epilectics in the audience a seizure
2. Make everybody else feel guilty for having killed their loved ones
3. Victory!

Why I still watch Hungry Beast

The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943)

The outrage economy

Hungry Beast explains media outrage as a bubble economy:

The sadistic mouse with the psychotic grin orders you to smile, darn ya, smile!!!(!!)

A leader for the 60's

Ike for President



Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy? Kennedy!



Jerry Springer for Governor:



Does he look like Jens Stoltenberg?

Kampf um Norwegen

I came across this in my 40's movies marathon: Kampf um Norwegen, a lost Nazi documentary of the invasion of Norway that was rediscovered in 2005. The video above is full-length, but without subtitles.

Whenever I watch movies I have a finger on the screenshot-button, (improvised with a wireless gamepad), looking for interesting shots. Sometimes I end up with hundreds. Here are some stills from Kampf um Norwegen.

Why Norway had to be conquered - to avoid a British invasion of Germany through Scandinavia:

Long distances:

Oslo:



Kristiansand:

Narvik:

Norwegian prisoners:


Railway to Bergen:


Fighting their way north:





Lillehammer:


Namsos:


"There is peace in South and Central Norway!"

Narvik:



Mo i Rana / the Arctic Circle:



Reinforcements for Narvik:


Victory:

Hemp for Victory

I came across this in my 40's movies marathon. It's a 1942 short film that teaches American farmers how to grow hemp, to help the war effort. There are so many things right about this: Getting a contemporary closeup view of a single cog in the war machine of World War 2. The nerdy pleasure of seeing every stage of the process from plant to rope. The machines - oh, the beautiful machines. It always thrills me to see what machines can do without computer technology.

And then there's this brief image:

If you want to feel good, become an extremist

En høyst relevant politisk reklamevideo fra 1987, med John Cleese:



Via Unge Venstre-blogger Sveinung Rotevatn, som mener videoen også fungerer som argument for politisk TV-reklame. Ja, bortsett fra at du neppe får kjøpt 10 minutter til å legge frem et nyansert argument i reklamepausen på TV2. Derimot er den et godt argument for aktiv bruk av YouTube, og å være saklig fremfor snedig i presentasjonen.

Ready to lay shots nonstop

Whenever I hear music like this ..

Notorious B.I.G. - Things Done Changed



.. or this ..

Scarface - No Tears



.. I always feel a need to imitate this scene from Office Space:



It would be hilarious. It's a strong urge. The only thing that stops me is that 1) I don't know any lyrics, and 2) I don't have a car, or a driver's license.

Still, just imagining it is enough to crack me up.

She's doing the evil voice

From the third season of That Mitchell and Webb Look.

The (near-)future of toy movies

Via Cartoon Brew. Made by Dan Meth, who writes:

You can tell you are an adult when Hollywood is producing movies based on your childhood shows and toys. It means people your age are directing and financing blockbusters.

The Science of a Good Beer

Grab a (good) beer, and watch Dave McLean explain how he brews.



I love listening to experts explain their field in their own words, without having to conform to news conventions.

Teheran, Iran, June 13-15 (no comment)

In the gutty, in the grutty, down the rooves and all the scruppy

Stanley Unwin - The Pidey Pipeload of Hamling



Stanley Unwin - The Populode of the Musicolly

Cow vs man, kung-fu style

Found when somebody told me to check out "the mancow video". By which he actually meant the waterboarding video of radio host Erik "Mancow" Muller:



.. which is interesting, but far less spectacular.

Yes, this is all very interesting, Number One

The Occupational Hazards of Book Critics

All was well in the world, because there were nine planets, and the ninth planet was Pluto

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astronomer who "killed Pluto" (OMG!!) talks about how to define a planet, and why it really doesn't matter how many planets we have.



About why people were so upset about Pluto:

You know what I think it was? Because I put a fair amount of thought into this. When you learn something early in elementary school, and - you didn't learn what things were, you just memorized something - that's really what happened there. If you memorized something, and then later on that breaks, you feel like something attacked you. The memorization of the planets was kind of like an intellectual version of comfort food. All was well in the world, because there were nine planets, and the ninth planet was Pluto. And you memorized it. Had you learned that these were dynamic bodies, that had these properties, and then you learned that there were new objects that had new properties, I don't think people would have gotten upset. [..] My hope is that in the textbooks to come, there will not be an exercise in memorizing planets.

Which is a good excuse to link to Richard Feynman's essay on what science is.

Krugman and the financial crisis

Paul Krugman talks about the financial crisis:



I don't have an opinion here. The consensus seems to be that governments everywhere need to spend a lot of money in some clever way. I respect economists who believe that, especially those like Krugman here who are honest about the effects: It might not work. Nobody really knows how to solve this, in the end it comes down to luck.

