The Dearth of Conservative Professors Explained

in Politics | February 20th, 2008

Lib­er­als out­num­ber con­ser­v­a­tives in the acad­e­my. That’s a known fact. What explains this diver­gence? Some have attrib­uted it to lib­er­als cre­at­ing a hos­tile envi­ron­ment for con­ser­v­a­tives. But new research calls that view into ques­tion and offers an intrigu­ing alter­na­tive expla­na­tion.

As described in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Matthew Woess­ner (a con­ser­v­a­tive aca­d­e­m­ic) and April Kel­ly-Woess­ner (a lib­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic) looked at sur­veys com­plet­ed by 15,569 col­lege seniors, and what an analy­sis of the data sug­gests is that “the per­son­al pri­or­i­ties of those on the left are more com­pat­i­ble with pur­su­ing a Ph.D.” “Lib­er­al­ism is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a desire for excite­ment, an inter­est in cre­ative out­lets, and an aver­sion to a struc­tured work envi­ron­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives express greater inter­est in finan­cial suc­cess and stronger desires to raise fam­i­lies. From this per­spec­tive, the ide­o­log­i­cal imbal­ance that per­me­ates much of acad­e­mia may be some­what intractable.” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, this imbal­ance may not be going away any time soon.

To delve fur­ther into their research, you can read their report online here.

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Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | January 2nd, 2008

The Iowa cau­cus is final­ly and mer­ci­ful­ly upon us. And right in time, film­mak­er Michael Moore has offered an analy­sis of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic field of can­di­dates. There’s much here that I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly agree with here, but Moore makes two large claims that strike me as being fun­da­men­tal­ly (and regret­ful­ly) true:

• The “Demo­c­ra­t­ic front-run­ners are a less-than-stel­lar group of can­di­dates, and … none of them are the slam dunk we wish they were.”
• “For months I’ve been want­i­ng to ask the ques­tion, “Where are you, Al Gore?” You can only pol­ish that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decid­ed by Scan­di­na­vians! I don’t blame you for not want­i­ng to enter the viper pit again after you already won. But get­ting us to change out our incan­des­cent light bulbs for some irri­tat­ing flu­o­res­cent ones isn’t going to save the world. All it’s going to do is make us more agi­tat­ed and jumpy and feel­ing like once we get home we haven’t real­ly left the office.”

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Privacy Policy

in | November 3rd, 2007

Last mod­i­fied: July 27, 2024

Open Cul­ture, LLC (“Open Cul­ture,” “we” or “us”) knows that you care how infor­ma­tion about you is used and shared.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy explains how Open Cul­ture col­lects and uses infor­ma­tion at its web­site locat­ed at www.openculture.com and at oth­er web­sites and mobile ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Open Cul­ture (col­lec­tive­ly the “Net­work Web­sites”).  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy also explains how you can con­trol the col­lec­tion, cor­rec­tion and/or dele­tion of cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion that we col­lect.  We will not use or share your infor­ma­tion with any­one except as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to infor­ma­tion we col­lect by oth­er means (includ­ing offline) or from oth­er sources.  Fur­ther, this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to any web­sites, web­pages, blogs, appli­ca­tions, wid­gets or oth­er ser­vices oper­at­ed by any third par­ty, includ­ing our affil­i­ates, adver­tis­ers, providers and part­ners.

1. Infor­ma­tion We Col­lect

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

In gen­er­al, Open Cul­ture does not col­lect per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, except as set forth below.  For pur­pos­es of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, “per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion” is data intend­ed to be used to iden­ti­fy, con­tact or locate a per­son, includ­ing, name, address, tele­phone num­ber or e‑mail address and any oth­er infor­ma­tion (even if non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able) pro­vid­ed in com­bi­na­tion with such per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.

You may pro­vide us infor­ma­tion about your­self, such as your name or e‑mail address, when you use or post con­tent on or though the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, includ­ing reg­is­ter­ing for the use of cer­tain fea­tures such as email RSS feeds.  If you cor­re­spond with us by email, we may retain the con­tent of your email mes­sages, your email address, and our respons­es.  We may also retain any mes­sages or oth­er con­tent you send through or post on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

Cit­i­zens of any coun­try that has pro­mul­gat­ed a data local­iza­tion law may not uti­lize the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices in any way, includ­ing view­ing pages on the Open Cul­ture web­site or sub­scrib­ing to the Open Cul­ture newslet­ter.

