The Happy Orca » Presenting

Embrace Life

happyorca — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:48:26 +0000

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

happyorca — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:49:11 +0000

A Few Reflections on Europe’s Financial Woes

happyorca — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:49:40 +0000

KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: Time for John Clarke and Bryan Dawe with a few reflections on Europe’s financial woes.

BRYAN DAWE: Your name is Roger yes?

JOHN CLARKE: Roger.

BRYAN DAWE: Ah, that’s your name?

JOHN CLARKE: Roger.

BRYAN DAWE: Good. And what do you do Roger?

JOHN CLARKE: I’m a financial consultant.

BRYAN DAWE: Ah, financial consultant, eh?

JOHN CLARKE: Roger, yes.

BRYAN DAWE: Terrific and Roger how is business at the moment?

JOHN CLARKE: Not bad thank you. Been a bit quiet lately.

BRYAN DAWE: How do you mean lately?

JOHN CLARKE: Since the war. Been a bit quiet.

BRYAN DAWE: Fair enough. Okay, Roger your special subject tonight is the economies of the European community. Your time starts now. Best of luck.

JOHN CLARKE: Thank you.

BRYAN DAWE: How much does Greece owe, Roger?

JOHN CLARKE: $367 billion.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. And who do they owe it to?

JOHN CLARKE: Mostly to the other European economies.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. How much does Ireland owe?

JOHN CLARKE: $865 billion.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Who do they owe it to?

JOHN CLARKE: Other European economies mostly.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. How much does Spain and Italy owe?

JOHN CLARKE: $1 trillion each.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Who to?

JOHN CLARKE: Mainly France, Britain and Germany.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. And how are Germany, France, Britain going Roger?

JOHN CLARKE: Well they’re struggling a bit, aren’t they?

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Why?

JOHN CLARKE: Well ‘cause they’ve lent all the vast amounts of money to other European economies that can’t possibly pay them back.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct so what are they go to go have to do?

JOHN CLARKE: They’re going to have to bail them out.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Where are they getting the money to do that Roger?

JOHN CLARKE: That is a good question. I don’t know the answer to that one. (laughs)

BRYAN DAWE: How much does Portugal owe?

JOHN CLARKE: Hang on a minute, what was the answer to that earlier question?

BRYAN DAWE: Just keep answering the questions Roger.

Where is Portugal going to get the money it owes to Germany if Germany can’t get back the money that it lent to Italy?

JOHN CLARKE: Just a minute. What was the answer to the previous que-

The question was: How can broke economies lend money to other broke economies who haven’t got any money because they can’t pay back the money the broke economy lent to the other broke economy and shouldn’t have lent it to them in the first place because the broke economy can’t pay back?

BRYAN DAWE: You are wasting valuable time Roger. How much money does Spain owe to Italy?

JOHN CLARKE: $41 billion. But where are they going to get it?

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. What does Italy owe to Spain?

JOHN CLARKE: $27 billion but they haven’t got it – they’re broke.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. How can they pay each other if neither of them has any money?

JOHN CLARKE: They’re going to get a bailout, aren’t they?

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. And where is the money coming from for the bailout?

JOHN CLARKE: That is what I’m asking you!

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Why are people selling the European currency and buying the US dollar?

JOHN CLARKE: Because the US economy is so much stronger than the European economy.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct. Why is that Roger?

JOHN CLARKE: Because it’s owned by China.

BRYAN DAWE: Correct and very well done! And after that round you’ve lost $1 million.

JOHN CLARKE: I’ve lost $1 million? I thought you said well done!

BRYAN DAWE: Yes well done – you’ve only lost $1 million. That’s an extraordinary performance Roger.

JOHN CLARKE: I’ve only lost $1 million.

BRYAN DAWE: Very well done.

JOHN CLARKE: That’s quite good is it?

BRYAN DAWE: Oh it’s excellent.

JOHN CLARKE: Sell everything immediately. Quickly!

KERRY O’BRIEN: I think it’s called laughing as you sink.

The Story of Stuff

happyorca — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:31:07 +0000

more about "The Story of Stuff", posted with vodpod

Did You Know 4.0

happyorca — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:40:04 +0000

more about "Did You Know 4.0", posted with vodpod

Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Nitin Nohria

happyorca — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:51:45 +0000

more about "Imagine Leadership | By XPLANE & Niti…", posted with vodpod

Jonathan Harris: The Art of Collecting Stories

happyorca — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:41:27 +0000

Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for.

