The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and American?) Empire: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | July 13th, 2007

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­ume 1 is. With a run­time of almost 20 hours, this audio­book — click to access indi­vid­ual files or the full zip file — will make it so that you’re not look­ing for the remain­ing vol­umes any time soon. But don’t wor­ry they’re even­tu­al­ly com­ing.

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a recent pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

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The High and Low Road of the Atheism Debate

in Current Affairs, Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | July 10th, 2007

These days, there is no short­age of pub­lic thinkers launch­ing a vig­or­ous defense of athe­ism. Most recent­ly, Christo­pher Hitchens has come out with God is Not Great. And, hold­ing true to form, he has used this book and relat­ed media cam­paign as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fight out the ugly cul­ture wars once again. All of the expect­ed ingre­di­ents are there — the blus­ter, bad behav­ior, and gen­er­al unwill­ing­ness to engage in a civ­i­lized and sub­stan­tive debate. To get a quick taste of Hitchens’ M.O., just lis­ten to this NPR-ish inter­view. The longer the inter­view goes, the more he hits his stride.

On the upside, there is always Richard Dawkins. Yes, the man has strong opin­ions and can some­times sound smug. But you can’t deny this: he goes out there, takes the debate seri­ous­ly, thinks through the angles, and answers crit­ics’ ques­tions with crisp, intel­lec­tu­al­ly pre­cise argu­ments. It’s all a wel­comed reprieve from the style of debate that we’ve become accus­tomed to in the Unit­ed States. Below, you can get a lit­tle taste of what we’re talk­ing about, or click to watch the video here.

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Watch “Live Earth” Live (Now)

in Current Affairs, Music | July 6th, 2007

Unless you’ve been liv­ing in a bunker some­where, you’ve prob­a­bly heard about Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7‑continent con­cert that’s been orga­nized to raise aware­ness about glob­al warm­ing and to inspire action on the envi­ron­men­tal front. You can watch these shows live by click­ing here. The con­certs in Asia are already under­way, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere shows will start tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Thanks to Al Gore for pro­mot­ing this event and this impor­tant larg­er cause.

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Michael Moore’s “Sicko” — Fox Likes It More Than Google?

in Current Affairs, Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | July 2nd, 2007

For some, it came as no sur­prise that “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s lat­est film and crit­i­cal look at Amer­i­ca’s health­care sys­tem, got strong reviews at The Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. What else would you expect from Europe’s lefty intel­li­gentsia? Then there was this lit­tle curve­ball. The right-lean­ing Fox News also called the film “bril­liant and uplift­ing.” How like­ly is that? The odds are next to zero. But it hap­pened, and it says some­thing rather extra­or­di­nary about the film. (You can watch the trail­er for the movie on your iPod here.)

In the mean­time, Google has got­ten itself into a bit of a PR deba­cle with the release of Sicko. Last week, a Google employ­ee took the posi­tion on a Google health­care blog that “Moore’s film por­trays the indus­try as mon­ey and mar­ket­ing dri­ven, and fails to show healthcare’s inter­est in patient well-being and care.” And then she invit­ed the health­care indus­try to use Adwords, the com­pa­ny’s mon­ey-rak­ing ad plat­form, to show­case for the pub­lic all the good that they do for us. When Google got the inevitable blow­back, the cor­po­rate PR folks kicked things into gear. Soon enough, we were told that the Google employ­ee had been speak­ing out of turn and they released an adden­dum on their main cor­po­rate blog, which says some­thing and yet noth­ing at the same time. Where does Google real­ly stand on the issue? Who knows. They’re play­ing things pre­dictably safe, and that’s to be expect­ed when your com­pa­ny stands to gen­er­ate bil­lions of ad rev­enue from a mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar indus­try. Mean­while where does Fox stand on all of this (and I am talk­ing about the com­pa­ny, rather than the indi­vid­ual film review­er cit­ed above)? Prob­a­bly nowhere good.

Below, you can find Michael Moore talk­ing with Bill Maher (HBO) about the health­care prob­lem that cuts across the polit­i­cal divide. Give it a good look, but bet­ter yet, go see the movie.