I also respect critics like the libertarians at Reason who point out that governments aren't good at spending huge amounts of money. There's a certain arrogance among economists about how finally, this time, they understand the economy well enough to know how and where to spend. Spring time for Keynes. I'll believe that when they have a track record, not just anecdotes from the last crisis.

But maybe a wild and expensive shot with a hope of success is better than the alternatives. I don't know. I'm not qualified.

Here's what I believe: If this works, it will encourage people to think "hey, if the government can save the economy from a crisis by bluntly manipulating macroeconomic variables, maybe it's also qualified to manage it in detail under normal circumstances." That would be bad. We're feeding a monster here, in the hope that it will help us, but even if it does we'll have to wean it off the taste of blood later. (Alarmist metaphor? We're encouraging politicians to spend huge amounts of money. Think about that for a second.)

Was machst du, Data?

Here's more.

This emotional science

Dacher Keltner talks about the psychology of emotions:



The story he tells about how hardly any American soldiers fired their guns in World War 2 is probably a myth.

Emergency Broadcast Network

What is this?! I almost don't want to know.

How to be happy

Psychiatrist Raj Persaud talks about the secret of happiness:



Or as Lin Yutang wrote in The Importance of Living:

All questions of living in heaven must be brushed aside. Let not the spirit take wings and soar to the abode of the gods and forget the earth. Are we not mortals, condemned to die? The span of life vouchsafed us, threescore and ten, is short enough, if the spirit gets too haughty and wants to live forever, but on the other hand, it is also long enough, if the spirit is a little humble. One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, "It was a good show" when the curtain falls.

For we are of the earth, earth-born and earth-bound. There is nothing to be unhappy about the fact that we are, as it were, delivered upon this beautiful earth as its transient guests. Even if it were a dark dungeon, we still would have to make the best of it; it would be ungrateful of us not to do so when we have, instead of a dungeon, such a beautiful earth to live on for a good part of a century.

Neuroplasticity - keeping your brain alive

From Google Tech Talks, Michael Merzenich talks about how the brain changes and learns:



Via a comment at Jeff Moser, who's afraid of brain rot.

FORA videos on counterterrorism and the Iraq war

From FORA.tv: Laura Donohue talks about counterterrorism and surveillance in the US after September 11. She argues that 'freedom' vs 'security' is the wrong angle, and that one of the overlooked challenges of counterterrorism is the power it gives to the executive branch.




Peter Galbraith talks about the Iraq war, the prospects of democracy, and why Iran is the victor of the war:

Did he learn nothing in Hanoi?

From FORA.tv: Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris talk about the less-known backstory of the Abu Ghraib scandal. You need to watch this.




An interview with the satirist and former Republican speech writer Christopher Buckley, (author of the delightful Thank You For Smoking):




Richard Rigby explains what's happening in China:




Robert Reich talks about the financial crisis:

A monument to curiosity

Steven LeVine talks about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist.






Philip Pan talks about freedom and repression in China.






Frank Wilczek explains the Large Hadron Collider. And there's a silly LHC rap. Physics nerds are so awesome.

Today's evening news replacement

New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins talks about his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq:






Jacob Weisberg talks about the life and character of George W. Bush:






OMG!!1! Two hours of talking! Brain hurts .. must .. find .. funny .. cat .. picture. Aaaah:

Remember when there were smart programs on TV?

FORA.tv is a video site that wants to make you smarter. Without saying anything bad about YouTube and its imitators, this is a rare ambition on the web today. FORA.tv gathers videos of speeches, lectures and panel debates on topics such as politics, science and culture. The videos are long, often boring, and rarely contain even a single TV-worthy soundbite. It's my favourite new website in a long while - this is what's missing from television. In such a gathering of public intellectuals, academics and activists, you'll inevitably suffer many silly and eccentric speakers, and if that is enough to scare you away I recommend you go watch this freaking hilarious dramatic chipmunk on YouTube. For the rest of you, here are some recommendations to start with:

• I already linked to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is a bad speaker, but has important things to say, (a common combination).
  
• A panel on propaganda. Skip the first speaker, and my favourite part (about the Solidarity movement in Poland) begins at chapter 15.
  
• This second part from the same conference talks about the science of manipulation. My favourite part is with Frank Luntz from chapter 9.
  
• Walt Mossberg talks about cellphones and internet technology.
  
• Sudhir Venkatesh talks about his book Gang Leader For a Day, about what he learned from his friendship with a Chicago gang leader.
  

The future has always been crazier than we thought

Skip the evening news today, and instead watch this talk by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, where he summarizes his wonderful book on unpredictable surprises, The Black Swan. Favourite provocation: If you're skeptical towards bishops, but believe in the stock market, you're a hypocrite.