Category: People

Who is kidding who?

A frank and honest assessment of the reality of the present economic situation.

The next two days see me publishing, in two parts, a recent article from the Blogsite, Washington’s Blog.  Perhaps one can’t blame the efforts of so many of the western governments’ leaders to talk up the economy but at street level the vast majority of people feel pain about their circumstances.

The particular post that appeared on Washington’s Blog on the 28th April was entitled Gallup Poll Shows that More Americans Believe the U.S. is in a Depression than is Growing … Are They Right? You can link to it here. It is detailed and comprehensive, which is why I think it will be more easily digested as two parts presented on Learning from Dogs over this week-end.

Here’s the first part.

Consumer confidence is, well … in somewhat of a depression.

Reuters reports today:

The April 20-23 Gallup survey of 1,013 U.S. adults found that only 27 percent said the economy is growing. Twenty-nine percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is “slowing down,” Gallup said.

Tyler Durden notes:

That means that more Americans think the country is in a Depression, let alone recession, than growing.

How can so many Americans believe that we’re in a depression, when the stock market and commodity prices have been booming?

As I noted last week:

Instead of directly helping the American people, the government threwtrillions at the giant banks (including foreign banks; and see this) . The big banks have – in turn – used a lot of that money to speculate in commodities, including food and other items which are now driving up the price of consumer necessities [as well as stocks]. Instead of using the money to hire Americans, they’re hiring abroad (and getting tax refunds from the government).

But don’t rising stock prices help create wealth?

Not really. As I pointed out in January:

A rising stock market doesn’t help the average American as much as you might assume.

For example, Robert Shiller noted in 2001:

We have examined the wealth effect with a cross-sectional time-series data sets that are more comprehensive than any applied to the wealth effect before and with a number of different econometric specifications. The statistical results are variable depending on econometric specification, and so any conclusion must be tentative. Nevertheless, the evidence of a stock market wealth effect is weak; the common presumption that there is strong evidence for the wealth effect is not supported in our results. However, we do find strong evidence that variations in housing market wealth have important effects upon consumption. This evidence arises consistently using panels of U.S. states and individual countries and is robust to differences in model specification. The housing market appears to be more important than the stock market in influencing consumption in developed countries.

I pointed out in March:

Even Alan Greenspan recently called the recovery “extremely unbalanced,” driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

***

As economics professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reichwrites today in an outstanding piece:

Some cheerleaders say rising stock prices make consumers feel wealthier and therefore readier to spend. But to the extent most Americans have any assets at all their net worth is mostly in their homes, and those homes are still worth less than they were in 2007. The “wealth effect” is relevant mainly to the richest 10 percent of Americans, most of whose net worth is in stocks and bonds.

I noted in May:

As of 2007, the bottom 50% of the U.S. population owned only one-half of one percent of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds in the U.S. On the other hand, the top 1% owned owned 50.9%.

***

(Of course, the divergence between the wealthiest and the rest has only increased since 2007.)

And last month Professor G. William Domhoff updated his “Who Rules America” study, showing that the richest 10% own 98.5% of all financial securities, and that:

The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.

Indeed, most stocks are held for only a couple of moments – and aren’t held by mom and pop investors.

How Bad?

How bad are things for the little guy?

Well, as I noted in January, the housing slump is worse than during the Great Depression.

As CNN Money points out today:

Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.

“We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.

Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said.

“Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.

And – in case you still think that the 29% of Americans who think we’re in a depression are unduly pessimistic – take a look at what I wrote last December:

The following experts have – at some point during the last 2 years – said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

***

States and Cities In Worst Shape Since the Great Depression

States and cities are in dire financial straits, and many may default in 2011.

California is issuing IOUs for only the second time since the Great Depression.

Things haven’t been this bad for state and local governments since the 30s.

Loan Loss Rate Higher than During the Great Depression

In October 2009, I reported:

In May, analyst Mike Mayo predicted that the bank loan loss rate would be higher than during the Great Depression.

