Marty Kaplan

The reason that our financial system isn't going to crash and burn again, the reason that taxpayers won't have to fork over another trillion dollars of no-strings-attached bailout money, is -- well, I forget.

I haven't forgotten the reason, because there isn't any. What I've forgotten is that there is no reason it can't happen again. I've forgotten the bipartisan sliminess that enabled this catastrophe, like the demolition of the Glass-Steagall wall between banking and stock speculation. I've forgotten the battalions of Wall Street lobbyists armed with limitless campaign cash that decimated Dodd-Frank's attempt to regulate derivatives. I've forgotten the obscene bonuses, underwritten by our rescue money, that plutocrats have kept on awarding themselves to celebrate escaping accountability.

I know: I haven't really forgotten them. In fact, I'm enthralled and repulsed by accounts of what went wrong, from the terrific three-part "Money, Power and Wall Street" documentary that Frontline just aired, to books by Michael Lewis, Simon Johnson, William D. Cohan and other chroniclers of greed, criminality and a political system addicted to legalized graft.

But if more people were paying even a modicum of attention to the past, the economic debate in the 2012 presidential campaign wouldn't be between one political party beholden to big money that dreamily depicts investment bankers and oligarchs as jobs creators, and another political party, also beholden to big money, that wants applause for fixing the problem. If more people remembered which policies worked and which failed during the Depression -- as Paul Krugman documents in his new book End This Depression Now! -- then the jobs debate in this election wouldn't be about austerity and deficits, it would be about stimulating short-term demand and making long-term investments in education, research and infrastructure.

Total recall is a total buzz killer. Take Instagram, a photo-sharing startup that has yet to make a penny, but was just bought for a festive billion dollars by Facebook, which in turn is being valued at $100 billion. Hello? Dot-com bubble burst of 2000? Tulip sector -- I mean, tech sector valuations like these, larger than many nations' GDP, don't derive from companies' cash flows or their assets and liabilities. They're a function of expectations, of the wisdom and the madness of crowds. The worth of your pension fund is about to depend on the forgetfulness of the stock market, which is actually a pretty good example of a senior moment.

Continue reading "Don't Know Much About History" »

Scott McGibbon
Scott McGibbon is Project Specialist at the Lear Center.

As so much of our lives - medical charts, business enterprises, financial records, personal photos and videos - moves "up there," it seems like a good time to take a clear-eyed view of "the cloud."

A new report from Greenpeace, How Clean Is Your Cloud, claims that much of the online infrastructure known as "the cloud" relies on coal or nuclear power and that many "cloud" facilities are moving from Silicon Valley to areas of the country like North Carolina, Virginia and northeastern Illinois where energy prices are much lower.

What additionally shocking details does the report offer?

• The electricity consumption of data centers may be as much as 70% higher than previously predicted.
• The combined electricity demand of the internet/cloud (data centers and telecommunications network) globally in 2007 was 623 billion kilowatt hours. If the cloud were a country, it would have the fifth largest electricity demand in the world.
• Based on current projections, the demand for electricity will more than triple to 1,973bn kWh, an amount greater than the combined total demands of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil.
• By 2008, "the cloud" was already responsible for 2% of global greenhouse gasses.

We tend to forget that "the cloud" consists of millions of web servers built from metals and silicon and plastics which are bolted into steel racks which are themselves firmly bolted to steel floors, all inside huge, secure industrial buildings and kept from overheating by massive cooling systems. Not a cloud or "the cloud" in sight.

Does it matter what it's called? Only so far as we do not deceive ourselves with a false metaphor about what our relentless use of it really demands in terms of materials, power, underpaid human labor and political battles over mining rights. What if we each made a decision not to take this data ecosystem for granted? What if we chose to treat it as a precious resource? Why not be 10% more judicious about using it? Ration your uploads of pictures of food you're about to ingest; only post videos edited to feature just the best moments. How about the five freshest pictures from the party instead of all 47? You'd be doing the environment (and all your followers) a favor.

(Got a better idea of a name for "the cloud?" Tweet @learcenter with your idea!)

Chrissie Pollock
Chrissie Pollock is a freelance writer on film and television.
Reposted from Journeys in Film

In 2012, The Hunger Games smashed box office records as crowds gathered to view a powerful story. The violent film offered a strong message of anti-violence. How ironic, and yet it worked. How? Because of empathy.

The Hunger Games Promotes Empathy

According to the article "Human Empathy Through the Lens of Social Neuroscience" from The Scientific World JOURNAL, empathy is "the ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others."

