"The History of The Video Game" from VOA.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: I’m Christopher Cruise.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Video games have evolved over the past fifty years into one of the most popular forms of modern media entertainment. This week on our program, we explore the history of video games and look at some popular releases from the past year.

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CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Early versions of video games were not devices for the average person to play at home. Programmers developed them using what were then huge university computers.

In nineteen sixty-two, a team of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a game called Spacewar! It had a big influence on future games. But it could only be played on a computer at MIT.

BARBARA KLEIN: Ten years later, in nineteen seventy-two, an engineer named Nolan Bushnell and a programmer, Ted Dabney, started the Atari company in California. Atari produced coin-operated video games.

Their first big hit was called Pong. It was an electronic form of ping-pong or table tennis that was easy enough for anyone to play. Atari video games became hugely popular at arcade centers.

Soon, other companies in Japan and the United States started making similar games. Popular games during the late seventies and early eighties included Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender and Pac-Man.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Little by little, gaming technology became more complex.

Back in the nineteen sixties, an engineer named Ralph Baer started work on an idea. He wanted to turn television sets in every home into a gaming device. His work resulted in the development of the Magnavox Odyssey, a video-game console for home use. The system was released in nineteen seventy-two and came with twelve games.

But it was hard to compete against Atari. Atari's video game system became the most successful on the American market. And it stayed that way until the market crashed briefly in nineteen eighty-three.

BARBARA KLEIN: By that point, another company had established itself as a big name in gaming: Nintendo. The Japanese company was not new at making games. It began in the nineteenth century as a producer of traditional playing cards.

The family-owned business later expanded into developing other kinds of toys.

Nintendo also began developing arcade games, and then game systems that could be played at home. One of the most influential programmers in the world works for Nintendo. Shigeru Miyamoto helped create hits like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zelda.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Nintendo also found success with the Nintendo Entertainment System for playing video games at home and the handheld Game Boy.

Today the main competitors to Nintendo systems are Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s X-Box 360.

In two thousand six Nintendo released its first Wii system. The Wii was not like a traditional video game. It was the first wireless system that could capture the movements of the player’s body. This way people could play sports against the game or against another person without ever leaving the house.

These days Wii systems can be found in retirement homes and community centers. One of Nintendo's aims with the Wii was to make video gaming more social and more popular with wider audiences.

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BARBARA KLEIN: GamePro Media is a publishing company that follows the gaming industry. We asked news editor A. J. Glasser what makes a good video game.

AJ GLASSER: “It’s difficult to say. It will be different, I will say, for each platform.”

BARBARA KLEIN:

For example, games on mobile devices are less technically complex than games played on a system at home and with a high-definition TV. Those games can be enjoyed for hours.

Ms. Glasser says a great game on a mobile phone is a game that can be played for a short time -- even for just a minute on the train.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: We also asked her about some of the best games of the past year. She says the horror game Dead Space 2 has been extremely successful.

AJ GLASSER: “It’s sort of a visceral, very gory sort of horror game but at the same time sort of a psychological thriller.”

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Another popular game is Red Dead Redemption.

AJ GLASSER: “It’s open world in the way that Grand Theft Auto is, so you play a character that can go almost anywhere, and do almost anything. But it’s set in the Wild West, so you are doing it with horses.”

BARBARA KLEIN: A.J. Glasser at GamePro Media says the video game industry recognizes that many gamers today are girls and women.

AJ GLASSER: “It’s no longer just the twelve- to twenty-one-year-old boys that want to shoot up people or just solve puzzles. It’s everyone wants to play a little bit. So they try to make games for everyone, or at least make games that don’t forbid anyone from enjoying them.”

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CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Ryota Wada is a ten-year-old boy who recently moved with his family from Tokyo to Herndon, Virginia, outside Washington. Ryota is listed in the twenty eleven Gamer's Edition of Guinness World Records. He received a perfect score on the most difficult level of Dance Dance Revolution.

The game plays music and requires players to move their feet in difficult dance moves. Ryota began playing Dance Dance Revolution when he was three. He spends hours day playing the game he loves.

BARBARA KLEIN: But is it healthy to spend so much time playing video games? The journal Pediatrics recently published a new study. Researchers studied about three thousand students in Singapore for two years. The study found that children who played video games "obsessively" had higher rates of depression, social fears and stress. Of course, that observation alone does not prove that video games cause mental illness.

Other studies have linked violence in video games to aggressive behavior. In nineteen ninety-three American lawmakers pressured the video game industry to develop a rating system. Since then the industry has rated games based on the age group for which they are considered acceptable.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Video games may have their critics, but other experts see them as offering benefits. The Journal of Adolescent Health just published a new study by researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah.

The researchers said girls who played video games with a parent behaved better, felt more connected to their families and had stronger mental health. Said researcher Laura Padilla-Walker: “We’re guessing it’s a daddy-daughter thing, because not a lot of moms said yes when we asked them if they played video games."

For boys, playing video games with a parent made no noticeable difference in their behavior.

Other studies suggest that video games can be useful in teaching, supporting teamwork and improving hand-eye coordination.

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BARBARA KLEIN: Mobile phones and other devices have created big competition for the handheld video-game industry. People might wonder why they need to buy a device like Sony’s PlayStation Portable or Nintendo’s DS player. Games that can be downloaded to a phone cost a lot less than games for those handheld players.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: For example, the game Angry Birds is a huge hit on the Apple iPhone and other devices. Players launch birds to try to crush their enemies, the fat green pigs. The game is easy enough for children yet difficult enough to keep adults interested. The game has been downloaded tens of millions of times around the world.

A market research company reported an early estimate of fifteen and a half billion dollars in sales of all games content in the United States last year. The NPD Group said that was about the same as the year before.

BARBARA KLEIN: In March, Nintendo will launch the American release of a new device that might make some people forget about playing games on their phones.

The new handheld game player, the Nintendo 3DS, offers three-dimensional images that do not require special glasses. The 3-D technology is not for everyone, though. The company warns that children six years old and younger should not play its games in 3-D mode. Experts say looking at the images for long periods of time could damage young eyes.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Sony is also working on new handheld game devices. In late January, the company announced its next-generation portable entertainment system. The system does not have a name yet but it will have a touch screen, two cameras and 3G wireless service. The system is expected to be released by the end of the year, offering another example of the continuing evolution of video games.

