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So you may have noticed that something’s different, and we want to reassure you that we’re still the same Bubblers you know (and presumably) love.

But we’ve had a makeover. You’re currently at what will soon be our old website, but for the moment, feel free to peruse this web space the way you would have previous to this grand news.

If you’re not in the loop, check out our big announcement here.

In short, it was time for a change. Three years in, we wanted to mature like a new, beautiful butterfly emerging from its cocoon. A couple things led to our decision to change our name, and subsequently our look.

Our incorporated name to date was Smart Bubble Society, and Thought Bubble represented our product; the videos we create. Having two names is not ideal for any business venture or organization, but the reason we went down that route was because we kind of had to. Thought Bubble would have been our name of choice, but unfortunately, we can’t incorporate it because it’s already taken.

That gave us an opportunity to think of something new, fresh, and inspiring, that still encapsulated who we are and what we do. Smart Bubble Society just didn’t cut it, and Thought Café emerged after much deliberation and brainstorming.

So why Thought Café?

In the early 20th century when cafés first began to pop up, it was a place for great thinkers, writers, artists, innovators — the movers and shakers of societal progression. Some of our esteemed great thinkers chilled at the same cafés, downing copious amounts of coffee, sharing insights and imaginings that made their way into famous books and theories we still cherish to date. Today, the idea of a café as a place for conversation and musings lives on in a lot of indie and alternative cafés, even some select franchises, which means it’s made a comeback. People want a place to gather, think, create, and inspire. We aim to be that place online (and maybe, one day soon, in a physical space too).

Overall, our purpose as a studio remains exactly the same: to create educational motion graphics. But we want to aim a bit higher, and not only create, but curate successful motion graphics. We’ll feature videos that fall under multiple topics of interest: environment, politics, culture — much like a news site, but we’ll also tell you why we think they’re great. We’ll encourage sharing these videos to spread word about given issues, and our big picture dream is to see a new strain of motion graphics emerge that aims to educate and inspire, so that more people decide to join our leagues, and use their skills for good.

Like some of the videos you’ve seen to date on our channel; Bill McKibben’s Thought Bubble, John Green’s Thought Bubble, the thought bubble series will continue to highlight great thinkers, fully subsidized by our studio’s profits.

So are changes coming our way? Yes, absolutely, but we couldn’t be happier and more excited about them.

We hope you’re excited too, and that you’ll stay in touch throughout this process! You can still find us on our existing channels; YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, and you can check out our teaser page here.

Thanks for your support thus far, bubble out!

Thought Café

Today, we participated in The Project for Awesome. What is it you ask? Well careful, because it might blow your socks right off.

Project for Awesome, or P4A, is an annual event that seeks to raise money for and promote charities and non-profit organizations sponsored by the YouTube community.

On December 17th and 18th, YouTube users all over the world come together to create a video showcasing an organization of choice. The top five most popular videos by count of comments are then picked, and a simultaneous IndieGogo campaign donates all raised funds between the five charities/organizations mentioned in these videos.

Pretty amazing. And if that doesn’t sound cool enough, for the two days, John and Hank Green of Vlogbrothers and our very own Crash Course host a live stream show featuring select submissions while striving to entertain viewers for hours on end. Which makes for some pretty entertaining moments, like this now famous screen-cap of John Green with kittens for nipples, birthed from John being challenged to go shirtless when funds raised reached 100k.

So far, the IndieGogo campaign has raised an incredible $291,023 and counting, and $370,575 has been raised overall. The total comment count for all submitted videos is at 416,826.

So our very own P4A submission video, we decided to sponsor ourselves. It sounds a bit cheeky, but here’s why we chose to do it:

a) We wanted to let people know that we are in fact a non-profit motion graphic studio, something that’s still quite unique in our industry today.

b) As you’ll see in our video, we exist to help garner support for many charities and organizations through engaging motion graphics, so by supporting Thought Bubble, you’ll inherently support some of your favourite charities in helping them spread word about their campaigns, grow support for their various causes, and explain the issues they focus on.

Check out our P4A submission below! And remember, comments count as votes, so comment away if you support our cause!

For more information about Project for Awesome, check out the website.
You can also watch the livestream here.
Or donate to the IndieGogo campaign here.

