I think it fitting, as I was planning to blog again, that I start with this important, sad and recent news.

Bernard Dupont, born in 1944, gone in 2009, Rest in peace.

My quarter brother Dorian (the half brother of my half sister) is an artist!

You could buy his painting online, I believe.. (I know, I should be sure but, hmm… he is in Sydney and me in Brisbane…), here is the website:
Benjamin Dray - Paintings

Not being too much into art myself, I will just let the pictures do the talking!

I just received another anti bank email by my dad. This one refers to a new book be Ellen Brown, “Web of Debt”.

This is well explained, seems reasonable. And all it really “demands” is for bank to be nationalized. It gives the example of North Dakota which has a state bank and seems to enjoy strong economy because of it.

I can’t help but found the author’s argument sound.

After all the only problem I can see with public bank is the state creating too much money and hence creating inflation. But, why would a state bank create anymore more money than a private bank after all? Against this single (possible) argument against public bank, you could find many argument in favor of it.

Mm.. at least I think it’s an idea worth spreading.

By the way, another society building idea I have. I mean it’s not an idea as in a solution, it’s more an idea as in a question, personal research topic (not that my opinion matter much to politician, anyway…)

For me it is beyond doubt or question that education is the way to improve your life quality, status and, more than that, participate to the wealth of your nation (read make it grow!).

But there is a problem, education takes time, and often you study for nothing. I mean I know plenty of people whose degrees helped them find a well paying job. Conversely I know plenty of people who can’t find job despite a valuable degree. And more than that there plenty of area where there isn’t enough qualified people. Studying again might not be much more successful.

What I wonder is… if there is a way to make people more successful in general! That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

But it seems a logical evolution of society. In modern society you are more less sure you will find food, your sickness would be cured, you would have water, criminal will be arrested and in case of natural catastrophe help would come! The next thing society has to improve, if it’s possible, would be… financial security?

If you know me or read all this blog you might know that I look forward to the time of electric car. And maybe solar power as well. There are lots of improvement to be made. Battery life, price and power should be improved for electric car. Solar power also has a lot of potential but if it cannot be stored it is not worth much (hence we go back to the battery issue)(it needs to be stored to be used at nigh, on cloudy day or whenever it is needed), not to mention it should be cheaper and more efficient as well. And the grid need to be improved to transport it, as renewable energy takes lot of space and renewable energy power station are bound to be far from the cities.

Anyway in most of these fronts many breakthrough keeps happening lately! I don’t know if it’s simply due to my increase awareness or if the times are ripe!

So, here are some interesting bits of information:

(Note: from one article to an other on the same topic I often found number discrepancy, so while I take some general information from the article, I usually don’t grant too much attention / faith to the numbers they provide)

A ‘Lithium ion – Air’ battery, a new concept which has the potential to dramatically increase all lithium  batteries!

A new cathode for batteries which can greatly improve… their overall performance: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/battery-life-breakthrough.php

A123 System (a leading manufacturer in Li-ion battery) announced it is going to build in a new factory in America.

The “Project better place” which aim to speed up electric battery market, had an agreement with the Australian government, they should be here by 2012, yoohoo!!

Here apparently First Solar Inc. broke the $1 per watt barrier in solar energy power generation.

Researcher have created a device which capture a much bigger range of the light spectrum.

Researchers have found a paint coating which can be used to capture solar power.

Yeah a 3rd blog entry in one day (after many months of silence)!
Anyway I had a French couch surfer girl coming here recently (Thanks Dan) (I’m French too, that helps). Anyway she took pictures of me surfing, so here we go, the proof I can do it!

Another pic, but not on the sea…

And a pic of Isabelle herself!

yeah the sea was pretty rough this day…

For some reason, lately, I have been watching heaps of movies!

First, I will go directly to heart of the matter, and recommend a bunch of my latest favorites: “Travelers and Magicians”, “War Inc.” and “Gran Torino”.