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BARBARA KLEIN: Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Barbara Klein.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I’m Christopher Cruise. Our programs are online with transcripts and MP3s at voaspecialenglish.com -- where you can also tell us what video games you like and how often you play. You can also post comments on our Facebook wall at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

Want a career in Video Games? Check out this video from Youtube and VOA:

Thinking About Relationships Long Term

I've boasted regularly about the new blog and book, Spousonomics. Whether it's date night, conflict, or marriage in general, economics has a lot to say about marriage. The authors recently requested questions on the Freakonomics blog, and mine got accepted. Here the question and answer:

Q. How do you avoid the counting-favors game? -Harrison Brookie

A. Or put another way, how to stop score-keeping? An excellent question and one that applies to virtually every couple, partnership and business relationship on planet earth. Research on incentives shows that counting favors is a double-edged sword. Say you’re trying to construct an agreement for how to pay an employee (or spouse). You could count every little thing he or she does or doesn't do, and pay for or punish each one. But this signals a lack of trust: Why else would you have to keep such close score? Evidence has shown that when a partner feels a lack of trust, he or she is more likely to cheat the system and less likely to volunteer to do something on his or her own. This is called “crowding out” of intrinsic motivation.

There are clear benefits to counting favors, you get the other to do more. But I'd never considered the costs. Like Dan Ariely stated in his book, there two different kinds of exchanges, market and social. When you treat a relationship like a system of platonic exchanges, the intrinsic desire to help disappears. If you plan on being in a relationship long term, which I certainly do, it's probably better for you to stop keeping count.

Congratulations to Anthony Watts: Best Science Blog 2100 WUWT!

WUWT Best Science Blog
Watts Up With That has won the 2011 best blog award in the category of "Science." The award is called the "Bloggie", perhaps in imitation of the Emmy or the Grammy. Regardless, it is a distinct honour, and one that is well-deserved by Anthony Watts and his team.

Anthony Watts first became well-known in the blogosphere with his vitally important "Surface Stations" project, to determine the quality and validity of the important climate data being collected by the large network of USHCN surface stations. This data becomes the raw material for climate models -- which could easily determine the fate of $trillions of government spending and redistribution in the not-so-distant future.

From there, Watts founded the "Watts Up With That?!" blog, which has rapidly grown to the most popular source for high quality dispassionate and sceptical information regarding the global warming political and quasi-religious movement.

I’ll simply say “thank you dear readers”, and leave it at that. I also owe thanks to the many moderators and guest bloggers that make WUWT what it is. You are winners too.

I have a temporary badge up, a permanent one follows when they have it all completed. The main page here http://2011.bloggi.es should have the announcement soon – Anthony _WUWT

The award is well deserved. Here's hoping for many more of the same in the future.

The result of the conscientious efforts of bloggers such as Anthony Watts, Roger Pielke Sr., and Steve McIntyre is a turning away from a politicised carbon hysteria, back toward a more honest science of climate -- at least in some circles.

The jury is still out on other attempts at increased transparency in climate studies.

What Destiny Does Demographic Change Hold for World Hegemony?

It is fashionable to assume that the 21st century will belong to China, as Europe and North America lose the memes and genes which drove scientific, commercial, military, and technological progress in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. But what does demography have to say about the fashionable viewpoint?

Americans prosper with a fertility rate of 2.1, high enough to shield them from the sort of demographic collapse closing in on Asia and Europe. Beijing and Shanghai are 1.0, Korea is 1.1, Singapore 1.2, Germany 1.3, Poland 1.3, Italy 1.4 and Russia 1.4.

...Zhuoyan Mao from Beijing’s Institute for Family Planning said China’s fertility rate had been below replacement level for almost twenty years. “Population momentum” turned negative over a decade ago in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Liaoning, but the countryside is catching up. “The decline speed in rural areas is faster,” he says. _Evans-Pritchard Telegraph

The decline of rural populations can lead to fewer farmers, less agricultural production, and a growing need to import food for hungry cities.

China’s fertility rate is collapsing anyway for the same reasons as it has collapsed in Japan and Korea – affluence, women’s education, later pregnancies that stretch generations, in-law duties, and costly housing. You cannot reverse this with a wave of the wand. The lag times can be half a century.

George Magnus, UBS’s global guru, writes in his book “Uprising” that China faces a “triple whammy of ageing”. The number of children under 14 will fall by 53m by 2050; the work force will contract by 100m; and the over-60s will rise by 234m, from 12pc to 31pc of the total.

...Cheng Siwei, the head of China’s green energy drive, told me a few months ago that eco-damage of 13.5pc of GDP each year outstrips China’s growth rate of 10pc. "We have an intangible environmental debt that we are leaving to our children," he said. That debt is already due. _Telegraph

Much of Eastern Siberia will belong to China before the mid-point of the 21st century. Russia's demographic collapse is coming on too quickly for it to be able to hold on to its vast underpopulated East -- new nukes or no new nukes.

But will China belong to China? China's history is replete with short lived empires interrupted by chaotic schisms of scattered warlord rule. We can see such nascent cracking chasms beginning to work their way through modern China even now -- some of them along ancient fault lines.

And while the quoted Evans-Pritchard article above referred to the possible rise of something called "ChIndia," how much more likely -- should the US collapse under massive debt, over-sized government, dys-regulation, and loss of human capital -- that the wave of anarchy and neo-tribalist schism should wash over China, India, and all other multi-ethnic, multi-cultural quasi-empires?

The Past Wasn't Completely Impoverished

In the first post my series against self-verification, I'd like to try and balance an argument I make regularly. Though like was significantly worse before the Industrial Revolution, in some places it wasn't as bad as I thought:

In the first, with Joseph Cummins and Brock Smith, he shows that England was surprisingly rich before the Industrial Revolution. This assertion is based on the fact the a small share of the population was engaged in farming. The primary sector accounted for 52% in 1817, and even 60% in 1560. These measurements are based on the occupations listed in men's wills and indicate that a substantial fraction of people living in rural areas were in fact not engaged in farming. Thus measuring the urban population share can be misleading in this respect.

In the second, Gregory Clark shows that there has been relatively little growth over these centuries, which means that way back in 1381, England was much richer than we thought. At that date, only 55% of the population was engaged in farming, based on records of the Poll Tax. This is very close to the number quoted above for 1817. Thus standards of living were not that different four and a half centuries apart.

I think I've also been guilty of ignoring the importance of intimate relationships when it comes to measuring wealth. Having enjoyable conversations with friends is one of many things that won't show up in GDP. And let's not forget, that like me, plenty of ancient cultures had time for games.

On Taking a More Nitty-Gritty Approach to Seasteading

More Designs Here
Up to this point, seasteading seems to be more about superficial design and "gee-whiz! futurism" than about actually building a seastead as an ongoing concern -- as a self-sustaining alternative to government monopoly. The Seasteading Institute has promoted a number of conferences and has achieved a good deal of media coverage. That is always helpful for raising interest in the general ideas, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of making a life on the ocean, most of the ideas one finds on the site lack heft. In the end, a seastead will have to pay for itself.

