As I gather material for the blog, I often come across content that’s interesting, but not quite right for the blog. It seemed like Twitter might be a good place to add this bonus material. So from here on out, I’ll casually add some extra content there. Today, I just mentioned how you can get 50% off of some classic American literature. Check out our Twitter feed here.
John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly
This week marks the 50th anniversary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talking about the 1959 airplane crash that cut short the budding lives and careers of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. In ’59, Buddy Holly’s musical career was just getting started, but his influence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all covered Holly songs during their early careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon moving from a Lead Belly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a little Buddy Holly medley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peggy Sue.” (The Beatles’ take on “Words of Love” can be listened to here as well.) Enjoy.
Amazon: New Kindle and Free E‑Books
Google announced yesterday that it’s making a large number of books available via web-enabled mobile phones. Now, Amazon has said that it will unveil a new version of the Kindle next week and also make Kindle titles available on a variety of mobile phones. You can get more info here.
UPDATE: We have created a large collection of Free eBooks, which includes ebooks provided by Google. Please visit this page to access free ebooks on your computer, smart phone (including iphone), or kindle.
Steve Jobs Demos the First Macintosh in 1984
We originally posted this video back in 2009, and it seems like the right time to bring it back. It captures the first of many times that Steve Jobs thrilled audiences with the promise of what technology could deliver. The video takes you back to January 1984, when Jobs demoed the first Macintosh. A young Jobs, sporting a bow tie and a fuller head of hair, could barely hold back his smile and some tears, and the crowd simply couldn’t contain its enthusiasm, giving Jobs a five-minute standing ovation. That’s where the video ends, fading happily and suitably to black. We’ll miss you Steve.
For another great Steve Jobs moment, don’t miss his inspiring Stanford 2005 graduation talk where he discussed his approach to living and urged the young graduates to “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” So far as commencement speeches go, it’s hard to beat this one.
Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone
Wow. Point your mobile web browser to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. According to The Globe and Mail, Google is making 500,000 books, most from the public domain, freely available to you. And if you live in the US, the number will reach 1.5 million. The collection includes works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Milton and more. (You can also find many similar texts in our collection of free audio books.) I tested Google’s mobile books on the iPhone, and it looks really good. Hopefully things will work well on your mobile device as well.
via Maud Newton’s Twitter Feed
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The Future of Human Health TED-Style
This week the 2009 TED Conference is kicking into full gear, and it’s getting live blogged by BoingBoing throughout the week. See for example here, here and here. If you’re familiar with the TED format, you’ll know that the goal is to take influential thinkers and have them deliver the “talk of their lives” in 18 crisp minutes or less. It’s a good model, and it’s one that Stanford used during the fall when it delivered a short course called: “The Future of Human Health: Seven Very Short Talks That Will Blow Your Mind.” In the lecture posted above, Jennifer Raymond talks about what changes in our brains when we learn and remember, and how our understanding of these processes (and of specifically neural circuits) can eventually lead to treatments for learning disabilities, dementia and Alzheimer’s. You can find the complete list of short talks on YouTube and iTunes as well.
Faulkner and Delillo Writing for Sports Illustrated
A good find by the LA Times Books Blog that we picked up on Twitter: Somewhere back in the Sports Illustrated archive, you’ll find William Faulkner writing in 1955 about seeing his first hockey game (the Rangers v. the Montreal Canadiens at Madison Square Garden). And then we have Don Delillo doing his own piece in 1972, well before he wrote his first big novels. Both pieces, by the way, are collected in the 2004 book, Fifty Years of Great Writing.
Can YouTube Save the Nuns?
Given that we were talking about the historical Jesus yesterday, this piece in the Utne Reader caught my eye …
What happens when you’re running a 14th century convent in Southern Spain that’s nearly broke? You could call up Jake and Elwood. Or, if you’re Mother Isabel and you run the show, you put a video on YouTube entitled “Why not be a barefoot Carmelite?” And then you let everyone see the nuns doing their thing — nuns reading, nuns praying, nuns baking and nuns sewing. So far the video has about 30,000 views, which is not huge by YouTube standards and it may not be enough to save the nuns. But the way I figure it, if we can bail out the Wall Street bunglers, then why not the nuns?
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