In a new report, Moody’s has just confirmed (as summarized by Zero Hedge):

The most recent rate of bank charge offs, which hit $45 billion in the past quarter, and have now reached a total of $116 billion, is at 3.4%, which is substantially higher than the 2.25% hit in 1932, before peaking at at 3.4% rate by 1934.

And see this.

Here’s a chart summarizing the findings:

(click here for full chart).

Indeed, top economists such as Anna Schwartz, James Galbraith, Nouriel Roubini and others have pointed out that while banks faced a liquidity crisis during the Great Depression, today they are wholly insolvent. See this, this,this and this. Insolvency is much more severe than a shortage of liquidity.
Unemployment at or Near Depression Levels

USA Today reports today:

So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.

Citing what it calls “an unprecedented rise” in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.

***

The change is a sign that bureau officials “are afraid that a cap of two years may be ‘understating the true average duration’ — but they won’t know by how much until they raise the upper limit,” says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

***

“The BLS doesn’t make such changes lightly,” Barrington says. Stacey Standish, a bureau assistant press officer, says the two-year limit has been used for 33 years.

***

Although “this feels like something we’ve not experienced” since the Great Depression, she says, economists need more information to be sure.

The following chart from Calculated Risk shows that this is not a normal spike in unemployment:

As does this chart from Clusterstock:


As I noted in October:

It is difficult to compare current unemployment with that during the Great Depression. In the Depression, unemployment numbers weren’t tracked very consistently, and the U-3 and U-6 statistics we use today weren’t used back then. And statistical “adjustments” such as the “birth-death model” are being used today that weren’t used in the 1930s.

But let’s discuss the facts we do know.

The Wall Street Journal noted in July 2009:

The average length of unemployment is higher than it’s been since government began tracking the data in 1948.

***

The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

The Christian Science Monitor wrote an article in June entitled, “Length of unemployment reaches Great Depression levels“.

60 Minutes – in a must-watch segment – notes that our current situation tops the Great Depression in one respect: never have we had a recession this deep with a recovery this flat. 60 Minutes points out that unemployment has been at 9.5% or above for 14 months:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy notes in Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945(Oxford, 1999) that – during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, more than 13 million Americans lost their jobs. Of those, 62% found themselves out of work for longer than a year; 44% longer than two years; 24%longer than three years; and 11% longer than four years.

Part Two tomorrow.

The power of shine!

A delightful presentation by Terry Hershey.

Regular followers of Learning from Dogs will recall that in March we had the pleasure of a visit to St Paul’s Episcopal Church, here in Payson, of the well-known Terry Hershey.  He is a great inspirational speaker, based on deep and sound personal values.  Terry’s website is here.

Well it seemed like a nice idea to offer some more of TH.  Here is his presentation on World Communion Day, October 4th 2009, at the First Community Church, Columbus, Ohio.  Letting the light that is in each one of us shine out.

Part One

Part Two

Still on the theme of this Blog

More on why this Blog gets written.

Last Wednesday, I set out to explain why the blog is called Learning from Dogs.  If you missed that then it is here.  The focus was on the very special relationship between man and dog that goes back thousands of years.  It has been a critically important relationship for both species.

But there is another aspect to this Blog, as follows: The relationship between dogs and man goes back thousands of years. The theory is that dogs were domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago although DNA evidence suggests dogs split away from the grey wolf around 100,000 years ago.  Certainly, the dog was the first animal to be domesticated by man. In fact, some archaeologists speculate that man could not have been a successful ‘hunter-gatherer’ without his relationship with the dog and thus been able to progress to farming the earth for food.

The relationship between Planet Earth and man, as in H. sapiens, goes back around 200,000 years. There is little doubt that most people, even with a minimum of awareness about the world that we live in, are deeply worried. On so many fronts there are forbidding and scary views. It feels as though all the certainty of past times has gone; as if all the trusted models of society are now broken. Whether we are talking politics, economics, employment or the environment, nothing seems to be working.

Why is this? What’s the cause?

