Doctor Who Music Videos

Some video interpretations to Doctor Who soundtracks..

Beware: There are lots of spoilers for both 2005 & 2006 series.

They’re all good, but I especially like the two versions of Song For Ten, and If You Wait For Me, as they’re a bit of a different take than the others. Fans of Classic Who will love the Seven Doctors version of Song For Ten.

Muhammad Yunus on web and video

As you probably know, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

The text of his lecture at the awards ceremony is available here. The video of the lecture is currently not working, but footage of the ceremonial parts of the event can be found in the YouTube videos below. Note that these give a flavour of the celebrations, with a lot of music and dance, as well as discussion of Yunus’ work and thought. Yunus’ own lecture starts 16 minutes and 45 seconds into Part 2, but is incomplete.

Ceremony Part 1 (Approx 40 min)

Ceremony Part 2 (Approx 30 min)

. . .

It turns out that there is also a website devoted to Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank. This site appears to be something like a fans and supporters site, rather than Yunus’ own doing, but it has lots of useful information, and it seems he was willing to cut the ribbon for its launch, so is presumably happy with it.

An official site seems to be planned, and “coming soon” here.

Meanwhile buried in the very professional fan site – as I hope I can call it without offending anyone! – there are links to a number of videos by Ashoka.

I haven’t had time to view them yet, as they are each about 40 minutes long, but they appear very interesting. Although they definitely have a promotional spin, rather than being independent documentaries.

The one on Yunus’ life (“Banker to the Poor”) looks especially interesting as it gives a real insight into the making of the man.

Direct links to the videos are:

Banker to the Poor

Building Social Enterprise

Creating a Poverty-Free World

Also on the site is a video by Ashoka founder Bill Drayton, on the concept of social enterprise:

Nothing More Powerful

A nice feature of all these videos is that subtitles are available in many languages.

One Woman Making a Difference in Afghanistan

The world is changing. And one way that it’s changing fast is that the likes of venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki are nowadays as engaged by making a difference as making money.

He says the most inspiring tale of entrepreneurship he’s heard in 2006 is not the one about a few young guys in a garage starting YouTube and making a billion dollars, but the story of a female entrepreneur in Afghanistan, who employs 260 women making leather goods.

For me, this story highlights many themes that are important:

• The power of the entrepreneurial spirit, especially compared to the way that many traditional charities and non-profits operate
• The shift in business consciousness, as more and more people are at least as interested in fulfillment and making a difference as making a pile of money
• The rise of global partnerships and the increasing solidarity between the rich and the poor

These are things to celebrate, take heart from, and work to expand.

Terrorism Paranoia?

Yet another person seems to have been charged with terrorism with little reason. The BBC reports that the terrorism charges against an alleged ringleader of the summer Heathrow airliner plot have been dropped in Pakistan. Other criminal charges like forgery remain but the report says…

Pakistan has presented Mr Rauf as one of the ringleaders behind the alleged plan to blow up flights

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

There have been quite a few cases where the authorities seem to be jumping to premature conclusions. Not long ago someone described as Britain’s most dangerous terrorist was sentenced to forty years in prison. But as the Economist says:

Yet there is something a little strange about the case. Although a mass of data was discovered on computer hard drives, no weapons or explosives were found… And not once in his ten years as a terrorist did he ever carry out an attack. But he has just been given one of the toughest sentences, save for the very worst murders, handed down in modern times by a British court.

In ten years as an alleged terrorist, all he had done was write up grandiose plans on his laptop, and make the odd video of a target, making childish “boom” noises. But he had not taken a single step to implement any of these plans, had not gotten any of the materials needed, and as far as could be told, didn’t have the money to get them.

Perhaps more a fantasist than a terrorist?

And there are plenty of other examples… the Forest Gate incident, the alleged plot to attack a football match… The latter alarm appears to have been triggered because some Muslims were overheard discussing plans to go to Old Trafford. After much hysteria and dire warnings for all football matches, it turned out that there were indeed Muslims with such plans – because they were avid Manchester United supporters.

A journal article recently – unfortunately I can’t remember which one – pointed out that since 9/11 there has not been a single attack in the US. It argued that there is no doubt that al-Qaeda would love to carry out such an attack, and the obvious conclusion which no-one has drawn is that they haven’t done it because they have little capability to carry out another attack. Probably, the article suggested, they have few members left in the US, and it’s now not easy for any would-be attackers to enter.

No doubt there is a real threat as 9/11 and 7/7 show.

But it seems the paranoia is way out of proportion to the threat. Even in the week of 7/7, more people died in the UK in road traffic accidents than from the terrorist attack.

There are shades of the “intelligence” about WMD in Iraq. No intelligence agency in the world doubted that Saddam had them, and they were all wrong.

