Category: Video
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Draw the Prophet
A Muslim student is asked to draw the Prophet in this short film set in France, a few days after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Jan 2015. See what he comes up with (5 min).
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‘What do we deserve?’ A Talk Hosted by Nirmukta, Chennai
Below is a talk I gave at Thinkfest 2015 to a classroom-sized audience on 26 Jan, 2015 (90 minutes). It was hosted by Nirmukta, dedicated to promoting science, freethought and secular humanism in South Asia. (NB: the audio in the first few minutes is choppy but fine thereafter.)
The topic I chose is “What do we deserve?” For our learning, natural talents, and labor, what rewards and entitlements can we fairly claim? This question is particularly relevant in market-based societies in which people tend to think they deserve both their success and their failure. I explore the fraught concepts of “merit” and “success”, and what outcomes we can take credit for or not. I present three leading models of economic justice by which a society might allocate its rewards—libertarian, meritocratic, egalitarian—and consider the pros and cons of each using examples from both India and the U.S. (Also read a companion essay to this video, and read a report on Thinkfest 2015.)
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Under the Dome
“Under the Dome” is a brilliant documentary on air pollution in China that has been seen by millions. Scary as hell. India is catching up fast and would do well to avoid some of China’s mistakes. Not likely though. Things are going to get much worse in India before people wake up.
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Sheena Iyengar on Choice
Sheena Iyengar’s excellent anthropological survey of “choice” across cultures, with special focus on its meaning in the U.S. She “studies how we make choices—and how we feel about the choices we make”, including “both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones” (18 mins).
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The Quantum Indians
A film on the life and work of three Indian scientists: Satyendra Nath Bose, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, and Meghnad Saha, “the significance of whose contributions are of vital importance even today in quantum physics, fibre optics, nuclear science or astrophysics.” The film’s biographical sketches are celebratory and tinged with patriotic pride, but it still furnishes an engaging overview of their life and work.
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Aftershocks: The Rough Guide to Democracy
Check out “Aftershocks: The Rough Guide to Democracy”, an engaging documentary film by Rakesh Sharma. Set in Kutch, Gujarat, it tells the story of people in two remote villages whose lives are plunged into upheaval by an earthquake, an apathetic state, corporate greed, religious myth, baseless optimism, and other human tragedies (64 mins, 2002). Sharma is better known for “The Final Solution”, a really good film on the 2002 Gujarat riots. You’ll find both films at his Vimeo channel.
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Mysteries of the Unseen World
“We live in a world of unseeable beauty, so subtle and delicate that it is imperceptible to the human eye. To bring this invisible world to light, filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg bends the boundaries of time and space with high-speed cameras, time lapses and microscopes. At TED2014, he shares highlights from his latest project, a 3D film titled Mysteries of the Unseen World, which slows down, speeds up, and magnifies the astonishing wonders of nature.” Must see.
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The Merchants of Death
Welcome to SOFEX (Special Operations Forces Exhibition) in Jordan, the premier international trade show of the global army industry, along with a training center sponsored by the U.S. and Jordan. “SOFEX is where the world’s leading generals come to buy everything from handguns to laser-guided missile systems.” Indeed, “just about anyone with enough money can buy the most powerful weapons in the world.”
I think the video report below is both well made and depressing. As the narrator says, 16 of the 20 largest arms manufacturers selling at SOFEX are American. “America gives a lot of these countries foreign aid,” he notes, “so they can come here and buy weapon systems from American companies … more often than not, they’re [using these weapons] against their own citizens. And thanks to the number of governments who are afraid of their own people, business is booming.” Pax Americana, baby!
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Of Vaginal Creams and Gels
Remember that absurd ad for the vaginal whitening cream launched in India in April 2012? At first I thought the clip below was a parody. I soon realized, to my horror, that this was a bonafide ad for another product: a vaginal tightening gel called “18 Again”. The louts behind this insidious marketing campaign—including one Priti Nair in a leadership role at an outfit called Curry Nation—say this gel’s “product positioning from a brand perspective is that of women empowerment”. Surreal, no? The product, made by Ultratech India, was apparently launched in Aug 2012 (I only saw this today) and attracted a fair bit of bad press, twitter venting, and scientific debunking of its claims back then.
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Shillong Chamber Choir
Here is an extraordinary find, the Shillong Chamber Choir, founded in 2001 and based in Shillong, Meghalaya, India. If you like this, sample more of their music on their website. Such a talented bunch with a versatile repertoire, and a great example of cultural globalization.
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An Uncommon History of the United States
For the most part, mainstream history in the United States has little in common with this trenchant narrative from a leftist perspective — and not because this has any less truth or clarity (23 mins). (They could have chosen a better title for this film though. 🙂
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Sugar: The Intimate Enemy
This brilliant talk by Dr. Robert Lustig persuasively argues that sugar, based on how our bodies metabolize it in the liver, is no less a poison than alcohol. He explains how our bodies process different carbohydrates like glucose, sucrose (table sugar), and fructose, and why sugar in the latter two forms is the primary cause of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and more. He also debunks many common myths of health and nutrition by showing that a calorie is not a calorie (its source is important), why exercising is not about burning calories but improving metabolism, why fat is nowhere near as bad as sugar, etc. Also read this review of the related new documentary, Fed Up.
