Amazon Finally Gets the Kindle Right with the Paperwhite, Delivering on Price and Technology

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Technology | October 7th, 2012

It took five years and five mod­els, but Ama­zon has final­ly released a new gen­er­a­tion of the Kin­dle — the Kin­dle Paper­white — that deliv­ers the goods. The prob­lem with the pre­vi­ous mod­els boiled down to this. The screens were fair­ly mud­dy. The con­trast, poor. The words did­n’t pop off of the page. If you ever tried read­ing a Kin­dle indoors, espe­cial­ly in low­er light con­di­tions, you know what I mean.

With the Kin­dle Paper­white, Ama­zon has made a pret­ty big leap ahead. They’ve made improve­ments to the font con­trast and screen res­o­lu­tion, which def­i­nite­ly enhance the read­ing expe­ri­ence. They’ve also added a touch­screen to the e‑ink mod­el. But the big stride for­ward is the built-in light that illu­mi­nates the screen. The screen is sidelit, not back­lit (à la the iPad). The point of the light isn’t to make the screen glow like a com­put­er screen. It’s to make the screen stay white, like the page of a book, under vary­ing light con­di­tions. If you move from brighter to dim­mer light­ing con­di­tions, you nudge up the bright­ness so that the page con­tin­ues to look white. And then you stop there.

It all works quite well, until you start read­ing with the Paper­white in pret­ty dim light con­di­tions. Then you’ll need to dial up the light until the screen actu­al­ly glows, and that’s when you’ll start to see some imper­fec­tions in the design. As David Pogue men­tioned in his New York Times review, the Paper­white has some hotspots (areas of uneven light­ing) along the bot­tom of the screen, which detract minor­ly from the read­ing expe­ri­ence.

The last thing Ama­zon got right is the price. The entry mod­el starts at $119, which means that Ama­zon is basi­cal­ly sell­ing the e‑reader at cost, and then mak­ing mon­ey on book sales. But that does­n’t mean that you need to spend very much. You can always down­load texts from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Or, if you’re an Ama­zon Prime Mem­ber, you can bor­row up to 180,000 books for free.

For a com­plete tour of the new Kin­dle, watch this 20 minute video.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 450 Free Audio Books

Read 160 Free Text­books Online

Down­load a Free Audio Book From Audible.com

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What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees (and What a Geographer Learns About Our Planet) from the ISS

in Astronomy, Video - Science | October 6th, 2012

Justin Wilkin­son has a pret­ty cool sound­ing gig. He’s the chief geo­sci­en­tist at NASA, and he learns all about plan­et Earth from space. When astro­nauts head to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), Wilkin­son asks them to snap pic­tures of var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. And, from this van­tage point 250 miles above the plan­et’s sur­face, he learns many things — for exam­ple, he tells Slate, “there are a lot more exam­ples of a geo­graph­i­cal phe­nom­e­non called an inland delta or megafan—that is, deltas formed far from coastlines—than was once thought.”

Out of Wilkin­son’s research comes some great pic­tures and videos, and today we’re fea­tur­ing two clips. The first video above shows you what an astro­naut sees at night, giv­ing you an aer­i­al tour of cities and coast­lines in the Amer­i­c­as, the Mid­dle East and Europe. The equal­ly impres­sive video below gives you stel­lar shots (in day­light) of Namib­ia, Tunisia, Mada­gas­car, Sici­ly, Chi­na, Iran, and Utah. You’ll find these videos added to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos. Cours­es on astron­o­my can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.  h/t @stevesilberman

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Christopher Lee Narrates a Beautiful Animation of Tim Burton’s Poem, Nightmare Before Christmas

in Animation, Film | October 5th, 2012

Almost nine­teen years ago, the ide­al fall-hol­i­day ani­mat­ed film first opened: The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, direct­ed by stop-motion mas­ter Hen­ry Selick and pro­duced by Tim Bur­ton, pos­ses­sor of one of the best-known imag­i­na­tions of our time. Over a decade before that, in 1982, Bur­ton wrote a poem of the same name, telling essen­tial­ly the same sto­ry as would the film. Work­ing at the time as an ani­ma­tor at Dis­ney, he man­aged to catch his employ­er’s atten­tion by turn­ing these vers­es into con­cept art, sto­ry­boards, and char­ac­ter mod­els for adap­ta­tion into a poten­tial half-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial fea­tur­ing Vin­cent Price. But the world, much less Dis­ney, did­n’t yet seem ready for the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, much less the par­tic­u­lar note of jol­ly grim­ness struck by The Night­mare Before Christ­mas. Years would pass, both in terms of get­ting the project into the right hands and in terms of the painstak­ing pro­duc­tion itself, before we could enjoy Jack Skelling­ton’s acci­den­tal jour­ney into Christ­mas Town and his well-mean­ing but ill-fat­ed attempt to take that hol­i­day for him­self.

