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18:47:46 02/02/12
Agnes Mercedes - "Molom": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 18:47:46 02/02/12
Agnes Mercedes - "Molom": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
"Any other artist, dead or alive have ever made anything like this. It%acutes totally original! Agnes Mercedes creativity and very own expression is so great that one wonders if she is mad or brilliant, but however that may be these melodic tales are more than music. They are work of art". -Zero Music Magazine, Sweden Last year Agnes Mercedes started this music project, and made a tour that included about 200 big venues and art galleries all over Sweden. Now her awaited debut album is here, filled with word gluttony and "pop-up-poems" as she call it herself. These melodic fairytales are told in her own made up language "sprak". This language is a mixture of forgotten dialects. Words with bitter-, sweet and sometimes salty aftertaste. All within a frame of "sprinkle sounscapes". To a beat of purcussion-like piano playing. She is singing with a voice that for one moment could sound like a cartoon, and the next second transform itself into a blue whale with water-tones in the songs... She%acutes been making jingles for the Swedish Radio. Selling sound art for a lot of different art galleries in Sweden, such as \"Kulturhuset Stockholm". Right now she%acutes composing music for a new documentary production, for the Swedish Television. "Agnes Mercedes doesn%acutet sound like anyone else, or maybe like a extraterrestrial radio theater, in a melodic way. This is great art!" -The Swedish Radio From: sxsw Views: 61 1 ratings Time: 04:04 More in Entertainment
0 Views
18:47:46 02/02/12
Agnes Mercedes - "Molom": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 18:47:46 02/02/12
Agnes Mercedes - "Molom": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
"Any other artist, dead or alive have ever made anything like this. It%acutes totally original! Agnes Mercedes creativity and very own expression is so great that one wonders if she is mad or brilliant, but however that may be these melodic tales are more than music. They are work of art". -Zero Music Magazine, Sweden Last year Agnes Mercedes started this music project, and made a tour that included about 200 big venues and art galleries all over Sweden. Now her awaited debut album is here, filled with word gluttony and "pop-up-poems" as she call it herself. These melodic fairytales are told in her own made up language "sprak". This language is a mixture of forgotten dialects. Words with bitter-, sweet and sometimes salty aftertaste. All within a frame of "sprinkle sounscapes". To a beat of purcussion-like piano playing. She is singing with a voice that for one moment could sound like a cartoon, and the next second transform itself into a blue whale with water-tones in the songs... She%acutes been making jingles for the Swedish Radio. Selling sound art for a lot of different art galleries in Sweden, such as \"Kulturhuset Stockholm". Right now she%acutes composing music for a new documentary production, for the Swedish Television. "Agnes Mercedes doesn%acutet sound like anyone else, or maybe like a extraterrestrial radio theater, in a melodic way. This is great art!" -The Swedish Radio From: sxsw Views: 54 0 ratings Time: 04:04 More in Entertainment
0 Views
01:44:38 01/28/12
euronews learning world - Teaching indigenous culture
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 01:44:38 01/28/12
euronews learning world - Teaching indigenous culture
www.euronews.net UNESCO estimates that indigenous peoples make up five percent of the world's population, but they often face the threat of losing their cultural identity. Learning World looks at projects aiming to preserve indigenous languages and traditions in New Zealand, Bolivia and Ethiopia. *Maori Immersion School, New Zealand* From: Euronews Views: 9 4 ratings Time: 10:04 More in Shows
0 Views
01:44:38 01/28/12
euronews learning world - Teaching indigenous culture
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 01:44:38 01/28/12
euronews learning world - Teaching indigenous culture
www.euronews.net UNESCO estimates that indigenous peoples make up five percent of the world's population, but they often face the threat of losing their cultural identity. Learning World looks at projects aiming to preserve indigenous languages and traditions in New Zealand, Bolivia and Ethiopia. *Maori Immersion School, New Zealand* From: Euronews Views: 52 4 ratings Time: 10:04 More in Shows
