≡ Category: Comedy, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
You know things are looking bleak when comedy starts making fodder out of depression themes. Here’s a bit that tells you how to go from office worker to homeless drifter in seven easy steps. (Video courtesy of Howcast)
via Valleywag
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≡ Category: Comedy, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
“Comedian, actor and satirist Chris Elliott has made a career of blurring truth and absurdity. Elliott wrote and performed for Late Night With David Letterman, and went on to perform in other television programs, including Saturday Night Live.” Here he is in conversation with writer Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). The video [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
In a quick three minutes, you can watch the sometimes cocky author of The Corrections read from an essay on bird watching, courtesy of BigThink.com, where you can also find more videos with intellectual heft.
For more thoughtful video, also see our YouTube playlist and the related collection: Intelligent Life at YouTube: 70 Educational Video Collections.
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≡ Category: Current Affairs, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
As US stock declines, China’s stock keeps going up. It’s the story of the decade, really. Here’s footage from China’s first space walk this past week …
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≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
From The Daily Dish:
“Clouds move across the sky on Mars. The sun rises. Snow falls – but never touches the ground.”
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≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature | ≅ Comments
I first posted this one during the dead of summer, so it seemed worth revisiting this now that we’re all a bit more focused ….
Over at the Internet Archive, you can find George Orwell’s classic, 1984, available as a free audio book. As you’ll see, the recording is professionally done. You can download the full [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ Comments
This post is a twofer. First, I get to tell you about FiveChapters.com, a web site that posts new fiction in kind of a novel way. Almost a throwback to the 19th century, FiveChapters publishes short fiction in serial format. Each week, they present a story in five parts, and you can follow along as [...]
≡ Category: Art, Books | ≅ Comments
Thanks to a heads up from one of our loyal readers (thanks Bob!) you can see a new artistic trend that’s turning books back into trees. Good stuff.
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In memory of Paul Newman …
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≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
Straight from BoingBoing: The new MAD Magazine artwork below. Glad someone can find a little humor in this…
(PS Also see BoingBoing’s piece on the changing WaMu web site.)
≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
NPR’s Fresh Air has been doing a very good job of demystifying the financial crisis. Here, we have an interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning financial journalist, Gretchen Morgenson. As you’ll see, the program (iTunes - RSS Feed - Stream Here) does an excellent job of connecting many small dots, explaining precisely how the recklessness of Wall Street threatens to spill [...]
≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
Rather slick trailer. (And got to wonder how filming the pretzel scene didn’t hurt.) “W,” Oliver Stone’s new biopic, hits the theaters this fall.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Not to be too pessimistic …
(PS You can find other remixes here and here.)
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≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
In March 2000, Yale economist Robert Shiller published Irrational Exuberance and warned that the long-running parabolic stock market was a bubble. Weeks later, the market cracked and Shiller was the new guru. Fast forward a few years, Shiller released a second edition of the same book, this time arguing that the housing market was the [...]
≡ Category: MIT, Online Courses, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Yale | ≅ Comments
Last week, the launch of Stanford Engineering Everywhere, featuring 10 free computer science and engineering courses, got no shortage of buzz on the net. This led me to think, why not highlight other major collections of free university courses/resources. As you’ll see, each collection offers countless hours of free, high quality content. Download the audio [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
The 2008 MacArthurs were just announced. And one goes to Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic who recently published The Rest is Noise, a widely praised work that makes sense of 20th century classical music. Below we have Ross talking about his musical background, the New York music scene and the general gist of [...]
Just a quick reminder. Starting today (September 23), you can download Michael Moore’s new feature film – Slacker Uprising – via the web for free. This is unfortunately only available to US and Canadian residents, and it will remain free for three weeks. You can get more info and download the film here.
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≡ Category: Online Courses | ≅ Comments
In case this got lost over the weekend I am bumping it back up: The New York Times has a piece running this weekend that surveys the landscape of online university lectures. (Get a jumbo list of free courses here.) Along the way, they focus on five lectures that “no one should miss.” They are [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
Because it’s election season and Rock cracks me up …
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≡ Category: Music, Uncategorized | ≅ Comments
Courtesy of Metafilter:
“AOL Sessions has live videos from more than 150 different artists specially recorded for the series. Here are just a few of the artists on offer: Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Modest Mouse, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Sarah McLachlan, Bonnie Raitt, Iggy Pop, and more. To the left of the videos [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
To the tune of the Inspector Gadget Theme. So far viewed 14.5 million times. Pretty amazing. Take it away (and check out the musician’s CD here) …
Added to our YouTube playlist.
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≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
Philip Roth’s latest is out. And, as one reviewer described it, the novel, like his last two, is “ruthlessly economical and relentlessly deathbound.” You can read the first chapter of Indignation here for free. Or, buy the novel here.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Comments
Keying off an opinion piece by Paul Krugman, Eric Rauchway, an American historian (and also an old grad school colleague of mine), offers an intriguing analysis of the Bush/Paulson bailout and how it compares to the Hoover and FDR bailouts from the Depression era. The difference between 1932/33 and 2008? In 2008 (get text of [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
“The NASA STEREO spacecraft sees the disk of the Moon pass in front of the Sun in a view never seen before by human eyes.” For more videos, see The Bad Astronomy channel on YouTube, which we’ve added to our collection: Intelligent Life at YouTube: 70 Educational Video Collections.
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
From the TedTalks conference. Fascinating talk. Here’s a summary that introduces the clip below …
“Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Stanford, Technology, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
Stanford Engineering Everywhere is a new project rolling out of Stanford, and it’s making available to anyone, anywhere 10 complete online computer science and electrical engineering courses. This includes the three-course Introduction to Computer Science series taken by the majority of Stanford undergraduates.
The top-notch courses are free, which means that we’ve added them to our [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Comments
If you’re wondering why so many dominos (Fannie & Freddie, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG) have fallen so swiftly this past week, give a listen to today’s episode of Fresh Air (iTunes – RSS Feed – Stream Here). It features Michael Greenberger who gives a very lucid explanation of how/why our unregulated shadow financial system [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
Thanks to PBS, you can now download from iTunes a four-hour definitive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR guided the US through the Great Depression, then World War II, serving as president for an unprecedented four terms. The video podcast run a good four hours, and it’s part of a series called American Experience: The [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
The news of David Foster Wallace’s suicide came as a shock. 46, supremely talented, and gone. We’re not left with much. His books, his essays, and the understandable desire to find some link between his writing and his end. Here’s a line that caught my attention from David Streitfeld’s blog. (He’s a former books editor [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film | ≅ Comments
Released last month, this Sundance 2008 selection speaks directly to American financial missteps:
I.O.U.S.A. – One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt.
Pretty timely. Watch a short trailer here or a longer intro below, and get more on the film here.
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