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Omprakash Valmiki, RIP
Omprakash Valmiki, a leading Hindi writer and poet, died last week. He was 63 years old. He is best known for his memoir, Joothan, whose translation by Arun Mukherjee I reviewed some years ago. “It is a memoir of growing up ‘untouchable’ starting in the 1950s outside a typical village in Uttar Pradesh. Told as a series of piercing vignettes, Joothan is also a remarkable record of a rare Indian journey, one that took a boy from extremely wretched socioeconomic conditions to prominence as an author and social critic.” In this video in three parts (one, two, three), Valmiki reads some of his poems, which are powerful and moving.
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Black Venus: The Saartjie Baartman Story
Saartjie (or Sarah) Baartman isn’t a name that many will recognize, outside of her native South Africa. But her story seems to embody so much about historical (and modern) contradictions of race and gender, violence, fantasy, exploitation, and prejudice, that she’s become an icon for many, such as the founders of the Saartjie Baartman Center for Women and Children in South Africa.Baartman was a young Khoisan woman who traveled to England in 1810, when she was 20 years old, to become a performer. In England, she quickly became famous as the “Hottentot Venus,” the main attraction of a popular Piccadilly freak show exhibit, in which she presented herself as a wild savage tamed by her keeper. Dressed in a revealing bodysuit and beaded ornaments, she swaggered and growled for the audience, and turned to let them closely examine her famously prominent buttocks. Between performances, she lived comfortably, dressing as a European woman and going freely about town. She also fell to heavy drinking and her health declined. After a few years of this in England, she was sent to France, where her exploitation deepened, including her presentation as a biological specimen studied by leading scientists eager to promote their theory of white racial superiority. In France, she died of one or more undetermined infections at the age of 25.
The fact that the cause of her death remains uncertain is curious, given that after her death her remains were carefully examined, measured, and preserved in pieces. Of particular interest to these men of science who dissected her were her genitalia, which were separated and kept in a jar that was displayed in France’s National Museum until the late 20th century. In 2002, after calls from the South African government, her remains were finally repatriated and buried, surrounded by a great swell of national feeling and homage paid in speeches, song, and dance.
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PechaKucha #20, New Delhi
I spoke on the topic of “value” at a recent PechaKucha event in New Delhi, hosted by the Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, New Delhi on Aug 29, 2013. “PechaKucha 20×20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images.”Pecha Kucha Night #20: Value
We use the term value in two surprisingly contradictory ways in our everyday life: on the one hand, we speak of our valuables, market valuation, and other forms of economic worth, and on the other hand we speak of social, cultural and moral values. In generations past it was more or less accepted that these two forms of value could not be reconciled. The things one had to do to create economic value might simply remain in tension or opposition with one’s personal or familial values. Increasingly, however, we see that young people in India and around the world are trying to bring these two kinds of value into alignment with one another.
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Jackson Katz on Gender Issues
To commemorate Teacher’s Day today, here is a great talk on how men ought to approach “gender issues”, and the complicit silence and self-deception that pervades the lives of men. Obvious parallels here for upper-caste Indians on how to approach “caste issues”.
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Of Meenas, Migrants, and Medicine
By Usha Alexander (Also cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
Two days in south Rajasthan with AMRIT Health Services, a not-for-profit initiative
Religion of Peace?
Is Islam a religion of peace? On the occasion of Eid today, I thought of this recent and eloquent defense of Islam by British journalist Mehdi Hasan at a debate at the Oxford Union. Hasan was responding to the opposing views of Anne-Marie Waters, Peter Atkins, and Daniel Johnson. For the record, Hasan’s side (including Mathhew Handley and Adam Deen) won this heated debate 286-168.
In Dec 2012, Hasan also participated in a spirited interview / debate with Richard Dawkins on whether religion is a force for good or evil.
A New Green Revolution?
The Green Revolution of the 60s and 70s is best associated with higher yields through new innovations in agricultural science and technology. To attain its impressive results however, the new farming practices used synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides which ravaged the soil, damaged ecosystems, polluted groundwater, encouraged crop monocultures, and raised the incidence of certain diseases. The resulting land degradation fueled the search for new land and deforestation. In other words, modern intensive farming practices are not sustainable, and various experiments worldwide have tried to make them sustainable while increasing yields at lower cost — the agricultural holy grail.
Here is a promising Al-Jazeera story about “two million farmers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh [who] have ditched chemical pesticides in favour of natural repellants and fertilisers, as part of a growing eco-agriculture movement [that] has improved soil health and biodiversity, reduced costs and upped yields.” Could this catch on more widely?
Monbiot on Carbon Omissions
In 2006, China surpassed the U.S. to become the leading producer of green house emissions. But a big reason for its higher emissions is that China has become the industrial heartland of the world. Developed countries that claim to have reduced carbon emissions have, in effect, shifted their factories and pollution to China (this is one outsourcing no politician in the U.S. complains about). As consumers, all of us are now a party to China’s green house emissions. Each time we buy a plastic toy, a blender, or an iPhone, we inject a blast of CO2 over China.
In a new article and the animation below, George Monbiot describes the bogus accounting that’s de rigueur in measuring carbon emissions. It only accounts for territorial emissions, not outsourced emissions. With proper accounting that’s linked to consumption, the U.S. is still way ahead of China in its contribution to climate change. The difference is even starker if we consider emissions per capita.
When nations negotiate global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, they are held responsible only for the gases produced within their own borders. Partly as a result of this convention, these tend to be the only ones that countries count. When these “territorial emissions” fall, they congratulate themselves on reducing their carbon footprints. But as markets of all kinds have been globalised, and as manufacturing migrates from rich nations to poorer ones, territorial accounting bears ever less relationship to our real impacts.