It appears that aesthetics may be playing too great a role -- and economics too small a role -- in many of the themes and schemes thrown around in popular seasteading circles.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of basic marine structure. Actual commercial enterprises such as the oil & gas industry and marine mining concerns, have made significant engineering advances and continue to do so, in terms of habitable ocean-going vessels which are also working commercial platforms. It is possible that the movement could use the input of more no-nonsense marine architects and engineers, as well as that of more persons familiar with the ins and outs of making a living from the sea.

The early seasteads need to be tough, strong, and relatively inexpensive. There is no need to win a beauty contest. One relatively inexpensive building material which could be used to construct working seasteads is pre-stressed concrete:

Through innovation with precast and prestressed concrete, some latest trends are now focused toward the development and construction of floating ocean platforms used to extract minerals, energy, and other natural resources.

Precast and prestressed concrete platforms have been constructed to support phosphate processing plants, floating liquefied propane gas (LPG) processing and storage facilities, and oil exploration platforms that are transported afloat and grounded for drilling.

For ocean platforms, the size and weight of prestressed and precast concrete construction will provide the greatest dynamic stability due to its large inertial advantage. Long-term durability of concrete construction in an ocean environment has been proven by actual service of existing prestressed precast concrete platforms over the last several decades. _civil-online

If the trend toward more and more offshore drilling and mining enterprises continues, it is likely that a great deal of the preliminary testing of possible designs and materials will be done by industrial concerns.

By taking advantage of the lessons already learned and earned by offshore industries, seasteaders who are serious about pulling their own weight can find starting opportunities and niches. Focusing on "pay as you go" approaches is not nearly as glamorous as a lot of the ideas being thrown around at some popular seasteading sites and forums, but it is an approach that is more likely to work in the long run.

From an earlier article at Al Fin Potpourri

Your Default is Self-Verification

If there is one thing blogging has taught me, it's that we are drawn to ideas we already have. For example, we only trust experts when they agree with what we believe (I'm guilty too). This is a huge hindrance to our search for the truth. To be truly wise, we must doubt our own fragile understanding and give others' thoughts the benefit of the doubt. That's why this week, I will devote the first post of every day to items that I was once wrong about. Hopefully by reminding myself of my past foolishness, I can prevent future foolishness.

The Reverse Placebo

If education and ignorance can be positive placebos, can the reverse be true?:

Researchers from Britain and Germany used brain scans to map how a person's feelings and past experiences can influence the effectiveness of medicines, and found that a powerful painkilling drug with a true biological effect can appear not to be working if a patient has been primed to expect it to fail.

Via Justin Landwehr.

Parasitic Housing Built Upon the Old Order

All images via Inhabitat

This return to cave-like cliff dwellings is inspired by Brazil's teeming populations of shanty towns, or favelas. As the current wave of tall and ultra-tall buildings rises and subsides, humans in depressed economies will find it too expensive to afford the maintenance required to keep the buildings functioning. But they may have a use -- providing neo-cavemen rooms with a view.

Inspired by favelas or Brazilian shanty towns, the structures are box-like homes that can be attached onto the facades of other buildings. Reyes’ concept is unique in that it actually enlists able-bodied survivors to assist with the implementation of the shelters – a cool idea, since it empowers them to take action instead of simply sitting around, waiting for help. Reyes envisions that the pre-constructed structures could be airlifted by helicopter to sites where they are needed and then guided into place with the help of survivors. They “clip” onto building facades using leverage.

Each shelter would contain beds, lighting, storage and a skylight and be made of recycled materials from local construction sites. There would also be attachments for solar energy, water purification and organic farming. Finding muse in the famous favela paintings of Rio de Janeiro, Reyes also hopes that survivors will be able to use the walls of their shelters as canvases once they are settled in, using painting as a creative outlet as they begin the process of healing. _Inhabitat

Like cliffside cavemen in the past, the neo-cavemen may find living high above the teeming masses and ground-level predators, to be safer.

Nations with average population IQs below 90 -- and without a market dominant high-IQ minority to run things -- will lose the ability to sustain advanced technologies with the coming anarchy. The high tech infrastructure still remaining after such societies collapse will be scavenged and parasitised as needed, as pockets of humanity across the third world revert to the caves.


Images via Inhabitat

People Care Less Than You Think

One of the main complaints about the world is that people don't care enough. But it's not all bad:

This research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overestimated how prominent their positive and negative utterances were to their fellow discussants. Studies 4 and 5 provide evidence supporting an anchoring-and-adjustmentinterpre- tation of the spotlight effect. In particular, people appear to anchor on their own rich phenomenological experience and then adjust--insufficiently--to take into account the perspective of others. The discussion focuses on the manifestations and implications of the spotlight effect across a host of everyday social phenomena.

This is one of the biggest lessons I try to teach my high schoolers.

In the Search of Diamond

There was a farmer, who was living happily in Africa.

One day a wise man came to him and told him about the glory of diamonds and
the power that goes along with them.

The wise man said, "If you had a diamond the size of your thumb, you could have your own city. If you had a diamond the size of your fist, you could probably own your own country."
And then he went away.

That night the farmer couldn't sleep. He was unhappy.

The next morning he made arrangements to sell off his farm, took care of his family and 

went in search of diamonds.

He looked all over Africa and couldn't find any diamonds.

He looked all through Europe and couldn't find any diamonds.

When he got to Spain, he was emotionally, physically and financially broke.

He got so disheartened that he threw himself into the Barcelona River and committed suicide.

Back home, the person who had bought his farm was watering the camels at a stream that ran through the farm. Across the stream, the rays of the morning sun hit a stone and made it sparkle like a rainbow.
He picked up the stone and put it in the living room.

That afternoon, the wise man came and saw the stone sparkling.

He asked about farmer.

The new owner said, "No, why do you ask?"

The wise man said, "Because that is a diamond. I recognize one when I see one."

The man said, no, that's just a stone I picked up from the stream. Come, I'll show you. There are many more."

They went and picked some samples and sent them for analysis. Sure enough, the stones were diamonds.

They found that the farm was indeed covered with acres and acres of diamonds.

Moral of the Story:

When our attitude is right, we realize that we are all walking on acres and acres of diamonds.

Opportunity is always under our feet. We don't have to go anywhere. 

All we need to do is recognize it.

When people don't know how to recognize opportunity, they complain of noise when it knocks.

The same opportunity never knocks twice. The next one may be better or worse, but it is never the same one.

Mammon ... because you deserve it.

US Public Sector Unions' Descent Into Chaos

Nationwide, state and local government pension plans are suffering a $1 to $3 trillion dollar underfunding. State governments are sinking, in large part due to impossible commitments to public sector unions.

