H/T 3quarksdaily

I guess it is 2012 everywhere on earth now, so fellow earthlings, happy 2012!

Werner Herzog, whose movie Nosferatu the Vampyre I saw over a long train ride a couple of weeks ago, talks at length about film-making, his new movie Into the Abyss, his hatred of capital punishment (one of the reasons he doesn’t want to apply for American citizenship), and how movies don’t change anything (he says that his movies tell stories, not make arguments; and ideologies and arguments belong in the political space, media, etc., not in movies).

It is hard not to be amused and even impressed by his idiosyncracies – he once ate his shoes after losing a bet, and he claims that the first thing he does when he walks into a room is to size everybody up and assess who of them could milk a cow. According to him, he could tell that Woody Allen couldn’t handle udders.

Well, check out the video above. Worth all the 25 minutes it takes to watch it.

H/T Open Culture

Dr Okonjo-Iweala, the returning finance minister and new economy Czar (couldn’t resist that one) starts talking at about 4:30. She talks about agriculture, manufacturing, job creation and even Nollywood. I don’t yet have an opinion on her and her new team  -  it is much too early – but in a few months, one should begin to see beyond the platitudinous rhetoric.

From a 1985 discussion.

H/T brain pickings

I know it is Dr Doom, but it’s got to be newsworthy when an NYU economist tells a WSJ columnist that Marx was right about capitalism.

Thanks to Ola for the link.

Alain de Botton – On Pessimism from The School of Life on Vimeo.