Sunroom Desk recommends:

YouTube: Fear the Boom and Bust and Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round 2, featuring the famous economists in hilarious rap music videos debating the causes of the Great Depression and Great Recession, and advocating for their preferred cures. The works feature subtle political satire, key quotes from both men, and clear expositions. EconStoriesTV, a collaboration between George Mason University’s economics department and Emergent Order, should get a YouTube Oscar for its innovative and professional work.

Netflix: Inside Job, which clearly explains the causes of the 2008 crash and features beautiful shots of the Manhattan skyline, simple graphics demonstrating how CDOs proliferated, and interviews with international leaders. This got on my Netflix queue after it won this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary. Toward the end of the film, people at the apex of professional achievement stutter, trip over their words, or get mad when they are asked direct questions about the root causes of the crisis and their own culpability.

InterLibrary Loan: The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek’s classic on the dangers of increasing government control over the economy. Hayek warned that totalitarianism was the inevitable result of too much government control or “central planning.” His book was a best-seller in the 1940s and returned to take the #1 place in Amazon sales last year. That’s when I decided to request it (electronically) through the Glendale Public Library’s InterLibrary loan system. I was #12 in the hold queue; I finally reached the top of the list three weeks ago. After reading it, I figured others might be waiting, and I was right: the online hold queue showed ten requests a few days ago.

Kindle: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. Each “thing” made sense and confirmed the lessons of all works above, but the accompanying expositions were sometimes confusing. The 23rd “thing” is “Good economic policy does not require good economists”! Earlier in the book, author Ha-Joon Chang explains that most “good economists” didn’t anticipate the 2008 crash. He also exposes their lame excuses, including one sent in an official letter to Queen Elizabeth II, and concludes “Over the last three decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions of the 2008 crisis…Economics, as it has been practiced in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people.”

Full Signal debuted this fall. The trailer calls wireless technology “the world’s largest biological experiment ever.” It was named Best Documentary at the Myrtle Beach International Film Festival; and was featured at both the premier and closing (due to popular demand) of the Santa Fe Film Festival. The San Fernando Valley Sun published this review last week.

Radiant Day is a Norwegian documentary (with English subtitles) that calls into question World Health Organization and U.S. standards on safe levels of radiation exposure. It reveals that military and wireless industry personnel dominate scientific committees that set these standards, and that such questions are far from “settled” as many scientists are very concerned. Disturbing musical and visual effects throughout the video ‘portray’ the invisible radioactive emissions from cell towers and wireless devices.

Bad Reception covers a San Francisco neighborhood’s fight to keep cell sites out of their neighborhood in 2003, County Supervisor Matt Gonzalez’ anger at Sprint over misleading data on its permit application, and residents’ concerns that proliferation of cell sites was about gaining market share, not providing service. Producer Doug Loranger is one of the organizers of the Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies.

Public Exposure dates from 2000, as cell phone use increased dramatically. Nine years ago (before universal wireless broadband became the goal!), the trailer warned wireless signals had increased background radiation 10,000 times. The issues from 2000, though, are very much the same today: industry’s claim there are no proven health effects, concerned scientists asking for common sense precautions, and individual activists and communities trying to sound the alarm. Two scientists featured in this video (Cindy Sage and Elizabeth Kelley) continue today to advocate for protecting populations from wireless technology radiation.

A YouTube search will turn up several other videos on this subject.

For those with a preference for print information, the latest issue of Prevention Magazine features the dangers of dirty electricity (low-level radiation), and 11 ways to protect yourself (4 of these involve cell phones).

This Friday, July 17th, 7:30 p.m. at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Operation Gratitude is hosting the only Los Angeles screening of Brothers at War, the winner of the GI Film Festival for Best Documentary.

Brothers at War is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time. Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story. Jake embeds with four combat units in Iraq, and access to U.S. and Iraqi combat units take him behind the camouflage curtain with secret reconnaissance troops on the Syrian border, into sniper “Hide Sites” in the Sunni Triangle, through raging machine gun battles with the Iraqi Army. Ultimately, the film follows his brothers home to their parents, siblings, wives and children and provides a rare look at the bonds and service of our soldiers on the frontlines and the profound effects their service has on the loved ones they leave behind.

A question and answer session with Director Jake Rademacher and Producer Norman S. Powell will follow the screening.

Tickets to the screening are $20; every ticket purchased sends a care package overseas. Tickets can be purchased online here, or at the Alex Theatre box office (818.243.2539).

Operation Gratitude is a non-profit, volunteer organization that annually sends 100,000+ care packages of items and letters addressed to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed in hostile overseas regions. More information about the organization and its events is on its website.