The adver­tise­ments we deliv­er may offer the abil­i­ty to inter­act, includ­ing play­ing a game or view­ing a video.  The ad may also give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide the adver­tis­er with infor­ma­tion about your­self.  In some instances, if you choose to inter­act with an adver­tise­ment or pro­vide an adver­tis­er with infor­ma­tion about your­self, Open Cul­ture may col­lect infor­ma­tion on behalf of the adver­tis­er.  In that case, the advertiser’s pri­va­cy pol­i­cy would apply to the data col­lect­ed and we will abide by the instruc­tions giv­en to us by the adver­tis­er in our han­dling of the data.  Open Cul­ture will not asso­ciate any infor­ma­tion (non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able or per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able) we col­lect for an adver­tis­er with any oth­er infor­ma­tion we may have col­lect­ed about you through the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

When you vis­it the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, Open Cul­ture or third par­ties such as adver­tis­ers, third-par­ty adver­tis­ing net­works, and third-par­ty adver­tis­ing serv­ing com­pa­nies may col­lect non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.  For pur­pos­es of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, “non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion” is data that is not per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able. Open Cul­ture and these third par­ties may imple­ment cer­tain tech­nolo­gies to enable the col­lec­tion of such infor­ma­tion.  An expla­na­tion of these tech­nolo­gies is below.

Cook­ies Infor­ma­tion: When you vis­it the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, we may send one or more cookies—a small text file con­tain­ing a string of alphanu­mer­ic characters—to your com­put­er that unique­ly iden­ti­fies your brows­er and lets Open Cul­ture help you log in faster and enhance your nav­i­ga­tion through the site.  A cook­ie may also con­vey infor­ma­tion about how you browse the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  Open Cul­ture uses ses­sion, per­sis­tent, flash and brows­er cook­ies.  The use of cook­ies on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices is anony­mous and does not allow us to gath­er per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.  A per­sis­tent cook­ie remains on your hard dri­ve after you close your brows­er.  Per­sis­tent cook­ies may be used by your brows­er on sub­se­quent vis­its to the site.  Per­sis­tent cook­ies can be removed by fol­low­ing your web browser’s direc­tions.  A ses­sion cook­ie is tem­po­rary and dis­ap­pears after you close your brows­er.  You can set your web brows­er to refuse all cook­ies or to indi­cate when a cook­ie is being sent.  How­ev­er, some fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not func­tion prop­er­ly if the abil­i­ty to accept cook­ies is dis­abled.

Device Iden­ti­fiers: When you access the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices by or through a mobile device, we may access, col­lect, mon­i­tor and/or remote­ly store one or more “device iden­ti­fiers.”  Device iden­ti­fiers are small data files or sim­i­lar data struc­tures stored on or asso­ci­at­ed with your mobile device that unique­ly iden­ti­fy your mobile device and are used by Open Cul­ture to enhance your use of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may be data stored in con­nec­tion with the device hard­ware, data stored in con­nec­tion with the device’s oper­at­ing sys­tem or oth­er soft­ware, or data sent to the device by Open Cul­ture.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may con­vey infor­ma­tion to us about how you browse the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  A device iden­ti­fi­er does not col­lect or share any per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.  How­ev­er, a device iden­ti­fi­er may be used in con­junc­tion with oth­er infor­ma­tion in a man­ner that may con­sti­tute per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion.  A device iden­ti­fi­er may remain per­sis­tent­ly on your device, to help you log in faster and enhance your nav­i­ga­tion through the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  Some fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not func­tion prop­er­ly if use or avail­abil­i­ty of device iden­ti­fiers are impaired or dis­abled.

Web Bea­con­s/Click-Stream Data: A web bea­con is an elec­tron­ic file that sig­nals when a web­page, adver­tise­ment, video, oth­er con­tent, an email, or a newslet­ter has been viewed.  We may use web bea­cons in our emails and newslet­ters, or on our web­sites and ser­vices.  Open Cul­ture may use web bea­cons in con­junc­tion with cook­ies to col­lect click-stream data that helps us bet­ter under­stand how vis­i­tors move from page to page with­in our web­sites.  As with cook­ies, our use of web bea­cons is anony­mous and does not allow us to gath­er per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about you.

Pas­sive Brows­er Infor­ma­tion: Open Cul­ture col­lects pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion though its web servers.  We use the pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion to help us under­stand how many vis­i­tors come to our web­sites and where they come from, and ulti­mate­ly to help us make deci­sions about how to orga­nize the web­sites and deliv­er adver­tis­ing.