But when we got to enjoy it, boy, did we ever enjoy it: in its near­ly two decades of exis­tence, The Night­mare Christ­mas has, with its dis­tinc­tive intri­cate dark-yet-light aes­thet­ics, askew humor, and sur­pris­ing intel­li­gence, spawned a vast inter­na­tion­al sub­cul­ture of enthu­si­asts. But you can still expe­ri­ence the core of every­thing the film is, and every­thing it has become in the zeit­geist, in Bur­ton’s orig­i­nal poem. So why not also see it ani­mat­ed and read aloud by Christo­pher Lee, as you can in the video above? “It was late one fall in Hal­loween Land, and the air had quite a chill,” the hor­ror vet­er­an intones. “Against the moon a skele­ton sat, alone upon a hill.” Night­mare Before Christ­mas fans know where this is going, but they’ll still want to hear the rest; though clear­ly the direct source of so much in their beloved movie, the poem looks on Skelling­ton and his mis­ad­ven­tures from a few angles they would­n’t quite expect.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

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

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Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959

in Books, Literature, Theatre | October 5th, 2012

If there is no God, said Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, life is mean­ing­less. And with­out mean­ing, men and women will “go stark, rav­ing mad.” For the deeply skep­ti­cal and agnos­tic Albert Camus, Dos­toyevsky’s books were a rev­e­la­tion. While he could­n’t agree with the Russ­ian nov­el­ist’s pre­scrip­tion of faith in an unseen deity, Camus felt Dos­toyevsky had con­vinc­ing­ly described the tragedy of man’s exis­tence in an indif­fer­ent uni­verse.

Camus first read Dos­toyevsky when he was 20 years old, and lat­er called it a “soul-shak­ing expe­ri­ence.” He was moved by the moral weight of Dos­toyevsky’s words. When the hor­rors of Stal­in’s purges came to light, Camus refused to look away. As he lat­er said, “The real 19th cen­tu­ry prophet was Dos­toyevsky, not Karl Marx.”

One of Dos­toyevsky’s works that affect­ed Camus the most was the apoc­a­lyp­tic 1872 nov­el The Pos­sessed, which in recent years has been trans­lat­ed as Demons or The Dev­ils. It’s a com­plex sto­ry of a con­flict­ed Russ­ian soci­ety as it descends into anar­chy and chaos with the spread of nihilism. The themes explored in The Pos­sessed were so absorb­ing to Camus that in 1959 he pub­lished a three-act stage adap­ta­tion, Les Pos­sédés. The play pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 28, 1959 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and on that day he gave an inter­est­ing inter­view with Pierre Dumayet for French tele­vi­sion, which you can watch in the video above. In the pro­gram hand­ed out at the the­ater that night, Camus described the nov­el­’s impor­tance: “Les Pos­sédés is one of the four or five works that I rank above all oth­ers. In more ways than one, I can say that it has enriched and shaped me.”

You can down­load a copy of The Pos­sessed and oth­er works by Dos­to­evsky from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Major works by the great Russ­ian author can also be found in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

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How Indie Video Game Makers Are Changing the Game

in Art, Technology, Video Games | October 5th, 2012

In a fol­low-up to its fea­ture on Glitch Art, which we wrote up in August, PBS’s Off Book series has released this short video pro­mot­ing indie video games. The video packs a lot of infor­ma­tion into a very short time frame, so it’s worth watch­ing twice. Over­all, the take­away here is that indie game design­ers can do inno­v­a­tive, quirky things the big guys–the so-called AAA games–can’t, since the indies can fund their own projects through enti­ties like Kick­starter and Indiegogo. It’s a per­sua­sive mes­sage giv­en the amaz­ing vari­ety of sound and vision on dis­play; in sev­en and a half min­utes, we get a glimpse of over two dozen indie games rang­ing from throw­backs to clas­sic 8‑bit ani­ma­tion to gor­geous, painter­ly envi­ron­ments and land­scapes.

The Off Book video breaks its sub­ject into four basic cat­e­gories, each one cov­ered by dif­fer­ent gam­ing jour­nal­ists or game cre­ators: Mechan­ics, Sound, Visu­als, and Sto­ry­telling. The last cat­e­go­ry is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant since it real­ly is an emo­tion­al engage­ment with a game’s char­ac­ters and plot­lines that push­es peo­ple through the game. At least I can say that’s always been the case for me. My fond­est mem­o­ries of the games I sat up all night with are those that pulled me into a world through, yes, fan­cy graph­ics and com­plex moves, but even more so through nar­ra­tive: from the sim­ple, repet­i­tive tales of the Mega Man series to the glo­be­trot­ting intrigues of Tomb Raider. For some­one who remem­bers the first incar­na­tions of both of those games, it’s excit­ing to see indie game design­ers draw­ing on nostalgia—in graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion and in the small craft stu­dio pro­duc­tion teams—while also inte­grat­ing con­tem­po­rary sounds and ideas. Like many of their con­tem­po­raries in var­i­ous indie music nich­es, indie game design­ers are push­ing the medi­um for­ward by scal­ing back to basics and by draw­ing on the trea­sures of their past.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Scotch Pronunciation Guide: Brian Cox Teaches You How To Ask Authentically for 40 Scotches