Viewers of The Hunger Games connected with characters who had to make tough ethical and moral choices. By the time viewers left the theater, their thought processes changed because the film knew how to teach empathy. Viewers were confronted with the question of what they would do in a similar situation.

How Fiction Teaches Empathy

In her New York Times article, "Your Brain on Fiction," Annie Murphy Paul cites a study by Dr. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada. In this study, he noted that preschool-age children who had stories read to them had a keener theory of mind. This occurred after the children watched movies, as well. However, it did not happen when they watched television.

Dr. Mar conjectured that the parent-children conversations after movies might have an impact on the results. He finds that parents are more likely to watch a film with a child, but children are often left to watch television alone.In this article, Paul highlights a quote from Dr. Mar:

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, "is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life."

Using Film Curriculum to Teach Empathy

Journeys in Film uses its own curriculum and recommends films that teach empathy using fictional stories on film. For example, in Children of Heaven, middle school viewers develop an understanding of what it means to live in such poverty that losing a pair of shoes can break a family.

Although children viewing the title might live without financial worry, watching the film helps them connect to, and understand, others who struggle more. This leaves them with a desire to help others rather than judge or ridicule them.

Film is a useful tool for helping children understand others without living through experiences themselves. Their cognitive structures change, encouraging them to reach out in global understanding.

Veronica Jauriqui

Veronica Jauriqui is Special Projects Manager at the Norman Lear Center.

The LACMA Rock and a case study in museums and online engagement

I'll admit it. I caught Rock Fever. It was the same mania that possessed large swaths of Los Angeles County just a few weeks ago, compelling people to leave their homes, take to the streets in wild celebration and pose for photographs with what was referred to (with a touch of overkill) as the city's newest rock star.

Of course I'm referring to the LACMA Rock, the 340-ton granite slab that will become the heart of artist Michael Heizer's sculpture "Levitated Mass" opening this summer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I didn't exactly join the city revelers who en masse followed the rock's 100+mile route from a Riverside quarry to the Miracle Mile. But I meticulously tracked its progress online - on LACMA's own Levitated Mass blog, through photos shared on Flickr and via one of the best Twitter anthropomorphs I've seen in a while, the @LACMARock. The Rock's unofficial twitter feed (according to a LACMA spokesperson, it originated from L.A. County Supervisor Don Knabe's office) was a pitch perfect online supplement to a much-publicized spectacle that galvanized a city around a piece of modern art.

The momentum spawned marriage proposals, a "Rockapalooza" street party and an upcoming documentary.

Whether you loved it like me or wearied of the daily play-by-play, LACMA's star exhibition built some serious online engagement. And kudos to LACMA for embracing the madness and allowing the Rock to literally take on a life of its own.

Continue reading "Rock Me Like...an Art Museum?" »

Adam Amel Rogers

Adam Amel Rogers is a Project Specialist at the Norman Lear Center.

Our nation's young people are living in a war zone. School bullying is at epidemic levels, educators largely lack resources to intervene and cyberbullying ensures that the tormenting continues well after the school bell rings.

No one has the silver bullet answer, but the search for solutions has launched anti-bullying efforts from the White House, Facebook and numerous education groups at every level. However, the most visible soldier in the battle against bullying has indisputably been the entertainment industry. While being visible is not necessarily synonymous with being effective, there is no doubt that the entertainment industry has brought unprecedented awareness to the issue.

In recent weeks, this entertainment-induced awareness evolved out of Dan Savage's celebrity-laden It Gets Better campaign. Harvard University hosted the official launch of Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation, which serves as "a bottom-up movement to try to make it cooler for young people to be nice." Gaga has been a leading voice in anti-bullying efforts-including her notable lobbying of President Obama for stronger anti-bullying legislation. Also, an upcoming documentary from the Weinstein Company titled, Bully has created a major buzz with a haunting trailer and a growing battle with the MPAA, which has produced over 300,000 petition signatures to reduce the film's "R" rating so young people can actually watch the movie.

