Nate Silver (Sporting a Cookie Monster T‑Shirt) Talks Serious Stats with Conan O’Brien

in Media, Politics | December 10th, 2012

Even if you hate or fear sta­tis­tics, you’ve sure­ly become more than aware in recent months of one par­tic­u­lar sta­tis­ti­cian: Nate Sil­ver. The young pro­fes­sion­al num­ber-crunch­er has made the news in a big way for a legit­i­mate­ly impres­sive sta­tis­ti­cal feat: pre­dict­ing the win­ner of all fifty states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia in this year’s Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He came near­ly as close back in 2008’s elec­tion, pre­dict­ing the win­ner in 49 states. In between those coups, Time named Sil­ver one of the world’s hun­dred most influ­en­tial peo­ple, and the New York Times has giv­en their offi­cial impri­matur by host­ing his blog FiveThir­tyEight. Now he’s received what some would con­sid­er an even high­er hon­or: an invi­ta­tion to sit down with Conan O’Brien for the bet­ter part of an hour on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber.

“Elec­tions are prob­a­bly the most dra­mat­ic moments in the his­to­ry of our coun­try,” O’Brien says to Sil­ver. “The­se’s a dan­ger,” he then dead­pans, “that you’re tak­ing the fun out of it.” We jumped on O’Brien’s new long-form inter­view web series last month, fea­tur­ing his con­ver­sa­tions with pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Edmund Mor­ris and “com­e­dy mas­ter­mind” Judd Apa­tow. Sil­ver, the pro­gram’s third guest, per­fect­ly con­tin­ues its short but strong tra­di­tion of per­son­al­i­ties who bring both zeit­geist rel­e­vance and intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. The choice also taps into a well of pub­lic curios­i­ty — a great many of us know of Nate Sil­ver with­out quite under­stand­ing why we do — and finds a reserve of goofi­ness to match O’Brien’s own. (If you doubt this, behold Sil­ver’s Cook­ie Mon­ster t‑shirt.) So think hard when you watch this con­ver­sa­tion about polit­i­cal echo cham­bers, media frag­men­ta­tion, data’s rela­tion­ship to instinct, and math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing. But do feel free to laugh at the jokes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Plays Char­lie Rose, Talks Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry with Edmund Mor­ris

Celebri­ty Sta­tis­ti­cian Nate Sil­ver Fields Ques­tions from Data Wiz­ards at Google

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How a Crossword Puzzle is Made: Behind the Scenes with The New York Times

in Media | November 17th, 2012

If you still sub­scribe to old-fash­ioned print news­pa­pers, chances are it’s because you like doing cross­word puz­zles and putting pen(cil) to paper. If you fall into this camp, we give you this: Will Shortz, the cross­word puz­zle edi­tor for The New York Times (and the only known per­son to hold a col­lege degree in enig­ma­tol­ogy) pre­sent­ing a quick, behind-the-scenes look at how the NYT puz­zle gets made. Off we go.

 

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A Celebration of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cassettes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

in Media, Music, Technology | November 7th, 2012

In going dig­i­tal, we’ve gained some con­ve­nience. That’s unde­ni­able. But we’ve lost much when it comes to aes­thet­ics and qual­i­ty too. (Neil Young makes that point again and again.) Increas­ing­ly, we’re real­iz­ing what we’ve left behind, and there’s a move­ment afoot to recov­er old school media — things you can see, touch and feel and mar­vel over. Vinyl records. Tape cas­settes. VHS tapes. 8mm Film. Polaroid Pho­tos. All of that good stuff gets revis­it­ed in the lat­est short film pro­duced in the PBS Off Book series. Pre­vi­ous install­ments have cov­ered:

Art in the Era of the Inter­net

The Art of Film and TV Title Design

The Art of Glitch

The Cre­ativ­i­ty of Indie Video Games 

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Jon Hamm and Lena Dunham Unveil The New Yorker’s New iPhone App

in iPhone, Media | August 10th, 2012

In 2010, when The New York­er released its iPad app, Jason Schwartz­man made the com­ic pitch. Now comes the new iPhone app, and it’s Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Lena Dun­ham (Tiny Fur­ni­ture film­mak­er and Girls cre­ator) doing the hon­ors. As The New York­er will tell you, the new app has “every sto­ry, every car­toon, every em dash, every illus­tra­tion” found in the mag­a­zine, plus extra audio and video fea­tures. Any­one with an iPhone can down­load this week’s issue for free. In the future, read­ers sub­scrib­ing to the mag­a­zine in print, iPad, and Kin­dle Fire for­mats will receive full access to the mobile app. Android users, don’t despair. It looks like the mag­a­zine will take care of your dig­i­tal needs down the line.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Inter­view with The New York­er

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The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela Retold with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

in History, Media, Technology | July 18th, 2012

Back in March, we told you about the launch of The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. Part­ly fund­ed by Google, the archive lets you revis­it impor­tant moments in Man­de­la’s life — his Ear­ly Life, his Prison Years, and his Pres­i­den­tial Years.

That Dig­i­tal Archive offers one way to tell Man­de­la’s sto­ry. Now here’s anoth­er. The cre­ators of the web site Man­dela Sto­ry launched a short video yes­ter­day that looks at Man­de­la’s life through the lens of social media. And it’s meant to raise a seri­ous ques­tion: “Would Man­dela have spent 27 years in cap­tiv­i­ty if he (and oth­ers) had access to the same tech­nol­o­gy, social media plat­forms and tools as we do today?”

It’s short and cer­tain­ly cre­ative. And if it speaks to you, you should check out Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line, a clip cre­at­ed by The Rijksmu­se­um that imag­ines the social life of the great Dutch painter.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

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Books Made with Disappearing Ink Strategically Fade Away

in Books, Media | July 9th, 2012

How about this for a new pub­lish­ing mod­el? The Buenos Aires pub­lish­er Eter­na Caden­cia has start­ed to pub­lish books made with dis­ap­pear­ing ink. Once you crack open the cov­er, you have two months to fin­ish the book, or else you’ll be star­ing at a blank page. If books have an expi­ra­tion date, read­ers won’t let them sit idly on their shelves. They’ll read books more often, and give more authors a try. That’s the log­ic of this new twist on pub­lish­ing..

Books aren’t dead yet. They’re just inten­tion­al­ly fad­ing away.…

via Gal­ley Cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Secret Book­store in New York City

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

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The “Collapse” of the Sydney Opera House Sails

in Art, Media | June 4th, 2012

Mul­ti-award win­ning Ger­man design col­lec­tive URBANSCREEN spe­cial­izes in large-scale pro­jec­tion on urban sur­faces. Their first great inter­na­tion­al suc­cess was “555 KUBIK — How it would be if a house was dream­ing,” a bril­liant media instal­la­tion using the façade of the Kun­sthalle Ham­burg. This project quick­ly found its way to all major blogs and sites on the Inter­net and gained so much fame that it sur­passed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lol­cat videos for almost an hour.

This year, URBANSCREEN was com­mis­sioned to trans­form the sails of the icon­ic Syd­ney Opera House as part of Vivid Syd­ney, a fes­ti­val of light, music and ideas. The tru­ly amaz­ing pro­jec­tions explore the sculp­tur­al form of the Opera House and its place as a home for music, dance and dra­ma. The con­clu­sion is not to be missed.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.