James Ellroy on Re-Writing History

in Books, Literature | October 8th, 2009

James Ell­roy’s new crime fic­tion nov­el, Blood­’s a Rover, takes you back to the tumul­tuous sum­mer of 1968, to a world inhab­it­ed by J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hugh­es, the Black Pan­thers, and the mob run­ning their rack­ets in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Above, in his own inim­itable style, Ell­roy gives you the scoop on how he goes about writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. To get a feel for the book, you can read a PDF of the first chap­ter here. And if you want to get the audio book for free, check out Audible.com’s stand­ing offer.

via Media Bistro

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Who is Herta Muller?

in Literature | October 8th, 2009

This morn­ing, the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture was award­ed to the Roman­ian author, Her­ta Muller. There’s a good chance that you’re not famil­iar with her work. So let me steer you to this pro­file in the Tele­graph. You can also read this excerpt­ed inter­view that goes back to 1999. If I come across any media fea­tur­ing Muller (so far, not much is com­ing up), I will post it as the day goes on.

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Richard Dawkins on “The Greatest Show on Earth”

in Sci Fi | October 7th, 2009

Richard Dawkins, the promi­nent Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gist, has fol­lowed up The God Delu­sion (2006) with The Great­est Show on Earth (Sep­tem­ber, 2009). After hav­ing made the case for athe­ism, Dawkins now looks to debunk “Intel­li­gent Design” and lay out the sheer vol­ume of evi­dence sup­port­ing evo­lu­tion. Above, Dawkins reads pas­sages from his book and then talks about evo­lu­tion and why, rel­a­tive to oth­er sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries, it tends to meet so much oppo­si­tion. The video comes from the Guardian where you can also find a review of Dawkins’ new book.

Note: you should be able to down­load Dawkins’ book for free (in audio for­mat) through Audible.com’s stand­ing offer. Details here.

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Free Film Noir at Archive.org

in Film | October 7th, 2009

Mark Frauen­felder, over at Boing­Bo­ing, has flagged a nice film noir col­lec­tion housed at Archive. org. All films are pub­lic domain and free. Among the 43 films you’ll find Beat the Dev­il (1953), a John Hus­ton film star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt. (Watch it here.) Archive.org also hosts a good num­ber of oth­er films, and I’ve high­light­ed some in a pre­vi­ous post: 35 Places to Watch Free Movies Online

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Case for God: The First Chapter

in Religion | October 7th, 2009

As we men­tioned last week, Karen Arm­strong’s new book, The Case for God, is out. And now you can read the first chap­ter for free. Just click on this link, and then the book view­er on the left side of the page. It will expand, and from there you can start flip­ping through the pages. Be warned, the viewer/reader is a lit­tle clunky. The down­side of free, I guess.

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Michael Sandel on Justice: Lecture III

in Harvard, Philosophy | October 6th, 2009

Lec­ture 3 of Michael Sandel’s ever pop­u­lar course on Jus­tice is now online. Here’s the sum­ma­ry of mate­r­i­al cov­ered by the new­ly added lec­ture. It’s pro­vid­ed by Har­vard’s course web site:

Part 1 — FREE TO CHOOSE: With humor­ous ref­er­ences to Bill Gates and Michael Jor­dan, Sandel intro­duces the lib­er­tar­i­an notion that redis­trib­u­tive taxation—taxing the rich to give to the poor—is akin to forced labor.

PART 2 — WHO OWNS ME?: Stu­dents first dis­cuss the argu­ments behind redis­trib­u­tive tax­a­tion. If you live in a soci­ety that has a sys­tem of pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion, aren’t you oblig­at­ed to pay your tax­es? Don’t many rich peo­ple often acquire their wealth through sheer luck or fam­i­ly for­tune? A group of stu­dents dubbed “Team Lib­er­tar­i­an” vol­un­teers to defend the lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy against these objec­tions.

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PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

in Education, Media, Television | October 6th, 2009

News from the Wired Cam­pus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now post­ing taped inter­views and videos of lec­tures by aca­d­e­mics, adding to the grow­ing num­ber of free lec­tures online.

Their site, called Forum Net­work, says it makes thou­sands of lec­tures avail­able, includ­ing the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel’s take on cal­cu­lat­ing hap­pi­ness in a lec­ture called “How to Mea­sure Plea­sure,” and a dis­cus­sion by a North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the dif­fi­cul­ties of report­ing in Rus­sia in a lec­ture called “Of Spies and Spokes­men: The Chal­lenge of Jour­nal­ism in Rus­sia.”

The Forum Net­work is now hap­pi­ly added to our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intel­li­gent video sites here.) For more free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, be sure to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es. It now fea­tures 200 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, and you can down­load them all to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er.

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The 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes

in Television | October 5th, 2009



Last Fri­day marked the 50th anniver­sary of The Twi­light Zone’s debut on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, a big occa­sion for fans of sci-fi, hor­ror and sus­pense. To cel­e­brate the anniver­sary, TV Squad pulled togeth­er a list of the 10 best episodes of Rod Ser­ling’s show. At the top, you might put the episode called “Eye of the Behold­er,” which we’ve post­ed above. For the remain­ing nine, vis­it the TV Squad list and also see the inter­views with Rod Ser­ling toward the end of their page. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

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