Article by Kyle Boulden
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Perhaps a bit buried amid the noise of the American Presidential election, that same night a number of significant initiatives were being voted on across the United States. One of them, California Proposition 37, would have required all genetically modified (GM) foods to carry a label. While in the end Prop 37 was defeated, it represents a significant moment for the future of the food industry.

While a narrow majority (53%-47%) voted against the measure, the bigger story may have instead been the extreme measures that a number of major corporations resorted to in order to prevent its passage. Many of the world’s largest food and beverage companies contributed to a massive $46-million media campaign to stop the proposition, including Pepsi, Nestle, Kraft and Coca-Cola. Even more interesting is that among the top-ten donors were the six biggest pesticide/herbicide companies in the world, led by an $8-million contribution from infamous multinational Monsanto.

As renowned author and food activist Michael Pollan suggested in a recent article in the New York Times (prior to November 6th), the circus of Prop 37 has helped shed light on the power that huge corporations have over what end up on the dinner table. What is at stake is not simply the labeling of GM crops, but the public’s confidence in the industrial food chain. While the resistance from food processing corporations could be expected, even more interesting was the presence of the GMO seed/agrichemical industry. Their conspicuousness in this fight showed that they were taking it as a serious threat to the status quo.

Let’s look at the case of Monsanto, a corporation with $11-billion a year in revenue. Their prominence in the food industry has come with a lot of criticism, and made them a symbol for many of the problems with industrial agriculture and GM foods. As an industrial chemical company, Monsanto introduced glyphosate herbicides to the world, making a fortune marketing them under their Roundup brand. In recent years that part of the business has shrunk to around 10% of their revenues (still over $1-billion), but they’ve moved successfully into another industry – GM seeds.

The genes of GM seeds are tinkered with to give plants traits not normally found in nature, like longer shelf life or brighter colours. In the case of Monsanto they have generated a line of GM seeds that, in a stroke of particularly diabolical genius of corporate synergy, have been modified to be resistant to the very herbicide they manufacture. The result is a system that encourages farmers to rely on one crop (monoculture) combined with heavy amounts of chemicals. Somewhere between 85% and 95% of corn and soybeans in the United States are genetically modified, and those two ingredients are in vast number of food products (think high-fructose corn syrup) that end up in your neighbourhood grocery store.

While it might not seem so at first glance, Prop 37 represented a major threat to the status quo for Monsanto and other combined chemical/GM seed companies like Dupont and Syngenta. A move towards more transparency in the industry might encourage consumers and farmers to move away from their products, and so we have these corporations pouring money into efforts to stop it.

The concept of labeling GM foods is generally quite popular with the public. A Canadian poll in 2003 saw 88% of people in support of mandatory labeling of GM foods, while just last year another polling company found nine out of ten Americans supported labeling GM foods. So what happened? There were some legitimate concerns (expressed by media like the LA Times) over the muddled legal language of Prop 37 and the practicality of enforcing it, but in the end it was a massive “No on 37” media campaign full of dirty tricks that doomed the pro-GM labeling side.

There was actually a similar ballot initiative to Prop 37 that was defeated in Oregon in 2002. As with Prop 37, what began as a large majority supporting the concept prior to the referendum was reversed by the time voting came around, in this case rejected by more than 70% of voters. So what happened? As the Chicago Tribune reported at the time, a $5-million “Vote No on Measure 27″ media blitz just weeks before the vote proved to be a deciding factor. And guess who was there spearheading the blitz? Monsanto, who by one estimate contributed $1.5 million to the “No on 27” campaign.

It’s not an unreasonable assumption that the brains behind the California No on 37 campaign took lessons from Oregon a decade prior. As it was in Oregon their focus was on striking that nerve that is ever-present in American society: money. As the No on 37 campaign website put it:

“The official state analysis of Prop 37 concludes that it would cost taxpayers millions, and economic studies show that, by forcing food products to be repackaged or remade with higher priced ingredients, Prop 37 would cost the average California family up to $400 per year in higher grocery costs.”

Never mind that the link leads to an analysis from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office that says no such thing, and that the ‘economic study’ cited is a report by a group of consultants hired by their campaign. The damage was done. A variety of other dirty tricks sealed the deal, including a campaign mailer sent out with an official U.S. Food and Drug Administration seal (a criminal offence) falsely quoting the agency.

