The Second Amendment: Does It Really Let You Bear Arms?

in Law, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2008

What does the Sec­ond Amend­ment mean? It’s some­thing that the Supreme Court has nev­er real­ly said. In this hour long video, Cass Sun­stein, a very well known law pro­fes­sor from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, takes a crack at inter­pret­ing this amend­ment and see­ing whether its orig­i­nal mean­ing actu­al­ly con­fers the right to bear arms. Originalists/conservatives prob­a­bly won’t like his con­clu­sions, and they may be inclined to dis­miss this as a talk giv­en by anoth­er lib­er­al elit­ist. But they should keep in mind that Sun­stein actu­al­ly saw the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s wire­tap­ping as hav­ing a plau­si­ble legal basis, and he’s had any­thing but a harsh assess­ment of John Roberts’ track record as a judge.

This talk was record­ed on Octo­ber 23, 2007.

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Malcolm X at Oxford University 1964

in History, Video - Politics/Society | January 11th, 2008

We love find­ing these vin­tage media gems. Below, we have Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964. In this clas­sic speech, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage and also the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it. Then there’s his notion that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” can achieve lib­er­ty more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies (e.g., what MLK had in mind). You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But we’d also encour­age you to watch (see below) the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide — to how we get from Ham­let’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to tak­ing up arms against state enshrined racism. This piece of video is added to our YouTube playlist.

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A Conversation with Benazir Bhutto

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

Again, no com­men­tary need­ed. Infor­ma­tive in many ways, Bhut­to’s talk was taped at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in August. More info here.

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Nobel Prize Winners on YouTube

in Video - Politics/Society | December 10th, 2007

YouTube gets smarter one painful­ly small step at a time. First cours­es from Berke­ley; next videos of Nobel Prize win­ners.  More com­ing?

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JFK in 1960, Romney in 2007 — Religion in America

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2007

Mitt Rom­ney, a Mor­mon, looked yes­ter­day to set aside lin­ger­ing con­cerns about his reli­gion in a high­ly pub­li­cized speech. Imme­di­ate­ly, the speech revived mem­o­ries of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, dur­ing the 1960 cam­paign, to ease con­cerns about his Catholi­cism. We’ve post­ed both speech­es below. The sim­i­lar­i­ties are there. But the dif­fer­ences are more pro­found. I’ll resist the temp­ta­tion to point them out. You can watch the clips and draw your own con­clu­sions.

John F. Kennedy — 1960

Mitt Rom­ney — 2007

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Not The Daily Show

in Television, Video - Politics/Society | November 18th, 2007

As the weeks go on, more and more of us are start­ing to notice that Hol­ly­wood’s writ­ers are on strike. One by one new tele­vi­sion shows are run­ning out of fresh mate­r­i­al. But if you’re a fan of The Dai­ly Show, (and, well, we are) you were hit prac­ti­cal­ly on day one, since the top­i­cal news spoofs put on by Jon Stew­art and his mer­ry band are writ­ten on a short sched­ule.

So while the rest of us find alter­nate means of enter­tain­ing our­selves, the writ­ers are out there pick­et­ing in New York and L.A. What hap­pens when you leave a bunch of bored writ­ers with a side­walk and a griev­ance? Not The Dai­ly Show:

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150 Monty Python Sketches (and a Related Prank)

in Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | November 17th, 2007

Some­one did a lot of leg­work and pulled togeth­er a heap of Mon­ty Python videos on YouTube. The list includes one famous seg­ment called “Dead Par­rot,” which is notable part­ly because it’s fun­ny, and part­ly because it forms the basis of a sec­ondary joke.

To make a long sto­ry short, there are some folks out there called “scam­baiters” who take revenge against 419 scam­mers — you know, the peo­ple who gen­er­ate those emails that begin some­thing like this: “I have picked-up the trust and courage to write you this let­ter with divine con­fi­dence that you are a reli­able and hon­est per­son who will be capa­ble for this impor­tant busi­ness trans­ac­tion believ­ing also that you will let me down either now or in the future.” When one scam­baiter named Mike Berry received one such email, he some­how man­aged to turn the tables on the scam­mers and duped them into recre­at­ing the Python Dead Par­rot skit. The prank all gets explained at the start of the video below, and you can read more about it here.

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The Psychology of Evil: The Stanford Prison Experiment to Abu Ghraib

in Current Affairs, Psychology, Video - Politics/Society | November 8th, 2007

Back in 1971, Philip Zim­bar­do, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, set up an exper­i­ment that quick­ly and now famous­ly went awry. Here, Zim­bar­do had under­grad­u­ates play the role of pris­on­ers and prison guards in a mock prison envi­ron­ment. Meant to last two weeks, the exper­i­ment was cut short after only six days when, as The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment web site puts it, the guards “became sadis­tic and [the] pris­on­ers became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” For Zim­bar­do, the way things played out says a lot about what hap­pens when good, aver­age peo­ple are put in bad sit­u­a­tions. And it speaks to how tor­ture sce­nar­ios, like those at Abu Ghraib, become pos­si­ble. (For more on the par­al­lels between the prison exper­i­ment and the tor­ture in Iraq, you may want to check out Zim­bar­do’s recent video-cap­tured talk at Google­plex.

Below, we’ve post­ed a video that offers a quick ver­sion, with orig­i­nal footage, of how the prison exper­i­ment went down. If you’re inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing what he calls the “Lucifer Effect,” the title of his new book (which, by the way, was just reviewed by Martha Nuss­baum in the Times Online), then it’s worth your time.

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