New David Foster Wallace in The New Yorker

in Literature | December 8th, 2009

Appear­ing in The New York­er this week is an excerpt from David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s unfin­ished nov­el, The Pale King. It begins:

Once when I was a lit­tle boy I received as a gift a toy cement mix­er. It was made of wood except for its wheels—axles—which, as I remem­ber, were thin met­al rods. I’m nine­ty per cent sure it was a Christ­mas gift. I liked it the same way a boy that age likes toy dump trucks, ambu­lances, trac­tor-trail­ers, and what­not. There are lit­tle boys who like trains and lit­tle boys who like vehicles—I liked the lat­ter.

Con­tin­ue read­ing the rest here. Also see this oth­er  pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished excerpt and some pages from DWF’s actu­al man­u­script.

via Kottke.org

PS Is any­one hav­ing prob­lems post­ing com­ments? If so, please shoot me a note at the email address above. I appre­ci­ate your help.

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Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture: Text Here

in Literature | December 8th, 2009

A quick note: Her­ta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, deliv­ered her lec­ture in Stock­holm yes­ter­day. You can now read the full text online; the video should be com­ing soon.

My grand­fa­ther had been a sol­dier in the First World War. He knew what he was talk­ing about when he said, often and embit­tered, in ref­er­ence to his son Matz: When the flags start to flut­ter, com­mon sense slides right into the trum­pet. This warn­ing also applied to the fol­low­ing dic­ta­tor­ship, which I expe­ri­enced. Every day you could see the com­mon sense of the prof­i­teers, both big and lit­tle, slid­ing right into the trum­pet. The trum­pet I decid­ed not to blow.

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Would You Pay $3.99 for a Short Story?

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | December 7th, 2009

The Atlantic Month­ly and Amazon/Kindle are hop­ing so…

PS Note that the “Best­sellers in Kin­dle” (look in the right col­umn of linked page) all cur­rent­ly cost $0.00.

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The World’s Smallest Writing Ever. Going Subatomic at Stanford.

in Science, Stanford | December 7th, 2009

Vis­it Stan­ford’s YouTube Chan­nel here.

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Learning, Memory and the Brain: A Primer

in Science | December 6th, 2009

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has post­ed online a free video lec­ture that focus­es on what hap­pens in our brain when we learn — some­thing that should pique the inter­est of pret­ty much any read­er here. (Just what hap­pens with those synaps­es when you come here every day?) The lec­ture (watch here) comes from a larg­er course called Under­stand­ing the Brain and is pre­sent­ed by Jeanette Nor­den, a pro­fes­sor in Cell and Devel­op­men­tal Biol­o­gy at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty.

Side Note: The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is also offer­ing free access to anoth­er lec­ture (this one in audio) that sur­veys the “Mas­ter­pieces of Clas­si­cal Hol­i­day Music,” includ­ing Bach’s Christ­mas Ora­to­rio of 1734, Handel’s Mes­si­ah of 1741; and Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er Suite of 1892. Lis­ten or down­load here.

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Google to Provide Virtual Tours of 19 World Heritage Sites

in Google, History | December 5th, 2009

On Fri­day, I men­tioned that you can now vis­it the Roman ruins at Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles via Google Street View. What I did­n’t real­ize is that this looks to be part of a larg­er ini­tia­tive, a larg­er attempt to pro­vide dig­i­tal tours of impor­tant world her­itage sites. Accord­ing to this UNESCO announce­ment, 19 his­tor­i­cal sites will be includ­ed, and I’ve list­ed them below. The video above offers more details.

“Spain: San­ti­a­go de Com­postela (Old Town); Old Town of Cáceres; His­toric Walled Town of Cuen­ca; Old City of Sala­man­ca; Old Town of Ávi­la with its Extra-Muros Church­es; Old Town of Segovia and its Aque­duct; His­toric City of Tole­do France: Palace and Park of Ver­sailles; Paris, Banks of the Seine Italy: Archae­o­log­i­cal Areas of Pom­pei, Her­cu­la­neum and Torre Annun­zi­a­ta; His­toric Cen­tre of Siena; His­toric Cen­tre of Urbino; His­toric Cen­tre of San Gimignano Nether­lands: Mill Net­work at Kinderdijk-Elshout Czech Repub­lic: Holy Trin­i­ty Col­umn in Olo­mouc; His­toric Cen­tre of Český Krumlov; His­toric Cen­tre of Prague Unit­ed King­dom: Stone­henge, Ave­bury and Asso­ci­at­ed Sites; Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens, Kew”

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Visit Pompeii (also Stonehenge & Versailles) with Google Street View

in Google, History | December 4th, 2009

pompeiigoogleThe sto­ry of Pom­peii is well known. Back in 79 AD, Mount Vesu­vius erupt­ed and cov­ered the neigh­bor­ing Roman city with 60 feet of ash over the course of two days. The city was wiped out and then entombed for cen­turies, until archae­ol­o­gists start­ed unearthing the ruins in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, offer­ing the mod­ern world an amaz­ing win­dow into the fin­er details of ancient Roman life. (Just for the record, dig­ging con­tin­ues there today, and I even got to do some this past sum­mer.) Today, Google is help­ing deep­en the mod­ern con­nec­tion to the ancient world. Using Google Street view, you can tour Pom­peii in 3D from the com­fort of your own home. To begin walk­ing through the ancient city, just click here.

As a side note, this isn’t the first time Google has used Street View in such a way. You can also find tours of Stone­henge and Louis XIV’s Ver­sailles. Plus, you can also use Google Earth, anoth­er Google pro­gram, to tour the ancient city of Rome.

Final­ly, to dig deep­er into ancient his­to­ry, I’d rec­om­mend look­ing through our pre­vi­ous post, Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free. This will point you to some of the best free cours­es avail­able on the web.

via Mash­able and the Nation­al Post

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U. Michigan iPhone Orchestra

in Music | December 4th, 2009

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan now offers a course designed to help stu­dents turn their iPhones into musi­cal instru­ments. The video above shows footage from one of their prac­tice ses­sions held in Novem­ber. A final con­cert will be held on Decem­ber 9. You can read more about this project here. Also see Stan­ford stu­dents play­ing the iPhone here.

via TUAW.com

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.