Until now, no one has been courageous enough to point out the impossibility of meeting the exponentially rising taxpayer commitments to public sector union warchests. Until now. Both taxpayers and a few governors and legislators are waking up to this harsh reality.

But unions and their minions are not waking up. Quite the opposite. They are descending into incomprehensible chaos. As if the threat of violence could possibly change the fiscal facts. Only criminals and fools take that tack in the face of the dark budgetary winds that are blowing.

Two Paths to be happy in life

Never take help of Tears to show Your Emotions 

and 

Never take help of Words to show Your Anger.

Before There Was Blogging

There was memorization:

Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store our memories outside our brains, but it wasn’t so long ago that culture depended on individual memories. A trained memory was not just a handy tool but also a fundamental facet of any worldly mind. It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics. Only through memorizing, the thinking went, could ideas be incorporated into your psyche and their values absorbed.

Natasya

The Best Defense Against Propaganda Like "Gasland" is to Learn How Things Are Actually Done

26Feb2011 MORE:New Scientist looks at the questionable tactics and claims of Gasland. The New York Times -- lately more of a tabloid rag than a purveyor of accurate news -- makes some new claims about threats of radioactivity released by wastewater from fracking. Time will tell. Certainly the developed world needs the energy and fuel from unconventional hydrocarbons to allow it to bridge into the era of advanced fission, advanced biofuels, enhanced geothermal, fusion, and other advanced nuclear and exotic particle reactions.

This video provides a brief summary of the oil and gas drilling process. If you pay attention over its few minutes, you will know far more about oil & gas production than most of the faux environmentalists who write propaganda pieces and make propumentary films on the topic, meant to sway public opinion.

The Oscar-nominated film Gasland is a fine example of the genre known as "propumentaries", or propaganda as documentary. Michael Moore is a master of the genre, but Josh Fox is certainly up and coming in the field with this entry.

Here is a website devoted to debunking Gasland

Here is a PDF from Gasland's maker meant to debunk the debunking of Gasland, called Affirming Gasland

A further debunking of Gasland can be found here and here and here

It should be said that for most thinking persons, Gasland debunks itself. But the film is not aimed at thinking persons, it is aimed at members of the Idiocracy, programmed by a failed educational system not to think at all. With that audience, the film has apparently succeeded -- since it is nominated for an Oscar.

President Obama's EPA and Interior Department have succeeded in proclaiming CO2 as a "dangerous pollutant" and in stonewalling offshore oil drilling at all costs. Obama's minions have shut down several coal mines and coal power plants. Obama's NRC is dragging its feet on newer, safer, nuclear plants. All forms of reliable energy have been targeted by Obama's regime. If the regime were able to find any significant pretense to pull the plug on shale gas, they would have done so by now. As it is, they are still looking for anything at all substantial they can use to shut down yet another form of energy. Gasland is certainly not that thing, but is rather in the category of a joke. But they are still looking -- hard.

You can bet a large number of overseas gas producers from Russia to MENA are very interested in seeing Obama take action against shale gas producers. Needless to say, lefty-Luddite greens of the dioff.orgy persuasion are likewise eager to intensify the Obama program of energy starvation in the US.

US Government Desperately Needs a Maintenance Shutdown

Machinery of all types experience wear and tear over time. Routine scheduled shutdowns for vital maintenance are part of any industrial plant's life cycle in the developed world. Such routine and profound plant overhauls prevent disastrous failures at future times. The machinery of large governments is no different -- it needs to be shut down periodically for crucial maintenance, replacement, and refurbishing.

The US government is in current desperate need of overhaul, requiring deep surgical cuts to prevent a far worse catastrophic failure in the future. Despite rampant quasi-superstitious fears over the thought of a government shut-down, the alternative of "business as usual" is the genuine cataclysmic alternative.

The government in Belgium has been shut down for 257 days, and the people there seem happy with the result. In the US, as long as the social security checks and other important entitlement disbursements continue during the shutdown, the people of America should be likewise content. Particularly if they were made aware that crucial maintenance was being done to the government, to allow it to avoid a massive breakdown within the next decade or two.

Fiscal policies of government are in particular need of overhaul, with no end in sight for a growing massive debt. Educational, immigration, and cultural policies are leading to a dumbed down Idiocracy which cannot support a high tech society for long. Current energy policies are leading to a terminal energy starvation whose fatal repercussions will rebound through the US economy and society in devastatingly short order.

The US elections of 2010 revealed a deep-seated dissatisfaction among the American electorate, with the direction of the Obama - Pelosi - Reid regressive government. Most Americans believed the nation was being badly mis-directed by its leadership. The election of 2010 re-arranged the US Congress as well as state-level legislatures and governorships. It was not a merely cosmetic overhaul.

There is an awakening at the American grassroots -- particularly among persons who must produce the wealth which the rest of the country lives on -- that the American government has grown a huge crop of freeloaders both within and around Washington DC and state capitals. It is an unsustainable crop which is choking off any chance of economic prosperity for the nation at large.

A few modest attempts to right some of these wrongs in the state of Wisconsin has led to a massive reactionary and potentially violent government-sector union response. President Obama himself has denounced the Wisconsin governor's attempts to balance the Wisconsin state budget -- using his campaign apparatus to bus in hundreds or thousands of outside agitators-for-hire in an attempt to intimidate the government and people of Wisconson into acquiescing to their own death-by-parasites.

What is happening in Wisconsin is bound to happen in many or most other US states, and eventually in the US government. No one knows how violent and bloody these standoffs can become, if the freeloaders of the public sector decide to go all out in demanding their special privileges and benefits. Mr. Obama has so far done everything he can to fuel public union intransigence, anger, and potential violence.

If something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop. It is in the interest of government and public sector unions to accept the reality that a perpetual wild and exponential growth in their ranks and benefits is unsustainable. An orderly shutdown and overhaul -- similar to a deep maintenance shutdown in an industrial plant or a "controlled burn" in the wild -- is mandatory to prevent a cataclysmic collapse eventually.

Scheduled, elective surgery is always in the best interest of the patient, the surgeon, and the medical centre. It is time to schedule a deep surgical procedure on the US government.

History of US Energy Production

That's from the US Energy Information Administration. So what do we expect for the future? A combination of more nuclear, more solar, more oil, maybe more geothermal, hopefully less corn and all at about the same price.

Conditioned For Marriage

There's been a lot of chatter on the web recently about "the end of marriage". Unsurprisingly, I'm skeptical. Here's some evidence that humanity is trained for committed relationships:

Single, male subjects rated a woman the most attractive at the peak of her ovulation, scientists found, which is to be expected since that's when she's the most fertile. On the other hand, male subjects in a committed relationship behaved the opposite by giving the woman lower attractive marks during her fertility peak.

