How many days, weeks or months before your iPod goes kaput? This web site will give you an estimate. Perhaps a handy tool for anyone who consumes all of the podcasts that we throw your way.
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Ahmadinejad’s recent appearance at Columbia University generated a lot of serious press (watch his speech here), and, quite rightly, journalists and commentators seized on his more outlandish assertions — that the Holocaust is not a historical given, and that homosexuals actually don’t exist in Iran. After all of the serious reporting was done, Saturday Night Live got to work and aired this clip that continued its tradition of biting political satire. Here it goes:
Earlier this week I spoke on the phone with Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us. (See our initial piece on his book.) Alan was gracious enough to take some time out of his publicity schedule to share his thoughts on the book, the world, his writing process, and more. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Ed: This book addresses what on the surface seems to be a pretty far-fetched hypothetical: that humanity might suddenly disappear. What drew you to this premise in the first place?
Alan: Well, precisely that. Most great environmental writing does not get read by a lot of the people who ought to be learning about it because the nearer-term possibilities just seem sometimes so frightening, or so depressing, that nobody really wants to pick up a book to read it.
By structuring the book the way that I did, I disarm the automatic fear that repels a lot of people from reading about the environment. People don’t want to read something that seems too threatening. On a subconscious or even a conscious level, they don’t want to be worried we’re all going to die. In my book, killing us off in the first couple of pages means people don’t have to worry about dying because we’re already dead, and that’s a relief in a sense. The idea of glimpsing the future is irresistible to all of us and I establish pretty quickly that is not going to just be me speculating, it’s going to be some hard science writing based on a lot of reporting, of talking to experts or eyewitnesses whose guesses will be far more interesting than most peoples’.
The fact that it is far-fetched is really useful because on the one hand really it’s a remote possibility that we would leave, that we would disappear tomorrow. So people don’t go into a panic over this book, and it really gives people enough time to think about these things without panicking about it. So that’s how this device works, and I think it’s been proven to be very effective. I’m getting a lot more people to read it than just people who are hung up on the environment.
David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Lenin’s Tomb, has recently revisited the country he knows so well. And what he has to show for it is an extensive piece on Garry Kasparov, arguably the best chess player in history, and his dangerous move into the political arena. In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, neither political dissent nor political opposition goes over terribly well. Since he took the reins of power in 2000, more than a dozen journalists critical of Putin have turned up dead. So have some politicians. Then there was the dramatic case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent turned Putin critic, who died of radiation poisoning in London last fall. All of the cases remain “unresolved.”
At great personal and financial cost, Kasparov is trying to lay the foundation for a legitimate political opposition. Getting there, however, won’t be easy. For one, Putin, having shored up Russia’s economy and national psyche, is immensely popular, having upwards to an 80% popularity rating. Even the old dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn likes him. Then, there’s the fact that Putin has almost a tsarist, “L’État, c’est moi” kind of grip on power. In a podcasted interview (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that grew out of Remnick’s article, Kasparov talks about his expectations for the next presidential election in Russia, when Putin is constitutionally required to cede presidential powers to another politician. Here, he tells Remnick that Putin will continue calling the shots because, as he puts it, Russia’s political elite is so feckless that they would “vote to make Putin’s dog the prime minister.” This strikes the listener as a strange but timely comment, especially in light of Putin’s announcement yesterday that he may seek to become Russia’s prime minister, which would essentially give him the chance to continue exercising power from what one diplomat has called “a parallel structure.” That’s a move that should prove hard for Kasparov or any other Putin opponent to parry.
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In 2004, Danger Mouse released The Grey Album which layered the rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album on top of The Beatles’ White Album. Black and white makes grey.
Now, on YouTube, you can find The Grey Video, which experimentally brings Danger Mouse’s concept to video. The video, created by two Swiss directors, meshes clips from The Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night with footage of Jay‑Z performing. Watch it below, and get more info on The Grey Album here. Also check our collection of MP3 Music Blogs.