0 Views
05:14:03 01/24/12
catch 22.mov
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 05:14:03 01/24/12
Disclaimer If you are offended by language do not watch this film Book based on catch 22 satire project ... Dumb Films Squad ... catch22 satire ... youtube.com
1 Views
19:22:43 01/23/12
The Love Language - "Heart To Tell": SXSW Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 19:22:43 01/23/12
The Love Language - "Heart To Tell": SXSW Showcasing Artist
The Love Language, initiated by Stuart McLamb, is a fortunate by-product of the North Carolina native's rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. The growing body of emotional fight songs, committed to MP3 with a high-school era multitrack recorder, became postcards from exile, a way to let his friends and former flames know he was getting along, battered but not beaten. The self-immolating beauty of the budget correspondences was exhausting and triumphant; McLamb's dalliances with rejection and redemption would be minted in a self-titled debut on Portland independent label Bladen County in March of 2009. Soon afterwards, the mighty ensemble band version of The Love Language-a dysfunctional symphony of musical vagrants-disbanded to pursue personal projects. McLamb, who had roamed the state since recording The Love Language, moved back to Raleigh where Libraries engineer/producer BJ Burton adopted the one-man band and helped harness the extraordinary might generated during these sessions. Among the moments captured on Libraries are Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything. The effective average of McLamb's madness and Burton's discipline rendered an album in ... From: sxsw Views: 2 1 ratings Time: 02:46 More in Music
0 Views
19:22:43 01/23/12
The Love Language - "Heart To Tell": SXSW Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 19:22:43 01/23/12
The Love Language - "Heart To Tell": SXSW Showcasing Artist
The Love Language, initiated by Stuart McLamb, is a fortunate by-product of the North Carolina native's rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. The growing body of emotional fight songs, committed to MP3 with a high-school era multitrack recorder, became postcards from exile, a way to let his friends and former flames know he was getting along, battered but not beaten. The self-immolating beauty of the budget correspondences was exhausting and triumphant; McLamb's dalliances with rejection and redemption would be minted in a self-titled debut on Portland independent label Bladen County in March of 2009. Soon afterwards, the mighty ensemble band version of The Love Language-a dysfunctional symphony of musical vagrants-disbanded to pursue personal projects. McLamb, who had roamed the state since recording The Love Language, moved back to Raleigh where Libraries engineer/producer BJ Burton adopted the one-man band and helped harness the extraordinary might generated during these sessions. Among the moments captured on Libraries are Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything. The effective average of McLamb's madness and Burton's discipline rendered an album in ... From: sxsw Views: 1 1 ratings Time: 02:46 More in Music
0 Views
11:17:16 01/20/12
Project X - Trailer 2
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 11:17:16 01/20/12
"Project X" follows three seemingly anonymous high school seniors as they attempt to finally make a name for themselves. Their idea is innocent enough: let's throw a party that no one will forget... but nothing could prepare them for this party. Word spreads quickly as dreams are ruined, records are blemished and legends are born. "Project X" is a warning to parents and police everywhere. This film has been rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, nudity, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behavior and mayhem-all involving teens.
0 Views
11:17:16 01/20/12
Project X - Trailer 2
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 11:17:16 01/20/12
"Project X" follows three seemingly anonymous high school seniors as they attempt to finally make a name for themselves. Their idea is innocent enough: let's throw a party that no one will forget... but nothing could prepare them for this party. Word spreads quickly as dreams are ruined, records are blemished and legends are born. "Project X" is a warning to parents and police everywhere. This film has been rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, nudity, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behavior and mayhem-all involving teens.