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Bill Clinton at Harvard

in Current Affairs, Harvard | June 13th, 2007

Amer­i­ca’s 42nd pres­i­dent spoke this week­end at Har­vard’s Class Day, a tra­di­tion­al event held for grad­u­at­ing seniors. While Class Day often fea­tures pop icons and come­di­ans — take this speech by Ali G from a few yeas ago — Clin­ton’s speech was a bit more seri­ous and ide­al­is­tic, and it reminds us that there may be again a day when we can look to the White House for sub­stance and inspi­ra­tion. This too shall pass. You can watch Part 1 of his pre­sen­ta­tion below. Here are links to Parts 2 and 3.

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Who Didn’t See This One Coming?

in Current Affairs, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 29th, 2007

Amer­i­ca’s 42nd pres­i­dent spoke this week­end at Har­vard’s Class Day, a tra­di­tion­al event held for grad­u­at­ing seniors. While Class Day often fea­tures pop icons and come­di­ans — take this speech by Ali G from a few yeas ago — Clin­ton’s speech was a bit more seri­ous and ide­al­is­tic, and it reminds us that there may be again a day when we can look to the White House for sub­stance and inspi­ra­tion. This too shall pass. You can watch Part 1 of his pre­sen­ta­tion below. Here are links to Parts 2 and 3.

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YouTube’s Impact on the 2008 Election: The Hype and the Fact

in Current Affairs, Google, Media, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 23rd, 2007

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YouTube is a lit­tle more than two years old. It’s a mere tod­dler. But, it’s now owned by an over­grown, ful­ly-beard­ed nine year old. Yes, that would be Google, and that means that YouTube is ready to storm its way into the media main­stream, pam­pers and all.

You can be sure that GooTube has already cooked up sev­er­al strate­gies that will lead the video unit to media dom­i­na­tion. But, even to the untrained media observ­er, it’s fair­ly clear that Google’s video unit has cho­sen the 2008 elec­tion as an are­na in which it intends to com­pete with oth­er major media out­fits for eye­balls.

In April, YouTube launched its polit­i­cal chan­nel Cit­i­zen­Tube (get more info here) and, along with it, its first major line of video pro­gram­ming called You Choose ’08. The con­cept here is sim­ple and promis­ing: Cit­i­zens ask ques­tions to the ’08 can­di­dates, and the can­di­dates respond. The results, how­ev­er, have been large­ly dis­ap­point­ing. When you strip every­thing away, what you get are politi­cians speak­ing the same plat­i­tudes that we’ve seen for decades on TV. (See a sam­ple reply here.) The only dif­fer­ence is that the video qual­i­ty is worse, and they’re man­ag­ing to get their plat­i­tudes in front of a young demo­graph­ic, which is no small feat. For bet­ter or for worse, YouTube is to the ’08 elec­tion what MTV (remem­ber Bill play­ing the sax?) was to the ’92 elec­tion.

While nei­ther Cit­i­zen­Tube nor the polit­i­cal cam­paigns are using the video plat­form in rev­o­lu­tion­ary ways, the mil­lions of aver­age users who make YouTube what it is are doing a bet­ter job of it.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the way in which videos are emerg­ing on YouTube that counter images being care­ful­ly pro­ject­ed by can­di­dates and their cam­paigns. Here are two quick exam­ples.

GOP can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney has been pre­dictably work­ing to cast him­self as a social con­ser­v­a­tive. Twice in recent months, he has shown up at Pat Robert­son’s Regent Uni­ver­si­ty to deliv­er lines like this:

“We’re shocked by the evil of the Vir­ginia Tech shoot­ing…” “I opened my Bible short­ly after I heard of the tragedy. Only a

few vers­es, it seems, after the Fall, we read that Adam and Eve’s

old­est son killed his younger broth­er. From the begin­ning, there has

been evil in the world.”

…“Pornog­ra­phy and vio­lence

poi­son our music and movies and TV and video games. The Vir­ginia Tech

shoot­er, like the Columbine shoot­ers before him, had drunk from this

cesspool.”