Log File Infor­ma­tion: Log file infor­ma­tion is auto­mat­i­cal­ly report­ed by your brows­er each time you access a web page.  When you use the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, our servers auto­mat­i­cal­ly record cer­tain log file infor­ma­tion.  These serv­er logs may include infor­ma­tion such as your web request, Inter­net Pro­to­col (“IP”) address, brows­er type, refer­ring / exit pages and URLs, num­ber of clicks, domain names, land­ing pages, pages viewed, data about how you inter­act with links on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, and oth­er such infor­ma­tion.  We may dis­play your IP address to the own­ers or main­tain­ers of cer­tain blogs, groups or com­mu­ni­ties if you post to those blogs, groups or com­mu­ni­ties and the own­er or main­tain­er has enabled func­tion­al­i­ty for this pur­pose.

Scripts:  A script is a short seg­ment of com­put­er code includ­ed in a web page or oth­er con­tent that can be used to set and access a cook­ie on your computer’s hard dri­ve and to record your activ­i­ty on a web­site.  Open Cul­ture may use scripts on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, on third-par­ty web­sites, or in our emails and newslet­ters.

C. Third Par­ty Adver­tise­ments

If an adver­tis­er asks Open Cul­ture to show an adver­tise­ment to a cer­tain audi­ence and you respond to that adver­tise­ment, the adver­tis­er or ad serv­er may con­clude that you fit the descrip­tion of the audi­ence they are try­ing to reach.  In addi­tion, third-par­ty adver­tis­ers may use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion about your vis­its to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices in order to pro­vide adver­tise­ments about goods and ser­vices that they believe may be of inter­est to you.  If you would like more infor­ma­tion about this prac­tice and to know your choic­es about not hav­ing this infor­ma­tion used by these com­pa­nies, please see the list pro­vid­ed imme­di­ate­ly below.  This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy does not apply to, and we can­not con­trol the activ­i­ties of, third-par­ty adver­tis­ers.  Please con­sult the respec­tive pri­va­cy poli­cies of such adver­tis­ers for more infor­ma­tion.

• Google Ana­lyt­ics: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Google Adsense: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Ama­zon Affil­i­ate Pro­gram: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Feed­burn­er: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Com­mis­sion Junc­tion Affil­i­ate Pro­gram: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Shar­eaSale: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• LinkShare/Rakuten: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Impact Radius: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy
• Pub­lift: Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy

2. How We Use Your Infor­ma­tion

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

We use the per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion that we col­lect to oper­ate, main­tain, and pro­vide to you the fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

By pro­vid­ing Open Cul­ture with your email address, you con­sent to our use of the email address to send you notices relat­ed to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, includ­ing any notices required by law, in lieu of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by postal mail.  We may also con­tact you via email with trans­ac­tion­al or rela­tion­ship mes­sages, such as noti­fi­ca­tions of changes to the terms of ser­vices pro­vid­ed.  By pro­vid­ing your email address, you agree that we may send you noti­fi­ca­tions of activ­i­ty on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices to that email address, in accor­dance with any applic­a­ble pri­va­cy set­tings.  We may use your email address to send you oth­er mes­sages, such as infor­ma­tion about changes to fea­tures of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  If you do not want to receive such email mes­sages, you may opt out or change your pref­er­ences by send­ing an email to ma**@*********re.com.  Opt­ing out may pre­vent you from receiv­ing email mes­sages regard­ing updates, improve­ments, or offers.  You may not opt out of ser­vice-relat­ed emails or trans­ac­tion­al or rela­tion­ship email mes­sages.

Open Cul­ture may use your per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and user con­tent inter­nal­ly for pur­pos­es such as oper­at­ing or improv­ing its web­sites, deter­min­ing which users have access priv­i­leges to cer­tain con­tent, ser­vices or resources that we offer, diag­nos­ing ser­vice or tech­ni­cal prob­lems, main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty, doing some­thing that you have asked us to do, telling you about Open Cul­ture prod­ucts, ser­vices and mar­ket­ing events that we think may be of inter­est, ana­lyz­ing how the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices are used, and per­son­al­iz­ing con­tent.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