0 Views
17:20:06 01/18/12
Turbina - "Mira Al Cielo": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 17:20:06 01/18/12
Turbina - "Mira Al Cielo": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
With bittersweet melodies making their way through chaotic soundscapes, Turbina, a band from Mexico City, emerges and reinvents itself through the album named "Leti' Hum Eek' -- Inda Jani -- Mish Masadi." Without leaving its rock & roll spirit behind, the material sounds like a new voice has risen, but one that is well-traveled. In 2003, Turbina burst onto the scene with the single Abre la puerta, and then anchored their fans with songs like Mira al cielo and Sat%eacutelite, from their first album "Panam%eacuterica" in 2006. This record proved a success and garnered a nomination as "Best Independent Artist" at the Latin America MTV Awards in 2007, a trip to Canada to shoot the video for Mira al cielo, a recognition as the most broadcasted band on radio that year, an appearance in the book Sonidos Urbanos, and an inclusion in the soundtrack for the Mexican film Juegos Inocentes with the theme tune Olvidarte para siempre. Now with a more mature sound, Alejandro Lara and Homero Ortega are releasing the project "Leti' Hum Eek' -- Inda Jani -- Mish Masadi" in recognition of Mexican native languages, created in three parts: an EP edited on CD, on vinyl and available for on-line downloading. Leti' Hum Eek' is "the sound of the comets" (Mayan,) Inda Jani is "the water that is born" (Zapotec,) and Mish Masadi is "moon child" (Mixe-Zoque.) Together they form a triple opus. After a first listening, everyone can choose which title goes with which work. In April 2011, they launched the first ... From: sxsw Views: 48 0 ratings Time: 04:29 More in Music
0 Views
17:20:06 01/18/12
Turbina - "Mira Al Cielo": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 17:20:06 01/18/12
Turbina - "Mira Al Cielo": SXSW 2012 Showcasing Artist
With bittersweet melodies making their way through chaotic soundscapes, Turbina, a band from Mexico City, emerges and reinvents itself through the album named "Leti' Hum Eek' -- Inda Jani -- Mish Masadi." Without leaving its rock & roll spirit behind, the material sounds like a new voice has risen, but one that is well-traveled. In 2003, Turbina burst onto the scene with the single Abre la puerta, and then anchored their fans with songs like Mira al cielo and Sat%eacutelite, from their first album "Panam%eacuterica" in 2006. This record proved a success and garnered a nomination as "Best Independent Artist" at the Latin America MTV Awards in 2007, a trip to Canada to shoot the video for Mira al cielo, a recognition as the most broadcasted band on radio that year, an appearance in the book Sonidos Urbanos, and an inclusion in the soundtrack for the Mexican film Juegos Inocentes with the theme tune Olvidarte para siempre. Now with a more mature sound, Alejandro Lara and Homero Ortega are releasing the project "Leti' Hum Eek' -- Inda Jani -- Mish Masadi" in recognition of Mexican native languages, created in three parts: an EP edited on CD, on vinyl and available for on-line downloading. Leti' Hum Eek' is "the sound of the comets" (Mayan,) Inda Jani is "the water that is born" (Zapotec,) and Mish Masadi is "moon child" (Mixe-Zoque.) Together they form a triple opus. After a first listening, everyone can choose which title goes with which work. In April 2011, they launched the first ... From: sxsw Views: 48 0 ratings Time: 04:29 More in Music
18 Views
05:02:23 01/04/12
Recreation, Re-Creation, or, We Like OLD Stuff – Bitsy Knox
[LESS INFO] 18 VIEWS | ADDED 05:02:23 01/04/12
Recreation, Re-Creation (2006, 9.6 MB, 4:27 min.) “This video juxtaposes original 16 mm footage acquired from my Grandfather with interview footage taken of my Mother and Grandparents. All but the past-tenses of their speaking are left intact, while the film footage has been aggressively manipulated. The project seeks to question the language of constructing one’s [...]
5 Views
19:00:30 12/28/11
Notable Death of the Year: RIP Austerity Economics, 1921-2011
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:30 12/28/11
"Smokestack Lightnin'," with Hubert Sumlin backing Howlin' Wolf in 1964
This is the time of year when we're reminded of all the famous people who died over the last twelve months, a list which includes two of my favorite guitar players ( Hubert Sumlin and Cornell Dupree ). But there were also some notable non-human deaths in 2011, especially in the world of economic policy.
One of those deaths should have completely altered the political debate in Washington. The name of the deceased was "Austerity Economics," and it was first glimpsed in a 1921 paper by conservative economist Frank Wright. Austerity died of natural causes brought on by prolonged exposure to reality.
But the debate in Washington didn't change nearly enough after its passing. In the nation's capital, dead things still rule the night.
Why Austerity?
"Austerity economics" backers claim that today's economic woes can only be fixed by dramatic reductions in government spending, which will lead to increased private-sector confidence and therefore to greater investment and growth.