It would be easy to condemn man’s drive for progress and an insatiable self-centredness as root causes. But it’s not the case.

The root cause is clear. It is this. How mankind has developed is the result of mankind’s behaviours. All of us behave in many ways that are hugely damaging to the survival of our species. It is likely that these behaviours are little unchanged over thousands of years.

But 2000 years ago, the global population of man was just 300 million.

Twelve-hundred years later, in 1800, it was 1 billion. In 1927, just 127 years later, the two-billionth baby was born. In 1960, only 33 years on, the three-billionth baby. (Remember the moon landing in 1969?  Well, of course you do!  There were about three and a half billion people on the planet!)

Just 16 years on, in 1974, the four-billionth baby was born. In 1987, 13 years later, five billion. Around October 1999, the sixth-billionth baby was born!

It’s trending to a billion every decade. 100 million population growth every year, or about 270,000 every single day!

Combine man’s behaviours with this growth of population and we have the present situation. A totally unsustainable situation disconnected from the planet that supports us.

The only viable solution is to amend our behaviours. To tap into the powers of integrity, self-awareness and mindfulness and change our game.

We all have to work with the fundamental, primary relationships we have with each other and with the planet upon which we all depend. We need a level of consciousness with each other and with the living, breathing planet that will empower change. We need spiritual enlightenment on a grand scale.

That’s why we have so much to learn from dogs. They are man’s best friend. They are man’s oldest friend. They have a relationship with us that is very special; almost certainly telepathic. They can show us how we need to live our lives.

Man's oldest, and wisest, friend.

That’s the real reason why this Blog gets written.  Phew! Glad that’s off my chest!

Chernobly, Fukushima and change.

From out of darkness has to come the dawn

One side effect of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Northern Japan on the 11th March causing an explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power station is that the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is much more a news item than I suspect it might have been.

The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Russia occurred on the 26th April, 1986, twenty-five years ago today.  One major difference between the two disasters was, of course, how they were reported.

Here’s a small extract from a fuller article in The Financial Times published on the 19th April written by Tony Barber who was in Russia those 25 years ago.

Twenty-five years after the explosion at the Ukrainian facility, I vividly recall every detail of those terrible days of April 1986. I was a 26-year-old foreign correspondent working in Moscow for Reuters news agency. On Friday, April 25, I flew to Kiev to spend a couple of days with Rhona, an ebullient Scottish friend who was teaching at the city’s university under a British Council programme. I was the only western journalist in Kiev that weekend.

While we caroused the night away, extraordinary events were unfolding 130km to the north. Technicians were conducting experiments that involved the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms at the plant’s fourth reactor. After a tremendous power surge, the reactor blew up at 1.23am on Saturday, April 26.

Except for high-ranking Communist party officials, the KGB and a number of scientists, doctors and fire-fighters, no one in the Soviet Union, let alone the wider world, knew anything about this. Soviet habits of secrecy and deception kept millions of people in the dark even as radiation spread across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and beyond.

Certainly the disaster in Japan was widely broadcast across the world without any delays or restraints.  But the thrust of this Post today is to point out what, in the end, will have to be understood by the majority of the world’s peoples and their representatives in power.  That is that our dependence, our love affair, with cheap carbon-based energy has to come to an end, and soon.

On the 26th March, The Economist published a briefing on nuclear power entitled, When the steam clears.  As with so many of this newspaper’s essays, it was very well written [I am a subscriber to The Economist; have been for years.]  Here’s a taste of the article,

When last year a volcano closed the skies over Europe and a blown-out oil-rig turned the Gulf of Mexico black, there was no widespread enthusiasm for giving up oil or air travel. But nuclear power is much less fundamental to the workings of the world than petrol or aeroplanes. Nuclear reactors generate only 14% of the world’s electricity, and with a median age of about 27 years (see chart) and a typical design life of 40 a lot are nearing retirement. Although the world is eager to fly and thirsts for oil, it has had little appetite for new nuclear power for the past quarter of a century.

