A MarketPlace of Ideas                        

Part 1

 In the style of the acclaimed CIVIL WAR series, THE PRIZE tells the epic history of oil – how it has dominated global politics, shaken the world economy, and transformed our century. Shot on location in Azerbaijan, Egypt, England, Indonesia, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Russia, Scotland, Turkey, and the United States, the series features fascinating characters, never-before-seen archival footage, newly filmed segments, and interviews with the people who shaped the oil industry. Yergin appears on camera throughout the series to discuss oil’s impact on politics, economics, and the environment. We see how oil becomes the largest industry in the world–a game of huge risks and monumental rewards. Narrated by Donald Sutherland, THE PRIZE represents cinematic storytelling at its best – a historically significant tale of a quest for mastery that has revolutionized our civilization." PART ONE: Our Plan "Trace the turbulent, rapid rise of the world’s biggest business, how a visionary but ruthless John D. Rockefeller controlled it–and how reporter Ida Tarbell took him on in one of the most famous muckraking exposes ever. A fascinating look at Rockefeller’s controversial legacy, the rise of modern business, and how Tarbell served as the role model for the modern investigative journalist

Part 2

The Prize Episode Two: Empires of Oil "Witness capitalism on a grand scale: how Shell Oil and Royal Dutch merged, then challenged the supremacy of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. A compelling tale of how oil transformed everyday life in the farthest corners of the globe, made Russia a great oil power, and helped the Allies win World War I

 Part 3

The Prize Episode Three: The Black Giant "It’s the Roaring Twenties, and the magic of oil touches everyone, from millions of new car owners to hopeful Texan wildcatters. The American oil industry wrestles with shortage and surplus, as flamboyant entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian stakes his claim in Iraq

Part 4

The Prize Episode Four: War and Oil "The untold story of World War II unfolds: how oil dictated strategy to Hitler; how lack of oil slowed Japan’s war machine; how oil ultimately determined victory or defeat. Features rare footage on the critical impact of oil on decisive military events

Part 5

The Prize Episode Five: Crude Diplomacy "Post World War II America awakens to the strategic importance of oil and witnesses a key moment in history when oil production shifts from the US to the Middle East. An extraordinary cast of characters, including Arabian kings, US presidents, British adventurers, Iranian politicians, and American explorers paint a global portrait of how oil shaped the world economy and politics

Part 6

The Prize Episode Six: Power to the Producers "It’s the heyday of cheap oil, the dawn of the Hydrocarbon Society…and the introduction of a prosperous new automobile culture for Americans. Follow the flamboyant characters, plots, and counterplots, as the producing countries and the independent oil companies challenge the "Seven Sisters"–and open a new era in world oil

Part 7

 The Prize Episode Seven: The Tinderbox "Relive two decades of upheaval that shook the world as power shifted, and nations and companies jockeyed for position–amidst embargoes, shortages, and surpluses. A unique view of the rise of the OPEC era, beginning with the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf and ending with the burning oil wells of Kuwait

Part 8

The Prize Episode Eight: The New Order of Oil "The Gulf War marked the beginning of a new era for the Hydrocarbon Society. This program explores the relationship between oil and the environmental conscience, and the technological race to balance energy, economic, and ecological needs in the Information Age

The presenter examines the worst jobs of the dark ages and selects what he considers to be the worst.  After selecting he performs the job to see what it was like.  Worst jobs up to 1066. 

