Nieuws uit Amsterdam, Drieëntwintig liquidaties tijdens bezetting:

“Tijdens de Duitse bezetting heeft het Amsterdamse verzet 23 mensen geliquideerd en nog eens 4 personen gedood tijdens schietpartijen, zo blijkt uit een recent onderzoek. Als vergelding hebben de Duitsers tientallen mensen gefusilleerd. Het verzet was in Amsterdam overigens minder gewelddadig dan in Rotterdam. “

Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe S1E3P3 – Includes a short film by Adam Curtis about the rise of ‘Ohdearism’.

“I never would have thought, in my most extreme paranoid fantasies, that my software, and the others like it, would have enabled Wall Street to decimate the investments of everyone in my family. Not even the most jaded observer saw that coming. I can’t deny that it allowed a privileged few to exploit the unsuspecting many. But catastrophe, depression, busted banks, forced auctions of entire tracts of houses? The fact that my software, over which I would labor for a decade, facilitated these events is numbing. Is capitalism inherently corrupt? I don’t think the free flow of goods in and of itself is the culprit. No, it’s the complexity masked by thousands of unseen whirring widgets that beguiles people into a sense of power, a feeling of dominion over the future.”

“When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.”

“Er zijn lange, korte, oude of beplakte en soms met grote of juist kleine letters. In zijn jarenlange eenzame strijd pleit vormgever Carel Kuitenbrouwer daarom voor de invoering van één type bordje, om zo de versnippering die door de stadsdelen is ontstaan tegen te gaan. Zijn korte film moet nu dan eindelijk zorgen voor een goed naambord in elke straat van de stad.”

Korte film: Opkomst en ondergang van een Goede Letter.

Screenshots:

“An elevator opening onto the mysterious 17th floor of the Lipstick Building, in Manhattan, where a small staff helped to manage Bernard Madoff’s exclusive investment fund.”

Mark Seal in Vanity Fair, Madoff’s World:

“Shortly after Madoff’s arrest, Rabbi Moshe Scheiner advised his congregation at the Palm Beach Synagogue to look beyond money, beyond financial losses, to matters of deeper importance. In New York, Rabbi Marc Gellman wrote in an open letter to Madoff in Newsweek about the pain he had inflicted on the Jewish community: “There must be some new word invented to describe the way you have redefined betrayal.” Rabbi Mark Borovitz, a reformed scamster and alcoholic himself, whose Los Angeles foundation lost between $200,000 and $300,000 to Madoff, called Madoff’s crooked style “affinity theft,” in which the con man preys on the idea that you can trust your own people. “Whether it’s Latino or black or Jewish or Christian, everybody wants to trust their own. Bernie Madoff took our trust and raped it,” said Borovitz. “He took advantage of every vulnerability, because he knew our vulnerable spots.”

When asked to describe Madoff’s personality, most of the people I interviewed in Palm Beach could come up with very little. “Pleasant, charming, but reclusive,” said one. “I go out nine nights out of seven, and I never saw him out once,” said another. “We’d never heard of him before December 11,” said Jeff Ostrowski, of The Palm Beach Post. Madoff’s barber, who had cut his hair and given him manicures and pedicures at least once a month for 17 years, couldn’t recall Madoff saying anything other than greetings and small talk.”

“Demonstrators in front of Iceland’s parliament building, in Reykjavík’s Austurvollur Square, on January 31.”

Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair, Wall Street on the Tundra:

““Yes,” he says with a smile, “there’s been a lot of Range Rovers catching fire lately.” Then he explains. For the past few years, some large number of Icelanders engaged in the same disastrous speculation. With local interest rates at 15.5 percent and the krona rising, they decided the smart thing to do, when they wanted to buy something they couldn’t afford, was to borrow not kronur but yen and Swiss francs. They paid 3 percent interest on the yen and in the bargain made a bundle on the currency trade, as the krona kept rising. “The fishing guys pretty much discovered the trade and made it huge,” says Magnus. “But they made so much money on it that the financial stuff eventually overwhelmed the fish.” They made so much money on it that the trade spread from the fishing guys to their friends. It must have seemed like a no-brainer: buy these ever more valuable houses and cars with money you are, in effect, paid to borrow. But, in October, after the krona collapsed, the yen and Swiss francs they must repay are many times more expensive. Now many Icelanders—especially young Icelanders—own $500,000 houses with $1.5 million mortgages, and $35,000 Range Rovers with $100,000 in loans against them. To the Range Rover problem there are two immediate solutions. One is to put it on a boat, ship it to Europe, and try to sell it for a currency that still has value. The other is set it on fire and collect the insurance: Boom!”

