Guns, Germs and Steel - 13.000 years of human history

Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.




Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.

Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet? Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead? Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East? Why did farming never emerge in Australia? And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental, environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both his theories and his own endurance tested.




The three one-hour programs were filmed across four continents on High Definition digital video, and combinied ambitious dramatic reconstruction with moving documentary footage and computer animation. They also include contributions from Diamond himself and a wealth of international historians, archeologists and scientists.




Guns, Germs, and Steel is a thrilling ride through the elemental forces which have shaped our world – and which continue to shape our future.

PART ONE - Out of Eden

PART TWO - Conquest

PART THREE - Tropics

GapCasts - Child Mortality, Urbanization, Public Services, carbon Dioxide - Gapminder.org

GapCast #11 Reducing Child Mortality

Nearly 10 million children under five die every year. Almost 90% of all child deaths are attributable to just six conditions: neonatal causes, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS.
The aim (Millenium Development Goal 4) is to cut child mortality by two thirds by 2015. How can this be achieved? Which countries make sufficient progress?
And by which rate did a country like Norway reduce its child mortality the last 100 years? Watch Gapcast #11 to understand the background and the current status of a Millenium Development Goal.



Gapcast #10 - Carbon Dioxide
Everyone contributes to carbon dioxide emissions, but some more than others. Reducing global CO2 emissions requires that we have a good understanding of the current picture. Serious progress can be made if we develop a renewable source of electricity that is cheaper than coal.




Gapcast #9 - Public Services
Public services (safe water, education, healthcare) meet basic human needs, but are currently unavailable to many people.
Better information about access to these services is needed by service users and providers in order to make and measure progress in this area.



Gapcast #2 - Urbanization
With Hans Rosling. In this GapCast, Hans Rosling focuses on urbanization. In four minutes he give a short overview over the urban challenge, showing the last 40 years of development in urbanization and economic growth.




GapCasts - Gapminder.org

"Origins - Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution." Hosted by author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Documentary about our creation and the universe.
PBS's NOVA series presents "Origins - Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution." Hosted by author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The Cold War

CNN
Cold War Episode 1: Comrades (1917-1945).



2. Iron Curtain -
3. Marshall Plan -
4. Berlin -
5. Korea -
6. Reds -
7. After Stalin -
8. Sputnik -
9. The Wall -
10. Cuba -
11. Vietnam -
12. MAD -
13. Make Love, Not War -
14. Red Spring -
15. China -
16. Détente -
17. Good Guys, Bad Guys -
18. Backyard -
19. Freeze -
20. Soldiers of God -
21. Spies -
22. Star Wars -
23. The Wall Comes Down -
24. Conclusions -

Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz on Human Progress

The Long Now Foundation
San Francisco, CA
Apr 28th, 2008
Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz present Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminars about Long-term Thinking.

Juan Enriquez: Mapping the Frontier of Knowledge - FORA.tv

The Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA. Oct 12th, 2007

Mapping the Frontier of Knowledge with Juan Enriquez speaking at a seminar hosted by The Long Now Foundation.
Enriquez has a world-class collection of historic maps made at the very point of discovery. He will deploy them for the first time in one of his dazzling presentations, to examine how we image and imagine what we are exploring, and thus image and imagine exploration itself. Enriquez is author of As the Future Catches You and The Untied States of America, and CEO and Chair of Biotechonomy, a life sciences research and investment firm - The Long Now Foundation







Juan Enriquez: Mapping the Frontier of Knowledge - FORA.tv

1891 - The Use and Abuse of Money, W Cunningham

The Use and Abuse of Money

A voyage round the world, in the years 1740-44

A voyage round the world, in the years 1740-44

1890 - Bizarre Notes and Queries in History

The Bizarre Notes and Queries in History

A Short History of Art, Julia B. Deforest, 1921

A Short History of Art: " "

Bad Predictions about the Future

Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future: " "

1993 New York Times first article on the Internet

1993 New York Times first article on the Internet: " "

San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906 footage

The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size. Rupturing the northernmost 296 miles (477 kilometers) of the San Andreas fault from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino, the earthquake confounded contemporary geologists with its large, horizontal displacements and great rupture length. Indeed, the significance of the fault and recognition of its large cumulative offset would not be fully appreciated until the advent of plate tectonics more than half a century later. Analysis of the 1906 displacements and strain in the surrounding crust led Reid (1910) to formulate his elastic-rebound theory of the earthquake source, which remains today the principal model of the earthquake cycle.

This footage is some of the earliest known from a natural disaster. Edison newsreels of San Francisco earthquake / falling buildings / taking away the hurt / troops marching along Van Ness Avenue with relief supplies / pan views of the destruction 1906 Earthquake.

