Matt Taibbi’s articles in Rolling Stone and his blog are essential reading for those wanting to know about the financial shenanigans that have rocked the country, and the excesses of Wall Street executives.
In a blog post with the above title, he provides yet another example of both aspects.
The Daily Show examines his record.
Margin Call (2011) is a first-rate film.
It deals with what ensues in a large unnamed investment bank when a junior analyst discovers late one evening in 2008 that the value of the bank’s holdings of mortgage-backed securities has wandered dangerously outside the range of mathematical models of the values that it should have, and that the size of the potential losses is so huge that it could bankrupt the entire institution.
The film tracks events over the next twenty-four hours as this information goes up the chain of command all the way to the chief executive, triggering a series of meetings at higher and higher levels that run through the night and into the dawn, as everyone tries to figure out what to do before the news of this disaster becomes widely known in the financial industry and destroys the company.
In the process, it reveals the thinking and mode of operation of the various players in investment banks, from the junior to the highest levels, the role of money, how people’s allegiance and silence is bought, and how some people are ruthlessly sacrificed so that others may profit, all done calmly and urbanely.
This world is unknown to me since I have never worked in such institutions but I have to say that from what I have read on the financial crises and kinds of people involved, the story and characters seem utterly plausible.
The film keeps you intensely interested even though there is little physical action or even any shouting. It is all talk, low-key and understated, but it shows how a film can deal with serious issues and still be engrossing. What it takes is that it be well-written, well-directed, and well-acted.
Here’s the trailer.
My local newspaper The Plain Dealer today had this statement in place of the normal Non Sequitur comic strip, one of my favorites.
Editor’s note: Today’s “Non Sequitur” strip was withheld because it was deemed objectionable by Plain Dealer editors. A replacement strip was unavailable at press time.
I naturally went on the web to see what was so shocking and am frankly baffled. Can anyone tell me why this strip should have been withheld?
A report just released says that it has been one year since there was a case of polio in India. This result was obtained after India carried out a massive program to deliver vaccines, involving 2.3 million vaccinators delivering 900 million doses in the past year. India used to have more than half of the world’s cases of this disease so this is a huge achievement. (Thanks to Ian over at The Crommunist Manifesto for the tip.)
This could mean that India could soon be removed from the list of countries where polio is still endemic, leaving just Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan on the list. It will take another two years of being disease-free for it to be declared that India has eradicated the disease. It is hoped that soon polio will join smallpox as the second global disease to be completely eradicated.
On a personal note, as a person who contracted polio at the age of six, this news is particularly gratifying.
Such a question had never occurred to me but if asked, my initial response would have been “A lot”. But I would have been wrong. It turns out that the number is surprisingly small and that I had (once again) been misled by the deceptive power of geometric progression.
I’ll let readers have the fun of guessing for themselves (assume that you can have a piece of paper of any size to start with) and then they can read this New Scientist report about a group of students who worked on this question for seven years before breaking the previous record.
It turns out that there is some fascinating physics involved in crumpling paper.
Jessica Ahlquist, a Rhode Island high school student who happens to be an atheist, challenged her local school board, requesting that a ‘prayer mural’ that had been hanging in the school auditorium since 1963 be removed.
The 8ftx4ft mural in the auditorium read:
SCHOOL PRAYER
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER, GRANT US EACH DAY THE DESIRE TO DO OUR BEST, TO GROW MENTALLY AND MORALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY, TO BE KIND AND HELPFUL TO OUR CLASSMATES AND TEACHERS, TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES AS WELL AS WITH OTHERS, HELP US TO BE GOOD SPORTS AND SMILE WHEN WE LOSE AS WELL AS WHEN WE WIN, TEACH US THE VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP, HELP US ALWAYS TO CONDUCT OURSELVES SO AS TO BRING CREDIT TO CRANSTON HIGH SCHOOL WEST.
AMEN
That Mitchell and Webb Look examines the sad plight of those who are w-a-a-a-y ahead of their time.
It is not easy for a Mormon to publicly renounce his or her faith. This article shares the story of four young Mormons who realized that they did not believe during or soon after they finished their obligatory missionary work. The author of the article Greg Wilcox says that this disenchantment with religion is part of a more general trend.
A 2010 article in Christianity Today, citing various studies, says that the percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” doubled in about two decades, up from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. A substantial 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. Also, 73 percent of these younger people came from religious homes.
The same article makes reference to the research of Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell, authors of a 2010 study called “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” which shows that the younger generation is dropping out of religion at five to six times the historic rate. [My emphasis-MS]
This adds to the evidence supporting my (admittedly minority) view that, despite appearances, religion is in serious danger of collapse. It is not that it will completely disappear but that it will become like astrology, largely irrelevant, viewed with amusement by most, but still believed in by an increasingly small minority.
Although the story is about loss of Mormon faith, I suspect that the experiences recounted are more generally applicable. The stories are quite poignant in describing the initial feelings of loss and loneliness before they found that they were not alone and joined with others in their same situation.
(Via Machines Like Us.)