Travelers and Magicians is a Bhutanese low-cost (could it have been otherwise from Bhutan?!) story in today’s Bhutan. It has a very nice atmosphere of mystery to it (That’s from the Magician part, I suppose) and very nice landscape and views.

War Inc. is a no brainer comedy, a very funny and light hearted satire of American politics. Set in some close future where private corporations rule the modern world, an assassin (John Cusack) is hired to kill the president of “Turaqistan” that the corporation Tamerline has just “liberated” in the 1st ever entirely privately funded war! In his cover as a show producer he is also organizing the marriage of some local pop star (Hilary Duff).

In Gran Torino a grumpy old guy (Clint Eastwood) who just lost his wife and his secretly haunted by some Korean war deed live a lonely life in a cheap neighborhood, estranged that he is with his remaining family. A chain of event will reluctantly bring him closer to his Hmong neighbors who see him as a sort of hero when he accidentally saved them from some local gangs.

Ho, I almost forgot “Slumdog Millionaire”, it could be described as a modern fairy tale happening in today’s Mumbai where we follow the life of a very poor kid from when a grew up (during a miserable childhood, yet one full of adventures, surprises and experiences) to the end where he win 1 million at a famous TV Show. Although it all happens during the show and the past comes as a recollection. There is more to it though, but I won’t disclose everything! (Plus now I know about my friend Abhi’s childhood! Muhahaha…)

Also, one of my favorite of the time, although it is a few years old already: “V for Vendetta”. Another political satire set up in some totalitarian future England. Where a “terrorist” fight for freedom of speech and to avenge some terrible and secret past misdeed done by the government.

One sentence from it would nicely lead to my second part. Eve’s dad (Eve is the Heroine of the movie) used to say that “Comedians used lies to tell the truth while politicians used lies to cover up the truth”.

Anyway it is a well known fact that story and movie helps spread role model and have an important impact on young adults behavior and expectation. Hence it always sadden me that American movies (Which have the bigger reach) usual depict shallow stupid girl and Yankee style alpha male thoughtlessly crushing anonymous side kick all of it slightly justified with some superficial black and white 2 cents moral values and philosophy.

A typical example of this over the counter 2 cents philosophy is … mm… if I may dare say “Star Wars”. Ho I love the special effects, the light sabers fights, the space ships, the Aliens, even the Jedi order have some romantic appeal. But to pretend it’s good against evil, righteousness against villainy, anger against peace, and the 2 cents moral values which comes with it… well maybe that is true… But I think it’s a misguiding philosophy, and it spoils lots of my fun and sadden me to see some people finding “valuable” moral values in that. It reminds me of things I despise, such as (if I dare be controversial once again) Nationalism and Religion.

However, what I was getting at is… I think American movies is maturing. It’s not alpha male any more. For example I love Brendon Fraser’s adventures movies. And undoubtedly he is the good guy and the hero in Mummy 1, 2, 3. Yet he is human, he makes mistake and sometimes situation makes fun of him.

Mhh.. I fear I am not very clear nor convincing. Doesn’t matter. All I wanted to say is I feel the American values, as spread out through its books and movies, are evolving toward a more nuanced, compromising, understanding, realistic view of the world. And that pleases me.

As a conclusion, far from the movie topic I started with, I want to say I hate “principles”, I love this anonymous quote about men of principle, that “Hitler was a man of principles too”. And I think compromise is a much greater and appropriate value.

What kind of school do you go to to design an award winning electric car at 16?
http://www.hometownlife.com/article/20081102/NEWS18/811020326/1035

It’s not the first time I see such news coming from America. And I wonder, are they school so much more interesting? Or better? Or did I miss something?
We never did something that cool back when I was in school or even studying physics!

On my preceding blog post (here) I have a few links to Paul Grignon’s video about the banking system (here, here and ici).

OK I’m not on economist and didn’t read much on the topic, but I did ask a few friends around and read some tidbits here and there and I have the feeling that these videos, while accurate, only show one side of the story. There are other thing to consider and I will share below a quick summary of my thoughts on the topic.

1. Paul Grignon is right, Money is ultimately created out of nothing (and this is a good thing), but I think it could be that in the modern system it is not the private bank who are allowed to do that, but the central banks. The private bank should borrow from the central bank. My Dad often complain that the European Central Bank is a private organism, I don’t know if this is true, but I will indeed find it vexing if such was the case.
2. In these videos you see the bankers asking for an interest, which slowly takes money out of the economy in their pocket if it was not for growing productivity and debt (other lending). This forget a few important things.
3. An important forgotten thing is that the value of money is fluctuating, you’ve got inflation / deflation. If the banks gets enormously rich and everyone poor, all price will gets down that is deflation. Which will make the banker more enormously rich and everyone as before (granted through some painful transition).
4. Also, because of inflation / deflation happen as the number of goods increase (or decrease), the money available needs to increase as the productivity increase. Ideally the amount of money should be such that there is no inflation / deflation (less trouble for everyone). The banking system answer this problem. The central banks set “the interest rate”, the interest that other banks should pay on the money they have borrowed and lent. This will impact on the lending system which, quite indirectly, will impact on how much new money will be created (or destroyed). Indeed the main role of the central banks is to insure there is no inflation or deflation, i.e. that the average value of money remain constant.
5. Also this video shows that the lender (the ultimate lenders being the central banks) will get all the money back in the end if the productivity and debt stop increasing. That forgot the fact that the modern central bank are not for profit public organization (I mean so they should be, my Dad say that it is not true for the European central bank, I don’t know), they are infrastructure whose main role is to insure constant value of money. To this end they could even do something you would not expect: use a negative interest rate, i.e. you have to pay back less that you borrowed! Indeed The Japanese Central Bank did just that in some past crisis.

My dad is very fond of conspiracy theory and the likes. Today he sent me a link which is, unsurprisingly, (slightly) tainted with such revolutionary views.

However it also brings some valid information on a seldom talked about, yet important topic. That is: Money and how it is created.

From what I gathered with past discussion on the topic, all of this is quite valid. Maybe it’s even a “conspiracy”, I guess it all hinges on what is a “conspiracy”. Nothing is secret in this document, it’s just not as talked about as it strongly deserve!

So… enough talking here are the links:

Money as Debt, by Paul Grignon

A short text summary of the video
The video in English, on Google
La vidéo en Français

To add some personal view, while I don’t feel inspired to participate in a great national upheaval just yet (maybe I’m too apathic?) I do agree that things can’t go on like that forever. Although I think they might still go (smoothly) like that for a fair while.

And I also do wonder, why is it that banks are private? I mean if banks are public they might be less “agile” as we like to criticize the governments, yet they would be more amenable to public will if (when?) we would go through this “monetary reform”.

The optimist in me like to think that this monetary reform which might be needed in some distant future if we want to see our quality or life improving further won’t be necessary for at least a 100 years. By then I think it possible that banks will slowly (and without blood!) become nationalized. I hold this belief that life has never been so good and that it is only the start. We ain’t see nothing yet, as they say!

BTW, I added some comments on that in this later blog post here.

On another topic,

The Millennium Development Goals

You probably heard about Bill Gates, now full time philanthropist he hold this talk in the UN about he Millennium Development Goals.
http://beta.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-united-nations-2008.aspx

Hey, I never heard about those before!
From quick Googling they seems to be: “End Hunger”, “Universal Education”, “Gender Equity”, “Child Health”, “Maternal Health”, “Combat … diseases…”, Environmental Sustainability”, and “Global Partnership”.

Well good luck with that, you got all my wholehearted support!

A coworker of mine has a little list of funny / insightful "things to know".
I like them all but today I will just mention this one:

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

Ho well, let's put his full list below!