And towards the end of the article, this,

Distressing though it is, the crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi is not in itself a reason for the world to change energy policy. The public-health effects seem likely, in the long run, to be small. Coal, with its emissions of sulphur, mercury and soot, will continue to kill far more people per kilowatt hour than nuclear does. But as an opportunity to reflect it may be welcome.  [my italics]

Power of hope

We need a continued growing awareness of the craziness of using coal and oil as primary sources of energy, and from that awareness a growing political pressure for change.  Change that recognises that mankind’s present energy strategies of continuing to pump carbon-based gases into the atmosphere are insane; pure and simple.

We need more of these examples:

Science Daily

University of Minnesota researchers are a key step closer to making renewable petroleum fuels using bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Scientific American magazine

As the world continues to grapple with energy-related pollution and poverty, can innovation help?

The clock is ticking, as I wrote here a few days ago.

Earth Day and The 11th Hour

Some very thought-provoking ideas.

John H, a good friend of us here in Payson, lent us the Leonardo DiCaprio film The 11th Hour.  More information on the film’s website.  Here’s the trailer,

The plot of the film, if plot is the right word, is as follows,

With contributions from over 50 politicians, scientists, and environmental activists, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and journalist Paul Hawken, the film documents the grave problems facing the planet’s life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans’ habitats are all addressed. The film’s premise is that the future of humanity is in jeopardy.

The film proposes potential solutions to these problems by calling for restorative action by the reshaping and rethinking of global human activity through technology, social responsibility and conservation.

Whether or not you watch the film, and I strongly suggest you do, the action website that supports making a difference is For the Love of Action.  Drop in and make your own mind up.

Following on from that film is this apt reminder of the world we have created.  I tend to write articles a few days ahead of the publish date, so it wasn’t possible to have this post come out on the 20th April, last Wednesday, which was Earth Day.  Shame.  Because as this email from the Alaska Wilderness League pointed out, it’s also a sad reminder of our love affair with oil.

Dear Paul,

The next Deepwater Horizon could be amid the broken sea ice and polar bear habitat of America’s Arctic: unless we prevent it now. Donate to the League.

It was one year ago today. I remember sitting in my living room after dinner when the news alert flashed across the screen:Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico; 11 workers dead or missing. 

Huddled around the office television the next morning, there was no way we could anticipate the true magnitude of the disaster. Images of ruined lives and tarnished lands poured out of the Gulf formonths on end. As the oil industry’s feeble attempts to contain the destruction grew evermore cartoony – ‘top hat,’ ‘junk shot,’ ‘top kill’ – we learned just how little they had prepared for the eventual catastrophe of an oil spill.

Our government rubber-stamped the faulty plans for this oil rig. They had a chance to prevent this disaster, but didn’t. What’s worse: they continue to approve plans for America’s Arctic that are functionally identical to the plans that caused the Gulf disaster. America’s Arctic could be our next Deepwater Horizon tragedy. The effects of deadly crude oil spilling into the broken sea ice and polar bear habitat of America’s Arctic would be disastrous: unless we stop it.

We are fighting the next horrifying oil spill every step of the way. Help us prevent it – donate now! 

When Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf, the League had just completed a campaign to highlight the incredible annual migration of Arctic birds that begins in the Arctic Refuge and extends through each U.S. state. Some of these birds fly as far as the southern tip of Argentina! Many of them rely on critical nesting grounds around the Gulf of Mexico.

The League moved quickly to save these birds, distributing ‘Arctic Garden Kits’ to help donors across the country to provide sustenance and shelter to Arctic birds in their own backyards. Proceeds from the fundraiser helped us fight faulty plans from moving forward in America’s Arctic for the last two summers.

Shell Oil, the biggest threat for Arctic drilling, remains undaunted by our success. Their drilling plans for 2012 have ballooned from one drill rig to six. This is their big move – their cards are on the table. We need your help and support to go over the top to stop their escalating plans.

Help us stop the next disaster in America’s Arctic. Give today.

