We all come from stars. It has taken the birth and death of multiple stars to make you and me. The supernatural is a delusion. Reality is what we have.
In this blog, I like to highlight the convergence of concepts, facts and events, the universality of ideas and the wonder of it all.
I also dig music lank.
Contents:
M.A.D World
We all seem to be dealing with the economic downturn in different ways.
By that I mean finding those responsible for this global mess whe're in and assigning blame. (Other than to ourselves, because buying that new car or 3rd TV had nothing to do with it - so don't worry it wasn't you)
The witch-hunt has begun in a world gone mad.
Interestingly, mad also stands for Mutually Assured Destruction, another 20th century invention. Given the economic interdependencies that are created by globalisation (I am thinking about China's financing for the US economy for example), M.A.D is as strangely appropriate allegory.
The Americans are still looking for someone to blame (They have a pretty large selection to choose from so it may take a while) whereas the French seem to already know: everyone - except themselves.
Both include large numbers of citizens taking to the streets and providing deep insight into the global financial crisis.
The French for their part, believe that stopping working for a day will help get them out of the crisis. They have even named the strike "Rêve Général" which rhymes with "General Strike" but means "General Fantasy"
... What an appropriate use of the word...
The Icelandics are going back to subsistence farming after a spectacularly bad stint in Finance (Great article by Vanity Fair) and the UK is taking a strong interest in livestock keeping once again following the quasi disappearance of its banking sector. (Interestingly, its banking sector was the solution devised by Mrs Thatcher to re-establish the UK to its rightful economic rank following its post WWII decline...)
The pope, in the meantime, is blaming the rise of HIV in Africa on condoms... Well it wasn't the only rising statistic this week: it seems Ratzinger's crew has been busy again this year...
MYOB, pope.
It seems few have any useful advice on what to do in these difficult times. Interestingly, one person's popularity seems to rise during downturns: Ayn Rand, the 20th century philosopher and author.
As it happened, I discovered her work only recently and purchased "Atlas Shrugged". It is a 1000 page weapon of mass distraction which I have yet to find the courage to start reading...
These interviews will give you a taste of her philosophy of positivism however - she was an intellectual giant for sure...
Where the hell have I been? I feel ashamed that it took me so long to discover Radiohead's YouTube home.
I should have guessed given the way they initially distributed the album that something was up. "In Rainbows" has been on constant replay on my Mac and iPod since it was first released over the net. It is the album I listen to on my noise-cancelling headphones whilst transiting through lonely airports.
Anyway, here is a 52 minute visual and sonic feast. Literally, a film with Radiohead in it, an intimate live remake (Called "Scotch Mist") of In Rainbows.
This is what the best rock band in the world looks and sounds like, people.
PS: Watch out for the slow-motion drumming sequence on minute 47...
In fact I have had more motorcycles than cars and plan to ride one through the Aussie outback at the end of the year. (More about that in a future blog).
I have never before experienced love at first sight with a bike before. That's until I saw a sample of the Deus Ex Machina brand while waiting for a connection at Sydney International a few years ago. What I saw stunned me with its style, simplicity and individuality.
The bikes are neo-classic re-incarnations of the spirit of bike riding. Judge for yourself.
I was intrigued, and reading up on this small Australian startup if found out that it is the brainchild (brainstorm? Perfect storm?) of a marketing genius, a businessman and a mechanic.
The marketing genius is Dare Jennings, none other than the founder and previous owner of Mambo, the irreverent and iconoclastic fashion company. (Interesting article here on how they founded the bike business and what it takes to create a brand and sell on Value)
By the way, these motorcycles are also modern, high-performance, reliable, safe and (relatively) affordable.
Motoring perfection.
In fact, when you look at them (as I did this morning on my little field trip - I only bought the T-shirt in the end), you wonder how come anyone hadn't thought of it before.
A bit like when using an ipod. How could it NOT have been invented? So pure, simple and adapted to its task. A perfect random mutation in the chain of industrial evolution as it turns out.
Here is where randomness comes in:
I have been waiting for the right opportunity to post Steve Jobs' Stanford address in this blog. (Steve is the guy who co-invented personal computers, the mac I am writing this post on, ipods, iphones etc...)
His speech resonates so much with my own life and thinking.
It addresses how we need to accept and embrace randomness as a source of richness and inspiration.
