Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Science & Atheism

in Current Affairs, Religion | August 10th, 2010

No one debates quite as well as an Oxford pro­fes­sor. And so today we fea­ture two Oxford profs – athe­ist biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and Chris­t­ian math­e­mati­cian John Lennox – debat­ing God and sci­ence in … of all places … Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma. The debate turns large­ly on a ques­tion raised in Dawkins’ 2006 best­seller, The God Delu­sion: To what extent can reli­gious belief and seri­ous sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery go hand-in-hand? The debate is live­ly, and the thought seri­ous. A good way to spend 90+ min­utes. And Brazil­ian read­ers, you’re in luck. You get sub­ti­tles. If you would like to pur­chase a copy of the debate, you can buy it through the Fixed Point Foun­da­tion, the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that orga­nized the event. You can also watch a ver­sion of the debate on the Fixed Point web site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God — Part II

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 24 ) |

Pete Seeger, 91, Performs BP Protest Song

in Current Affairs, Music | August 2nd, 2010

Bless the man. Pete Seeger, now 91, is still doing it, putting protests into song. On July 24th, he appeared at a Gulf Coast Oil Spill fundrais­er at The City Win­ery in New York City. There, he per­formed a song he co-wrote with Lorre Wyatt: “God’s Count­ing on Me, God’s Count­ing on You.” All pro­ceeds went to the Gulf Restora­tion Net­work. This one is for you, Bob…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What is WikiLeaks?

in Current Affairs | July 26th, 2010

Wik­iLeaks has done it again. This week­end, the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site released 92,000 mil­i­tary doc­u­ments that vivid­ly illus­trate why the US mil­i­tary cam­paign in Afghanistan has achieved so lit­tle suc­cess. Among oth­er things, the release shines a light on Pak­istan’s intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus, which has pro­vid­ed strate­gic sup­port to the Tal­iban, help­ing it coor­di­nate attacks against US troops and assas­si­nate Afghani lead­ers. (Mean­while, Pak­istan offi­cial­ly claims to be an ally of the US.) The founder of Wik­iLeaks, Julian Assange, called this release “the near­est ana­logue to the Pen­ta­gon Papers” pub­lished dur­ing the Viet­nam War. “It pro­vides a whole map, if you like, through time, of what has hap­pened dur­ing this war.”

This is not the first time that Wik­iLeaks has made news late­ly. In April, the site released footage show­ing US troops launch­ing a seem­ing­ly unjus­ti­fied air strike in Iraq, killing 12 peo­ple, includ­ing 2 Reuters jour­nal­ists. (Click here and scroll to bot­tom for video.) And last year, Wik­iLeaks helped get “Cli­mate­gate” rolling when it pub­lished mem­os from cli­mate sci­en­tists – mem­os that gave con­ser­v­a­tives ammo to argue that glob­al warm­ing is a fic­tion.

So what is Wik­iLeaks all about? On July 14, NPR’s Fresh Air inter­viewed Philip Shenon, an inves­tiga­tive reporter pre­vi­ous­ly at the New York Times, and now con­tribut­ing to The Dai­ly Beast. Dur­ing the 35 minute con­ver­sa­tion, they enter the secret world of Wik­iLeaks and answer your ques­tions. You can stream the inter­view here, grab it on iTunes, or lis­ten below.

[gplay­er href=“https://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2010/07/20100714_fa_01.mp3” ] [/gplayer]

Sources for this post: The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and The Guardian

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Roman Polanski on Making Chinatown

in Current Affairs, Film | July 12th, 2010

This morn­ing, the Swiss reject­ed US requests to extra­dite Roman Polanksi. This deci­sion effec­tive­ly brings to a close a rather dark chap­ter in his per­son­al life and lets the con­ver­sa­tion return to his film­mak­ing. Enter our video above, which fea­tures Polan­s­ki talk­ing about the mak­ing of Chi­na­town, his 1974 neo-noir film, star­ring Jack Nichol­son, Faye Dun­away, and John Hus­ton, that land­ed eleven Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions. Thanks Mike for send­ing this our way…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

West Bank Story: Parody for Peace

in Current Affairs, Film | July 7th, 2010

With Ben­jamin Netanyahu vis­it­ing Barack Oba­ma this week, we’ll hear some chat­ter about get­ting the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian peace talks back on track. But, let’s be hon­est, no one is expect­ing any real break­throughs here. Peace, love and under­stand­ing – the rad­i­cals and reac­tionar­ies won’t give you that these days. Only movie mak­ers will, which brings us to West Bank Sto­ry, a 21 minute film that par­o­dies the 1950s clas­sic musi­cal, West Side Sto­ry, a pro­duc­tion which is itself adapt­ed from Shake­speare’s Romeo and Juli­et. Direct­ed by US film­mak­er Ari Sandel, West Bank Sto­ry pre­miered at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2005, and then won an Acad­e­my Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2006. In mak­ing the film, Sandel had three main goals: to make peo­ple laugh, to advo­cate peace, and to por­tray the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans in a fun­ny but bal­anced way. You can learn more about the direc­tor’s approach here.

Oth­er than watch­ing the film above, you can view it direct­ly on Google Video or down­load a copy here. Also find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Crisis of Capitalism Animated

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | July 5th, 2010

The economic/financial pic­ture is look­ing ugly once again. Indeed, just yes­ter­day, the most emailed New York Times arti­cle warned that the stock mar­ket might be on the verge of an epic crash, one that will bring the Dow below 1,000. So how did we wind up in this glob­al cred­it mess? We’ve heard var­i­ous expla­na­tions, most assum­ing that our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem did­n’t quite func­tion as it should, and that a few reg­u­la­tions will take care of the prob­lem. But this is not the posi­tion tak­en by David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er (now at CUNY). Draw­ing on Marx­i­an analy­sis (it’s still alive and well some­where), Har­vey sug­gests that the cri­sis is built into cap­i­tal­ism itself. It’s not the result of too few reg­u­la­tions. Rather it’s part of cap­i­tal­is­m’s inter­nal log­ic. (Mark Man­call, an emer­i­tus Stan­ford his­to­ry prof, echoes some of these basic thoughts on “Enti­tled Opin­ions” by the way.) The ani­mat­ed video above is an out­take from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed by Har­vey at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce in the UK. You can watch the video in full here. Mean­while, David Har­vey has also made avail­able online a free, 26 hour course that offers a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal. It appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

Move Over Oil, Algae is Coming

in Current Affairs, Science | July 1st, 2010

We’ve entered the “Age of Tough Oil.” Hav­ing tapped out the easy oil, we’re now left drilling in geo­log­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly risky places. And, of course, this makes BP-style oil spills more an inevitabil­i­ty than a one-time fluke. Lis­ten to today’s NPR inter­view with Michael Klare for more on this.

Find­ing reli­able sources of renew­able ener­gy is now the order of the day. Hap­pi­ly, researchers at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty have iden­ti­fied an unlike­ly fuel source. Algae. Watch above.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Document the World’s Story on 10.10.10.

in Current Affairs, Film | June 28th, 2010

Aspir­ing (or even casu­al) film­mak­ers, get ready for One Day on Earth. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, thou­sands of peo­ple world­wide will shoot film and pro­duce a crowd­sourced doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing “the diver­si­ty, con­flict, tragedy, and tri­umph that can occur in one 24-hour peri­od on Earth.” You’re invit­ed to take part in poten­tial­ly the largest glob­al media event ever. The video above spells out the con­cept, and you can learn how to take part here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast