It’s the Tax Code, Stupid: Niall Ferguson Solves Our Economic Mess

in Animation, Economics | November 10th, 2011

Don’t blame the lamestream media for this one. When it comes to our pro­tract­ed eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, there is ulti­mate­ly one place to point the fin­ger: It’s those pesky main­stream econ­o­mists.

That’s the con­clu­sion of Niall Fer­gu­son, his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Har­vard and author of The Ascent of Mon­ey: A Finan­cial His­to­ry of the World. Fer­gu­son makes his point in the first install­ment of a new ani­mat­ed series of “Op-Vids” from The Dai­ly Beast. “What is an Op-Vid,” writes The Dai­ly Beast on Vimeo? “Opin­ion, with­out the pun­dits yelling. Hand­made ani­ma­tion, with­out the car­i­ca­tures. Essays with­out the text. Com­plex top­ics, with­out the bor­ing.” With­out the bor­ing what? Com­plex­i­ty?

Fer­gu­son makes some curi­ous claims. He admits that stim­u­lus spend­ing has worked up to a point: It helped avoid anoth­er Great Depres­sion. But it didn’t cre­ate a sus­tained recov­ery. Why? Because there wasn’t enough of it? No. Because it leaks. In a glob­al econ­o­my, Fer­gu­son argues, you would need chaos the­o­ry to under­stand where the stim­u­lus actu­al­ly ends up. Even more curi­ous­ly, Fer­gu­son argues that ris­ing income inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca “lim­its the effec­tive­ness of Key­ne­sian poli­cies, because they need aver­age house­holds to boost their spend­ing.” (So you can for­get about hir­ing teach­ers, fire­fight­ers or con­struc­tion work­ers; that wouldn’t help “aver­age” house­holds spend more.)

Hav­ing thus defeat­ed Key­ne­sian­ism, Fer­gu­son moves on to offer a solu­tion: Sim­pli­fy the tax code. Nev­er mind the short­fall in aggre­gate demand for goods and ser­vices. Nev­er mind that corporations–sitting on $2 tril­lion in unin­vest­ed cash reserves–have main­tained near-record prof­its despite the short­fall by cut­ting pro­duc­tion and lay­ing off work­ers. Sim­pli­fy the tax code, says Fer­gu­son, and Amer­i­can com­pa­nies will hire more Amer­i­can work­ers. Prob­lem solved.

As a foot­note, it’s worth point­ing out that in ear­ly 2009 Fer­gu­son was involved in a very pub­lic debate with Prince­ton econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man over the effec­tive­ness of fis­cal expan­sion. Fer­gu­son argued that gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing would dam­age the econ­o­my by dri­ving up inter­est rates. Near­ly three years lat­er, inter­est rates have remained very low. Look­ing back on the debate, Krug­man said of Fer­gu­son, “He does­n’t under­stand Macro­eco­nom­ics 101.”

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Visualizing Bach: Alexander Chen’s Impossible Harp

in Animation, Math, Music | November 8th, 2011

“Music,” Got­tfried Leib­niz famous­ly said, “is the plea­sure the human mind expe­ri­ences from count­ing with­out being aware that it is count­ing.” Com­put­er artist Alexan­der Chen makes this plea­sure vis­i­ble with Baroque.Me, his geo­met­ric com­put­er ani­ma­tion of the Pre­lude to Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G major.

Chen visu­al­ized the piece by imag­in­ing a harp with strings that would auto­mat­i­cal­ly morph into dif­fer­ent lengths accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of Pythagore­an tun­ing. “It’s math based on the frac­tion 2/3,” writes Chen on his blog. “I start­ed with the longest string, set­ting it to a sym­bol­ic length of pix­els. When cut to 2/3 length, it goes up a fifth. Cut its length by 1/2 and it goes up an octave. 3/4 length, one fourth. From these sim­ple num­bers I cal­cu­lat­ed the rel­a­tive string lengths of all the notes in the piece.” He used eight strings because the Pre­lude’s phras­ing is in groups of eight notes. The strings are “plucked” by two sym­met­ri­cal pairs of nodes that revolve at a uni­form rate, rather like a dig­i­tal music box.