The way in which the League responded to the Gulf disaster – stemming the damage to wildlife and preventing the next disaster – was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. You have a chance to be a part of this continuing work. Help us save America’s Arctic before it suffers the fate of another Deepwater Horizon.

Thank you for all that you do,

Cindy Shogan
Executive Director
Alaska Wilderness League

Finally, let me close rather pointedly, perhaps, by this video of the fires in Texas which are burning out of control and have already scorched 1.6 million acres.; long-term drought being part of the cause.

Beautiful minds, today Stephen Hawking

The second of two fascinating films about two very beautiful minds, Hugh Everett III and Stephen Hawking.

I am slightly hesitant in pursuing this, after my article about Hugh Everett on the 19th.  Said slightly tongue-in-cheek following a fascinating, as always, exchange of comments with Patrice Ayme.  Here’s a taste of Ayme’s writings, and here’s the exchange,

Patrice first wrote,

The question is: what happened? The multiverse answer is that, whatever it is, it happened in one universe, and it did not happen, in another universe. And if it is not a matter of discrete choice, as in a 2 slit experiment, an uncountable number of universes will be created. In other words, if one wants a proof of the insanity of some of today’s physicists, the multiverse is all we need. According to this lamentable spasm of the mind, during every single, smallest amount of time imaginable, an uncountable infinity of universes appear.

OK, the inflationary universe has the same problem, and is about as insane. But being surrounded by mad men does not excuse one’s own insanity. So we shall laugh.

To which I replied,

Dear Patrice, the challenge presented at this end, in terms of how to evaluate your comment, is that your anonymous profile (that is truly respected, by the way) makes it impossible to determine your academic and social backgrounds. Therefore are you replying from the position of a great thinker, or of a great thinker with significant scientific and philosophical accreditations? Your writings are powerful and impressive but nonetheless to assume (as I read into your approach) that the world of quantum physics is a ‘done deal’ is not something I can share. I anticipate that you will feel similarly ready to laugh on Thursday when I publish some words on Stephen Hawking. ;-)

Eliciting a further very thoughtful reply from PA,

Thoughts have to learn to stand on their own. The authority fallacy (if you forgive this neo sentence) is no ersatz for truth. Some (previously) immensely respected physics Nobel prizes were member of the Nazi party before Hitler. That did not make their physics any less insane.

Most top thinkers of the scientific revolution in the 17C were not respected tenured professors at the university (although Galileo and Newton were, not so for Kepler, Bruno,Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Leibnitz…). We have no historical distantiation to judge what’s going on now.

I respect some of the work of Hawking. And certainly respect him tremendously as a person (although he dumped his wife for his nurse).

I appreciate the fact you tease me with Quantum Mechanics as a “done deal”. I actually believe that QM is the most precise theory we have, but it’s most certainly false or crazy as Newton basically said about his own theory of gravitation, and pretty much for the same reasons… This shows that I have to express myself more clearly…

In any case QM got no traction with the Quantum computer, so far. To say the least, many questions have been found to not be answered…

As far as accreditations are concerned, I will refer to the PhDs of Qaddafi’s children, and the movie “Ghostwriter”. Speaking of Harvard, what about Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”, of an incredibly low scholarly level, and the numerous professors there on Qaddafi’s payroll? Does that mean they were accreditated by Qaddafi?

I am quite familiar with academia, and I think too much credit is given, quite often.

I am going to put a more extended version of my various remarks on my site, insisting on the fact QM, however impressive, is no deal. The multiverse was a desperate attempt to make it a deal, precisely, as it was made to eschew the problem of the non existence of a detailled mechanism of wave packet collapse. [Ironically I was once punished on a “philosophy” site for saying that QM was a live subject of research; I never went back to that site, which has academic pretentions: they had told me they checked with physics professors…]

Best wishes to you too, and I look forward chewing on Hawking very slowly… meanwhile I shall put my anti-multiverse blast on my site…

So here goes!