Here's why:

The authors hypothesize that people in relationships are more likely to subconsciously reduce thoughts of temptation. Researchers call these tendencies "relationship maintenance strategies," where we downplay the attractiveness of others we might be tempted by.

Why Husband avoid answers or replies to Wife's Questions?

Wife:  What would you do if I die? Would you get married again?
Husband: Definitely not!

Wife: Why not? Don't you like being married?
Husband: Of course I do.

Wife: Then why wouldn't you remarry?
Husband: Okay, okay, I'd get married again.

Wife: You would?
Husband: .......?

Wife: Would you live in our house?
Husband: Sure, it's a great house.

Wife: Would you sleep with her in our bed?
Husband: Where else would we sleep?

Wife: Would you let her drive my car?
Husband: Probably, it is almost new.

Wife: Would you replace my pictures with hers?
Husband: That would seem like the proper thing to do.

Wife: Would you give her my jewelry?
Husband: No, I'm sure she'd want her own.

Wife: Would she wear my shoes?
Husband: No, her size is 6.

Wife: ...Silence.
Husband: Shit.

Regret, Frustration, and Traffic

The Freakonomics blog recently posted a study done showing that people will give up something to prevent the possibility of regret. In the experiment participants were asked to pick a lottery ticket at random and then were offered a bonus to exchange the ticket for a different one. Because the first choice was random, there's no reason not to accept the free gift, but most do not. This is an irrationality I see often. I think it comes from a misunderstanding of sunk costs. There are certain things that are out of our control, for example the lottery, so they shouldn't effect our decision making.

I use this idea regularly on my long commute to work. It's well known that commuting, along with being  a terrible use of time, is very mentally taxing. One of the more frustrating parts of driving to work in the morning with a late bell looming over your shoulder, is getting behind a slow moving vehicle. That is, until I realized that most of my drive is a sunk cost. There is very little I can do on a road with one lane and very few places to pass. So when I drive, I don't try to go as fast as possible without getting a ticket, I try to limit the space between me and the car in front of me. As long as I'm right behind them, there's nothing else I can do. No regrets, no frustrations.

Shale Gas Promise is Real, "Gasland" Is A Fraud

In the US, unconventional gas is providing a much needed energy boost. Over the next 20 years, shale gas is destined to grow from 15% of US gas production to roughly 50% of production.

Contrary to the blatant falsehoods (PDF) displayed in the Oscar-nominated "documentary" Gasland, production of shale gas is as clean or cleaner than production of any other type of non-nuclear energy or fuel.

Extent of Marcellus Shale Resource
Several nations in Europe are growing more interested in their own shale oil resource, and are beginning to drill test wells.

In countries like Britain, Germany and Poland, exploratory drilling is under way, or about to begin, as engineers try to determine how much shale gas is present and how easy it will be to retrieve. New technologies for extracting natural gas from stone have raised worries about contamination of drinking water while also driving a huge drilling expansion in the United States, helping push prices down by two thirds since 2008 and reducing dependence on imports.

Shale gas production accounted for 14 percent of U.S. natural gas production in 2009 and is expected to reach 45 percent by 2035, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates.

“It was an amazing story in the U.S., this very rapid increase in the availability of shale gas,” said Paul Stevens, senior research fellow for energy at Chatham House, a London research institute. European exploration has big potential too, he added... _NYT

More on Marcellus Shale -- just one of several huge US gas deposits, now available for production thanks to improved drilling technologies.

Faux environmentalists inside and outside of the Obama regime have sworn to shut down US energy production -- including shale gas -- no matter what it takes. The Obama agenda of "energy starvation" shines through in the regime's offshore oil de facto drilling moratorium, in the shutting down of coal mines and coal power plants, in the attempts to shut down Canadian oil sands imports, in behind-the-scenes moves to shut down US shale gas, and in the Obama Nuclear Regulatory Commission's blatant dragging of its feet on new nuclear designs and plants. The EPA's decision to regulate CO2 -- a keystone to the chain of life on Earth -- as a "dangerous pollutant" is a clear indication that Obama's interests are not dictated by the welfare of humans in the US or anywhere on Earth.

More: From Master Resource, here are some maps for the three main types of unconventional gas resource for the US.

More from Master Resource here and here.  Methane is a compound found on other planets and moons in significant quantities in the outer solar system.  It has also been found to be generated in Earth's mantle abiotically.  Vast quantities of methane clathrates exist beneath seafloors and in arctic regions.  It is unlikely that humans will ever come close to running out of methane -- particularly when it is so easily produced via anaerobic digestion of waste biomass.

We must have fossil fuel resources such as oil, gas, coal, oil sands, etc. in order to give us time to move to more sustainable energy sources such as advanced fission, fusion, enhanced geothermal, advanced biofuels and bioenergy, orbital solar, and perhaps low energy nuclear reaction reactors.

More on energy topics at Al Fin Energy

The Curveball That Led the US to Iraq

Interview Questions

Below are the Very Impressive Interview Questions, which were asked in HR Round:

Question 1:

You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night, it’s raining heavily, when suddenly you pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for a bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing very well that there could only be one passenger in your car?

This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.

~You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and 

thus you should save her first, or

~You could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and 

this would be the perfect chance to pay him back.

~However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer. 

Guess what was his answer?

* He simply answered:

"I would give the car keys to my Old friend and let him take the lady to the hospital. 

I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the partner of my dreams."

Question 2:

What will you do if I run away with your sister?"

*The candidate who was selected answered " I will not get a better match for my sister than you sir"

Question 3:

Interviewer (to a student girl candidate) – What is one morning you woke up and 

found that you were pregnant?

*Girl – I will be very excited and take an off, to celebrate with my husband.

Normally, an unmarried girl will be shocked to hear this, but she managed it well. 

Why I should think it in the wrong way, she said later when asked.

Question 4:

Interviewer: He ordered a cup of coffee for the candidate. 

Coffee arrived kept before the candidate, then he asked what is before you?

*Candidate: Instantly replied "Tea".

He got selected.

You know how and why did he say "TEA" when he knows very well that coffee was kept before.

(Answer: The question was "What is before you (U – alphabet) Reply was "TEA" ( T – alphabet)

Alphabet "T" was before Alphabet "U"

Question 5:

Where Lord Rama would have celebrated his "First Diwali"?

People will start thinking of Ayodya, Mitila [Janaki's place], Lanka etc…

But the logic is, Diwali was a celebrated as a mark of Lord Krishna.

Killing Narakasura. In Dasavataar, Krishnavathaar comes after Raamavathaar.

*So, Lord Rama would not have celebrated the Diwali At all! 