Chen, 30, lives in Brook­lyn, NY, and works in the Google Cre­ative Lab. One of his most pop­u­lar pieces for Google was the Les Paul Doo­dle, which allows users to dig­i­tal­ly strum the gui­tar strings. Chen grew up learn­ing music and com­put­er pro­gram­ming in par­al­lel. He plays the clas­si­cal vio­la, but with the Bach ani­ma­tion he want­ed to remove the per­former’s inter­pre­tive ele­ment from the music. “It’s a piece that I’ve heard a lot since I was a kid,” Chen told the BBC recent­ly. (See the “Math­e­mat­i­cal Music” pod­cast, Nov. 3.) “Peo­ple always bring dif­fer­ent lev­els of expres­sion to it. Peo­ple play to dif­fer­ent tem­pos and they add a lot of dynam­ics, or less dynam­ics. But what I want­ed to let the com­put­er do was just kind of to play in a real­ly neu­tral way, because what I real­ly want­ed to express was how much emo­tion and inten­si­ty is just in the data of the notes them­selves. I think that’s real­ly where the beau­ty of the piece at its core is.”

To hear the Pre­lude with the inter­pre­tive ele­ment back in, you can watch this video of Pablo Casals per­form­ing it in 1954:

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Duelity: Creationist and Darwinist Origin Stories Animated

in Animation, Religion, Science | November 3rd, 2011

Pro­duced at the Van­cou­ver Film School, this split-screen ani­ma­tion tells the sto­ry of Earth’ s ori­gins from a cre­ation­ist and Darwinist/evolutionist point of view. To make things more inter­est­ing (spoil­er: stop read­ing now if you want to main­tain the ele­ment of sur­prise), the sci­en­tif­ic sto­ry is told using reli­gious lan­guage, where­as the Bib­li­cal ver­sion is told as if it were the sci­en­tif­ic one. The slight­ly con­fus­ing con­clu­sion (its’ a zinger) shows how the lan­guage we use to present ideas influ­ences their per­cep­tion. And the iron­ic use of info­graph­ics tops off this visu­al and lin­guis­tic exper­i­ment.

On the home­page of the project, you can watch the videos sep­a­rate­ly and down­load them. Also, the YouTube chan­nel of Van­cou­ver Film School is always worth a vis­it.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Beware the Horror of…The Gawper

in Animation | October 31st, 2011

Abbott and Costel­lo meet Tim Bur­ton in this styl­ish lit­tle trib­ute to clas­sic hor­ror films by the British ani­ma­tion team at A Large Evil Cor­po­ra­tion. (Yes, friends, they’re peo­ple too.) The moon is full and the bell tolls two as a pair of bum­bling grave rob­bers enter a fog­gy grave­yard. What hap­pens next is unspeak­ably sil­ly. The com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed 3D film was direct­ed by Seth Watkins and runs an epic one minute, 28 sec­onds.

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Watch the 1953 Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Narrated by James Mason

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 31st, 2011

Back by pop­u­lar demand, and cer­tain­ly the right video for today’s hol­i­day — the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. Upon its release, the film was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion. In the UK, the British Board of Film Cen­sors gave the film an “x” rat­ing, deem­ing it unsuit­able for adult audi­ences. Mean­while, “The Tell-Tale Heart” was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film in the US, though it ulti­mate­ly lost to a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion. The film runs a short 7:24, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

And then we have anoth­er small Hal­loween treat — your favorite actor, Christo­pher Walken, read­ing anoth­er clas­sic Poe sto­ry, The Raven. It’s now added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, and don’t miss oth­er read­ings by Walken right below.

Christo­pher Walken Reads “The Three Lit­tle Pigs”

Christo­pher Walken Reads Lady Gaga

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Books Come to Life in Classic Cartoons from 1930s and 1940s

in Animation, Books, Film | October 28th, 2011

Remem­ber Spike Jonze’s stop motion film Mourir Auprès de Toi? When we fea­tured it last week, one of our read­ers called it “Slow, bor­ing and unimag­i­na­tive.” He then con­tin­ued:

Warn­er Broth­ers’ ani­ma­tion depart­ment did sev­er­al car­toons based on this con­cept over 50 years ago that packed much more ener­gy and humor into a very few min­utes worth of daz­zling ani­ma­tion.