‘An Operation Migration pilot guiding whooping cranes to their winter nesting grounds. The group is one of several trying to bring the birds back to eastern North America.’

IHT, Orchestrating the comeback of the whooping crane:

“For the past eight years, Operation Migration has been one of several organizations collectively trying to bring whooping cranes back to the eastern part of the North American continent. The whooping crane is reclusive and headstrong – it demands a square mile, or two and a half square kilometers, around its nest to itself – and consequently was one of the first birds to suffer as humans crowded into their space.

Re-establishing the species presents a challenge: How can humans intervene to breed and teach the birds what they will need to survive without also wearing away those birds’ natural apprehension of people? One way is to do it in disguise.”

Website: Whooping Crane Reintroduction – Operation Migration

“Every phase or epoch of capitalism has its own distinct geography, or what economic geographers call the “spatial fix” for the era. The physical character of the economy—the way land is used, the location of homes and businesses, the physical infrastructure that ties everything together—shapes consumption, production, and innovation. As the economy grows and evolves, so too must the landscape.

To a surprising degree, the causes of this crash are geographic in nature, and they point out a whole system of economic organization and growth that has reached its limit. Positioning the economy to grow strongly in the coming decades will require not just fiscal stimulus or industrial reform; it will require a new kind of geography as well, a new spatial fix for the next chapter of American economic history.”

Zie ook: The Great Reset: Urban theorist Richard Florida explains why recession is the mother of invention.

World’s Columbian Exposition: Ferris Wheel, Chicago, United States, 1893. (Flickr: Brooklyn Museum)

The Smart Set, Hot Wheels. We are in the midst of a Ferris wheel craze. In 2009.:

“There’s an international battle going on. The prize is height, width, rotation. Its weapons are not guns, nor tanks, nor arrows. The weapons of this battle are wheels. Ferris wheels.

This year, Germany will unveil the Great Berlin Wheel. Upon its completion, the wheel will be 606 feet high — as high as two football fields are long, as high as three Niagara Falls. It will be taller than what’s currently the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, the Singapore Flyer, a soon-to-be-disappointing 541 feet high. This year, China also plans to unveil the Beijing Great Wheel. At an awesome 682 feet high, it will be taller than both the Great Berlin Wheel and the Singapore Flyer (which only debuted as the world’s tallest Ferris wheel last year). “

Wikipedia: Ferris Wheel.

“Pollans verdienste is dat hij voedsel als onderwerp op de politieke en sociale agenda heeft gezet. Zeker in de VS, land van te dikke pizza’s en te zoete milkshakes, kan dat niet genoeg gedaan worden. Zijn ideeën zijn goed bedoeld; de meeste zijn niet nieuw, een klein aantal ervan is verstandig, maar een groot deel is wetenschappelijke onzin. Het resultaat is een aantrekkelijk, maar misleidend mengsel met hier en daar een vleugje demagogie. Leuk is het idee om van de tuin van het Witte Huis een moestuin te maken. Verstandig is zijn samenvattende stelling: eet niet te veel en vooral planten. Demagogisch is: eet niets waarin ingrediënten zitten die je niet kunt uitspreken. Of: eet niets wat je grootmoeder niet zou herkennen.”

Das Sandbad (Johann SCHWARZER, Austria 1906)

Europa Film Treasures

“Like many of his Inca ancestors, Juan Apaza is possessed by gold. Descending into an icy tunnel 17,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes, the 44-year-old miner stuffs a wad of coca leaves into his mouth to brace himself for the inevitable hunger and fatigue. For 30 days each month Apaza toils, without pay, deep inside this mine dug down under a glacier above the world’s highest town, La Rinconada. For 30 days he faces the dangers that have killed many of his fellow miners—explosives, toxic gases, tunnel collapses—to extract the gold that the world demands. Apaza does all this, without pay, so that he can make it to today, the 31st day, when he and his fellow miners are given a single shift, four hours or maybe a little more, to haul out and keep as much rock as their weary shoulders can bear. Under the ancient lottery system that still prevails in the high Andes, known as the cachorreo, this is what passes for a paycheck: a sack of rocks that may contain a small fortune in gold or, far more often, very little at all.”