Despite their defeat in California, the growing GM labelling and food industry reform movement is not likely to disappear. Hopefully the lengths to which the agribusiness and food processing industries resorted to stop Prop 37 will bring attention to, and get people interested in learning about the food system. It presents an opportunity to create a broader dialogue on a range of food issues, from food safety, to genetically-engineered organisms, to the power of corporations in the world of industrial monoculture.

Article by Kyle Boulden
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The democratic system of government is a complicated creature, one that is vulnerable to all sorts of attempts to create advantages for one side over another. Some groups may try to subtly influence the system, while in other cases the corruption is more obvious. The practice of gerrymandering falls into the latter category, and is a major factor in American politics.

The idea behind gerrymandering is that, every so often, government must create new voting districts and redraw old ones in response to demographic changes over time. As people move away from one area and into another, this can create inequalities in representation where voters in a less populated district will have a disproportionate amount of power. Gerrymandering refers to the manipulation of the readjustment process for political advantage.

When the ruling party has the power over redistricting, they are able to draw up constituencies in a way that will maximize their electoral success. They identify groups of supporters and opponents and employ the strategies of cracking and packing to distribute them in a way that will wins them the most seats. Packing involves concentrating voters likely to support the opponent into a single electoral district in order to win other districts. Cracking is the opposite, where the lines are drawn in a way that spreads out a particular bloc of voters among several districts to try to prevent them from gaining a majority in any of them.

The concept of gerrymandering is certainly not exclusive to the United States, but one could say they have truly mastered the art. Politicians there have come a long way since Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts first drew up an unusual ‘salamander’ like district in 1812 (hence ‘Gerry-mander’). In the United States, every ten years following the census state legislatures are responsible for re-drawing boundaries, which are then approved by the state governor. Historically, Republican legislatures in particular have taken advantage of gerrymandering to create minority-majority districts, packing minority voters (who’s votes lean heavily towards the Democratic Party) into safe Democratic districts while preserving a white majority in the surrounding districts.

There have been some truly inspired districts drawn up over the past few decades. They are sprawling, ink-blot like, and often barely contiguous, connected with ridiculously thin slivers of land. Some have compared Illinois’ infamous 4th congressional district to a pair of ear muffs, thanks to a redistricting that joined two predominantly Hispanic neighbourhoods on opposite sides of Chicago and connected them with a razor-thin corridor of land along Interstate 294. California’s 23rd congressional district once stretched along such a narrow strip of the Pacific coast that it was known as “the district that disappears at high tide.”

Needless to say, it’s a gross subversion of the democratic process. And yet, neither federal nor state law prohibit the practice. As international election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe noted diplomatically after the 2004 American Presidential Election:
The absence of such a prohibition and the availability of increasingly sophisticated geographic databases, demonstrating voting history patterns and indicating likely voter intent, are widely seen as having an impact on the redistricting process…such a practice may have rendered a sizable proportion of the congressional races in these elections to be insufficiently competitive.

Despite all this, there are alternatives available. In countries such as Canada, the UK and Australia a relatively simple solution has involved the creation of non-partisan organizations in charge of allocating constituencies as opposed to elected lawmakers. In Canada, independent commissions are appointed every 10 years to study the country’s demographics and make changes to the proportioning. While even that formula isn’t perfect, as there are concerns about influence relating to the appointment process itself, it removes the institutionalized manipulation found in the current system.

The good news is that some states have already begun to move towards creating laws to prevent partisan manipulation of the redistricting process. Iowa was one of the first to create an independent agency to draw up boundaries, with additional regulations to ensure districts are “reasonably compact in form.” More recently voters passed ballot initiatives in California and Florida to restrict gerrymandering (although in Florida it faces a lawsuit brought about by Republicans), and several other states have made efforts to create standing committees for redistricting. It should come as no surprise that politicians are reluctant to relinquish this power, but as long as voters keep up the pressure on them, someday such gerrymandering will be simply a curious footnote in American history.

(Be sure to check out our recent piece on Gerrymandering on Ted Ed):

Article by Kyle Boulden
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If you’ve been paying any attention to the U.S. presidential race recently, it would be nearly impossible to miss the debate over taxation and tax reform. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have decided to make the economy the main focus of their campaign, and fiscal policy lies at the heart.