But then, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient­ly, videos from Mitt Rom­ney’s past polit­i­cal cam­paigns show up on YouTube, ones which should make evan­gel­i­cals think twice, and there is not much Rom­ney can do about it. The past hurts, but it does­n’t lie:

Then there is Hillary Clin­ton. She’s got the mon­ey, the par­ty machine is back­ing her, try­ing to wrap up the nom­i­na­tion with a bow. But then a damn­ing attack ad crops up on YouTube. This pitch for Barack Oba­ma remix­es the “1984” TV ad that famous­ly intro­duced Apple com­put­ers to Amer­i­ca, and it casts Hillary as a polit­i­cal automa­ton, an image that rings true for many. (The Oba­ma cam­paign denies hav­ing any­thing do with the video, and its cre­ator remains unknown.)

It is with videos like these that YouTube gets polit­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing. Just as quick­ly as a polit­i­cal cam­paign projects an image for Rom­ney or Clin­ton, your aver­age web user can scrounge up footage that calls that image into ques­tion. A retort is always pos­si­ble, which was nev­er the case on TV. And the cost of delivering/countering a mes­sage runs next to noth­ing. Again a first. YouTube equal­izes, and it isn’t a ter­rain on which the rich can instant­ly claim vic­to­ry. Just ask Rom­ney and his over $200 mil­lion in per­son­al wealth. What good has it done him in YouTube land?

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America’s Perception Problem in the Middle East

in Current Affairs | May 14th, 2007


Cartoon_2 Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq has had mul­ti­ple costs for the US, with just one being the decline of Amer­i­can moral lead­er­ship on the inter­na­tion­al stage, and par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Mid­dle East. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, we know that Amer­i­ca’s pres­tige is momen­tar­i­ly shot. But to get a feel for what this means in prac­tice, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view (iTunes — MP3) with Lawrence Pin­tak, who directs the Adham Cen­ter for Elec­tron­ic Jour­nal­ism at The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. A long­time observ­er of the Mid­dle East, Pin­tak sees the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­ca’s image going some­thing like this: Before 9/11, the prover­bial Mid­dle East­ern cab dri­ver expressed deep admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­cans, even while dis­agree­ing with Amer­i­can lead­ers and poli­cies. When the Twin Tow­ers fell, sym­pa­thy for Amer­i­ca was nev­er greater. Now, six years lat­er, it’s all gone awry. The men­tal line that sep­a­rat­ed Amer­i­cans and Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is gone, and the antipa­thy toward Amer­i­ca is fair­ly com­plete.

What part­ly explains this shift is how the war has been refract­ed through the Mid­dle East­ern media. Ever since Al Jazeera start­ed air­ing in 1996 (you can watch it here in Eng­lish), the Mid­dle East has had its own free media and seen events through its own lens. And, in the case of the Iraq war, it has meant see­ing what we don’t see — the unsan­i­tized war, the bod­ies, the lev­eled build­ings, etc. — but also much more mun­dane things that shape over­all impres­sions. It means see­ing, for exam­ple, how tone-deaf US spokes­men in Bagh­dad show up at jour­nal­ist con­fer­ences in Abu Dhabi (a com­plete­ly non-mil­i­tary event out­side of Iraq) in army fatigues, leav­ing essen­tial­ly the impres­sion that the US sees the larg­er Mid­dle East as a mil­i­tary stage.

Pin­tak knows the region well, and he artic­u­lates Amer­i­ca’s per­cep­tion prob­lem in a bal­anced and thought­ful way. Check it out here: (iTunes — MP3) Also, on a relat­ed note, any­one who wants to digg more deeply into Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tives may want to explore Mosa­ic: World News from the Mid­dle East (iTunes  Feed). This Peabody award-win­ning pod­cast pro­vides a dai­ly com­pi­la­tion of tele­vi­sion news reports from across the Mid­dle East. The news comes from inde­pen­dent and state-run news ser­vices, and it is all trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

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