Alle sombere berichten ten spijt, de wereld is ook in 2008 niet vergaan. Ditmaal naar verluid vanwege elektronische problemen. (BigPicture)

Gespeeld en genoten in 2008:

Toneel

De Theatercompagnie maakte met De Eenzame Weg (tekst Arthur Schnitzler, regie Theu Boermans) de beste voorstelling van het jaar. En ja, de Theatercompagnie moet blijven.

Toneelgroep Amsterdam was ook in 2008 het beste ensemble, heeft meer dan ooit de beste verzameling acteurs en heeft met Jacob Derwig bovendien de allerallerbeste acteur van het land in huis.

Muziek

Van een eerder jaar, maar Anders Trentemøllers The Chronicles (Amazon) was zeer te genieten, evenals de herontdekte knappe lichtvoetigheid van Moby. Een uiterst trage uitvoering van Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem (Amazon) uit 1947, door de Wiener Philharmoniker met Elisabeth Schwarzkopf o.l.v. Von Karajan, zorgde voor de stemmige en opgewekte noot in het afgelopen jaar. De uitvoering is bovendien bijzonder geschikt om fijn mee te zingen. NRK was tot slot volgens de teller van iTunes het meest beluisterde radiostation van 2008.

Film

Batman: The Dark Knight en Milk waren prima films uit 2008, maar de oudjes Casablanca, Ikiru, Ladri di biciclette en Persona waren ook dit jaar weer favoriet. Natuurlijk was Il Conformista ook in 2008 de beste film ooit.

Opera

Leoš Janáček, Kát’a Kabanová door De Nederlandse Opera.

Podcast

This American Life maakte in samenwerking met Planet Money tot tweemaal toe een podcast zoals radio ooit was bedoeld. Informatief, zeer onderhoudend en spannend: The Giant Pool of Money en Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

Boeken

Charlotte Mutsaers schreef met Koetsier Herfst de beste nederlandstalige roman van het jaar. Steven Nadlers Spinoza (Amazon) was goed en ook bij de zoveelste herlezing had ik plezier van Amsterdam ten tijde van Spinoza. Geld en vrijheid van Henry Méchoulan. Spinoza kreeg dit jaar overigens een enorm lelijk Wilhelmina-look-alike beeld aan de monding van de Amstel.

Kranten en Tijdschriften

Het Financieele Dagblad was prima op dreef en The Economist was heel prima op dreef, maar de NRC werd helaas steeds slechter. Kranten bevatten in 2008 voornamelijk oud nieuws op oud papier, en zijn dan ook nog eens voorzien van een overdaad aan trivia en columns. – Analyse is zeldzaam en opinie goedkoop. Anekdotes spreken niet voor zichzelf en verklaren niets en vooral: sinds wanneer is polemiek het allerhoogste goed?

Amsterdamse Middenstand

Marqt is dagelijkse kost, maar na de feestdagen a.u.b. geen muzak meer. Ook in 2008 prima middenstanders: Meeuwig, Caulis, ‘t Vlaams Broodhuys, Ton Overmars en de Boerenmarkt op zaterdag.

Restaurant

Bordewijk van Wil Demandt is in 2008 al 25 jaar het beste restaurant van de stad.

TV

Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson vertelde ook op tv de geschiedenis van het geld. Meer aardige economen op tv: de optredens van Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini (foto) en Willem Buiter.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives (YouTube) was een mooi verslag van E, van de band Eels, op zoek naar sporen van zijn geniale vader, de quantum mechanicus Hugh Everett. (bonus).

Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes was het smakelijkste programma op tv. Van de Nederlandse tv was geloof ik niks de moeite van het onthouden waard. UKNova was overigens ook in 2008 de plaats om UK-televisie te downloaden.

Rood Jurkje

Victor en Rolf: “No”. Collectie Fall/Winter 2008/2009.

Kunst

De Kunstvlaai heeft sowieso een voorsprong vanwege de toplocatie, zoals Rijksacademie Open vanwege het talent.

Dooddoener in 2008 in alle kunsten: alle schedels.