more about "", posted with vodpod

Shai Agassi’s bold plan for electric cars

happyorca — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:38:08 +0000

“So how would you run a whole country without oil? That was the question that sort of hit me in the middle of a Davos afternoon about 4 years ago and it never left my brain, and I started playing with it more like a puzzle. The original thought I had… this must be ethanol so I went out and researched ethanol and found out that you need the amazon in your backyard in every country. About 6 months later I figured out it must be Hydrogen, until some scientists told me the unfortunate truth which is you use more clean electrons… if you use hydrogen so that’s not going to be the path to go… and then sort of through a process of wandering around I got to a thought that actually if you could convert an entire country to electric cars in a way that convenient and affordable you could get to a solution. Now I started from a point of view that it has to be something that scales en masse – how do you do this so that it scales to 99% of the population. The thought that came to mind is that it needs to be as good as any car that you would have today… so 1) it has to be more convenient than a car and 2) it has to be more affordable than today’s cars. And affordable is not a 40 thousand dollar sedan – right – that’s not something that we can buy or finance today and convenient is not something you can drive for an hour and charge for eight. So we are bound the laws of physics and the laws of economics. So how do we do this still within the boundary with the science we know today… how do we do it within economics today, how do we do it from the power of the consumer up and not from the power of an edict down. And on a random visit to Tesla on some afternoon, I actually found out that the answer comes from separating from the car ownership and the battery ownership…. This is the classic “batteries not included”…

more about "", posted with vodpod

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

happyorca — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:45:09 +0000

more about “The Crisis of Credit Visualized“, posted with vodpod

Where The Hell Is Matt?

happyorca — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:26:41 +0000

more about "Where The Hell Is Matt?", posted with vodpod

(more…)

HD quality version

Garry Schyman…

New Matt Harding Video on youtube
Sunday, June 22, 2008

My score/song for Matt Harding’s latest video is now up on youtube and Vimeo and has received over seven million views so far (first three weeks). For those interested here’s the link and my album notes that was not published with the song on Amazonmp3.com.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001B8R3MS/

Album notes “Praan”

Credits:

Music By Garry Schyman

Drums and Engineering Dan Blessinger

Vocals Palbasha Siddique

Guitars and bass Kevin Dukes

Concertmaster Belinda Broughton

Orchestral contractor Ross DeRoche (DeRoche Music Inc.)

Vocal Contractor Melissa Nixon

Lyrics adapted from the poem “Stream Of Life” from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

This song is my fourth collaboration with Matt Harding. How we met and got started working together is an interesting story in itself, without detailing it here I will just say it is one of those serendipitous events that can play a big part in ones life.

I wrote this music without particular lyrics in mind because, for one thing, I don”t really write lyrics. Matt would send me early edits of the video which I used to inspire me as I composed. I used my film and television experience to build the song in the appropriate places.

When it came time for lyrics and to find a singer Matt suggested that we consider non-English lyrics, which instantly sounded right to me. I immediately thought of Rabindranath Tagore who is considered the poet laureate of India. He was given the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for his English translation of his book of poetry entitled Gitanjali and was the first non-westerner to win the prize.

Matt was particularly fond of the poem “Stream Of Life” which seemed perfectly in tune with his video.

Bengali is a beautiful language so we decided to have it sung in Tagore’s native tongue, however we had no idea who the singer would be.

I started listening to countless demo mp3′s of various studio singers, who all sounded terrific but just didn’t seem right for the song. Bengali is a particularly difficult language to sing if you don’t know the language and we wanted someone who could really bring off the poem in Bengali. To the rescue came Matt’s girlfriend and co-producer of the video Melissa Nixon. Melissa is amazing and searched youtube for just the right voice. Astonishingly she found her in the person of Palbasha Siddique. Palbasha had a couple of videos that included her singing and though the videos did not do her justice, they were enough for us to contact her and learn that she was a 17 year old high school junior living in Minneapolis Minnesota (Palbasha was born in Bengladesh and moved there when she was six years old). To be honest I was initially very skeptical as to whether she could really pull off what we wanted for the song, but when I spoke to her she was keen on being involved and was willing to record a demo for us. I sent her a rough mix of the song and she recorded over it and sent it back. We were all just completely amazed at how perfect she was. She completely understood what we were doing and she sounded fantastic. We immediately invited her and her mother to Los Angeles to record at a session planned for June 5th of this year. She came in and was so professional and sounded so awesome that it could not have been better. Later that day we recorded live strings and if you look closely at about 3:40 into the video you will see Matt dancing with the string section with me next to him conducting (I have the honor of being the only person in Matt’s video whose backside is prominently featured!). Our concertmaster was Belinda Broughton and she and the rest of the string section were wonderful.

I must also pay tribute to my recording engineer Dan Blessinger who records all of my orchestral music for me (I am not really known as a songwriter but rather as a film/TV and video game composer of orchestral scores, check out my score for BioShock). Dan also plays the drums on the track and did an amazing job. I also want to thank Kevin Dukes who has plays guitar and bass on all three songs I have written for Matt’s videos. Kevin is an amazing studio guitarist who can do anything you ask on his instrument.

Oh and the title of the song “Praan” is a particularly poetic way of saying “life” in Bengali.

I hope you like this track I loved writing and recording it.

Regards,

Garry Schyman

Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the lifethrob of ages dancing in my blood this moment.