≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
A good find over at Metafilter. Desjardins asks “Need a little Tolstoy while you’re waiting in line? How about some Mark Twain on the subway? Booksinmyphone puts – surprise! - books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to download classics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Thanks to some digital hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and helping promote One Laptop Per Child, a charity working to bring cheap computers and internet access to children in developing countries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the commercial stitches together old recordings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a couple of new [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was produced in 1981 by the BBC and PBS, and it features Richard Feynman, the charismatic, Nobel prize-winning physicist, talking in a very personal way about the joys of scientific discovery, and how he developed his enthusiasm for science. About the program, Harry Kroto (winner of the Nobel Prize for [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
Voila, the birth, life and death of a G-type star, like our Sun. 12 billion years boiled down to six simple minutes. We’ve added it to our YouTube Favorites.
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via Digg
≡ Category: Random | ≅ Comments
Here’s what it looks like if you plant a camera in the same location for one year and snap photos throughout the changing seasons. Video is striking but random. So we’re filing it under “Random.”
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
This weekend’s New York Times ran a piece detailing how the record industry has dithered and continually failed to release several long-awaited Beatles’ projects. It also mentioned how fans and collectors have forged ahead and put together unauthorized bootleg projects, some of which the Times calls “curatorial masterpieces.” In particular, the article highlights the Purple Chick label, which [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
When the twin towers were taken down in September 2001, America looked to make sense of what happened. And it wasn’t long before many started turning to The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, a book written by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard poli sci professor who passed on last week.
The book itself was [...]
≡ Category: Television | ≅ Comments
Eartha Kitt also left us this week. She won fame on Broadway, in movies and cabaret, and through music and films. But my inner four year old will always remember her role as Catwoman on the 1960s TV series “Batman.” (Actually, I’ll really remember her for the leading role she played in my first memorable childhood [...]
≡ Category: Theater | ≅ Comments
Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, died in London on Wednesday. As The New York Times obit mentions, when Pinter won the Nobel in 2005, his declining health prevented him from attending the awards ceremony in Stockholm. Instead, he gave his acceptance lecture – “Art, Truth & Politics” — via a recorded video, which we’re [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Comments
Here’s a logical (but unplanned) follow up to our previous post that looked back at Christmas Eve during World War I.
Here we present a Christmas propaganda film that came out of England during the Second World War. Britain is under German siege. But it’s enduring the Blitz and keeping a stiff upper lip, and Christmas will [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
We take you back to 1977 and what The Washington Post calls “one of the most successful duets in Christmas music history — and surely the weirdest.” The ’40s-era crooner meets the glam rocker, to be precise. Get the backstory here. (And, yup, we’ve added the clip to our YouTube Favorites.)
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≡ Category: History, Music | ≅ Comments
Right in time for Christmas Eve…
World War I was a relentlessly grinding and brutal war. Europe had never experienced anything like it. But there was one notable moment of respite, a brief moment when humanity showed back through. Christmas Eve, 1914. The moving story of what happened that night gets recounted in John McCutcheon’s touching [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Comments
The New York Times thinks that e-books may have finally turned the corner in 2008. The Kindle is sold out until February (which messes up my Christmas plans). Sales of Sony’s e-book reader have tripled over last season. And we’re now seeing e-books hit the bestseller list. The digital age for books may be upon [...]
In a quick 59 seconds, David Lynch tells you the films and filmmakers that he likes best (see below). In equally succinct videos, though with a bit more salty language (read: language that’s not ideal for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on product placement and the whole concept of watching a movie on an [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
A couple of big blogs recently highlighted a clip of the Muppets doing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s cute, and I was hardly surprised that the video logged 3.6 million views on YouTube.
Not far behind, at 3.2 million views, is a long video showing Herbert Von Karajan leading a live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. [...]
About the Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a New York Times op-ed had this to say today:
It “is anything but a cheery holiday tale.” It “is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Let me indulge in a brief bit of nostalgia for a sec. Somehow my once wayward friends and I scored tickets to Live Aid back in 1985, which meant that we got to spend a scorching day at Philly’s JFK Stadium, watching live acts that included Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
Aired first in September, this BBC production asks famous scientists to offer important words of advice to the next American president. What does Obama need to know to make smart decisions about key issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to climate change? Here it goes:
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Hat tip to Bob for tipping us off to this collection put together by The Mirror in the UK. They take Leonard Cohen’s classic “Hallelujah” (listen below) and then bring you the ten best cover versions. On the list, you’ll find versions by Bob Dylan, John Cale (founder of The Velvet Underground), Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, among [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources | ≅ Comments
Two of England’s oldest universities, Oxford and Cambridge, have taken the leap into the digital age, recently launching their own podcast channels. Now, no matter where you live, you can experience the intellectual world that has given us William Gladstone, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking (Oxford alums) [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
What does the brain look like at its best? This online gallery will give you a sense. These images come from a European exhibition dedicated to raising public awareness of neuroscience. All pictures were derived from real laboratory experiments and cutting edge research.
via Metafilter
≡ Category: Comedy, Film | ≅ Comments
The business news keeps getting worse. Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme unraveled, defrauding wealthy investors of an estimated $50 billion. Marc Dreier, a big time New York lawyer, got jailed for allegedly bilking sophisticated hedge funds out of millions. Now, we learn that the CEO of National Lampoon is charged with securities fraud. As you may know, [...]
≡ Category: Wikipedia | ≅ Comments
A Lifehacker post reminded me to spread the word about the newish mobile version of Wikipedia. Simply bookmark this page (mobile.wikipedia.org) on your wireless device, and you can then research all of your questions on the fly. When did the French finally get rid of Robespierre? What’s the gist of Einstein’s special theory of relativity? [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Philosophy | ≅ Comments
Ayn Rand’s classic gets dusted off and humorously brought into 2008 over at McSweeney’s. Worth a read.
As a side note, you may want to revisit the New York Times 2007 piece, Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism, which talks about the influence that Atlas Shrugged (and its free market philosophy) has had on Fortune 500 CEOs and [...]
≡ Category: Random | ≅ Comments
We’ve been having some problems posting videos, and think we now have it figured out. So we’re posting a test.
In case you don’t know the backstory, President Bush made a final surprise trip to Iraq today and held a joint news conference. It ended abruptly when an Iraqi journalist started throwing his shoes at him. [...]
Let’s ease into the weekend on a high note:
via Lifehacker via Overthinkingit
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≡ Category: Comedy, Television | ≅ Comments
Bad clothes, really bad TV sets, not so good hair, and some briefly good comedy — that’s what you get when Woody Allen hits the Dick Cavett Show in or around 1970. Watch it below, and get other segments here, here, and here. And find it on our YouTube Favorites.
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≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
While working on the International Space Station, Astronaut Don Pettit created this remarkable video of the aurora borealis (otherwise known as The Northern Lights). How? By stitching together a large sequence of still images that he took from space. It makes for some good viewing.
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via NYTimes DotEarth
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