Japan’s Lost Decade and What It Means for the US

in Current Affairs, Economics | February 3rd, 2009

NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast has done an excel­lent job of track­ing the ongo­ing glob­al finan­cial cri­sis. In its lat­est install­ment (Stream — iTunes — Rss Feed), they get down to an impor­tant ques­tion: Does his­to­ry offer solu­tions to the cur­rent cri­sis? And if so, does it make sense to look back at the Depres­sion of the 1930s? Or does 1990s Japan offer a bet­ter exam­ple?

One of Plan­et Mon­ey’s guests, econ­o­mist Adam Posen, argues that we should keep our eyes on Japan. Dur­ing the 1980s, Japan­ese banks and investors exploit­ed loose mort­gage lend­ing and gen­er­at­ed a sub­stan­tial real estate bub­ble, which popped in the ear­ly 90s once Japan’s gov­ern­ment start­ed tight­en­ing cred­it. From there, all oth­er assets and mar­kets fell apart, and a long reces­sion began. Sound famil­iar?

For Posen, the actions of the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment help illus­trate which anti-reces­sion poli­cies worked, and which did­n’t. The upshot is that Japan’s cri­sis could have been lim­it­ed to three years. But it went on for a decade instead. And that’s because Japan nev­er passed a major stim­u­lus pack­age until the very end, and because the gov­ern­ment nev­er forced the banks to change their prac­tices. This all sug­gests that Amer­i­can pol­i­cy can make a dif­fer­ence. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has a big stim­u­lus pack­age com­ing. But will it get the banks under con­trol? I’m less than san­guine about that, and it could make the dif­fer­ence between a short, sharp reces­sion and anoth­er lost decade.

PS The con­ver­sa­tion men­tioned above starts about 3 and 1/2 min­utes into the pod­cast.

The Historical Jesus on Your iPod

in History, Religion | February 2nd, 2009

I men­tioned this course over two years ago, back when the Open Cul­ture had about five read­ers. And giv­en that the top­ic is hard­ly out of date, I fig­ured that it would­n’t hurt to bring it back to the sur­face. The course comes out of Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Pro­gram (where I help give a hand). The top­ic is the real Jesus. The pro­fes­sor is Thomas Shee­han. You can access it on iTune­sU and oth­er­wise find it in our col­lec­tion of free online cours­es. Final­ly, the course descrip­tion is here:

Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do, as con­trast­ed with what ear­ly Chris­tians (e.g., Paul and the Gospel writ­ers) believed that he said and did? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion, as con­trast­ed with the mes­sian­ic and even divine claims that the New Tes­ta­ment makes about him? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

Over the last four decades his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship on Jesus and his times — whether con­duct­ed by Jews, Chris­tians, or non-believ­ers — has arrived at a strong con­sen­sus about what this unde­ni­ably his­tor­i­cal fig­ure (born ca. 4 BCE, died ca. 30 CE) said and did, and how he pre­sent­ed him­self and his mes­sage to his Jew­ish audi­ence. Often that his­tor­i­cal evi­dence about Jesus does not eas­i­ly dove­tail with the tra­di­tion­al doc­trines of Chris­tian­i­ty. How then might one adju­di­cate those con­flict­ing claims?

This is a course about his­to­ry, not about faith or the­ol­o­gy. It will exam­ine the best avail­able lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence about Jesus and his times and will dis­cuss method­olo­gies for inter­pret­ing that evi­dence, in order to help par­tic­i­pants make their own judg­ments and draw their own con­clu­sions.

Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl

in Music, Television | February 1st, 2009

As you’ll recall, we men­tioned a few days ago that Bob Dylan allowed “Blowin’ in the Wind” to be used in a British com­mer­cial. Nev­er before had Dylan allowed that to hap­pen, at least in Britain. For one of our read­ers, there was a small sil­ver lin­ing. The com­pa­ny using the clas­sic song (the Co-oper­a­tive Group) has some clear virtues. “The Co-op is eth­i­cal; The Co-op sup­ports Fair­Trade; The Co-op is still a co-oper­a­tive; They sure ain’t Victoria’s Secret.”

Fast for­ward a few days, and we strange­ly find Dylan doing a Super Bowl ad for Pep­si — not the worst com­pa­ny in the world, but also not the best. Above, Dylan and Will.i.am (Black Eye Peas) sing a song that they wrote specif­i­cal­ly for the Super Bowl ad, and you might even­tu­al­ly find it being sold on iTunes. I can hard­ly wait.

Follow Open Culture on Twitter!

in Uncategorized | January 31st, 2009

This is just a quick note to let you know that you can now fol­low Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter. If you sub­scribe, you’ll know when­ev­er we post some­thing new on the site. To get going, cre­ate a Twit­ter account (if you don’t already have one), access our Twit­ter page here, and then click the word “Fol­low” beneath our logo, and you’ll be all set. If you’re won­der­ing what Twit­ter is all about, you can watch this handy video.

Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Arturo Toscanini, 1952

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 31st, 2009

Here’s a nice vin­tage clip that comes out of a YouTube Chan­nel called The Great Per­form­ers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Col­lec­tions. The video fea­tures Arturo Toscani­ni con­duct­ing Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the sec­ond move­ment here.

For more clas­si­cal music see:

Free Beethoven and Mozart Record­ings via Pod­cast

Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 9 — Kara­jan or Mup­pet Style

The Ten Best Clas­si­cal Music Record­ings of 2008

The New Design and Your Feedback

in Uncategorized | January 28th, 2009

As you prob­a­bly know, Open Cul­ture launched a new look last week, and it seemed worth devot­ing a few words to it. With the new design, I was hop­ing to give the site a more invit­ing look and stream­line the over­all nav­i­ga­tion. I was also hop­ing to make it clear that user con­tri­bu­tions are always wel­come. If you have tips on good media, send them our way. And if you ever want to write a guest blog post, please feel free to let me know what you have in mind. The more indi­vid­ual read­ers con­tribute, the more our com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers ben­e­fits.

I def­i­nite­ly want to send a word of thanks to the folks at Rolling Orange, who han­dled all of the design and imple­men­ta­tion. An excel­lent group to work with. Also, I want to thank Eric Ober­le who has been very gen­er­ous with his tech sup­port since the begin­ning.

Last­ly, this is a great time to ask you what you would like to see from Open Cul­ture in the future. What should the site do more of? What should it do less of? What good things haven’t we thought about? Your input would be real­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Feel free to send thoughts from the con­tact page, or add any thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below. Thanks in advance to all…

Amazon Serves Up Free Music

in Music | January 28th, 2009

An excel­lent find by Kot­tke: “Ama­zon has hun­dreds of free mp3s avail­able for down­load, includ­ing tracks by Bri­an Eno & David Byrne, Ani Difran­co, and Rev­erend Hor­ton Heat.”

Update: A read­er informs us that this is US only. My apolo­gies to any read­ers out­side the US.

Inaugural Poet Talks with Stephen Colbert

in Comedy, Literature, Poetry | January 28th, 2009

Eliz­a­beth Alexan­der recit­ed one of her own poems at Oba­ma’s inau­gu­ra­tion last week and now talks poet­ry (both high­brow and low­brow) with Stephen Col­bert. All in all, she does a pret­ty good job of hang­ing in there.

John Updike at Rest

in Books | January 27th, 2009

Sad news. John Updike, one of the most pro­lif­ic authors of the last half cen­tu­ry, has died at the age of 76. The cause was appar­ent­ly lung can­cer. Get the obit here.

In Novem­ber, Updike pub­lished The Wid­ows of East­wick, a sequel to The Witch­es of East­wick, the best­seller he wrote back in 1984. On his book tour, he stopped in for an inter­view with Michael Kras­ny, here in San Fran­cis­co, and they cov­ered a wide range of issues — witch­es, sex, squir­rels, oak trees, Rab­bit Angstrom, his most famous char­ac­ter and how he died, and more. You can lis­ten here.

Added Con­tent:

As you prob­a­bly know, Updike was a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York­er mag­a­zine since 1954. Today, they’re high­light­ing a few of his pieces, includ­ing a 1960 reportage on Ted Williams’ last game, a short sto­ry called Here Come the Maples (1976), and a 2006 essay called Late Works, which looks at writ­ers and artists con­fronting the end.

You can read oth­er archives of Updike con­tent at The Atlantic, The New York Review Of Books, and The New Repub­lic. (Thanks to the Dai­ly Dish for point­ing these out.)

Also, for good mea­sure, we’re adding a lengthy clip from 2006, which fea­tures Updike read­ing from his post 9–11 book, The Ter­ror­ist: A Nov­el.

Darwin’s Legacy on YouTube

in Science, Stanford, Video - Science | January 26th, 2009

Back in Octo­ber, I men­tioned that Stan­ford had post­ed on iTunes a course called Darwin’s Lega­cy, which helped com­mem­o­rate the 200th anniver­sary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species.

The course brings togeth­er impor­tant schol­ars from across the US who explore Darwin’s lega­cy in fields as diverse as anthro­pol­o­gy, reli­gion, med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and biol­o­gy. It’s now avail­able on YouTube, and we’ve post­ed above a lec­ture by Daniel Den­nett, a lead­ing Amer­i­can philoso­pher who talks about the philo­soph­i­cal impor­tance of Dar­win’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. To watch the com­plete course on YouTube, sim­ply access this playlist. You can also find the course, and many oth­ers like it, list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.