But it's never worked. And if investors have lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal stability, they're sure not acting that way. There hasn't been this much demand for Treasury bonds since the government began tracking it twenty years ago, and they haven't performed as well since the go-go 1990s.
It's easy to understand austerity's attraction for power elites inside and outside of government. The people who suffer from austerity budgets aren't the kinds of people they know personally, since they're typically public employees like teachers, police, firefighters and the administrators of social programs; people who need government assistance, like the poor; and middle-class people with the temerity to either grow old or become disabled.
Austerity's attraction became even greater in the U.S. because once it became conventional wisdom that tax increases on the wealthy was "politically infeasible." That made it a program whose sole purpose was to cut government spending, lowering the pressure to increase taxes on the wealthy from today's historically low levels.
For a one-percenter, what's not to love?
Austerity Comes of Age
The idea's been around in one form or another since that 1921 paper, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been imposing it on Third World nations for decades.
But 2009 was the year that austerity really came of age. That was the year that a wealthy stockbroker's son named David Cameron began campaigning for Prime Minister of Great Britain on an explicitly pro-austerity platform.
It was also the year that Cameron helped to form a group named European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) dedicated to electing like-minded politicians across Europe and helping them collaborate on ways to slash government spending. It was also the year that right-leaning Angela Merkel won reelection as the Chancellor of Germany with a stronger mandate than she'd been given in her first term.
With Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France, Great Britain was the only major European power not yet in the hands of the corporate-backed austerity crowd.
The Global Sado-Erotic Thrill Machine
That changed with Cameron's election as Prime Minister in May 2010, an event that threw pro-austerity Americans into throes of near-erotic ecstasy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, consider conservative Anne Appelbaum's reaction to Cameron's budget in September of 2010: >
Vicious cuts." "Savage cuts." "Swingeing (sic) cuts." The language that the British use to describe their new government's spending-reduction policy is apocalyptic in the extreme. The ministers in charge of the country's finances are known as "axe-wielders" who will be "hacking" away at the budget. Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation.
And the British love it.
What can I say? There are people who collect serial-killer memorabilia, too. But Appelbaum wasn't just speaking for herself. It became unacceptable for any politician in Washington, Democrat or Republican, to advocate anything other than an austerity budget for the United States.
And it was more than an economic strategy to its backers. Austerity became a way to demonize those who had suffered most from the banking abuses and self-indulgences of the wealthy, a totemic "blame the victim" response that turned the political debate into a grotesque inversion of morality. Again, Appelbaum: >
"Not only is austerity being touted as the solution to Britain's economic woes; it is also being described as the answer to the country's moral failings."
Bad Metaphors vs. Good Economists
The Democratic President of the United States, Barack Obama, jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet by repeatedly lecturing Americans on the need for government to stop "spending beyond its means." Obama recycled the popular conservative metaphor of a family that has to sit around the kitchen table and decide how much money it has to spend.
That's one of the worst metaphors in modern politics. Does a family establish its own currency -- especially one that has the unique position of the dollar? Can a family borrow money at rates so low they're effectively less than zero? Would a family let Grandma go hungry because Junior bought too many Porsches out of the family kitty and then gambled it away on lousy mortgage investments?
The world's top economists, those who had successfully predicted the crisis of 2008, tried telling the rest of the world what was wrong with the idea: Joblessness and consumer fears were killing any chance of real recovery. More short-term spending was needed to get the economy moving again. Austerity would make things worse, not better.
But nobody listened. Austerity's S%M-like attraction had the world's elites in its grip.
Death of a Delusion
And then something else came into the picture: Reality.
Cameron's austerity budget had a shattering effect on the already-struggling British economy. His government's financial stability was downgraded five times during his first year in power and retail sales had fallen 2.5 percent. Household income was projected to fall an additional 2 percent if his austerity plans were carried forward. Britain's modest employment gains were reversed, youth unemployment reached record levels, and income inequality was the worst it had been in more than half a century.
Anne Appelbaum's erotic dreams had become Great Britain's nightmare.