It is generally agreed upon that the American economy is not in good shape. Unemployment is high, budget deficits are the norm and income inequality is rising. This election the Republicans have chosen to focus on the economy, as traditionally it’s the incumbent who takes the blame for the country’s woes. They feel their experience in that field puts them at an advantage, but a closer look at this common narrative show it to be plainly false.

Tax policy is a complicated subject, but what it comes down to is that the Republicans feel they can improve the economy and create jobs by cutting taxes, particularly to corporations and the rich, and that the benefits will ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of the economy. The catch in all this is that these are exactly the policies that have been implemented in the past decade and have failed.

At first glance, the claim that Republicans want to cut taxes to the rich and to corporations might come across as partisan rhetoric. That’s certainly how it’s portrayed in many circles. Oh sure, the Republicans are bad guys who only want to help the rich and hurt the poor. However, when you strip away the veneer of speeches and spin, underneath it their actual policy platform lays it out quite plainly. It’s a matter of understanding what you are looking at.

The best place to begin is by looking at the Bush-era tax cuts, which have been a lightning-rod for debate on tax policy. Typically they refer to the 2001 legislation that lowered income taxes across all brackets, and the 2003 legislation that saw a significant cut in the top tax rates on capital gains and dividends. The Republican platform endorses making the cuts permanent, while the Democratic Party would see these cuts, originally created to be temporary, expire in favour of new policy focusing tax relief on the lower and middle incomes.

The thing is, this isn’t a debate between two potential solutions to economic crisis. It’s one plan that may help the situation versus another that has been proven wrong in a wide variety of research. What the Mitt Romney/Republican platform suggests is based on widely disproved economic theories. As former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton Robert Reich explains: “Bush promised the tax cuts would more than pay for themselves in terms of their alleged positive impact on the economy. The record shows they didn’t. Job growth after the Bush tax cuts was a fraction of the growth under Bill Clinton – even before the economy crashed in late 2008. And the median wage dropped, adjusted for inflation.”

There is a certain cognitive dissonance when it comes to Republicans and the economy (one that is also shared by many in the Democratic Party as well). They seem quite willing to ignore decades of evidence that proves their economic theories don’t work in order to keep up their belief that taxation is bad. Recently the independent Tax Policy Center examined Mitt Romney’s campaign proposals, which includes significant reductions to taxes on income, capital gains and dividends, as well as the elimination of the estate tax. They determined that “(the plan) Governor Romney has outlined would reduce taxes for high-income households, thus requiring higher taxes on other, even if the plan’s financing is as progressive as possible, given the available tax expenditures.”

In other words, these proposed changes to the tax system would disproportionately favour the rich, and in fact would be mathematically impossible to cover in the ‘revenue neutral’ way Romney proposes without transferring additional cost to middle and lower-income people. Under Romney’s plan, the estimate is that the 99 to 99.9 percent gain an average percent change in after-tax income of 3.5 percent, and the top 0.1 percent gain 4.4 percent, while everyone loses 1.1 percent.

Now the question is: why would anyone other than the richest 1% of people vote for such a plan? What it comes down to is a lack of information. Whether it is a population more interested in pop culture than politics, or the American education system’s disturbing suppression of critical thinking skills, voters aren’t making decisions in their own best interest. In fact, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed that only 58% of Americans think the rich pay too little in taxes, and that 20% in fact think the poor pay too little. Compare this to 20 years ago, when 77% of people thought the rich paid too little in taxes and only 8% thought the poor paid too little. As writer Andrew Leonard explains: “income inequality has grown, tax rates for the rich have fallen to historically low levels, and the wealthiest Americans have grabbed an ever larger piece of the pie. Does that sound like a recipe for class warfare? Nope! The numbers actually signal the opposite conclusion.”

Stating that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party want to cut taxes to the rich and corporations at the expense of the poor is not some partisan rhetoric, it’s a simple fact. The extension of the Bush tax cuts and the other proposed changes to the United States’ fiscal policies are plainly designed for that, with little regard as to hiding it from the voting public. It will not help the economy, will not create jobs and will worsen income inequality. Yet in the American political discourse these are still considered legitimate strategies. The solution here is knowledge and education. People need to know and understand the issues, and understand the logical connection between their political choices and their own well-being.

We’ve had an empty shop page up for what, 3 years now? Well we’re happy to announce we’ve just added two very brand, spankin’ new items to promote the Crash Course World History series! If you don’t know what that is, get your bum over to the channel and educate yourself on some fun, awesome history with your host, John Green.