Often, we all see what we expect to see, especially when there is no clear information, and such sources as exist are murky and unreliable. Especially if you are already jumpy and saying to yourself “it might mean many things, but we need to be prepared for the worst”.

It’s not true that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

But the fear and paranoia may be far more dangerous to us than the threat gave rise to it.

Is Moving to India a Good Idea?

Ten years ago, I probably had a great opportunity to be in on the ground floor of China’s transformation. At the time, I knew it was going to be big, but it wasn’t such common knowledge then. I was doing an MBA where I had good Chinese and Taiwanese friends. I started to learn Mandarin. If I’d really wanted to, and had really gone for it, probably I could have started a new life there. And possibly made a lot of money for myself, and made a lot of difference there too.

Today, I’m asking myself the same questions about India.

The BBC has an interesting piece Brits head to India. Selected snippets:

“My major concerns were around the general poverty, the fear of malaria that all British seem to have – and the standard of living,” he says.
“But… amid India’s economic boom, Mumbai life is surprisingly easy.”

“I miss my family, my friends, the dialogue, the contact, simple things like finishing work and going to a pub for a glass of wine,” she says.

Nigeria’s Stone Crushers

Take a look at this BBC picture story . It vividly shows the lives of poor people making a living from crushing stones for the construction industry in Nigeria. The dignity and resolution of these people is astonishing, as they use any opportunity to take care of their families and send children to school.

Debating Student Debt

Three further thoughts on the Free Exchange debate on the effects of student debt:

• Some people seem to think that who paid for a degree would affect the motivations of a student to work hard.

  Would who paid for your car affect your motivations to drive it? Would a car that was a gift from a rich father be driven with less enthusiasm? Probably not.

  In fact those who believe that such behaviour is determined by economic rationality need to ponder this: If there are benefits to working hard and getting a better degree, why wouldn’t a rational student seize those benefits regardless of who paid for the opportunity to study?

• Some years ago I did a full-time MBA at one of the top UK schools. All of us on the course had paid large fees, and sacrificed even more in foregone salary. A substantial investment by anyone’s standards.

  Did we all therefore work as hard as possible to make the most of the opportunity?

  My experience was that people behaved very much in line with their personalities. Some people burned the midnight oil and read every book cover to cover. Other people often skipped lectures and slept in. Many people left their assignments to the last minute, and did a rush job that didn’t do them justice.

• The discussions here remind me of a quote from Einstein.

  “Common sense is just another name for the prejudices we acquired by the age of 18.”

  People seem to be here to spout their received wisdom, without any real thinking or exchange of ideas.

  Which like the behaviour of the MBA students I described above is utterly, familiarly, human, and far from rational.

Perspectives on Wealth – Follow Up

I wrote recently on the narrow way we often think of wealth, and how that can be very misleading about people’s true economic well-being.

The points I made there are relevant to a post on The Econonmist blog, about student debt. Some of the connections are these:

• Another way to think about student debt is to consider the intellectual capital that is gained, and offsets the financial debt that may have been undertaken. This is the point I originally made as an example of how in statistics someone with healthy prospects can appear to be worse off than a truly poor person, who does have a modicum of savings.
• Of course there is more to studying than simply enhancing one’s financial prospects. Some of the commenters on the post point out that large debts prevent talented people from working in non-profits or the public sector, where they are very much needed. This relates to my thoughts on private and public wealth.
• The Economist suggests that maybe if all students were required to take on a large loan, that would actually level the playing field because it would:

“put the children of the middle class in at least somewhat the same position as the less affluent students who compete with them for places”

• When you consider “social capital” it is clear that the playing field cannot be so easily levelled. Someone who knows that in the worst case they can always go and live in comfort in an affluent parental home is in a very different position to someone whose debts might end up as a burden not only to themselves, but their hard-pressed family. And there is a great deal more to social capital than just that. For example, is a law degree sufficient to gain entry to a lucrative legal career? Or is the right accent and demeanour also a requisite?
• Remember that decisions are made in conditions of bounded rationality. It’s not sufficient that education is a good investment. It must also be clear to a young person with little experience of the world that it’s so. If that young person comes from a background where this is taken for granted, their decision will be obvious. If they hardly know anyone with a university education, the risks may appear great, whether they are or not. And it is actually the case that the less capital you have, social and otherwise, the more any given financial loss would impact you.
• Maybe most pertinent from my earlier post is the point that most often people are not interested in any real or rigorous thinking, simply in latching on to evidence to justify their own existing point of view. The discussion on the Economist blog – from whatever point of view – illustrates this only too well.
• In fact I wonder, was the original Economist post written to shed light on an important question? Or was it like much else written simply from the perspective of “What can I say today to get some traffic to this blog and earn my paycheck?” Questions that we would all do well to ask ourselves often.