Prof. Hawking

Professor Stephen William Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England.  His own website has a nice summary of his life which may be read here.  There is a huge amount that could be written about this most amazing man.  His book A Brief History of Time has sold in the millions which for a man who deals with some pretty big personal challenges, is no small feat.  Here’s a relatively recent talk (2008) from TED2008,

But like the Hugh Everett posting, I wanted to draw your attention to the 48 minute programme, originally from the BBC Horizon series, that explores some of the challenges that are starting to appear to Hawking’s long-held theories about the start of the universe.

The film may be watched from here.

Why the Blog is called Learning from Dogs.

A reflection on the starting point of this Blog.

It struck me recently that many of you readers that come to Learning from Dogs on a regular basis, say, over the last 18 months, may not be clear as to why it’s called what it is, and the deeper issues behind the name.

First, the name.  Quite a few years ago I was sitting chatting with Jon Lavin, the co-founder of the Blog, in his home in South-West England.  My German Shepherd, Pharaoh (that’s him on the home page) was sleeping on the floor while Jon and I were nattering about the works of Dr David Hawkins of Veritas Publishing.  Jon mentioned that David Hawkins had measured the consciousness of dogs and that they came out about 205.  In other words they were integrous creatures and firmly on the truthful side of the boundary between truth and falsehood.

I was fascinated by that idea.  Later, back at my home, less than an hour away from Jon’s house, I was idly looking at domain names that were available, and imagine my glee when I discovered that learningfromdogs (dot) com was free.  It was rapidly grabbed.

A rather chaotic period of my life descended upon me but the notion that we have much to learn from dogs stayed with me.  Much later, when I was happily settled with Jean, the vision and purpose of the Blog got me under way.  The first post was published on 15th July, 2009.

The ideas behind the theme that dogs have an extraordinary relationship with man is contained in a very early piece written for the Blog back in July 19th, 2009.  That article is called Dogs and integrity.  But nothings stays still.  In that piece, I wrote,

Because of this closeness between dogs and man, we (as in man!) have the ability to observe the way they live.  Now I’m sure that scientists would cringe with the idea that the way that a dog lives his life sets an example for us humans, well cringe in the scientific sense.

However, on Sunday evening we watched a video from PBS that showed that scientists are now taking a very close interest in dogs and why they have such a special relationship with man, perhaps even a critical part in enabling man to prosper as hunter-gatherers.  Here’s a preview of that video programme.

Unfortunately, the video is not freely available from PBS.  However, it was based on the BBC Horizon programme, The Secret Life of the Dog, which I wrote about back in the 25th January, 2011.  (The YouTube link on that post appears to have been curtailed.)

Luckily there are a couple of options to watch this fascinating and very revealing documentary.  You can either watch it in sections from YouTube, the first 10 minutes is below, or you can watch it in full, if you don’t mind some Chinese translations here.  Your choice.

That’s enough for today, I shall return to this theme next week.

Beautiful minds; Hugh Everett

Two fascinating films about two very beautiful minds, Hugh Everett III and Stephen Hawking.

Hugh Everett III

A documentary on PBS entitled Parallel World, Parallel Lives traces in a deeply personal way, the efforts of the son of Hugh Everett, Mark Oliver Everett, to find out more about his father, who died in 1982, just 51 years old.  Mark Everett is an accomplished musician and much of his music makes it onto the soundtrack of the film. Here’s a brief extract from an article from Scientific American.

Hugh Everett III

Hugh Everett III was a brilliant mathematician, an iconoclastic quantum theorist and, later, a successful defense contractor with access to the nation’s most sensitive military secrets. He introduced a new conception of reality to physics and influenced the course of world history at a time when nuclear Armageddon loomed large. To science-fiction aficionados, he remains a folk hero: the man who invented a quantum theory of multiple universes. To his children, he was someone else again: an emotionally unavailable father; “a lump of furniture sitting at the dining room table,” cigarette in hand.

Here’s a taste of the film from YouTube.

But you may prefer to watch the whole programme, courtesy of Top Documentary Films.

