The Unrepentant Terrorist? A Conversation with Bill Ayers

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 iron­ic way it begins:

…our inter­view [start­ed] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lob­by and a wor­ried secu­ri­ty guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, point­ing to a back­pack and coat that were def­i­nite­ly not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few oth­er peo­ple. The own­er was not there. She radioed in. I con­sid­ered the irony of being blown up while inter­view­ing Bill Ayers. I fig­ured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.

Get the full inter­view over at The Rum­pus.

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Stream the New U2 Album

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 music play­er, and tog­gle the “Fea­ture Playlist” to No Line on the Hori­zon. You should be able to access the album in its entire­ty.

Dylan and Baez Sing Blowin’ in the Wind

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. You can now see this rare com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flag­ging that.

Hitchens & D’Souza Go Mano-a-Mano on Faith

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. The top­ic is faith and athe­ism. The debate is heat­ed. And as you watch, you’ll see the charm­ing per­son­al­i­ties come out. The video con­tin­ues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 min­utes in total.

Welcome to the New Age of Upheaval

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 full-blown polit­i­cal and pos­si­bly mil­i­tary cri­sis, and we’re already see­ing the risk of upheaval in nine coun­tries, includ­ing Soma­lia, Rus­sia, and Mex­i­co. Fer­gu­son clos­es by say­ing: “Eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, plus eth­nic dis­in­te­gra­tion, plus an empire in decline: That com­bi­na­tion is about the most lethal in geopol­i­tics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.”

via The Dai­ly Dish

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On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

twitterimageEar­li­er 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 lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”

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Sounds of Opera 1907

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, â€śTrea­sures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes arti­cle and scroll down a lit­tle to the Mul­ti­me­dia sec­tion, you can sam­ple these cen­tu­ry old record­ings. The Times col­lec­tion fea­tures out­takes from Verdi’s Aida, Otel­lo and Rigo­let­to. Find them here.

Swapping Your Way to Enlightenment: A Recession Special

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 you want to read. And the cost (aside from ship­ping fees) is zero. Plus you’ll save more than a few trees.

On the web, you’ll find two major online book swap­ping ser­vices. The first is PaperBackSwap.com. The sec­ond is Book­Mooch. You can learn more about each ser­vice (respec­tive­ly) here and here.

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