Question 6:

The interviewer asked to the candidate "This is your last question of the interview. 

Please tell me the exact position of the center of this table where u have kept your files."

*Candidate confidently put one of his finger at some point at the table and 

told that this was the central point at the table.

Interviewer asked how did u get to know that this being the central point

of this table, then he answers quickly that

"Sir, You are not likely to ask any more question, as it was the last question

that u promised to ask"

And hence, he was selected as because of his quick-wittedness.

Epiphany collects

I love the collects used for the final Sundays after the Epiphany. Because the date of Easter and thus of Ash Wednesday and Lent vary from year to year, they often go unused and unheard. But they are among the most beautiful in the Prayer Book. Easter must fall between April 22 and April 25 for all of them to be used. This year, Easter is on April 24th.

The collect for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany in the 1979 Prayer Book is original to the first Prayer Book of 1549, and thus (I supposed) a composition of Dr Cranmer. Before the reworking of the calendar, it was the collect for Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Lent. I love it because it extols love and does so in such an antiquated diction.

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

As far as I can find, the collect for the Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany is original to the 1979 Prayer Book. It is a beautiful treatment of anxiety and faith.

Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany
Most loving Father, who willest us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of thee, and to cast all our care on thee who carest for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which thou hast manifested to us in thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

China: The World's "Rich Pauper"

Let’s face it – most Chinese growth is the result of overheated investment, and removing the sources of overheating without eliminating growth is going to prove impossible. I have been making the same argument for at least two or three years, and so far we have seen how Beijing veers between stomping on the gas when the economy slows precipitously and stomping on the brakes when it then grows too quickly. I don’t believe anything has changed. _Mish

While broadly seen as the heir apparent to the US' global hegemony, China has some deep problems which are rarely considered by more mainstream journalists and analysts.

Only a decade ago, China's GDP of US$1.1 trillion was only one quarter of Japan's US$4.2 trillion. And, as late as 2005, China's GDP, at US$2.2 trillion, was half Japan's US$4.5 trillion. Some analysts predict that if China's economy continues to surge at its current pace, it could surpass the United States as the world 's top economy in 2020.

Such sanguine prospects, however, do not obscure the fact that China is still a developing country, with a per capita GDP of US$4,500, which about one tenth of Japan's and one quarter of Taiwan's. China's new ranking as No. 2 contrasts starkly with the per capita ranking of No. 95 among the 182 countries ranked by the International Monetary Fund.

The plain fact is that the Chinese people are still poor, with 100 million people living below the U.N. poverty line of US$1 a day. The number of poor is nearly equal to the entire population of Japan. That's probably why we have not seen an official expression of elation over the historic event. _ChinaPost

In fact, the number of poor in China is far larger than the population of Japan. Clearly, even the "realists" are unable to face the stark reality of China today.

Here is more from Mish's Global Economic Analysis:

China has spent $750 billion on rail lines, much of it wasted.

The culprit is not design, but rather shoddy construction accompanied by fraud, greed, and unrealistic growth targets. If that sounds familiar, it's because it was one of the factors in the US housing bust, and indeed every huge bust in general.

...China's problems go far beyond high-speed rail, to construction and malinvestment in general.

I have talked about China's Vacant cities before but here is a quick recap from Chinese Bank Lending Spree Continues; $75 Billion New Loans First Week in January Alone; Inflation Gone Amuck

...Not only do I believe that the combination of very low cost of capital, socialized credit risks, and strong short-term political incentives to fund massive projects always leads to capital misallocation, but I also believe that the explosion in NPLs [Non-Performing Loans] a decade ago, and the fact that total SOE [State Owned Enterprise] profits are just a fraction of the interest rate subsidy they receive, is strong evidence that misallocated capital has long been a serious problem in China.

... _Mish

China's increasing reliance on overbuilding and speculation is causing several old China hands to look for ways to short the communist government's economy.

China's government is getting worried over the spreading contagion of unrest across MENA (middle east and north africa).

China’s rulers are caught between fear of a Soviet Union-style collapse if they begin political reform, and an Egypt-style overthrow if they do not, the political analyst said.

“Some say, if you don’t engage in political reform, there will be disaster ahead,” he said. “Others say, if you do, there will be disaster ahead.”

The government has not responded to the Arab uprisings with a political reform program. But an emergency meeting of the Communist Party leadership last Saturday — played up the next day on the front page of People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece — suggested it was badly spooked. _NYT

Even in Africa -- a continent thought to be in Beijing's pocket -- there is a spreading restlessness regarding China's willingness to bribe African leaders in order to carry out projects that are not in the best interests of the African people. Other nations -- particularly Brazil -- are moving into African economic territory.

Since the collapse of its export market in 2008-2009, China has implemented a policy of fevered construction to boost its economy. Unfortunately, a large proportion of this construction is of a shoddy nature, which will lead to a premature collapse of a wide variety of structures -- including China's vaunted high speed rail and wind power infrastructure.

If you are invested in China, you may need to take a closer look at the underlying realities on the ground there. China's continued use of US treasury instruments as repositories of wealth should tell you what shaky ground China's economy rests upon.

Fashion At Catwalk

The Brookies Versus Cleverbot

In the aftermath of Watson, the IBM computer that dominated Jeopardy last week, I've been thinking a lot about the practicality of this kind of artificial intelligence. Information organization, like that of the audio-visual encyclopedia Qwiki seem like the most obvious uses (though there are others). To get an idea of how this might work I decided to do my own type of Turing test and see if I could outwit a computer. As my opponent I chose Cleverbot.com, an interactive website that can mimic human conversations. With my wife by my side, we tried to prove that it was not a human:

User: Hello.
Cleverbot: Hello Hello.
User: How do I know you're not a robot?
Cleverbot: Well duh i'm not a robot.
User: What was your childhood like?
Cleverbot: Good enough I suppose.

Just generic enough. So we decided to ask it a trick question that only a robot could answer.

User: What is 50000.4 x 40000.5?
Cleverbot: Stop, now! I'm no calculator!

Dang. Okay, how about a question that only a human could answer.

User: What is your mother's name?
Cleverbot: I never told you her name, so I'm not telling you now.
User: What's love got to do with it?
Cleverbot: Love means nothing, peace means everyrthing.

Then we noticed something unusual.

User: Why did you misspell the word 'everyrthing'?
Cleverbot: I didn't.
User: Yes you did.
Cleverbot: No I didn't.
User: Prove it.
Cleverbot: Look at the log of our conversation.

We started getting frustrated.

User: Are you a robot.
Cleverbot: I'm not a robot.
User: Prove that you are not a robot,.
Cleverbot: How would you like me to prove that I am not a robot?