25 years after the release of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott has assembled a final and definitive director’s cut of the film, giving audiences the chance to see the film as Scott originally intended it.Before the film’s original release in 1982, preview screenings went horribly, and the money men stepped in and imposed changes on the aesthetic and narrative. Voice-overs and happy endings were added. New film shot. Dialogue changed. “I went along with the idea that we had to do certain things to get audiences interested,” Scott lamented in an article in appearing this weekend’s New York Times. “I later realized that once I adopted that line, I was selling my soul to the devil, inch by inch drifting from my original conception.”This is actually Scott’s second attempt at creating a final cut. Back in 1992, he took a first crack at revising Blade Runner. But he ultimately didn’t have the time and resources to get the job done as he liked. Now, just in time to capitalize on the 25th anniversary of the film, he’s releasing what he calls the final, final cut. The movie will be released in New York and Los Angeles theaters on October 5, and by Christmas, you can buy it on DVD. (Actually, it can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.)If you have a free moment, you may want to watch the audio slideshow that the Times put together on the cult classic as well as the new film’s trailer (see below). And to get even more info on this film’s making and remaking, see this article by MTV’s Kurt Loder.
Martin Scorsese is on a rock ‘n roll tear.
In 2006, he released No Direction Home, an acclaimed documentary on Bob Dylan (long after he filmed his first rockumentary, The Last Waltz in 1978). Next April, he’s set to release another documentary on The Rolling Stones, tentatively called Shine a Light. (Watch the already released trailer below.) And now he has just agreed to direct a film about George Harrison. The movie, being made with the support of Harrison’s family, will cover his time with the Beatles, his music and film career thereafter, and Harrison’s spiritual engagement with Eastern religion. Reportedly, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr may also contribute to the making of the film. It won’t be out for a few good years. In the meantime, check out our recent piece, The Beatles: Podcasts from Yesterday.
Social networking is doing some good. In a matter of days, over 110,000 users have joined the Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma group on Facebook, with the larger goal of mobilizing support for the Buddhist monks who have launched a peaceful, “saffron” protest against the military regime that seized power in 1962 and has held on ever since. As expected, the government is cracking down on the peaceful protesters, breaking into monasteries at night, torturing monks and throwing them in jail. The Facebook Group offers a specific action plan, and it’s effectively bringing visibility to this human rights issue. Log into Facebook (or create an account), join the group here and support democracy in Burma.
For a more general account of the human rights abuses in Burma, click here; for daily accounts of what’s currently happening in Burma right now, click here.
Also please note: International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. On October 4, bloggers will refrain from posting to their blogs and just put up one Banner underlined with the words “Free Burma!” Get more information at www.free-burma.org, and if you’re a blogger participate and help turn up the pressure.
PBS’s NOVA recently aired a three-hour mini-series, The Elegant Universe, that introduced TV viewers to string theory — a radical “theory of everything” that unites major laws of physics and offers a unified explanation for everything that happens in the universe. The program was hosted by Brian Green, a string theorist who wrote a runaway bestselling book also called The Elegant Universe (you can read an excerpt here). The program makes difficult concepts quite graspable, partly with the help of dynamic computer animation. And the best part is that you can now watch the mini-series any time you want online (just click here to get the videos). You can also access the complete description of the show here.
PS: Here is a great heads up from a reader. “A great complement to the Elegant Universe is the Origins series on NOVA, part of which is also available online. It details the creation of life on earth.” The complete collection of NOVA episodes can be found here. Thanks Allen for the good info.
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The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its latest crop of “genius grant” recipients. Each winner receives $500,000 “with no strings attached” and they can use the money to live, to fund research, or to buy a very modest condo in the Bay Area. As usual, the recipients come from a wide range of fields and backgrounds. Reviewing the bios and multimedia clips of these incredibly gifted people, I can’t help but be reminded of a great Tom Lehrer quote: “When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.”
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