Viewing Notes

• hard – messy – frightening jobs
• written history starts with Roman invasions
• Gold Mining:  romans wanted gold – was in south west Wales – was deep underground – was used as a means of punishment – Wales was plundered for healthy people to mine the gold.  The gold comes up in veins so you have to chase the vein.  Hot in summer and cold in the winter.  Dusty.  Dangerous because the Romans were always coming up with new methods.  Fire setting – fill an area full of wood and set it on fire.  Heat the rock up then toss water on the rock.  The rock would shatter and have to be carried out by hand. 
• Plowing land:  Acre = amount of land you could plow in one day.  That is with the old fashioned wooden plow.  
• Construction – wattle and daub fencing- weave a fence with green sticks – then daub with water / straw / mud / dung.  Dung acts like a binding agent for the mud.  Straw holds the daub together when it cracks during hot weather. 
• Corn Stone – "the daily grind".  Takes 3 to 4 hours to grind enough flour for a family of 12.  Children were used to gather firewood.
• Bog Iron Hunter  – In Saxons time they used Bog Ore.  40 kg of bog ore per day to support one smelter.  Poking into the bog with a stick. 
• Charcoal production – each village would have had its own charcoal maker.   3 tons of wood in a pyramid shape covered by dirt.  Set on fire to make charcoal.   Designed to smolder and not full on burn.  Took about 100 hours to finish.  Charcoal makers would nod off to sleep and risk the batch. Thus they made a one legged stool so if they fell asleep they would fall over and wake up.
• Coin maker – were not paid – got bed and board.   Shaving off a sliver was punished with castration.  If a whole coin went missing a hand was cut off and nailed to the door.
• Monastery – Monks had to do the same things as everyone else but they had the day job.  Atonement – suffering to prevent other people from going to hell.  Saint Cuthbert would wade out into the ocean in the winter and pray for 8 hours at a time.  Copying texts in cold conditions because they did not have glass they needed to be near a window or door for light.  Books were valuable and thus a target for Viking raiders. 
• Viking warrior – Viking boat had room for 16.  Alot of rowing involved when there was no wind.  Had to sleep on the boat.  No toilet.  Smelly.  Not alot of food. Bad sea weather.  Boat portage – carry the boat over the hill.  Repairs away from home were not a good idea.  Roll the boat along runners on the ground.  Runners must be greased with mashed up fish. 
• Gillymot egg collector – seabird.  Collection of the eggs from cliff ledge

 The Worst Jobs In History – The video series
—- Episode 1 The Dark Ages
—- Episode 2 The Middle Ages
—- Episode 3 The Tudors
—- Episode 4 stuarts
—- Episode 5 georgian times
—- Episode 6 victorian time

This is more an economic and political history of Britain than anything else.  The economic and political epochs of Britain are covered with nothing else talked about.  Even cultural events mentioned have strong bearing on economics with an example being a massive party that was the prototype rave.  Raves of this type are pay for entry models and more an economic effort than a party as much as they are talked up to the opposite.

Britain was on the edge of bankruptcy at the end of world war 2.  They owed money to the USA and at the same time they wanted to undertake a huge welfare effort including socialized medicine.  Sound familiar?   Sounds like the USA to me in 2009 under Obama. If you have interest in economics you need to watch all 5 of these shows.  In many ways the USA appears to be squarely on the same path as this has been empire.  

…..And just so you know Britain paid off the last of the loans from this era in the 2000’s. 

From video description: Britain in 1945; the country is victorious but nearly bankrupt. As Clement Attlee’s Labour government sets out to build ‘New Jerusalem’, Britain is forced to hold out the begging bowl in Washington. Though Ealing Studios produces a series of very British comedies and there is a spirit of hope in the air, the British people’s growing impatience with austerity threatens to take the country from bankruptcy to self-destruction.

Viewing Notes

• To be added upon second viewing

Links to all the videos

Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain
Episode 1 – Advance Britannia 1945-1955
Episode 2 – The Land of Lost Content 1955-1964
Episode 3 – Paradise Lost 1964-1979
Episode 4 – Revolution! 1979-1990
Episode 5 – New Britannia 1990-2007

Robert McNamara has died.  Unfortunately his brand of social engineering is alive and well.   You may know a couple of Roberts "innovations".  They include the F-111.

 And the ever jamming M-16 rifle.

His life demonstrates the abject failure of when the unwashed hands of government apparatiks touch the inner workings of our society. 

Read George Wills Article to understand better how McNamera introduced his own particular version of errors into the system. 

The apogee of McNamara’s professional life, in the first half of the 1960s, coincided, not coincidentally, with the apogee of the belief that behavioralism had finally made possible a science of politics. Behavioralism held — holds; it is a hardy perennial — that the social and natural sciences are not so different, both being devoted to the discovery of law-like regularities that govern the behavior of atoms, hamsters, humans, whatever.