As Europe's ruling austerity class pushed forward with their plans, even the IMF tried to dissuade them. It was clear to anyone who wasn't blinded by ideology or political cynicism that austerity economics was a failed program. Even in countries like Greece, where government was far graver than elsewhere, the austerity programs imposed from outside threatened to destabilize society while other reasonable measures like improved tax collection were still not taken seriously enough.
And now the entire Eurozone hangs in the balance. Bankers became wealthy by treating governments as if they were mortgages, lending recklessly and pocketing their fees without considering the long-term reliability of their loans. European leaders insisted for months they were take the kind of sensible steps that should've been taken in the United States by requiring bankers to accept at least part of the losses for the bad loans they had issed.
That plan was quietly dropped last month. "Austerity economics" never calls for austerity from those who have gotten rich by being irresponsible, only from those who didn't benefit from it at all.
The Afterlife
President Obama has dropped his austerity rhetoric, at least for the time being, but the Republicans have not. Listening to Mitt Romney discuss economics is like having a doctor wave a dead chicken over your head and saying he's decided to cast a spell on you rather than operate on that thing they found in your X-rays.
Aside from the bill introduced this month by the House Progressive Caucus to almost no media attention, there's no comprehensive plan for dropping this country's ineffective austerity strategy and replacing it with an agenda that works.
Rational solutions to our economic problems are being ignored. There won't be a real debate about alternatives to austerity until an entire political party, not just part of it, adopts this kind of program. Until then there will be chaos. And where there is chaos, austerity's powerful advocates can step in and take charge.
Austerity economics died in 2011 and is survived by the British, German, and French governments as well as the GOP and large portions of the Democratic Party. Instead of sending flowers, the family has asked the public to abandon all hopes of future economic growth.
1 Views
19:00:30 12/28/11
Notable Death of the Year: RIP Austerity Economics, 1921-2011
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:30 12/28/11
"Smokestack Lightnin'," with Hubert Sumlin backing Howlin' Wolf in 1964
This is the time of year when we're reminded of all the famous people who died over the last twelve months, a list which includes two of my favorite guitar players ( Hubert Sumlin and Cornell Dupree ). But there were also some notable non-human deaths in 2011, especially in the world of economic policy.
One of those deaths should have completely altered the political debate in Washington. The name of the deceased was "Austerity Economics," and it was first glimpsed in a 1921 paper by conservative economist Frank Wright. Austerity died of natural causes brought on by prolonged exposure to reality.
But the debate in Washington didn't change nearly enough after its passing. In the nation's capital, dead things still rule the night.
Why Austerity?
"Austerity economics" backers claim that today's economic woes can only be fixed by dramatic reductions in government spending, which will lead to increased private-sector confidence and therefore to greater investment and growth.
But it's never worked. And if investors have lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal stability, they're sure not acting that way. There hasn't been this much demand for Treasury bonds since the government began tracking it twenty years ago, and they haven't performed as well since the go-go 1990s.
It's easy to understand austerity's attraction for power elites inside and outside of government. The people who suffer from austerity budgets aren't the kinds of people they know personally, since they're typically public employees like teachers, police, firefighters and the administrators of social programs; people who need government assistance, like the poor; and middle-class people with the temerity to either grow old or become disabled.
Austerity's attraction became even greater in the U.S. because once it became conventional wisdom that tax increases on the wealthy was "politically infeasible." That made it a program whose sole purpose was to cut government spending, lowering the pressure to increase taxes on the wealthy from today's historically low levels.
For a one-percenter, what's not to love?
Austerity Comes of Age
The idea's been around in one form or another since that 1921 paper, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been imposing it on Third World nations for decades.
But 2009 was the year that austerity really came of age. That was the year that a wealthy stockbroker's son named David Cameron began campaigning for Prime Minister of Great Britain on an explicitly pro-austerity platform.
It was also the year that Cameron helped to form a group named European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) dedicated to electing like-minded politicians across Europe and helping them collaborate on ways to slash government spending. It was also the year that right-leaning Angela Merkel won reelection as the Chancellor of Germany with a stronger mandate than she'd been given in her first term.
With Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France, Great Britain was the only major European power not yet in the hands of the corporate-backed austerity crowd.