We may use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, includ­ing cook­ies, device iden­ti­fiers, loca­tion data, web bea­con­s/click-stream data, pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion, demon­stra­tion data, log file infor­ma­tion, and scripts to: (a) remem­ber infor­ma­tion so that you will not have to re-enter it dur­ing your vis­it or the next time you vis­it the site; (b) pro­vide cus­tom, per­son­al­ized con­tent and infor­ma­tion; © mon­i­tor the effec­tive­ness of our ser­vices; (d) mon­i­tor aggre­gate met­rics such as total num­ber of vis­i­tors, traf­fic, and demo­graph­ic pat­terns; (e) diag­nose or fix tech­nol­o­gy prob­lems report­ed by our users or engi­neers that are asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain IP address­es; (f) help you effi­cient­ly access your infor­ma­tion after you sign in; (g) mon­i­tor and pre­vent fraud and abuse; (h) iden­ti­fy you as an account hold­er; (i) require you to re-enter your pass­word after a cer­tain peri­od of time has elapsed to pre­vent oth­ers from access­ing your account con­tents; (j) keep track of pref­er­ences you spec­i­fy while you are using Open Cul­ture Ser­vices; (k) con­duct research to improve Open Cul­ture Ser­vices; (l) mon­i­tor adver­tis­ing-relat­ed met­rics, in order to pro­vide you with more help­ful and rel­e­vant adver­tis­ing; (m) admin­is­ter our busi­ness (e.g., to cal­cu­late pay­ments due to our net­work web­sites); and (n) track user con­tent and users to the extent nec­es­sary to com­ply as a ser­vice provider with the Dig­i­tal Mil­len­ni­um Copy­right Act.

Third-par­ty adver­tis­ing net­works and adver­tis­ers may also use non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to assist them in deliv­er­ing adver­tis­ing that may be rel­e­vant to your inter­ests.

3. How We Share Your Infor­ma­tion

A. Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

Open Cul­ture will not rent or sell your per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to oth­ers.  Open Cul­ture only shares per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion with oth­er com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als out­side of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices as fol­lows: (1) if Open Cul­ture has your con­sent to the shar­ing of per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion; (2) to pro­vide Open Culture’s ser­vices to you; (3) to respond to sub­poe­nas, court orders or legal process, to assist gov­ern­ment enforce­ment agen­cies, to estab­lish or exer­cise our legal rights, or to defend against legal claims; (4) if we believe it is nec­es­sary in order to inves­ti­gate, pre­vent, or take action regard­ing third-par­ty claims or alle­ga­tions, ille­gal activ­i­ties, sus­pect­ed fraud, sit­u­a­tions involv­ing poten­tial threats to the safe­ty or prop­er­ty of anoth­er per­son, vio­la­tion of our Terms and Con­di­tions of Ser­vice; or (7) as oth­er­wise required by law.  Open Cul­ture may also store per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and user con­tent in loca­tions out­side the direct con­trol of Open Cul­ture (for instance, on servers or data­bas­es co-locat­ed with host­ing providers).

Any per­son­al infor­ma­tion or con­tent that you vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­close for post­ing to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, such as mes­sages, com­ments or oth­er user con­tent, becomes avail­able to the pub­lic.

B. Non-Per­son­al­ly Iden­ti­fi­able Infor­ma­tion

In the event that we use a third par­ty to pro­vide ser­vices or to sup­port aspects of our busi­ness on our behalf, Open Cul­ture may share non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion with the third par­ty to be used by them only for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing their ser­vices to Open Cul­ture.

We may share non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion (such as anony­mous usage data, referring/exit pages and URLs, plat­form types, num­ber of clicks, etc.) with third par­ties to help them under­stand the usage pat­terns for cer­tain Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, and as part of the func­tion of our busi­ness.

C. Trans­fer of Data

In the event that Open Cul­ture sells, trans­fers or oth­er­wise relin­quish­es all or part of our assets, busi­ness offer­ings, or ser­vices, includ­ing any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, infor­ma­tion that you have shared with Open Cul­ture or that Open Cul­ture has col­lect­ed, includ­ing both per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion and non-per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, may be one of the busi­ness assets that will be trans­ferred.  We may also trans­fer or assign such infor­ma­tion in the course of cor­po­rate divesti­tures, merg­ers, or dis­so­lu­tion.  The trans­ferred infor­ma­tion will remain sub­ject to the terms of this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy or those of sub­se­quent poli­cies to which you have con­sent­ed.  If Open Cul­ture is involved in a merg­er, acqui­si­tion, or sale of all or a por­tion of its assets, you will be noti­fied via a promi­nent notice on our web­site of any change in own­er­ship or uses of your per­son­al infor­ma­tion, as well as any choic­es you may have regard­ing your per­son­al infor­ma­tion.

4. Con­tent Removal

Open Cul­ture reserves the right, but has no oblig­a­tion, to mon­i­tor the user con­tent you post on any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  We reserve the right to remove any such infor­ma­tion or mate­r­i­al for any rea­son or no rea­son, includ­ing with­out lim­i­ta­tion if in our sole opin­ion such infor­ma­tion or mate­r­i­al vio­lates, or may vio­late, any law or our Terms and Con­di­tions of Ser­vice, or to pro­tect or defend our rights or prop­er­ty or those of any third par­ty.  Open Cul­ture also reserves the right to remove infor­ma­tion upon the request of any third par­ty.

