Twitter in Plain English

If you’re late to Twit­ter, then this video cre­ative­ly explains what the recent buzz is all about. In a quick two min­utes, you’ll fig­ure out the gen­er­al idea behind Twit­ter and how to use it. And once you do, you can start to fol­low our Twit­ter stream right here. We also have a list of oth­er cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tions on Twit­ter here. Worth a look per­haps.

The pro­duc­er of this video, Com­mon­Craft, hosts oth­er videos along these lines on YouTube. Here are the most pop­u­lar ones.

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Extreme Sheepherding

File this clip (now added to our YouTube Favorites) under Ran­dom. See you next week. 

via Alfred A. Knopf Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

Is GWB The Worst President Of The Past 50 Years?

Stay with me con­ser­v­a­tives on this one. It’s not as bad as you think…

NPR’s Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes â€” Feed â€” Web Site) has a rather unique for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (Get more pre­cise details on the debate for­mat here.) Recent debates have cen­tered on the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Is Wash­ing­ton or Wall Street ulti­mate­ly to blame for the finan­cial cri­sis? Should we legal­ize the mar­ket for human organs?  Is the US final­ly win­ning the war in Iraq? And then, is George W. Bush the worst pres­i­dent of the last 50 years?

The GWB debate brings togeth­er a pret­ty sol­id pan­el. Argu­ing against the Bush lega­cy: Jacob Weis­berg (Edi­tor in Chief of Slate) and Simon Jenk­ins (colum­nist for the Guardian and the Sun­day Times). Then, for the Bush lega­cy: Karl Rove (the all impor­tant Bush strate­gist) and Bill Kris­tol (edi­tor of The Week­ly Stan­dard and for­mer colum­nist for The New York Times). As you’ll see, it’s a pret­ty spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. Have a lis­ten and let us know where you come down: iTunes — Feed — Stream.

As a quick note, the Intel­li­gence Squared pod­cast can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Amy Tan: The Sources of Creativity

The TED con­fer­ence has fea­tured sev­er­al talks about cre­ativ­i­ty in recent years. Eliz­a­beth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) gave a lit­tle spiel about “cre­ative genius” at this year’s con­fer­ence. Before that, famed psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi spoke about the rela­tion­ship between cre­ativ­i­ty and hap­pi­ness. (It all boils down to “flow.”) And now we fea­ture nov­el­ist Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), who locates the source of her own cre­ativ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly when writ­ing, in her fam­i­ly his­to­ry and big exis­ten­tial ques­tions. The talk runs a good 24 min­utes.

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Undersea Volcano Erupts

Record­ed yes­ter­day near Ton­ga

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Stevie Wonder Performs “Sketches of a Life”

“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

Via The Library of Con­gress Twit­ter Feed (Get ours here)

What Web 3.0 Might Look Like

Paul Levin­son, a pro­fes­sor of media stud­ies at Ford­ham in NYC, talks here about what Web 3.0 might look like. (Start the video at 17:23.) If he’s right, I’m not sure that even this gad­get geek (mean­ing me) wants to go there. This clip comes from a YouTube chan­nel called The Alcove, a pro­gram that fea­tures inter­views with var­i­ous influ­en­tial thinkers. We’re adding the chan­nel to our post called Intel­li­gent YouTube: 80 Smart Video Col­lec­tions.

Sean Penn Reads Bob Dylan’s Memoir

A quick find worth pass­ing along… 

Although some­what uncon­ven­tion­al as far as mem­oirs go, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One recap­tures Bob Dylan’s “first stir­rings of cre­ativ­i­ty with amaz­ing urgency” (as Janet Maslin once put it) , and brings you to places that the nor­mal Dylan biog­ra­phy won’t. It brings you back to the small moments that shaped Dylan’s ear­ly days as a musi­cian in New York, and to the intel­lec­tu­al and musi­cal influ­ences that framed his way of see­ing things: Thu­cidy­des, Hank Williams, Dos­to­evsky, Woody Guthrie, John Locke and Jean Genet. I down­loaded the audio book ver­sion of Chron­i­cles over the week­end and was per­haps most cap­ti­vat­ed by the nar­ra­tion record­ed by Sean Penn, the new­ly-mint­ed Acad­e­my Award win­ner. Penn is not play­ing a role here. But, at points, you think you’re lis­ten­ing to Dylan him­self, which makes it a rather unique audio expe­ri­ence. You can down­load the audio book for $13.65. But, you could also poten­tial­ly get it for free.  Audi­ble runs a reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that lets you down­load two books for free if you sign up for a 14 day free tri­al. Get the details here.

For many free audio books, check out our col­lec­tion here.

Stephen Colbert’s History Lesson: Bring Angry Mob to AIG

Cour­tesy of Stephen Col­bert, we get a lit­tle his­to­ry les­son that reminds us how we fixed prob­lems once upon a time in Amer­i­ca. Get the full episode here.

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

In Novem­ber, Google launched  a 3D tour of Ancient Rome, cir­ca 320 AD. The tour, pro­duced with the help of the Rome Reborn project at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, fea­tures over 6,000 build­ings, some ren­dered in fine detail, and it includes some inte­ri­ors as well. The Colos­se­um, the Roman Forum, the Basil­i­ca Julia, the Tem­ple of Ves­ta — they’re all there. The video above intro­duces you to the tour, and shows you how to access it on Google Earth. (The soft­ware can be down­loaded here). I should note that Google just held a com­pe­ti­tion that let edu­ca­tors devel­op his­to­ry lessons (aimed at high school stu­dents) using ele­ments of the 3D Tour. The win­ners and their lessons can be found here.

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Orson Welles’ Final Moments

Above, you can watch Orson Welles’ last inter­view and pub­lic appear­ance. The clip brings you back to Octo­ber 10, 1985, when the great film­mak­er, then 70 years old, appeared on the Merv Grif­fin show and talked a good deal about aging and his aging gen­er­a­tion. Just two hours lat­er, Welles would die of a heart attack at his Los Ange­les home. The clip is added to our YouTube Favorites in a sen­ti­men­tal kind of way.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

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