Things You Should Watch

This week's video is a bit of a commitment, but I strongly recommend it if you find yourself with an hour to kill. For those of you who have not yet been enlightened, a vast chunk of the BBC's documentary catalog is accessible on YouTube. While there are numerous titles which I would suggest, this particular film surveys the career of Nile Rodgers, one of the most influential minds in American pop music.

For those of you who do not know Niles by name, he is a founding member of the American R&B band Chic, and is responsible for some of the most successful songs, sounds, and bands that have dominated the US pop charts since the 1970s. He's not a bad guitarist either.

Things You Should Watch

This weeks video comes to us from video blogger CGP Grey who, over the past few years, has produced numerous videos explaining and exploring various political and legal oddities that can be found throughout the world. In this video, Mr. Grey (or Mr. CGP, I am not sure) uses an eloquent and subtly arrogant narration to explain the alternative voting system.

We often think of voting in a republic strictly in terms of the democratic system that we have in America, where each person gets one vote and whomever gets the most votes in an election is the winner of that race. Alternative voting is a system where voters can rank candidates based on their desirability in the hopes that the candidate with the highest desirability for the maximum number of people will become a representative. I will let Mr. Grey explain the nuances.

Things You Should Watch

Being a child of the internet, I feel confident in saying that I have spent the last few years honing my navigation skills on the vast ocean that is YouTube. Trusting in my self-endorsed capability, I have decided that every Monday I will try and post a video that I have come across which I feel is interesting, informative, or entertaining.

This week, I present the inaugural episode of the Crash Course: US History series presented by John Green, the author of the popular novel The Fault in Our Stars. Green, working with the Thought Cafe animation studio, does a wonderful job of explicating the nuances and complexities of American History in weekly segments that usually run shorter than fifteen minutes. If you are interested in US History, but find traditional ways of learning about it a bit daunting, or if you are just bored, I highly recommend the series.