The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | ≅ 8 Comments
There’s no doubt about it. We’re living in interesting times, as the Chinese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s happening here. So, below, I have highlighted a number of blogs and podcasts that help make intelligent sense of this economic debacle. Here they [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Media, e-books | ≅ 7 Comments
It took until February 26, but I finally got my backordered x-mas present – the Kindle 2 (check it out here). There’s a lot to like about it. It’s thin & light. The screen is very readable. It holds a ton of books (1500). It downloaded War & Peace in a matter of seconds. The [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy | ≅ Leave a Comment
Allan Bloom, perhaps best remembered for his controversial bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, spent his career studying and lecturing on the great books, writing extensively on Plato, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Hegel and others. Perhaps not terribly surprisingly, some of his lectures have popped up on YouTube. (What doesn’t eventually pop up there?) The lectures [...]
≡ Category: Media, iPhone | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a quick fyi for iPhone users: The Public Radio Tuner, a free app available on iTunes, gives you (free) access to hundreds of public radio streams from across the US. Released in late January, the Tuner brings together feeds from NPR, American Public Media, and PRI, among others. This is a handy way to [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 2 Comments
What’s the main news story of the day? It depends on where you live.
Newseum has a handy web page that let’s you visually scan the front page of over 700 newspapers across 80 countries. Open this web page, click on a continent, then click on a dot within a particular geographic area, and you’ll see [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Through his books and documentaries, Simon Schama, a British born historian, has covered a lot of fertile ground. The French Revolution, the slave trade, the power of art, Rembrandt, early modern Dutch culture, the history of Britain — Schama has covered it all. And now he has pulled a Tocqueville on us. He spent the [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Somehow my mind turned back today to this classic scene from Annie Hall — Woody Allen’s 1977 Academy Awarding-winning film. The scene features Woody, Diane Keaton, and a cameo by Marshall McLuhan, who gave us media theory and the expression “the medium is the message.” The bit is always good for a laugh.
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ 1 Comment
A quick fyi: This morning, Stanford Continuing Studies opened up registration for its spring lineup of online writing courses. Offered in partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program (one of the most distinguished writing programs in the country), these online courses give beginning and advanced writers, no matter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gifted [...]
≡ Category: Apple, iPhone | ≅ 16 Comments
Since the release of the iPhone App Store, numerous sources have commented on the potential of educational apps. While these apps can’t compete with the general popularity of gaming and leisure apps, there are a number of educational apps that mobile learners will find handy.
Top Free Apps
Open Culture: Our iPhone app gives you free mobile [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 2 Comments
Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and favorite whipping boy of the failed McCain campaign, gives a primer on the summer of ’68, discusses his favorite tattoo, and explains how the Chicago Police Department now loves him. The interview was conducted by a colleague of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
U2’s next album, No Line on the Horizon, will be released internationally in early March. But not terribly surprisingly the album is already being circulated (not legally) on BitTorrent. And this has motivated the band to give fans free access to a streamed version on MySpace. To listen, just click here, scroll down to the [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Somewhere back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites. As mentioned a few weeks back, Dylan recently agreed to lend this classic song to a TV commercial for an ethical banking and retail group in the UK. [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Leave a Comment
I didn’t think it would be possible, but it happened. I found my two least favorite intellectuals together on the same stage, and King’s College in NYC made it all possible. So, to mark the occasion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the academy’s dressed up version of Ann Coulter, debating the ever surly Christopher Hitchens. [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ 1 Comment
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson has written extensively about the rise and fall of great empires and financial systems. Writing for Foreign Policy, Ferguson now warns that the spiraling economic crisis may soon pose serious threats to international peace and American security. As we saw during the late 1930s, economic crisis often sets the stage for [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ 3 Comments
Earlier in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twitter, prompted partly by Makeuseof.com, which mentioned our site in a Twitter-related article. (Thanks Mark for that.)
When we first created our Twitter feed, my hopes weren’t especially high. And while I’m still not completely sold on the personal uses of Twitter, I’m definitely [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 1907, executives from the Gramophone Company headed to the basement of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax recordings of famous opera singers. Now, a century later, these recordings have been opened, dusted off, and (yes) even commercialized. Later this month, EMI will release the recordings under the title, “Treasures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a handy way to weather the recession with your intellect and pocket book intact…
In this very down economy, you can keep feeding your reading habit by book swapping. Yes, that’s right, book swapping. What goes on here is fairly straightforward. You give away books that you’ve already read. In exchange, you get books that [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
John Cheever’s story “Of Love: A Testimony” hasn’t been anthologized or reprinted since it was originally published in 1943. Now, you can find it online at Fivechapters.com. Throughout the week, Fivechapters will roll out the story in nice daily installments, as is their general custom.
via LA Times Books
Now there’s a nice alternative to the traditional, expensive art history textbook. The folks at smARThistory have created a free multi-media web-book that offers a dynamic survey of art history. The online resource combines traditional images with audio and videos, and the beauty is that you don’t have to read this web-book in a linear fashion. Rather, you [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
From Harper’s:
In celebration of its 25th year, the Harper’s Index–12,058 lines spanning 300 issues–is now open to all for searching and browsing, with more than one thousand linked categories. Some starting points: Adultery, China, Beer, Vegetables, Sweets,American Men, American Women, Cats, Dogs, Frogs, Bears, and Pandas.
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