First Movies ever made, Late 1800

These are some of the very first movies ever made. These came from the Library of Congress. "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion ...."
--Thomas A. Edison, 1888
Edison's laboratory was responsible for the invention of the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Motion pictures became a successful entertainment industry in less than a decade, with single-viewer Kinetoscopes giving way to films projected for mass audiences.

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

Linguist Steven Pinker questions the very nature of our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his best-selling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest.
In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we've come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

2060: Sir Isaac Newton’s doomsday date

Cambridge University calls him “one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time” and “the founding examplar of modern physical science”. Therefore, when Sir Issac Newton calculates the date on which the world will end, one is inclined to trust his math. (He was, after all, the incumbent of Cambridge’s Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.) Newton mentioned his calculated doomsday date, 2060, in a letter recently put on display in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Fate magazine reported in its August issue.
The letter, however, is not the work of Newton as a scientist, but rather an expample of his theological scholarship. He arrived at the 2060 date by working from verses in the Bible’s Book of Daniel, arguing the world would end 1,260 years after the AD 800 foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in Western Europe.
He was apparently as confident of his predictions in this realm as he was in the rational world of science. As reported in This Is London, Newton’s letter states the “Bible proved the world would end in 2060.” Adding a helpful note of eqivocation, “It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”
Apparently the reason he set to solve the problem was to debunk various end-timers during his own era. He wrote: “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”
Despite his genius, Newton did not have the final word on the apocalypse. At least not yet. The Interactive Bible offers a list of 220 past, present and future end-of-the-world prophecies, most of which have turned out to be “rash conjectures of fanciful men.”
We’ll find out if Newton was as good at religious prophecy as he was at physics in 53 years. Unless, of course, the Mayans were right all along and we only make it to 2012.
The exhibition entitled “Newton’s Secrets,” is part of an array of papers of the British scientist bequeathed to the Jerusalem University by a wealthy collector of scientific manuscripts. The Newton letter has been in the possession of Israel’s National library since 1969. This is the letter’s first public display.

1896 New York Fire Department alarm

Brighton Beach 1896

1901 - Electrocution of Leon Czolgosz

Leon Frank Czolgosz (1873 -- October 29, 1901) was the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley.

1901 - In the Twentieth Century (Newark Daily Advocate)

The piece ran on the first page of the January 1, 1901 Newark Daily Advocate (Newark, Ohio).

The second to last sentence beautifully expresses humanity's fascination with futurism: Now, candidly, wouldn't you like to know what sayers will be saying, thinkers thinking, writers writing, doers doing and plotters plotting at the end of the next hundred years?
Will lovely woman do the proposing?
Will woman bosses run [politics?] as they now run the home?
Will the housemaid be a houseman?
Will horses be exhibited as curiosities?
Will politics be run on a philanthropic basis?
Will the Boston woman discover the north pole?
Will airships be provided for messenger boys?
Will men wear frilled shirt waists and women trousers?
Will the [unreadable] Mrs. Grundy be driven into a convent?
Will the college girl carry a cane and smoke a pipe?
Will there be free lunch stands for women?
Will men go to church evenings instead of to the club?
Will the wife kiss her husband goodby before starting off to business?
Will squirrels want just a quarter of a second longer to make faces at the hunter?
Will rich noblemen marry poor American girls?
Will hornets and other stinging things arbitrate instead of fight when their nests are pulled?
Will the grain be extracted from the head of wheat and other cereals by a magnet and save the labor of harvesting straw?
Will there be a law compelling [unreadable] remain silent?
Will cows come home at milking time as eagerly as field hands come to supper?
And will those same cows semioccasionally turn grass into butter instead of milk?
Will there be any escape from the [coon?] song save suicide?
Will every busy man wear an illuminated collar button?
Will mind reading [unreadable] a key to the intentions of hens as to their duties and villainies?
Will the automatic principle be adjusted to taxes so that they pay themselves?
Will there be a society for the extermination of noisy milkmen which will really [unreadable]?
Will pounds be pounds and quarts be quarts in weight as well in price?
Will women be compelled to flatten their pompadours at the theater so that men may see the play?
Will all consumers of [unreadable] have the common sense to lay in their winter stock in midsummer at any sacrifice?
Will the creatures that build guano mountains at the equator occasionally fly over the impoverished farms of North America?
Will our beloved country still be going to the "demnition bowwows" and political orators howling for votes to save it?
Now, candidly, wouldn't you like to know what sayers will be saying, thinkers thinking, writers writing, doers doing and plotters plotting at the end of the next hundred years?
Will the century be ten years [unreadable] . . . library?