One entertainment event that has already had a major impact is the emotional climax in the teen bullying storyline on Glee. The show forces audiences to suspend disbelief a bit more than most shows, and it has addressed many important issues in arguably problematic ways (e.g., teen sex, disabilities, etc.), but Glee has handled each step of the bullying storyline with extreme care. Most recently, in a beautifully shot three-minute sequence, high school football player Dave Karofsky was outed as gay, bullied and cyberbullied, which caused him to attempt suicide. Though many have criticized the show for jamming so much important content into an episode that also contained a singing competition, a teenage wedding (almost) and a texting-while-driving car accident, the suicide attempt was portrayed in a realistic and powerful way. Max Adler, who plays Karofsky, brilliantly conveyed how hopeless and scary the situation was and how the character could have thought there was no other way out. Thankfully, after the longest commercial break ever, it was revealed that Karofsky's father found him before it was too late. The choice to have the suicide attempt fail is extremely important because the real life situation is already so hopeless that it would have been irresponsible for the show to resolve the storyline with tragedy.

The episode also displayed the aftermath of educators and friends searching for what they could have done to prevent it. Administrators proceeded cautiously out of fear of copycat attempts and the lack of acceptance from Karofsky's mother was shown to play a role in his suicide attempt. Perhaps most importantly, a public service announcement about The Trevor Project featuring Daniel Radcliffe aired during the episode. A leading suicide prevention hotline, The Trevor Project reported a 300% increase in phone calls and a 667% increase in web traffic on the night the episode aired. Overall, the episode delivered bullying and suicide prevention awareness to 7.4 million people in one fell swoop.

At the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, we study how entertainment impacts society and in our recent study of the film Food, Inc., over half of respondents said the film "changed their life." This is the latest in a long list of scholarship showing that entertainment can cause behavior change. This is why it is so important for shows like Glee to tackle important issues in poignant ways.

Patrick Reed

Patrick Reed has contributed to several projects for the Lear Center over the last 10 years and also works for Thoroughbred Times in Lexington, KY.

***POSTSCRIPT

One week after the post below, Luck's producers and HBO cancelled further production of the series, two episodes into shooting its second season. The press reported that another Thoroughbred was euthanized on-set, upping the total to three for the show's duration. The latest horse fatality reportedly occurred away from the racetrack as the animal was being led to the barn area at Santa Anita - an accident that could have happened in any situation, at any location, and one that did not come about as a result of simulating a race or any other high-intensity activity. Speculation immediately began to percolate as to whether the accident provided an opening for producers to halt filming of a series that had failed to draw strong ratings, but official statements by Milch, Mann, and the cable channel brass expressed regret over the decision and stressed that their commitment to equine welfare was absolute.

At any rate, the promise of Luck and its willingness to present an unflinching but affectionate portrait of contemporary horse racing to viewers will not be fully realized. The series will now likely be remembered more for its fine acting performances throughout the cast and especially for providing icons Hoffman and Nolte emotionally complex characters to inhabit as their careers wind down. As for horse racing, the search continues for the next gambling innovation, pop culture tie-in, big-event promotion, or - best of all - a new star on the track to recapture the interest of a general public that has, over the past quarter-century, largely abandoned the sport. Optimism remains a constant presence in the industry - despite all of the negative trends, there's always a next race.

Six years ago last week, a two-year-old by Forestry sold for the highest price ever at a Thoroughbred auction - $16-million at the select Fasig-Tipton Florida sale. The price (a result of a bidding war between two titanic international breeding and racing operations) easily surpassed the previous record of $13.1-million set in 1985 and in retrospect was the most egregious indicator of unsustainable excess within the industry - particularly in the breeding sector - that paralleled the overall economic insanity of the late 'aughts and portended the collapse to come. (The regally bred colt, later named The Green Monkey after a Barbados golf course, retired to stud in 2009 after racing three times without a win and with career earnings a shade above $10,000).

2008 brought a bracing across-the-board correction, and the U.S. Thoroughbred industry has been grasping for a lifeline ever since. While ample evidence exists that the bottom has been reached in the auction market over the past year and a half, and stallion fees have plummeted from their ridiculous heights in the mid-2000s to more affordable levels, the crucial long-term problem plaguing the industry remains: horse racing continues to lose fan support to other forms of entertainment. Thoroughbred racing may never regain its status as one of the three leading American pastimes that it shared with baseball and boxing during the middle of the last century, but currently the challenge facing the industry is much more basic, and dire: finding a way to carve out and maintain a foothold as a viable entertainment option against an endless, regenerating tide of slot machines, "SportsCenter" updates, handheld device games, and other touchstones of our instant-gratification zeitgeist.

Horse racing's steady decline in popularity is easy to understand in this context - because at its core,

Continue reading "Luck's Tough Love: Could David Milch's Unflinching HBO Series Assist in Horse Racing's Revival?" »