in Random | October 5th, 2012

Some Scotch names are fair­ly straight­for­ward — Glen­livet, Glen­fid­dich, Laphroaig. Oth­ers not so much. I mean, give Bun­na­hab­hain and Caol Ila a try. Well, if you’re a con­nois­seur strug­gling to get the pro­nun­ci­a­tion right, this will serve you well. Esquire has cre­at­ed “The Amer­i­can Man’s Scotch Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide” (though you hard­ly need to be male to prof­it from it), which fea­tures “esteemed actor and proud Scot” Bri­an Cox sipping/talking his way through more than 40 brand names. Catch them all here.

via @PartiallyExLife

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Neil Armstrong’s Parents Appear on the Classic American TV Show “I’ve Got a Secret,” 1962

in Astronomy | October 4th, 2012

“I’ve Got a Secret” was an Amer­i­can game show aired by CBS. By ask­ing a series of ques­tions, a pan­el had to deter­mine the secret of con­tes­tants. On Sep­tem­ber 17, 1962, Stephen Koenig Arm­strong and Vio­la Louise Engel Arm­strong came on the show and har­bored this secret — their son was one of nine men made an astro­naut that very day. Almost sev­en years lat­er, on July 20, 1969, Arm­strong became the first per­son to set foot on the moon. This is why host Gar­ry Moore’s ques­tion is all the more amaz­ing: “Now, how would you feel, Mrs. Arm­strong, if it turned out — of course nobody knows — but if it turns out that your son is the first man to land on the moon? How would you feel?”

Neil Arm­strong died on August 25, 2012 in Cincin­nati, at the age of 82. Here is NASA’s trib­ute to his life and achieve­ments.

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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Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at “The Father of Modern Photography”

in Art, Photography | October 4th, 2012

More than any­one else, Alfred Stieglitz helped raise the sta­tus of pho­tog­ra­phy to the lev­el of art. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, pub­lish­er and gallery own­er, Stieglitz was a key fig­ure in the birth of Amer­i­can mod­ernism. His own sta­tus as an arbiter of taste in pho­tog­ra­phy was bol­stered by his uncan­ny knack for quick­ly rec­og­niz­ing the great­ness of artists work­ing in oth­er media. He was the first gallery own­er in Amer­i­ca to exhib­it Picas­so, Matisse, Bran­cusi and oth­er great fig­ures in mod­ern art. As the nar­ra­tor of this fas­ci­nat­ing 1999 doc­u­men­tary puts it, Stieglitz opened the eyes of Amer­i­ca to the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye was direct­ed by Per­ry Miller Ada­to for the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters series, and builds on his ear­li­er doc­u­men­tary work on Stieglitz’s wid­ow, the painter Geor­gia O’Keefe.

Hav­ing shot many reels of film show­ing O’Keefe talk­ing about Stieglitz, Ada­to was a nat­ur­al choice to direct a full-length doc­u­men­tary on Stieglitz. As he told PBS in an inter­view:

We knew we had an ace up our sleeve–unique, invalu­able, nev­er-seen film footage of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe speak­ing about Alfred Stieglitz. In 1980, at the request of O’Ke­effe her­self, I had flown to New Mex­i­co with a small film crew and inter­viewed the artist at great length about Stieglitz.. On cam­era in her home, her gar­den and her stu­dio, she speaks frankly and inti­mate­ly, her rem­i­nis­cences salt­ed with her dry humor. O’Ke­effe talks about Alfred Stieglitz–the stu­dent, the man, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the pio­neer in the intro­duc­tion of avant-garde Euro­pean art to Amer­i­ca, the defend­er of strug­gling young Amer­i­can mod­ern artists; her own views on the artists of the famed “Stieglitz cir­cle” and of their life togeth­er. This film, rare dur­ing her life­time, became unique after her death in 1986. The 1980 project for a film about Stieglitz using this footage was nev­er real­ized. For 19 long years, eight large flat reels of 16mm film (work-print and synced mag track) lay buried in the stor­age room of my house in West­port, CT. Buried, but not entire­ly for­got­ten.

The doc­u­men­tary is round­ed out by inter­views with lead­ing Stieglitz schol­ars and muse­um cura­tors. Ada­to told PBS he was con­fi­dent the film would help reawak­en inter­est in Stieglitz, whose fame in recent decades has been over­shad­owed by that of O’Keefe. “It will help to restore his right­ful place in the his­to­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry art and cul­ture,” he said. “We hope that the pro­gram will also reveal Stieglitz as a charis­mat­ic, com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing indi­vid­ual ‘whose ide­al­ism wres­tled with his human frail­ties.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geor­gia O’Keeffe at 92

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