Tea partiers, with all their yelling and nonsensical political mumbo jumbo, really clouded up something which I hope resurfaces in time for 2012. Our government saved us from the Great Depression. Warren Buffet thinks so too. His op-ed in the NY Times is a stirring reminder of how great a government we have. Sure, there are budget deficits to work out and legislature to pass and we have lots of systems that suck but back in the Fall and Spring of 2008 the Treasury, White House, and Congress did its job. How many times do you get to go to the brink and then profit from it two years later; GM will repay $23 billion this week in a bailout even I was skeptical about.
If you haven’t seen it, Frontline has a great production of the weekend the World almost ended. http://goo.gl/7g4N2
Good for us, the World didn’t end. Mostly so I can check out the awesome work being done on how Enlightenment literature spread through Europe. http://goo.gl/61Fz6 Literature and data mixing, what comes next? Amelie’s unicorn walking up our driveway. One of the cool outputs of the projects described in the article is how by tracking correspondence, historians are using map mashups to see how Voltaire ideas spread through Europe. The whole article is here. http://goo.gl/Q6Qlm
Ok, so the last thread in my Wednesday chicken soup is a recommendation for a German movie that was panned on the Continent but has some awesome early 20th century period scenes. It’s also on Netflix online. The Red Baron (2008) tracks the story of Manfred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron, or the Ace of Aces of World War I. It’s a bit stiff, but the story is fun to watch and the visuals impressive. Here’s the German poster:
Side note: Snoopy versus the Red Baron is my favorite Christmas carol.
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