Then it occurred to me. It will be difficult to trick it using text. So how about sound.

User: What am I trying to communicate?: Hollow eye ham a niece pearson..
Cleverbot: That has nothing to do with the conversation.
User: Yes it does. I'm trying to find out if you are a robot. Answer my question.
Cleverbot: No, you weren't.
User: Look at the log of our conversation.

I'll count that as a victory for the humans.

Dying US Counties: A "Baby-Bust" Phenomenon

Across the developed world, the "baby bust" is leaving its mark in ghost towns, ghost counties, de-populating cities and states, and an emerging displacement of older populations by newer populations of outside origin.

Dying counties in the U.S. were rare until the 1960s, when the baby boom ended. By 1973, as farming communities declined, roughly 515 counties — mostly in the Great Plains — reported natural decrease. The phenomenon then began to show up in industrial regions, such as upstate New York and California. Natural decrease peaked in 2002 at a record 985, or 1 in 3 counties, before increasing births and an influx of Hispanic immigration helped add to county populations during the housing boom.

Following the recent recession, birth rates have dropped to the lowest in a century. Preliminary census numbers for 2007-09 now show that the number of dying counties is back on the upswing. Recent additions include Pittsburgh and its surrounding counties.

James Follain, senior fellow and economist at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University of Albany, said a new kind of declining city may be emerging in the wake of the housing bust — metropolitan areas that rapidly overbuilt earlier in the decade and then suffered massive foreclosures.

He cited as examples Las Vegas, Miami, parts of Arizona, and Stockton, Modesto, Fresno and Riverside in California. Like traditional ghost towns, Follain says, portions of these areas could spiral down from persistent loss of jobs and population and lose their reason for being.

Follain also pointed to a tighter fiscal environment in Washington that will limit help to troubled areas. The Obama administration announced this month it would shrink the government's role in the mortgage system to reduce taxpayer exposure to risk. House Republicans also are pushing federal spending cuts of more than $61 billion, even if it means reducing jobs.

"It's going to be a very slow recovery," Follain said. _AP-Yahoo

You may think that the population bust is mainly affecting Japan and Russia, but this deflationary trend affects virtually all European and Northeast Asian populations. While third world populations continue to expand, more developed nations -- with populations possessing higher average IQs -- are shrinking. The end result of these differential birthrates is a steady decline in the average global population IQ -- despite the so-called "Flynn effect."

It is clear that the higher-IQ populations of the world -- the people who drove the technological revolutions in medicine, agriculture, science, technology etc -- are fading, while the lower-IQ populations are on the ascendancy, numbers-wise. This is an ominous trend for the planet overall, since poverty, corruption, and eco-devastation are greater overall in low-IQ, third world regions.

It is time to face the facts about global population trends and what they mean for the intermediate term of the human world. The coming reality -- or should I say the "coming anarchy" -- will not be pretty. Those who are prepared will be better suited to reach the other side.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

My Career and Hobby Advice

Get really good at something specific and get paid for it (ex: teaching high school economics). Then spend the rest of your time getting good at everything else (ex: improv, blogging, relationships) and it will probably make you even better at your original thing.

Cities Are Greener

From the most recent Freakonomics podcast:

if you love nature, stay away from it. We're much more likely to harm nature, as Thoreau did surrounded by the woods than if we lived in tall urban apartments by ourselves. There's a statistical partner to that, which is together with Matthew Kahn, I've assembled data on carbon emissions associated with living in different parts of the country. And there are two facts which I think are important to come out of that: one of which is that people who live in cities do tend to emit significantly less carbon than people who live in countries. And this is controlling for income controlling for family size. That's coming mainly from driving, from the fact there's just a lot fewer carbon emissions associated with dense living. It's not just the move to public transportation, it's also that for drivers within cities, they're just driving much shorter distances. And then of course, it's because of smaller homes. The higher price of urban space means that people are living in smaller homes even with the same family size. And that leads to lower electricity usage, lower home heating usage, and those are the facts that make cities seem, at least to my eyes, significantly greener.

So if, as the author also claims, that cities are the engines of economic and social growth without the environmental destruction, why don't we all live in big cities? The government:

I think that at the federal level there are three issues, one of which is the home mortgage interest deduction. The home mortgage interest deduction essentially acts as a push away from urban apartments into suburban homes. [...]

Second policy that's problematic, and we're still doing this, and this I actually give President Obama much less credit for—we've been huge on building infrastructure in this country for a long time. [...]

But I worry about a renewed push towards building new transportation infrastructure in this country. The work of Nathaniel Baum-Snow finds that every new highway that cut into a major city in the post war period reduced that city's population by eighteen percent because of suburbanization. Transportation is sort of the opposite of urban clustering. You're sort of subsidizing people to spread out.

And the third thing, which is not really a federal issue, but it's huge is our local system of schooling. Certainly for anyone who's a parent like myself, the suburban school districts offer huge enticement to leave cities.

If you're not subscribed to this podcast yet, I highly reccomend it (and others).

IAS Exam Toppers Answers

Q. What looks like half apple ?
A: The other half. (UPSC Topper).

Q. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A. Concrete floors are very hard to crack! (UPSC Topper)

Q. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?
A. It will Wet or Sink as simple as that. (UPSC IAS Rank 2)

Q. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and
three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
A. Very large hands. (UPSC 11 Rank Opted for IPS)

Q. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A. It is not a problem, since you will never find an elephant with one hand.
(UPSC Rank 14 Opted for IES)

Q. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?
A. No time at all it is already built. (UPSC 23 Rank Opted for IFS)

Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep?
A. No Probs , He sleeps at night. (UPSC IAS Rank 98)

Q. Bay of Bengal is in which state?
A: Liquid (UPSC 33Rank).

Q. What happened when wheel was invented ?

A: It caused a revolution.

Q. What can you never eat for breakfast ?
A: Dinner.

"American Culture During The Depression" from VOA.

A Still from "Gone With the Wind"


THE MAKING OF A NATION – a program in Special English by the Voice of America.

Hard economic times and social conflict have always offered a rich source of material for artists and writers. A painter's colors can show the drying of dreams or the flight of human spirits. A musician can express the tensions and uncertainty of a people in struggle. The pressures of hard times can be the force to lift a writer's imagination to new heights.

So it was during the 1930s in the United States. The severe economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- created an atmosphere for artistic imagination and creative expression. The common feeling of struggle also led millions of Americans to look together to films, radio, and other new art forms for relief from their day-to-day cares. Our program today looks at American arts and popular culture during the 1930s.

(MUSIC)

The most popular sound of the 1930s was a new kind of music -- "swing" music. And the "King of Swing" was a clarinet player named Benny Goodman.

