Funniest Economics video ever!

I was reading through Steven Levitt's blog today when I came across this link to a student video project at Columbia University's Business School. It's a hilarious take on a student's dissatisfaction with the appointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. For the non-economists, the Federal Reserve is the US' version of our Bank Negara or Singapore's MAS.

The same video can be viewed here.



The video is doubly funny for me because the textbook that the lead singer discredits is the same textbook that I used for my Macroeconomics I module last semester.


Here reproduced for your convenience.

To be fair, I didn't think the textbook was as bad as the singer in the video made it out to be. Its actually pretty good, considering that an average student like myself can understand it without too much mind-numbing effort and concentration.Is there a lesson to be learned from all this? yes. Econs textbooks are so uncool that even fake music videos make fun of them. What is an econs major to do?

The solution?

An elegant, comprehensive and final one.

Singapore: History Revised & Condensed

This is a hilarious short history of Singapore. Its better than learning it from the books. Somebody even made a music video version. Its available here. I recommend it.

I like the way Singaporeans satirise their politics and history. Malaysians take their politics way too seriously sometimes, but thats a blog post for another day. Enjoy the comic relief.

Racial humour & hypersensitivity?

Being Malaysian, I always accepted without question the idea that people shouldn't talk about racial issues openly, loudly because inevitably, some race comes off worse in the discussion. This can lead to all sorts of problems.

Statements like:

• Malays are lazy, so lazy they won't even read this blog to berate the racist bigot who wrote this.
• Chinese businessmen are blood-sucking mosquitoes, just harder to swat than your average sized mosquito.
• Indians are so stupid, they literally believe they can swat the blood-sucking bigot mosquito who wrote this.

are sure to get you into hot water no matter how funny you are and how many times you rehearsed your delivery. People say jokes like that are in bad taste, as though Malay, Chinese and Indian were ice cream flavours. Weird.

Now that i've presented myself as a self-centred racist bigot, take a moment to ponder why. We stereotype and make fun of ah gua, bondan, or more accurately, transsexuals on television quite openly. Why is it not permissible for the same people to satirise a particular race?

I think I must now make something very clear. I am not advocating we abuse each other racially. I am wondering aloud why we don't talk about racial issues in an open, honest manner. Talking about race, acknowledging the differences and even finding the humour in it is surely a way to reconcile differences, bring everyone together and make real progress towards solving issues. Scott Adams goes so far as to say " You haven’t achieved equality until you’re a legitimate target for humor." I totally agree with that. I think we (both singapore and malaysia) are unequal societies.

In the context of Malaysia, with which i am most familiar, any mention of race triggers alarm bells in our collective consciousness. Mention racial issues in the public sphere and you're liable to get shouted down. This is an impediment to real progress in this area.
I am reminded of a story my friend Matthieu told me about France. He said that all government offices in France never ask for your race in any way for any service. The problem with this is that the government has no statistics on racial disparity in schools and are blind to the segregation of communities. We in Malaysia are marginally better in this respect. We can actually see the white err... multi-coloured elephant in the room. We just refuse to deal with it.

My suggestion as a first step to bringing about the kind of openness about these issues that society needs is to tell racist jokes. Why not? There are genuinely funny race jokes out there. I don't mean those unfunny, derogatory pseudo-jokes that pass for humour in some parlia... i mean parties. I mean race jokes the way comedians like Russell Peters and Chris Rock do it. Local comedians are funny too, but none of them have the cojones to do a proper race joke routine. Imagine the benefits a proper race comedy would have. Children to college students to old pensioners would have something to share and chat about with their multi-racial neighbours without worrying about appearing racist or bigoted.

Think about it. The next time you're in an awkward situation with a friend of a different race, break the tension with a funny, tasteful witticism about race. You could start a revolution in the way people think about race.

After my long hiatus from the blogging scene, during which Singapore had elections and hosted the IMF and World Bank, Pluto got downgraded and Grameen Bank (yes, a bank) won the Nobel Peace Prize, I am now back.
Apologies to my legions of adoring fans for my extended leave.
As a small measure of atonement for my grievous sin, I will now link everyone to a magical video that has amazed me no end for the past few days.
Ronaldinho Show - video powered by Metacafe

Now after my exams I got to find time to try that out. (hopefully without breaking my back in the process)