"...you can only connect the dots looking backwards...".
Nobody can tell you what will be useful to you in the future, rather follow your instinct and learn about things that feel valuable to you. One day, it will all fall into place and you will leverage this amalgam of knowledge in ways that could not have been foreseen.
True success comes as a product of all your experiences, rather than a narrow-focus long term plan.
In fact too much focus on acquiring skills can only bring about personal disappointment (As we grow and change, we're unlikely to find our childhood aspirations stimulating for long). That's my view anyway.
Another consequence of standardised education is the herd mentality that can develop as too many graduates who are the product of the same system get caught up in their own hype cycles. (IT analysts are the worst at reselling their own bullshit...I should know)
My old school friend Dimitri sent me this link from Bloomberg about Harvard MBAs and the downfall of investment banking.
(I should mention that he is assistant professor at one of the US's top MBA schools and so is pretty close to the subject)
Too many Harvard MBAs with too much faith in their own righteousness (For the cost of a Harvard MBA, you tend to rationalise your investment...).
Dimitri added:
We have plenty of diversity in our MBA student body, it’s the lack of self-doubt that’s the biggest problem. It’s very hard for them to believe that they might be wrong. And the more you challenge their thinking, the more entrenched their viewpoint becomes.
...Too young and too smart. They haven’t accumulated enough scrapes and bruises yet...
Too much knowledge, too many skills, not enough understanding of life.
It's ironic that Universities where originally modeled after Plato's "platonic Academia" following a skeptic philosophical tradition and devoted to Athena the goddess of wisdom.
No-one should be allowed to choose a career without having experienced more of the world than suburbia.
So get out of suburbia and into the wild...For those who haven't seen Sean Penn's adaptation of the true story "Into the wild" - see it.
It is a thesis on the search for and pursuit of value. I thought it was outstanding and inspirational while remaining subtle and light-handed on the rhetoric.
The music was written by Eddie Vedder (...you know... Pearl Jam...) and is hauntingly beautiful.
"Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" - Karl Marx.
Milan Kundera said that "Optimism is the opium of the people".
In these utterly pessimistic times, I thought it might be fun to look at what optimism means as a collective measure of our economic society.
Since my posts on the origin of the financial crisis and the new world order of bail-out politics, the blogosphere has been teeming with various sources of insightful material on these topics.
Tristan pointed me to this amusing summary of the origin of the subprime crisis:
If you are wondering how it is possible for so many intelligent people to get it so wrong, the answer is that the system is designed for this to happen. It is an inevitable, built-in feature of the global financial system (except maybe Cuba...for now).
The system is designed to encourage financial risk-taking and consumption of limited resources with a disproportionate mass of money. Politicians call it "economic growth". In many western democracies, it is a mantra - almost a religion.
Since money is now just a concept rather than a tangible quantity, by increasing its supply (Through the principle of Fractional Reserve banking) you can artificially increase consumption. Inflation is kept in check by importing cheap labour, cheap skills, cheap products and cheap oil from cheaper markets. (In the US that's from Mexico, India, China and the Middle-East respectively)
One way to increase money supply is for governments to run budget deficits as I mentioned in my previous post. What I missed, however, is the equally powerful impact of the banking system in the modern economies: Their ability to digitally print money almost at will.
The following documentary/expo/lecture/cartoon explains in simple terms how the banking system has evolved from minting gold coins to inventing new credit lines out of thin air.
It isn't entirely accurate (It misses the link between banks, the Fed and National debt) and is biased. But it is absolutely worth the time it takes to watch it.
One thing is for sure: The average world citizen has so little understanding of the problems, mechanisms and inherent risks of the money creation machine that there is almost not political will to investigate it.
Overhauling it is an even more remote possibility therefore. In the meantime, our governments will keep giving us cheap money to spend - in the hope of keeping us happy or at least content.
We're hooked on this opium.
There are dissident voices of this Keynesian world, most notably in the USA by congressman Ron Paul (Who ran for President in 2008) and his former economic advisor, Peter Schiff.
Watch him in action predicting the recession and giving us his version of the truth:
I was intrigued, and reading up on this small Australian startup if found out that it is the brainchild (brainstorm? Perfect storm?) of a marketing genius, a businessman and a mechanic. 
No-one should be allowed to choose a career without having experienced more of the world than suburbia.
