Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion

Inaugeration 2013

Engineers and Bomb Makers: TED

Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result.

Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here. I last did a TEDTalk I think about seven years ago or so. I talked about spaghetti sauce. And so many people, I guess, watch those videos. People have been coming up to me ever since to ask me questions about spaghetti sauce, which is a wonderful thing in the short term -- (Laughter) but it's proven to be less than ideal over seven years. And so I though I would come and try and put spaghetti sauce behind me.

The theme of this morning's session is Things We Make. And so I thought I would tell a story about someone who made one of the most precious objects of his era. And the man's name is Carl Norden. Carl Norden was born in 1880. And he was Swiss. And of course, the Swiss can be divided into two general categories: those who make small, exquisite, expensive objects and those who handle the money of those who buy small, exquisite, expensive objects. And Carl Norden is very firmly in the former camp. He's an engineer. He goes to the Federal Polytech in Zurich. In fact, one of his classmates is a young man named Lenin who would go on to break small, expensive, exquisite objects.

And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that in its fullest sense of the word. He wears three-piece suits; and he has a very, very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a suntan is a sign of moral weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with nothing but a slide rule.

Tony Blair: behind closed doors

Tony Blair's somewhat candid discussion on the inner workings of British government. Things he wish he had known, things he regrets, and how future government should look given what he calls a more convergent ideology between the prominent political parties.

Perspective

we got scared

We were born through ingenuity and violence,

in a world where brute struggle was encoded in every living being,

but we were different,

our sole imagination gave us confidence so we stood up right and we triumphed over our enemies,

but we were confused when we opened our eyes,

nature made us masters of survival didn’t give us the tools to understand the world,

all we knew about life was the death we inflicted upon others,

and it reminded us of our own fate

so we got scared,

and we told tales about another life, the corner stone of our civilization

we wandered out into the earth as proud nomads,

the smell of “concture” followed our footsteps,

we held our chests high and we feared no enemies,

but our brute species stumbled into a world full of mysteries ungraspable to our young minds

we started to ask questions but there were no answers to be found

winds, rains, volcanoes, earthquakes, the rulers of life and death, they seemed to be alive

they seemed to have a will of their own,

so we got scared and we surrendered the nature to a higher power, a thing to be worshiped

we settled down into every corner of the world,

and we declared dominion over the sea, and the air and over every living thing that moved upon the earth

we grew in numbers and our natural enemies feared our presence,

we demoted them to fairy tales,

we ruled the blessed land we walked upon but our common heritage was a lost memory,

we had turned into neighbors separated by distance and language,

we approached each other through suspicion and we saw the reflection of strangers,

so we got scared and we made new enemies

we raised cities and we drew boarders and we united proudly under our colors and superstition,

wealth and prosperity became the foundation of our great nations,

and those less fortunate diminished beyond oblivion,

our survival blood nourished our grabbing hands but the grass was always greener on the other side,

we were trapped under the fulfillment of our banner

and the sense of fulfillment was nowhere to be found,

our needs never gave us silence and there were no more lands to claim,

so we got scared and brother turned against brother

we mastered the power of thunder,

and the spark of enlightenment spread throughout the civilized world,

we became masters and servants under the force of technology,

and those that controlled its power claimed to be gods and ruled upon others,

every breath we took smelled the spring of success

but we drained the lands and materialized our societies,

and we imprisoned ourselves in the boxes of ancestral wisdom,

we fell down on our knees and pray and we only saw shadows of ghosts,

so we got scared and found new ways of destroying each other

look at us now!

We are so scared,

We surrender our hearts and minds to dogmatic ideologies,

 and we celebrate death and destruction as our greatest masterpiece,

we express our greatest achievements through fears and ignorance,

and we catalyze our power through our primitive nature,

we seek knowledge through ancient wisdom and we live our lives through dooms day prophecies,

we are driven by an ever growing hunger and we are always scared of not having enough,

and the fact that we are not going to live forever scares us so much that we seek salvation from this world and a paradise in another life

but haven’t always been scared,

alongside our brute and ignorant nature,

another force pushed alongside us through the ruthless pain of existence,

we have always been an inquiring species,

and the mysteries of nature captured our imagination from the moment we opened our eyes,

we gazed at the world and

through the night sky our inquisitive minds pushed beyond the boundaries of ignorance,

we began to use our tools to reveal the forces of nature,

and we struck down the fear that pounded us throughout the ages

we caressed the world with our consciousness and we evolved intellectually and morally,

and we reached incites far beyond our ancestors could ever have imagined

we homosapiens,

we are all connected through our common heritage,

 and we share the tree of life with every living thing,

we have changed through time by the loss of nature,

and we acquired virtues that have insured our survival throughout the generations,

we have fought for our existence against our natural enemies,

and we have endured the greatest ordeals,

our understanding of the world surpassed all other living beings,

and nature rewarded our inquisitiveness with the insight of self consciousness

we are the only species in the world that became aware of its existence,

we are the first to contemplate the nature of reality,

we stand alone in the concept of understand a better world,

and we have the only minds that can make dreams possible,

we have proven time and again that whenever we put our efforts together we have the power to achieve greatness

our unprecedented sense of love and compassion has moved us to found societies on freedom and justice,

and we have manifested our wisdom and ingenuity in wonders throughout the world,

we have learned the power of skeptical inquiry,

and we have found new ways to recognize the poetry of reality,

by climbing on the shoulders of giants we got courage to leap up from our world,

and we have touched the surface of our celestial neighbor with our footsteps,

we have explored distant worlds with our ingenious tools,

and we have discovered that the stuff we are made of flies throughout the cosmos,

we have even glanced at the origin of space and time,

and we are finally beginning to understand our place in the universe

we have made great progress and we have acquired great knowledge,

but our civilization is still far from its peak where we can live together in peace and harmony with nature,

we still have many rivers to cross and we still have much to learn before we reach our full potential,

if we want our civilization to survive and flourish then we must stop being scared all the time,

and we need to embrace the nature of reality,

and we need to stop pretending that we are part of a divine purpose,

and that we are going to be rewarded with eternal bliss

only when we accept that we are not going to live forever will we truly be able to appreciate the short spark of our existence and live our lives fulfilled,

only when we come to terms with our true nature will be able to diverge from our brute heritage and create the society where can share the world together,

only when we base our knowledge on facts and evidence

 will we be able to connect to the true wonder of the universe and celebrate the miracle of life,

and only when we realize that we are the authors of our own future,

will we be able to leap out from our planetary neighborhood and reach distant worlds and new civilizations

Why We Fight: Libyan Edition

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

From the Donkey's Mouth

Before I get too deep into the intricacies of education reform I suggest to my loyal readers to watch Obama’s speech to the Urban League. It is a long video (for this reason I suggest jumping to 12:00 we must remember Obama is still a politician and is very long winded), but it is a chance to see and hear the Obama’s administration’s reasoning for education reform from an unfiltered source.