Docuphile

I love documentaries. I haven't time to follow a whole TV series so a documentary is often an entertaining and informative way to relax for an hour in front of the TV. It can be about anything from wildlife to current affairs or famous people.

Some of the best documentaries of I watched have been about current affairs such as Crude Impact , Manda Bala, The World according to Monsanto, Another perfect world but the other day I saw a really good documentary about the artist Keith Haring. And that is just the thing, there are a lot of really good quality documentaries around now, or maybe its just that I have been paying more attention in the last few years. Indeed, there seems to be several documentaries getting a lot of media attention at the moment; Bananas!* and Videocracy to name a couple.

The impact of these films should not be underestimated. The makers of Bananas!* are being sued by Dole and the film The World accoring to Monsanto is billed as the film that "americans won't ever get to see." Manda Bala is also cited as a film that can never be shown in Brazil. So, I count myself lucky that I am not a target of such censorship.

In Sweden, we are also fortunate to have such good programs as Dokument utifrån and K-special that show a new documentary from around the world every week. Another program Uppdrag granskning reports on goings on in Sweden. In particular, there have been several programs on over-fishing, E.U. fishing regulations and fish-farming.

So how does this flood of information affect me? Well, as a consumer you pay for what you get. For a start I keep a pocket-size fish guide in my wallet when I am out shopping. Eco-food is also prefereable. Ask yourself, how can a banana be so cheap when it is grown on the other side of the world and has a shelf-life of just 2-3 days?

But I am not just a consumer but also a citizen of a democracy, and so being informed about what goes on in the world ("constant vigilance") enables me make the best use of my vote and helps hold our politicans accountable.

And now with the Copenhangen Climate Conference starting in a week, I expect there will be at least a few documentaries about climate change and climate politics on TV. Looking forward to it.

Baby black hole

I read a sci-fi short story once about a boy who went into a toy store and bought a pet black hole enclosed in some sort of glass case. It came with its own "food" to keep it alive and instructions explaining not to feed it anything else once the food ran out. Well, the boy brought the black hole home and fed it ubtil one day the food ran. Then he tried feeding it some other things in his room. Nothing bad happened so he continued to do this until one day the glass case vanished in front of his eyes and then things in his room started to be sucked into the black hole. In terror, he ran downstairs just as his bedroom door disappeared. The story ends with the boy running down the street while behind him his house implodes. More a horror story for nerds really which is why I like it.

Somehow my brain saw an analogy between feeding a black hole and raising our one year old daughter. The thought goes that providing appropriate stimulus to a small child usually results in the child learning to do new things which is fascinating to the child's parents. However, at some stage the child becomes self-sustaining, that is it learns on its own and not always with the most desirable results (climbing the furniture for instance). And that is where the analogy ends because at least this baby black hole can be taught to do the right thing.

I would love to know what the name of that book was.