We’ve added the first of three amazing posters, documenting Crash Course World History episodes 1 (Agricultural Revolution), through 15 (The Crusades). The remaining two posters will come soon after, documenting the remainder of the series, and connecting all three posters into one, massive island of pure awesome. Order the first one here, and check out more info about it at our shop, here.

The second item – a Mongol tee, also promoting Crash Course (specifically the exception – the Mongols), is up there too. Check out our fun little promo for it on our shop page, and order it here.

Enjoy, and look out for more merchandise and items coming soon!

Article by Kyle Boulden
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Water – without a doubt one of the most vital substances on the earth. This life-giving liquid is so important to humanity, and yet it is often treated with the same short-sightedness that plagues our handling of so many other resources.

Water is needed for people to drink, as habitat for plants and animals, to irrigate crops, and even to power hydroelectric dams, but ultimately there are limits to how much fresh water is available in the world. Unfortunately, decisions are made so often without taking this into consideration, focusing only on short-term needs, rather than judging the long-term costs and benefits that might result.

Perhaps the most glaring example is the sad case of the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, now known simply as “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.” In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union decided to divert the rivers flowing into the Aral Sea in order to irrigate the nearby desert. The plan was to create an agricultural industry where there has been none before, focusing particularly on growing cotton. The plan succeeded, in the short term, but without enough water flowing into it the Aral Sea steadily began to shrink.

Today, satellite pictures tell this tale of epic environmental disaster, as the sea has shrunk to 10% of its original size. Most of the lakebed is now a desert covered with salt and toxic chemicals, littered with the rusted hulks of old fishing ships. And yet, this result was not a surprise to many. As far back as 1964 Soviet scientists were warning their bosses that this massive project would eventually destroy the Aral Sea, but such matters were swiftly dismissed in the name of agricultural production.

In North America, we have our own water issues. While Canada is blessed with large natural reserves of fresh water, to the south many parts of the United States are not so lucky. Much of the Southwest United States has developed beyond the capacity of the environment to support its demands on water supplies. Droughts are becoming more and more common, leading to severe groundwater depletion. More water is being pumped out of the ground than can be replaced naturally, causing a litany of long-term problems.

The issue of groundwater depletion has popped up in the media over the past month after a study was released by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin on the impact irrigated agriculture is having in rapidly depleting groundwater resources in parts of the Western United States. Among the conclusions reached in the study was that if current trends continue, 35% of the southern High Plains that currently supports irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades. The vast fruit and vegetable growing fields of California’s Central Valley are at significant risk as well.

While groundwater depletion may be less of a concern for Canadians, water issues cannot be ignored. Even take a look at many of the fruits and vegetables in the grocery store and you’ll find a significant amount come from water-parched climates like California and Mexico. When it comes to humanity, it’s all more closely related than you might think. Meanwhile, eight million Canadians use groundwater, including four million in urban areas. From the potential effects of climate change on water resources, to the risks posed by bulk water exports to the United States, it’s important to be aware of how our present decisions affect us in the future.

The crucial concept to remember is that water is a finite resource, just like oil or timber. When making decisions like irrigating agricultural land, building dams or tapping aquifers, the future consequences of any choice needs to be taken into consideration. It may be something as simple as realizing that an arid climate might be better suited to crops like sorghum, than say cotton or rice. When instead the enduring health of people and ecosystems is set aside for short term profits, the world gains more catastrophes like the Aral Sea.

Bill McKibben’s Thought Bubble: The Fight of Our Time

Our latest Thought Bubble is for great thinker, activist, author, and climate leader Bill McKibben, who’s also the founder of the huge climate action organization network, 350.org. In this Thought Bubble, Bill delivers a personal, moving message about his journey battling the fossil fuel industry, how it’s been given too many advantages and free passes in our system, and how we need to join what he calls the biggest fight of our time, possibly of all time.

He asks us to use a combination of spirit, passion, and creativity to fight back, and protect the future of our planet. We were so honoured to create this piece, as Bill has been someone we’ve looked up to for a long time, and was on our list of top thinkers we wanted to ‘bubblize’ this year. Without further adieu, we present you with Bill McKibben’s Thought Bubble: The Fight of Our Time. Please share widely if you support Bill’s message, and visit 350.org for more info, and to join the movement.