The Global Sado-Erotic Thrill Machine
That changed with Cameron's election as Prime Minister in May 2010, an event that threw pro-austerity Americans into throes of near-erotic ecstasy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, consider conservative Anne Appelbaum's reaction to Cameron's budget in September of 2010: >
Vicious cuts." "Savage cuts." "Swingeing (sic) cuts." The language that the British use to describe their new government's spending-reduction policy is apocalyptic in the extreme. The ministers in charge of the country's finances are known as "axe-wielders" who will be "hacking" away at the budget. Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation.
And the British love it.
What can I say? There are people who collect serial-killer memorabilia, too. But Appelbaum wasn't just speaking for herself. It became unacceptable for any politician in Washington, Democrat or Republican, to advocate anything other than an austerity budget for the United States.
And it was more than an economic strategy to its backers. Austerity became a way to demonize those who had suffered most from the banking abuses and self-indulgences of the wealthy, a totemic "blame the victim" response that turned the political debate into a grotesque inversion of morality. Again, Appelbaum: >
"Not only is austerity being touted as the solution to Britain's economic woes; it is also being described as the answer to the country's moral failings."
Bad Metaphors vs. Good Economists
The Democratic President of the United States, Barack Obama, jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet by repeatedly lecturing Americans on the need for government to stop "spending beyond its means." Obama recycled the popular conservative metaphor of a family that has to sit around the kitchen table and decide how much money it has to spend.
That's one of the worst metaphors in modern politics. Does a family establish its own currency -- especially one that has the unique position of the dollar? Can a family borrow money at rates so low they're effectively less than zero? Would a family let Grandma go hungry because Junior bought too many Porsches out of the family kitty and then gambled it away on lousy mortgage investments?
The world's top economists, those who had successfully predicted the crisis of 2008, tried telling the rest of the world what was wrong with the idea: Joblessness and consumer fears were killing any chance of real recovery. More short-term spending was needed to get the economy moving again. Austerity would make things worse, not better.
But nobody listened. Austerity's S%M-like attraction had the world's elites in its grip.
Death of a Delusion
And then something else came into the picture: Reality.
Cameron's austerity budget had a shattering effect on the already-struggling British economy. His government's financial stability was downgraded five times during his first year in power and retail sales had fallen 2.5 percent. Household income was projected to fall an additional 2 percent if his austerity plans were carried forward. Britain's modest employment gains were reversed, youth unemployment reached record levels, and income inequality was the worst it had been in more than half a century.
Anne Appelbaum's erotic dreams had become Great Britain's nightmare.
As Europe's ruling austerity class pushed forward with their plans, even the IMF tried to dissuade them. It was clear to anyone who wasn't blinded by ideology or political cynicism that austerity economics was a failed program. Even in countries like Greece, where government was far graver than elsewhere, the austerity programs imposed from outside threatened to destabilize society while other reasonable measures like improved tax collection were still not taken seriously enough.
And now the entire Eurozone hangs in the balance. Bankers became wealthy by treating governments as if they were mortgages, lending recklessly and pocketing their fees without considering the long-term reliability of their loans. European leaders insisted for months they were take the kind of sensible steps that should've been taken in the United States by requiring bankers to accept at least part of the losses for the bad loans they had issed.
That plan was quietly dropped last month. "Austerity economics" never calls for austerity from those who have gotten rich by being irresponsible, only from those who didn't benefit from it at all.
The Afterlife
President Obama has dropped his austerity rhetoric, at least for the time being, but the Republicans have not. Listening to Mitt Romney discuss economics is like having a doctor wave a dead chicken over your head and saying he's decided to cast a spell on you rather than operate on that thing they found in your X-rays.
Aside from the bill introduced this month by the House Progressive Caucus to almost no media attention, there's no comprehensive plan for dropping this country's ineffective austerity strategy and replacing it with an agenda that works.
Rational solutions to our economic problems are being ignored. There won't be a real debate about alternatives to austerity until an entire political party, not just part of it, adopts this kind of program. Until then there will be chaos. And where there is chaos, austerity's powerful advocates can step in and take charge.
Austerity economics died in 2011 and is survived by the British, German, and French governments as well as the GOP and large portions of the Democratic Party. Instead of sending flowers, the family has asked the public to abandon all hopes of future economic growth.
