Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street (Marije Meerman, VPRO Backlight 2010)

VPROinternational

Quants are the math wizards and computer programmers in the engine room of our global financial system who designed the financial products that almost crashed Wall st. The credit crunch has shown how the global financial system has become increasingly dependent on mathematical models trying to quantify human (economic) behaviour. Now the quants are at the heart of yet another technological revolution in finance: trading at the speed of light.

What are the risks of treating the economy and its markets as a complex machine? Will we be able to keep control of this model-based financial system, or have we created a monster?

A story about greed, fear and randomness from the insides of Wall Street.

Director: Marije Meerman
Research: Gerko Wessel

The Frinky Science of the Human Mind

StanfordUniversity

Baba Shiv delves into the surprising workings of the brain during his lecture. "Frinky", a combination of "freaky" and "funky" was an apt descriptor for the mental experiments he describes. Deftly incorporating the anatomy of the brain, Shiv makes the case that emoitional responses are vital to responsible decision making, and that -- despite popular belief -- rational thought is perhaps not all it's cracked up to be.

Author and Activist Derrick Jensen: "The Dominant Culture is Killing the Planet...It’s Very Important for Us to Start to Build a Culture of Resistance"

We speak with Derrick Jensen, who has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement. He has written some 15 books critiquing contemporary society and the destruction of the environment. His many books include A Language Older than Words, Endgame, What We Left Behind, Resistance against Empire, and Deep Green Resistance. "I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet," Jensen says. "I think it’s very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we’re doing isn’t working, clearly."
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/26/author_and_activist_derrick_jensen_the

Analogy as the Core of Cognition

StanfordUniversity

Presidential Lecture, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter examines the role and contributions of analogy in cognition, using a variety of analogies to illustrate his points.
http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html

George Lakoff "The Brain and Its Politics"

UOregon

George Lakoff is the co-founder of the Rockridge Institute, a think tank for progressive politics and public policies. His talk surveys basic findings about what human reason is really like and shows why this matters in politics. Over the past 30 years, Lakoff posits, cognitive and brain sciences have shown that human reason --instead of being conscious and logical — takes place mostly below the level of consciousness and is much more interesting and complex than was once believed.

El Video Que BP, No Quiere Que Veas.

El Video Que BP, No Quiere Que Veas. from Teotl Nahualli on Vimeo.

El Video Que BP, No Quiere Que Veas, sobre el derrame de petroleo en el Golfo de México.
Pero gracias VIMEO y al Internet esta a tu alcance !!
** BP = British Petroleum

British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, "Our Kind of Traitor"

Today, we spend the hour with world-renowned British novelist John le Carré, the pen name of David Cornwell. Le Carré’s writing career spans half a century, during which he has established himself as a master spy writer. His latest novel, his twenty-second, is entitled Our Kind of Traitor. David Cornwell worked in the British Secret Services from the late 1950s until the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became an international bestseller. As the Cold War ended, le Carré continued to write prolifically, shifting focus to the inequities of globalization, unchecked multinational corporate power, and the role national spy services play in protecting corporate interests. "The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done—dare I say it—in the name of God," le Carré tells Democracy Now! Perhaps best known among his many post-Cold War novels is The Constant Gardener, depicting a pharmaceutical company’s exploitation of unwitting Kenyans for dangerous, sometimes fatal, drug tests. In this rare US interview, le Carré also discusses Tony Blair’s role in the Iraq war, US policy toward Iran, and international money laundering.
http://www.democracynow.org/