America Redeemed

in Current Affairs | November 4th, 2008

We’ve had some very low moments dur­ing recent years. And now the highs. The present buried the past, and the US elect­ed its first African-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent, prov­ing once again that Amer­i­ca is tru­ly the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty. This moment calls to mind the poignant quote that I heard this week. ‘Rosa sat so Mar­tin could walk, so Oba­ma could run, so our chil­dren can fly.’ Now watch them go. A beau­ti­ful moment.

Below, we present MLK’s full “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, which reminds of us how far we’ve come over the past 45 years.


 

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Farewell to Studs Terkel

in Current Affairs, History | October 31st, 2008

Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning his­to­ri­an of the every­man, has passed away at the ripe old age of 96. (Get the NYTimes obit here.) Below, we have a lengthy con­ver­sa­tion with Terkel, record­ed when he was 91. As you’ll see, being a nona­ge­nar­i­an did lit­tle to slow him down.

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From the Civil War to the Vietnam War — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Stanford | October 30th, 2008

The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions keeps rolling along. With his well-craft­ed lec­tures, Mar­tin Lewis shows you this week how Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal map and its polit­i­cal par­ties changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing the Civ­il War. In the space of 90 min­utes, he takes you through the Recon­struc­tion peri­od, The Gild­ed Age, the Depres­sion, World War II and The Cold War, up through the Viet­nam War.

You can down­load Lec­ture 3 via Tunes U in high res­o­lu­tion or watch the YouTube ver­sion below. And, as always, you can join the ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the pro­fes­sor and oth­er stu­dents world­wide right here.

There are still two more lec­tures to come, includ­ing one that will offer a post­mortem of next week’s elec­tion.

Last­ly, if you missed the pre­vi­ous lec­tures, you can grab them on iTunes here and YouTube here.

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The 13th Amendment

in Current Affairs, Film | October 30th, 2008

This week, CNN announced the win­ners of the iRe­port Film Fes­ti­val, the network’s first user-gen­er­at­ed short film com­pe­ti­tion. The fes­ti­val “chal­lenged film­mak­ers to doc­u­ment this year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign from their per­son­al van­tage point, whether they were vol­un­teer­ing for a cam­paign or had com­pelling sto­ries about this elec­tion they want­ed to doc­u­ment cre­ative­ly.” And the Grand Jury Award went to a short film called “13th Amend­ment.” Here, Mike Den­nis of Philadel­phia, Pa., fol­lows his 90-year-old grand­moth­er, who is African Amer­i­can, on her jour­ney to vote for the first seri­ous black can­di­date for the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy. (And, by the way, in case you were won­der­ing, the 13th Amend­ment banned slav­ery in the Unit­ed States in 1865.) Here it goes:

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The Political Wire

in Current Affairs, Television | October 29th, 2008

I’ve spent the past sev­er­al months work­ing through The Wire on DVD. A sim­ply bril­liant show. (Here’s a recap of Sea­son 1 in case you don’t know what you’re miss­ing. And for even more recaps click here.) Now some mem­bers of the cast, the good guys and the bad, have rolled out a com­mer­cial encour­ag­ing North Car­oli­na res­i­dents to get out the vote on Tues­day. It’s a good idea for all Amer­i­can vot­ers, no mat­ter who you sup­port in this race. Thanks to Kot­tke for point it out. Here it goes:

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Paul Krugman On The Financial Crisis And the Coming Recession

in Business, Current Affairs | October 22nd, 2008

How does the new win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics think the US gov­ern­ment should man­age the big loom­ing reces­sion? And does the New Deal offer a mod­el for con­fronting this new jam? Have a lis­ten: iTunes — Rss Feed — MP3.

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Electing a US President in Plain English

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 21st, 2008

We’re less than two weeks away (final­ly, at long last) from the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and that means that it’s a good time to deci­pher Amer­i­ca’s con­vo­lut­ed elec­toral sys­tem. So here’s a piece from The Com­mon Craft Show, which does it in a fair­ly cre­ative way:

 

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The Geography of US Presidential Elections: Week 1

in Current Affairs | October 15th, 2008

As men­tioned last week, Stan­ford is host­ing a five week course, The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions, that you can fol­low (for free) in real time. The first video lec­ture is now avail­able on iTunes (down­load here), and you can find it embed­ded below.

The first lec­ture is fast paced, and fea­tures intrigu­ing graph­ics that start to dis­man­tle the wide­ly held belief that the US can be neat­ly divid­ed into red and blue states. I will keep post­ing the lec­tures as the course unfolds. In the mean­time, I’d rec­om­mend vis­it­ing the course web site, and ask­ing the pro­fes­sor, Mar­tin Lewis, any ques­tions you might have.


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