Audio Book FYI

in Audio Books | January 9th, 2009

A quick fyi: We’ve spent some time beef­ing up our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. The col­lec­tion now fea­tures over 250 works of fic­tion, non-fic­tion and poet­ry, all of which can be down­loaded to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er for free.

Among the new addi­tions you’ll find some media from The New York­er Mag­a­zine, includ­ing a series of mp3’s that fea­ture Paul Ther­oux read­ing a short work by Jorge Luis Borges, T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle read­ing Tobias Wolf­f’s Bul­let in the Brain, and Junot Diaz read­ing his short piece, How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie). Also you will find new­ly added works by Charles Dick­ens, Alexan­dre Dumas, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Shake­speare, Kurt Von­negut and more. You can peruse the full col­lec­tion here.  Enjoy.

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What Will Change Everything? (According to the World’s Leading Scientific Minds)

in Science | January 7th, 2009

At the start of each new year, the Edge.org asks some of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic thinkers a big enchi­la­da ques­tion. This year, it’s “What Will Change Every­thing? What game-chang­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideas and devel­op­ments do you expect to live to see?” Here you can find the answers giv­en by 151 thinkers. (Col­lec­tive­ly, the full set of replies runs 107,000 words.) Some of the intrigu­ing answers include:

  • The detec­tion of extrater­res­tri­al life. And this life may take the form of dig­i­tal organ­isms that can move through the uni­verse at the speed of light (wow!),
  • A major upgrade of the human brain through tech­nol­o­gy,
  • Our  life span will poten­tial­ly be extend­ed to 150 years through genomics,
  • The dis­cov­ery of anoth­er uni­verse with­in our own uni­verse,
  • The dis­cov­ery of new time space dimen­sions, and 
  • The cre­ation of a uni­ver­sal trans­la­tion machine that will facil­i­tate trans­la­tion across the globe.

For the longer list, vis­it the full col­lec­tion.

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The History of the Internet in 8 Minutes

in Technology, Web/Tech | January 6th, 2009

We have here a short, catchy ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary that explains how we get from the 1950s to the inter­net that we know and love today. Along the way, it cov­ers inven­tions rang­ing from time-shar­ing to file­shar­ing, from Arpanet to Inter­net. Have a look…

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Stanford Online Writing Courses — The Winter Lineup

in Uncategorized | January 5th, 2009

A quick fyi: If you made a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion to become a seri­ous writer, then you might be inter­est­ed in these online writ­ing cours­es offered by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (which, caveat emp­tor, I help over­see) and Stan­ford’s Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram. These online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors. Class­es start next week. Unfor­tu­nate­ly some are already full … and they are not free. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ. And, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, feel free to look through the cours­es tak­ing place on the Stan­ford cam­pus.

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Bugs Bunny in The Big Snooze (1946)

in Television | January 4th, 2009

On the lighter side for a sleepy Sun­day .…

“The Big Snooze” (1946) was the last car­toon that ani­ma­tion direc­tor Bob Clam­pett ever worked on for Warn­er Broth­ers. The title? It’s an obvi­ous play on the Ray­mond Chan­dler nov­el, The Big Sleep, which was also turned into a film (star­ring Bog­a­rt and Bacall) in 1946. And the sleep­ing pill scene? Well, it was cen­sored on tele­vi­sion for some time. The clip can oth­er­wise be bought on The Looney Tunes Gold­en Col­lec­tion. For now, here it goes.

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The Ten Best Classical Music Recordings of 2008

in Music | January 3rd, 2009

Alex Ross, the New York­er music crit­ic who recent­ly won a MacArthur Genius grant and pub­lished The Rest is Noise, a wide­ly praised work that makes sense of 20th cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal music, lists his favorite clas­si­cal music record­ings of 2008.

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Steven Spielberg Admits Swallowing a Transistor to Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger

in Television | January 3rd, 2009

In 1979, Andy Warhol spent $40,000 on a broad­cast-qual­i­ty cam­era and start­ed dab­bling in cre­at­ing tele­vi­sion pro­grams that he aired on Man­hat­tan pub­lic access cable chan­nels. (Get more on the sto­ry here.) One episode fea­tured Warhol, Bian­ca Jag­ger and Steven Spiel­berg sim­ply hang­ing out on a bed. And here’s how their con­ver­sa­tion went down:

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Top 10 Blog Posts of 2008

in Most Popular | January 1st, 2009

Here they go, the most pop­u­lar posts of 2008:

10. Free Stan­ford Com­put­er Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Cours­es Now Online

9.) The Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed

8.) Teach­ing on YouTube

7.) Turn Your iPod into a Trav­el Guide: 20 Trav­el Pod­casts

7.) Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

6. This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies the Housing/Credit Cri­sis

5.) Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics: Down­load Leonard Susskind Video Lec­tures

4.) Yale Open Cours­es: The New Line­up

3.) George Orwell’s 1984: Down­load Free Audio Book Ver­sion

Also, James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Audio­book

2.) Top Five Col­lec­tions of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es

1.) Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

 

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Put Tolstoy, Twain and Others on Your Mobile Phone

in Books | December 31st, 2008

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Des­jardins asks “Need a lit­tle Tol­stoy while you’re wait­ing in line? How about some Mark Twain on the sub­way? Booksin­my­phone puts — sur­prise! — books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to down­load clas­sics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.  

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John Lennon Returns to Promote “One Laptop Per Child”

in Music | December 31st, 2008

Thanks to some dig­i­tal hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and help­ing pro­mote One Lap­top Per Child, a char­i­ty work­ing to bring cheap com­put­ers and inter­net access to chil­dren in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the com­mer­cial stitch­es togeth­er old record­ings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a cou­ple of new words (did Lennon ever say “lap­top”?). In the end, it all comes out fair­ly seam­less­ly. If you want to give a lap­top (start­ing at $199) and change the world, go here. Oth­er­wise, here’s John:

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via Goings On via Rolling Stone

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The Life of a Star: 12 Billion Years in Six Minutes

in Science, Video - Science | December 29th, 2008

Voila, the birth, life and death of a G‑type star, like our Sun. 12 bil­lion years boiled down to six sim­ple min­utes. We’ve added it to our YouTube Favorites.

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