Eerdere versies: 2005, 2006, 2007.

Carlos Maps, Ground Zero: “This mapplet shows the thermal damage caused by a nuclear explosion. Search for a place, pick a suitable weapon and press “Nuke It!”

BLDG Blog, Nuclear Urbanism:

“An amazing Google Maps mash-up by Sydney-based design firm CarlosLabs has us looking at what nuclear explosions would do to cities all over the world. “

“We’ve all heard about dumbing down. But there is plenty of evidence that the opposite is also true. Is this, in fact, the age of mass intelligence?”

More Intelligent Life, The Age of Mass Intelligence:

“From opera in cinemas to audio books for judo-players: the expanding market for intelligence is certainly unexpected. But what does it really amount to? Is it a profound cultural change or a mild shift upmarket? Here are three tentative conclusions. First, the growth of a market for intelligence may not imply anything about the quality of art being produced. Artists and patrons do separate, if related, things. Accusations of dumbing down are legion. On the other hand, the LA Times’s view that this is a golden age for serious television might be applied more widely. It is hard to believe that those who accuse arts institutions of dumbing down would want audiences to be smaller.”

“Livestation, the previously invite-only streaming television player, has released its free desktop client for all platforms. The app cites an available 1,275 channels, but the majority are—how should we say—not essential viewing. Still, there’s live CNN, BBC, NBC News, Bloomberg, and a smattering of local stations. The full-screen “carousel” view is pretty slick, as is reducing the player to a corner and having it always stay on top. After creating your account, you can also watch live streams from Livestation’s web site, and send twitters marking what you’re watching. All in all, a pretty decent solution to quickly pulling up news and information while you’re at your desktop. Livestation is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems; requires a free sign-up to use.”

Livestation

Jazzanova – I Can See (feat. Ben Westbeech)

Website: Jazzanova.de. Amazon: Jazzanova – Of All The Things

Hervé This – Art et Science (photo: Wired)

Morgan Meis and Stefany Anne Golberg in The Smart Set, Palate or Palette? The like problems behind molecular gastronomy and modern artmaking.:

“Contemporary art has an uneasy relationship to form. Sure, art is all about form. But what materials are we forming, and what are the models and traditions by which we are forming them? The sculptor Richard Serra, for instance, is fascinated by the properties of iron and steel. He recognizes that industrial materials are as much a part of our “natural” world as anything else. Serra loves to experiment with such materials, to find out what they can do and how they make us feel. He accepts the fact that we do not live primarily among plants and earth. We live in a world that has been manufactured, and Serra wants to manipulate the formal properties of that manufactured world. He hurled balls of molten lead at gallery walls and, more recently, twisted sheets of steel into elegant spirals. He was using the matter and the technologies available to persons of our time. He is not trying to represent the natural world — he is trying to create new forms in a post-natural environment in which artifice and nature are inextricably intertwined.

Likewise, Molecular Gastronomy has opened up an immense realm of formal experimentation. These experiments are not limited by the traditional boundaries as to what constitutes food and what you can do to it. Here is Hervé This:

In 2002, I introduced a formalism to describe, in a non-periodical manner, the organization of food space or different foodstuffs. All foods are complex disperse systems, also called “soft matter.” The simplest of these systems — formerly called colloidal — are well known: emulsions, foams, gels and so forth…But food needs more than interfaces to describe it; even a simple sauce such as a béarnaise consists of three phases: solid matter (microscopic egg-yolk aggregate) and a hydrophobic liquid (oil droplets) dispersed in a hydrophilic liquid (water).

(…)”

“French lawyer Jacques Vergès is famed for defending some of the worst mass murderers in recent history. He says “everyone, no matter what he may have done, has a right to a fair trial.”"

Der Spiegel, Interview with notorious lawyer Jacques Vergès. ‘There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil’:

“He has met Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Che Guevara. He defended ‘Carlos the Jackal’ and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Jacques Vergès, 83, is probably the world’s most notorious attorney. His latest client is Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, who is on trial for war crimes.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Vergès, are you attracted to evil?

Jacques Vergès: Nature is wild, unpredictable and senselessly gruesome. What distinguishes human beings from animals is the ability to speak on behalf of evil. Crime is a symbol of our freedom.

SPIEGEL: That’s a cynical worldview.

Vergès: A realistic one.”