What is Quantitative Easing?

The more I hear about "quantitative easing," the more it is clear that it amounts to fucking with our nation's currency in a dangerous way. It's making me queasy, and like many things, there's very little straight talk in the mainstream media. I've recently run across a few things that amount to some straight talk. Here's one, and here's the other:

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Robert Sapolsky discusses the alleged uniqueness of humans

Excellent lecture by Robert Sapolsky. Scientists used to think that humans were unique in many ways when compared to other animals. The number of ways in which we are truly unique is dwindling, however, and that dwindling number is the focus of Sapolsky's talk. There is at least one way in which we are unique, and that is our ability to entertain a contradiction. Sapolsky, speaking to a graduating class, challenges them to take on this contradiction: They are highly educated and thus privileged human animals who are educated to such an extent that they realize that it is virtually impossible for one person to make a difference in the world. The more clear this becomes that it is impossible to make the world better, "the more you must."

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Deep paint: Making a one-shot expressionist painting

Question: How do you create a large exquisite expressionist painting in one session? My friend Paul LaFlam is an artist in St. Louis, and he would give an answer something like this: Pour several gallons of hardware store house paint onto a big horizontal wooden canvass and then "brush" the paint with torn pieces of cardboard, making sure to let your painting dry for at least three days, because it is 1/8" deep. The layers of the paint interact with one another, and "the paint does much of the work itself." Paul offered to let me videotape his unusual process awhile back, and we finished up editing the videotape today. Check it out.

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