Fractional reserve banking explained.

On a truly terrible day for the markets I have finally happened upon a decent description of fractional reserve banking, one of the major problems with the current financial system.

I've been an occasional follower of Positive money but while their ideas seem fairly decent their videos are terrible.

Happily the Zeitgeist Movement of all things have made a very good lecture about it.


Towards the hour mark things go off the rails slightly but it is consistently a sound analysis of a barely known issue. Their proposed solution is... less sound, being a kind of magical technical centrally planned economy. Though as the guy giving the lecture points out at the end, the current system is way more absurd than that.

Oh and in another unexpected turn arch-conservative David Frum has kinda almost paid Paul Krugman a compliment and again here. We are living in strange times.

Patch Adams was a real person.

I just watched the Latest Onion A.V. Club Inventory on Youtube and they pointed out Patch Adams was a real person. Surprisingly he seems to be a really great guy and a devoted political activist for Healthcare reform in the US.

Hans Rosling on Stats

Hans Rosling makes stats more interesting than one could imagine possible, watch it Here

Theres a reason Chomsky isn't allowed on TV

Buy Silver, hurt JP Morgan

I've heard rumblings about this before but didn't really know what was going on. Heres all round cool dude Max Keiser explaining it in less than a minute:



More details here

Irvin Kershner 1923 - 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66FvPTj2Yw

Leslie Nielsen 1926 - 2010

Obama clarifies his position on Turkey.

Zizek on the inevitable apocalyspe Capitalism is causing.

I will let Zizek speak for himself because his command of language and passion is far beyond my own. I do recommend you watch it though.

Rory Bremner does excellent sung epitaphs of Prime Ministers.

Yeah that title could've been a bit more catchy but its true. Heres Gordon Brown's Swansong:



and going a good way into the past Tony Blair's:



(some knowledge of British Politics required for you to fully understand these)

Russell Brand interview

Russell Brand is generally portrayed as a bawd but if you actually listen to what he has to say the fact he is a former drug and sex addict isn't relevant and in this interview he brings up the point that narratives about himself and everything else cloud the meaning at the heart of issues. He is a lot of other things but he is also someone who overcame considerable hardship and unpleasantness as a child to get to where he is, perhaps people should bear that in mind more than they do. I recommend you watch it. One odd thing I consistently notice is that he uses big words it sounds like he is using them for their own sake but they are always correct to the conversation and convey his meaning, I wonder if it is simply the Essex accent, have I been trained to assume certain accents make you thick?

As a reward for watching the interview (which to be honest was pretty rewarding in itself) here is Brand utterly destroying Murdoch's The Sun at a charity gala event for Amnesty International:

The onion is supposed to be satire damnit

There is something mucky about Katy Perry.

I dunno specifically what it is about Katy Perry that seems so dirty (and not in a good way) to me, we live in an age of porno-chic but she bothers me in a way even pornstars don't. Maybe it is the sheer crassness of the commercialisation of her sexuality or maybe it is the hollowness of her faux naivety but since seeing the video of California Girls seeing her has made me uncomfortable. Now the producers of Sesame Street have cut her appearance on the show. With good cause I think, I mean yeah objectification of women is everywhere but if there can be one island safe from it, one place where it is unacceptable for starlets to dress up as whores for their appearances then goddamn Sesame Street should be it.

Maybe I'm turning into a prude but Perry specifically is getting to me.

Ok free climbings is bad but what about free running?

look forward to a link from jonny explaining how I inadvertently endorsed neo-nazism with this video.

I'm not the only one with the jibblies.

In that antenna repair video I linked the other day the narrator happily claims that under OSHA the dangerous free climbing depicted is legal. This caused people with far stronger constitutions than myself to get the jibblies. Yes indeed such dangerous behavior isn't acceptable under the law but the creator of the video and the companies that need to have their antennas repaired from time to time seem oddly unwilling to unequivocally state this.

So essentially I unwittingly spread corporate propaganda that weakens worker's rights. Sorry about that.

thanks jonny

A better class of News.

thanks jonny

A cool mashup by RX2008

THe Jibblies, now I have them.

Happy 9/11

Let us wallow in the deaths of rich asshole bankers and DoD apparatchiks, bemoan how terrible it is a bloodthirsty and imperialistic foreign policy has consequences and then use our deliberate blindess to reality to justify killing 300 brown people for every 9/11 victim. USA! USA!

Time, now in an adult format

(yes I know this is old)