This sort of social meddling has not ceased.  Unfortunately it has found a new home in the left.  Unable to fathom the mathematics of chaos they straddle the bucking bronco wild horse proclaiming over and over it will end differently this time.  This time we can break this wild horse called human reality.  This from the people who claim there is no god on one hand but on the other purport to have god like qualities of to-the-core understanding.  I think that is unlikely.

I guess all we can do is wait for Obama to be tossed off this pitch black mare with the bewitching eyes.  It will come sure as the sun rises.

Before the Scots there were the Picts.  The Picts were so called because they have tatoos on their bodies. ( pictures ).   They pursued a strategy of fighting and then falling back into the rough Scottish country side.  It appears that without sufficiently friendly environment the agressors would fall back.  Thus their strategy was someone passive agressive.

Playing cards were once the cheapest form of paper and mothers abandoning their children would often use a playing card to leave a note with a child.  Alot of other history I did not know about cards either.

This video shot in 1980 is the beginning of what later because "Great Railway Journeys" with Michael Palin hosting.   This first video is about the history of the train system in Great Britain and is probably the most authentic piece on the topic by Palin because he is working off material in his early life when he was a train fanatic.  One can not help having some nostalgia for 1980 when watching this. 

Historian Michael Wood delves through medieval court records to follow the fortunes of a village in Hertfordshire and, more particularly, the family of peasant Christina Cok. The 14th century was a perilous time in British history, shot through with famine, plague and war. It was a time of climate change, virulent cattle diseases and, above all, the Black Death. But it was also the time when modern mentalities were shaped, not just by the rulers but increasingly by the common people. It was the beginning of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a capitalist market economy. Michael chooses an everyday story of a medieval country family through which to illustrate the bigger picture of how the character and destiny of ordinary British people was being shaped. It is history told not from the top of society but from the bottom – and especially through the eyes of the forgotten Michael brings to life the story of a 14th-century extended family: peasant Christina Cok, her father Hugh, estranged husband William, and her children John and Alice. Michael shows us that though their lives might at first seem quite alien, you only have to scratch below the surface to find uncanny connections with modern-day Britons. In them, you can see our beginnings as a nation of shopkeepers and the roots of the British love affair with beer and football. Perhaps more importantly is the triumph of that sturdy and cussed streak of individualism that has been a characteristic of ‘Britishness’ down the centuries.

Take Away:    As you watch this video you should be asking yourself if things are different in any real way from the feudal days of the middle ages.  Just as today the law is used more to obfuscate and thwart rather than attain justice.  The critical fault of the left today is its religious belief in the power of government.  Yet is it not clear that government is used more to enslave than any other single function?    Can  you imagine what the governments at the time would have been able to do with a database?   The english have been steeped in  bureaucracy for a millenia.  Now that is hard to fathom.  I am forced to posit that mankind can not thrive in this circumstance and that the world was fortunate many other regions were free from this sort of government.  As we enter an age of every last bit of the world coming under the unwanted embrace of bureaucracy how will the spirit of mankind react ?   It is a dower grey fog that looms ahead of mankind.

The following is a true story told to me by my father.  In my fathers neighborhood there was a guy who he thought would stop at nothing to make money during the depression.  It was said this man would fish out used rubbers at the sewer plant.  He would then wash them and place them on broom poles to dry them out .  When dry he would package them up and sell them. 

On a related note how do you recycle a condom?

A few saying during the 30’s went as follows: 

    Times are bad and we  have to jack off the dog to feed the cat

    Need a job? -  The fellow would say   YES YES!!   And the trickster would reply   They have jobs down at krogers picking fly shit out black pepper

    Or alternatively the trickster would reply   Down at the bakery stick your ass out the window yell double loaf

Tires for your car were hard enough to come by that tricksters would go to where there was a cliff by a road and place a tire on a rope next to the road.  When a person would stop to pick up the tire they would reel it in and laugh.

Milk was delivered on the porch of houses in that era.   Sometimes there would be milk thieves.    People would put crotan oil in it and you almost immediately start crapping.  If you drank the milk on the spot at the victims porch there would be a trail of crap back to your house.

So when people bandy about the idea we might be in or be going into an economic depression remember one thing.  It has to get much much worse before that is true.