A fascinating programme and one which shows great courage and bravery from Mark Everett in dealing with his memories and emotions about a brilliant but emotionally flawed father.

Thursday, Stephen Hawking.

Man’s first orbit around Planet Earth.

A wonderful tribute to Yuri Gagarin and all his team.

When I recently wrote of it being 41 years since Swigert on board Apollo 13 transmitted “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” I also included a closing reflection as follows,

Finally, this Post is published, not only on the 41st anniversary of that memorable Apollo Flight but the day after the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight of a human into space, the 12th April, 1961.

Coincidentally, our favourite documentary film website, Top Documentary Films, featured on April 14th the new film First Orbit.  We watched the film that night.  It was a most unusual format for a film, yet a most haunting experience.  Watching the credits, it then became clear that the film was a co-operative venture made especially for the 50th anniversary of that remarkable, historic flight.

Of course, had I previously been aware of the venture and this remarkable film then it would have been promoted on Learning from Dogs in good time before the anniversary date.  However, better late than never!

Indeed, there is a dedicated website in recognition of this First Orbit.  Here’s the background to the film,

April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of humanity – the Earth from space. In the next 108 minutes he’ll see more than most people do in a lifetime. What sights awaited the first cosmonaut silently gliding over the world below? What was it like to view the oceans and continents sailing by from such a height?

In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of theInternational Space Station, we have created a new film of what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.

By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin’s Vostok 1spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.

Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary.

The music in the film is most beautiful, quite moving.  Here’s the background to the music from the First Orbit website,

The music in our film is all composed by Philip Sheppard and comes from his album Cloud Songs.

First Orbit’s producer Christopher Riley first worked with Philip in 2006 on the Sundance Award winning feature documentary film ‘In the Shadow of the Moon‘ and since then Philip had been working on a new suite of music inspired by spaceflight.

“We’d been working with some of these tracks on another project” says Chris, “and we suddenly realised how perfectly they could compliment ‘First Orbit’ as well. We contacted Philip to ask his permission to use them, only to find that his entire Cloud Song album was already in orbit onboard the International Space Station!”

“NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, had them on her iPod” says Philip. “Her husband Josh Simpson is a friend of mine and they’d listened to a lot of my music together before she left, so I made up a playlist for her!”

Quite by coincidence Cady had been listening to the music in ‘First Orbit’ at one end of the Space Station whilst European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli was shooting for the film at the other end, without either of them knowing the connection!

Back on Earth Chris and the film’s editor Stephen Slater took Philip’s tracks from Cloud Song and weaved them together with Paolo’s new views of the Earth to create the different moods of the film; from the first views of snowy Siberia to the darkness of night over the Pacific Ocean and the homecoming over Africa, as Gagarin starts to re-enter the atmosphere.

The result is a mesmerising combination of imagary and music which we hope convey the spectrum of emotions which no doubt went through Yuri’s mind as he gazed down upon the Earth.

Finally, here’s the film. It’s an hour and thirty-nine minutes and, as I said, an unconventional film experience.  But if any part of you either remembers the event or wonders what it was like, those 50 years ago, then find somewhere out of reach of interruptions and watch the film.

Socrates and self-confidence

A presentation by Alain de Botton.

On April 12th, I introduced to you, dear reader, the philosopher, Alain de Botton. I promised that I would soon give you more.

On Top Documentary Films, there are links to all six parts of a series on philosophy presented by this popular British philosopher  featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.

The first part is about Socrates; Socrates and self-confidence.  But before linking to that specific programme, a little about this enigmatic man, Socrates, who lived about 2,500 years ago (469–399 B.C.E).  Here’s an extract from the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.), an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic for the philosophic life and, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the admiration and emulation normally reserved for founders of religious sects—Jesus or Buddha—strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.

Full entry may be read here, and very interesting it is, by the way.

Anyway, back to the programme from Alain de Botton.  The part on Socrates is introduced thus,

Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own.

You can either watch the video by clicking here, or view it as three sections from YouTube, as follows.