(MUSIC)

Benny Goodman and other musicians made swing music extremely popular during the 1930s. Swing music was a new form of jazz. Many of its first players were black musicians in small, unknown groups. It was only when more well-known white musicians started playing swing music in the middle 1930s that the new music became wildly popular.

One reason for the popularity of swing music was the growing power of radio during the 1930s.

Radio had already proven in earlier years that it could be an important force in both politics and popular culture. Millions of Americans bought radios during the 1920s. But radio grew up in the 1930s. Producers became more skillful in creating programs. And actors and actresses began to understand the special needs and power of this new electronic art form.

Swing music was not the only kind of music that radio helped make popular. The 1930s also saw increasing popularity for traditional, classical music by Beethoven, Bach, and other great musicians.

In 1930, the Columbia Broadcasting System began a series of concerts by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on Sunday afternoons. The next year, the National Broadcasting Company, NBC, began weekly opera concerts.

In 1937, NBC asked Arturo Toscanini of Italy to lead an orchestra on American radio. Toscanini was the greatest orchestra leader of his day. Millions of Americans listened at Christmas time as Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra began playing the first of ten special radio concerts.

It was a great moment for both music and radio. For the first time, millions of average Americans were able to hear classical music by great musicians as it was being played.

Music was an important reason why millions of Americans gathered to listen to the radio during the 1930s. But even more popular were a series of weekly programs with exciting or funny new actors.

Families would come home from school or work and laugh at the foolish experiences of such actors as Jack Benny, Fred Allen, George Burns, Edgar Bergen, and W.C. Fields. Radio helped people forget the hard conditions of the Great Depression. And it helped to bring Americans together and share experiences.

Swing music. Classical music. Great comedy programs. The 1930s truly were a golden period for radio and mass communications. But it was also during this period that Hollywood and the American film industry became much more skilled and influential.

In previous years, films were silent. But the "talkies" arrived in the 1930s. Directors could produce films in which actors could talk. Americans reacted by attending film theaters by the millions. It was a great time for Hollywood.

The films had exciting new actors. Spencer Tracy. Bette Davis. Katharine Hepburn. The young Shirley Temple. The most famous film of the period was "Gone with the Wind" with actor Clark Gable and actress Vivien Leigh. Directors in the 1930s also produced such great films as "It Happened One Night," "Mutiny on the Bounty," and "The Life of Emile Zola."

The success of radio and films, as well as the depression itself, caused problems for many Americans newspapers during the 1930s. The trouble was not so much that readers stopped buying newspapers. It was that companies talked about their products through advertisements on radio instead of buying advertising space in newspapers.

Nearly half of the nation's independently-published newspapers either stopped publishing or joined larger companies during the 1930s. By World War Two, only one-hundred-twenty cities had competing newspapers.

Weekly and monthly publications faced the same problem as daily newspapers -- increased competition from radio and films. Many magazines failed. The two big successes of the period were Life Magazine and the Reader's Digest.

Life Magazine had stories for everyone about film actors, news events, or just daily life in the home or on the farm. Its photographs were the greatest anywhere. Reader's Digest published shorter forms of stories from other magazines and sources.

Most popular books of the period were like the films coming from Hollywood. Writers cared more about helping people forget their troubles than about facing serious social issues. They made more money that way, too.

But a number of writers in the 1930s did produce books that were both profitable and of high quality. One was Sinclair Lewis. His book, "It Can't Happen Here," warned of the coming dangers of fascism. John Steinbeck's great book, "The Grapes of Wrath," helped millions understand and feel in their hearts the troubles faced by poor farmers.

Erskine Caldwell wrote about the cruelty of life among poor people in the southeastern United States, and James T. Farrell about life in Chicago.









The same social concern and desire to present life as it really existed also were clear in the work of many American artists during the 1930s. Thomas Benton painted workers and others with strong tough bodies. Edward Hopper showed the sad streets of American cities. Reginald Marsh painted picture after picture of poor parts of New York City.

The federal government created a program that gave jobs to artists. They painted their pictures on the walls of airports, post offices, and schools. The program brought their ideas and creativity to millions of people.

At the same time, photography became more important as cameras improved in quality and became more moveable. Some photographers like Margaret Bourke-White and Walker Evans used their cameras to report the hard conditions of the Depression.

All this activity in the arts and popular culture played an important part in the lives of Americans during the 1930s. It not only provided relief from their troubles, but expanded their minds and pushed their imaginations.

The tensions and troubles of the Great Depression provided a rich atmosphere for artists and others to produce works that were serious, foolish, or just plain fun. And those works, in turn, helped make life a little better as Americans waited, worked, and hoped for times to improve.

(MUSIC)

You have been listening to THE MAKING OF A NATION, a program in Special English by the Voice of America. Your narrators have been Steve Ember and Bob Doughty. Our program was written by David Jarmul. The Voice of America invites you to listen again next week to THE MAKING OF A NATION.

COMPREHENSION CHECK

1. Hard economic times can _______________ an artist's imagination.
a. depress
b. limit
c. stimulate
d. exaggerate
answerc. stimulate

2. During The Great Depression of the 1930s, people gained _________ from their day-to-day troubles by going to films, listening to the radio, and viewing new art forms.
a. pleasure
b. relief
c. anxiety
d. financial security
answerb. relief

3. The most popular music of the 1930s was known as "_____________."
a. Swing
b. Jazz
c. Rock
d. Classical
answera. Swing

4. People listened to the radio not only for news and music, but also for __________ programs.
a. historical
b. Toscanini
c. science
d. comedy
answerd. comedy

5. The type of movie in which you could hear actors' speech was called the ____________ .
a. silent film
b. talkie
c. adventure film
d. radio film
answerb. talkie

6. One of the following performers is not a comedian.
a. Benny Goodman
b. Jack Benny
c. George Burns
d. W.C. Fields
answera. Benny Goodman

7. Newspapers began to go out of business in the 30s because _______________ used radio more.
a. entertainers
b. musicians
c. advertisers
d. journalists
answerc. advertisers

8. John Steinbeck's great book "The Grapes of Wrath" told about the troubles of ___________ .
a. fascist victims
b. failed businessmen
c. poor farmers
d. Chicago residents
answerc. poor farmers

9. Another name for this article could be ___________________ .
a. "Film and Radio in the 30s"
b. "The Healing Culture of The Great Depression"
c. "Great Comics of the 1930s"
d. "Musical Trends in Desperate Times"
answerb. "The Healing Culture of The ...."

10. This article is mainly about ___________________ .
a. the music of The Great Depression
b. the culture of The Great Depression
c. photography and painting in the 30s
d. the tough economic realities of the 30s
answerb. the culture of the Great Depression

See the trailer for "Gone With The Wind":