34 Views
12:00:00 12/25/11
Brian Beckman: Hidden Markov Models, Viterbi Algorithm, LINQ, Rx and Higgs Boson
[LESS INFO] 34 VIEWS | ADDED 12:00:00 12/25/11
It's been WAY too long since we've had Brian Beckman sharing knowledge, insights and perspectives on Channel 9. This changes now!
Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to spend an hour with Brian learning all about what he's up to these days. Not surprisingly, he's writing code and employing Rx and monads to solve very interesting problems. In this conversation (a code lesson, algorithm survey, a splash of random topical diversion), Brian explains and demonstrates his latest endeavor: implementing the Viterbi algorithm in C#. What's the Viterbi algorithm, Brian? What are hidden Markov models? What are you using this stuff for? Where does Rx fit into this? What's going on? By the way, it's awesome to learn that a Niner has been sharing C# monadic implementations with Brian (state monad, maybe monad).
Of course, no conversation with Brian - a physicist by training and a software architect at Microsoft - is complete without talking about some current physics problem: Finding the elusive Higgs Boson is all the rage these days, so we talk about what it means.
Brian also shares insights on Haskell, functional and hybrid programming languages (C# is imperative, but it provides functional capabilities like LINQ, for example, upon which Rx is built (Rx is LINQ-to-Streams or observable sequences of events, really)...). We also finally discuss his previous work at MS that we never got a chance to talk to him about while he was doing it. Before joining the Bing Mobile team, Brian was working on a project to create a new functional programming language. What was it?
Thank you, Brian!
Happy holidays from Channel 9 wherever you are and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating!
Notes and More:
The code Brian demos (download it, unzip it, launch VS, open the solution, then watch this video and play along): https://github.com/rebcabin/DotNetExtensionsImproved
From Wikipedia - information on Markov and Viterbi:
A hidden Markov model ( HMM ) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states
The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for finding the most likely sequence of hidden states – called the Viterbi path – that results in a sequence of observed events, especially in the context of Markov information sources , and more generally, hidden Markov models .
35 Views
12:00:00 12/25/11
Brian Beckman: Hidden Markov Models, Viterbi Algorithm, LINQ, Rx and Higgs Boson
[LESS INFO] 35 VIEWS | ADDED 12:00:00 12/25/11
It's been WAY too long since we've had Brian Beckman sharing knowledge, insights and perspectives on Channel 9. This changes now!
Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to spend an hour with Brian learning all about what he's up to these days. Not surprisingly, he's writing code and employing Rx and monads to solve very interesting problems. In this conversation (a code lesson, algorithm survey, a splash of random topical diversion), Brian explains and demonstrates his latest endeavor: implementing the Viterbi algorithm in C#. What's the Viterbi algorithm, Brian? What are hidden Markov models? What are you using this stuff for? Where does Rx fit into this? What's going on? By the way, it's awesome to learn that a Niner has been sharing C# monadic implementations with Brian (state monad, maybe monad).
Of course, no conversation with Brian - a physicist by training and a software architect at Microsoft - is complete without talking about some current physics problem: Finding the elusive Higgs Boson is all the rage these days, so we talk about what it means.
Brian also shares insights on Haskell, functional and hybrid programming languages (C# is imperative, but it provides functional capabilities like LINQ, for example, upon which Rx is built (Rx is LINQ-to-Streams or observable sequences of events, really)...). We also finally discuss his previous work at MS that we never got a chance to talk to him about while he was doing it. Before joining the Bing Mobile team, Brian was working on a project to create a new functional programming language. What was it?
Thank you, Brian!
Happy holidays from Channel 9 wherever you are and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating!
Notes and More:
The code Brian demos (download it, unzip it, launch VS, open the solution, then watch this video and play along): https://github.com/rebcabin/DotNetExtensionsImproved
From Wikipedia - information on Markov and Viterbi:
A hidden Markov model ( HMM ) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states
The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for finding the most likely sequence of hidden states – called the Viterbi path – that results in a sequence of observed events, especially in the context of Markov information sources , and more generally, hidden Markov models .