The read­er was also good enough to point us to one such ear­ly car­toon, which we’re fea­tur­ing today. (See above.)

Released in 1946, the Looney Tunes car­toon Book Revue starts with a scene that may look famil­iar if you watched Jonze’s film: It’s mid­night. The book­store is closed. The lights are off. No crea­tures are stir­ring, not even … Scratch that, the books are stir­ring. They’re com­ing to life. And the hor­mones are run­ning high, a lit­tle too high. You can watch the rest, but we’ll leave you with this tid­bit. In 1994, Book Revue was vot­ed one of the 50 great­est car­toons of all time by a group of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. We thank Mike for send­ing this our way.

For good mea­sure, let’s also rewind the clock to 1938, when Mer­rie Melodies released Have You Got Any Cas­tles? It may well be the orig­i­nal books-come-to-life car­toon. We start again at mid­night, and the book cov­ers do their thing. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phan­tom of the Opera, and Franken­stein make an appear­ance, along with oth­er famous lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. When TBS re-released this car­toon decades lat­er, sev­er­al char­ac­ters from this orig­i­nal film (Bill “Bojan­gles” Robin­son from The 39 Steps, and Cab Cal­loway singing “I’ve Got Swing For Sale”) were edit­ed out because of the indel­i­cate way that African-Amer­i­cans were car­i­ca­tured here. Tal­ent these 1930s ani­ma­tors had. But also their blindspots too.…

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Animations of 6 Famous Thought Experiments

in Animation, Math, Physics, Video - Science | October 18th, 2011

The Open Uni­ver­si­ty strikes again. In June, they released The His­to­ry of Eng­lish, a series of wit­ty ani­mat­ed videos that cov­ered 1600 years of lin­guis­tic his­to­ry in ten min­utes. Now, they’re back with 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought, anoth­er ani­mat­ed sequence that high­lights six famous thought exper­i­ments. It all starts with Zeno’s ancient Para­dox of the Tor­toise and Achilles. (Watch above.) Then we head straight to the 20th cen­tu­ry, to five famous thought exper­i­ments in physics, math and com­put­er sci­ence.

The Grand­fa­ther Para­dox (time trav­el)

Chi­nese Room (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence)

Hilbert’s Infi­nite Hotel (the con­cept of infin­i­ty)

The Twin Para­dox (spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty)

Schrödinger’s Cat (quan­tum mechan­ics)

You can watch the full series on YouTube and iTunes.

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John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Fairy Tale, “The False Grandmother,” in a Short Animated Film

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 17th, 2011

In 1956, Ita­lo Calvi­no, one of Italy’s finest post­war writ­ers, pub­lished Ital­ian Folk­tales, a series of 200 fairy tales based some­times loose­ly, some­times more strict­ly on sto­ries from a great folk tra­di­tion. When first pub­lished, The New York Times named Ital­ian Folk­tales one of the ten best books of the year, and, more than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, the sto­ries con­tin­ue to delight. Case in point: in 2007, John Tur­tur­ro, the star of numer­ous Coen broth­ers and Spike Lee films, began work­ing on Fiabe ital­iane, a play adapt­ed from Calvi­no’s col­lec­tion of fables. Last year, Tur­tur­ro’s play enjoyed a sold-out run in Turi­no.

The ani­mat­ed video above fea­tures Tur­tur­ro read­ing “The False Grand­moth­er,” Calvi­no’s rework­ing of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood. Kevin Ruelle illus­trat­ed the clip, which was pro­duced as part of Fly­p­me­di­a’s more exten­sive cov­er­age of Tur­tur­ro’s adap­ta­tion.

Calvi­no, who died far too young, would have cel­e­brat­ed his 88th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day.

Bonus: You can lis­ten to Jeanette Win­ter­son read Calvi­no’s short sto­ry, The Night, online here. The read­ing is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon

Invis­i­ble Cities Illus­trat­ed: Three Artists Paint Every City in Ita­lo Calvino’s Clas­sic Nov­el

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