5. Data Reten­tion

Open Cul­ture may retain and con­tin­ue to use indef­i­nite­ly all infor­ma­tion (includ­ing user con­tent) post­ed to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.

Open Cul­ture retains the spe­cif­ic anony­mous data col­lect­ed and tied to your computer’s unique ID as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy for a peri­od of up to twelve months.  Such data may be aggre­gat­ed and used for ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es indef­i­nite­ly.

6. How We Pro­tect Your Infor­ma­tion

Open Cul­ture cares about the integri­ty and secu­ri­ty of your per­son­al infor­ma­tion.  We can­not, how­ev­er, ensure or war­rant the secu­ri­ty of any infor­ma­tion you trans­mit to Open Cul­ture or guar­an­tee that your infor­ma­tion on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices may not be accessed, dis­closed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our phys­i­cal, tech­ni­cal, or man­age­r­i­al safe­guards.  The trans­mit­tal of infor­ma­tion from you to us is done at your own risk.

7. Com­pro­mise of Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion

In the event that per­son­al infor­ma­tion is com­pro­mised as a result of a breach of secu­ri­ty, Open Cul­ture will prompt­ly noti­fy those per­sons whose per­son­al infor­ma­tion has been com­pro­mised, in accor­dance with the noti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures set forth in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, or as oth­er­wise required by law.

8. Your Choic­es About Your Infor­ma­tion

You may, of course, decline to sub­mit per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion through the Ser­vice, in which case Open Cul­ture may not be able to pro­vide cer­tain ser­vices to you.

You can lim­it tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing by con­fig­ur­ing your browser’s set­tings or chang­ing the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er to lim­it your accep­tance of or delete cook­ies.  Because the man­age­ment of cook­ies in var­i­ous browsers dif­fers, you should con­sult the doc­u­men­ta­tion for your brows­er in order to man­age your cook­ies.  In order to lim­it the accep­tance of or dis­able “flash” cook­ies, you must access the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er installed on your com­put­er.  To learn more about the man­age­ment pan­el of the Adobe Flash Play­er and the man­age­ment of “flash” cook­ies, please access the fol­low­ing link: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/index.html.  You can also opt-out of receiv­ing cook­ies from third-par­ty data providers by fol­low­ing the instruc­tions at:  http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.  You can opt-out of receiv­ing cook­ies from Tar­gus­in­fo, a spe­cif­ic third-par­ty data provider, by fol­low­ing the instruc­tions at:  http://www.adadvisor.net/optout.html.  Also, because your choic­es are not asso­ci­at­ed with you as a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual, if you change com­put­ers, web browsers or cook­ie set­tings, you will need to re-imple­ment your pref­er­ences as described above.  Note that if you lim­it or dis­able cook­ies, this does not mean that you will not see ads on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices. Instead, ads will be dis­played that are based on pas­sive brows­er infor­ma­tion or oth­er infor­ma­tion that that may be pro­vid­ed by the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices at the time of your vis­it.

9. Children’s Pri­va­cy

Pro­tect­ing the pri­va­cy of young chil­dren is espe­cial­ly impor­tant.  Open Cul­ture and its relat­ed web­sites are not struc­tured to attract chil­dren under 13 years of age.  Open Cul­ture pro­hibits the use of our web­sites or ser­vices by any­one under 13 years of age.  Open Cul­ture does not know­ing­ly col­lect or solic­it per­son­al infor­ma­tion from any­one under the age of 13 or know­ing­ly allow such per­sons to reg­is­ter for any of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices.  If you are under 13, please do not access the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices or send any infor­ma­tion about your­self to us, includ­ing your name, address, tele­phone num­ber, or email address.  In the event that we learn that we have col­lect­ed per­son­al infor­ma­tion from a child under age 13 with­out ver­i­fi­ca­tion of parental con­sent, we will delete that infor­ma­tion as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.  If you believe that we might have any infor­ma­tion from or about a child under 13, please con­tact us at ma**@*********re.com.

10. Links to Oth­er Web­sites

We are not respon­si­ble for the prac­tices employed by web­sites linked to or from the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, nor the infor­ma­tion or con­tent con­tained there­in.  Please remem­ber that when you use a link to go from with­in the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices to an out­side web­site, our Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is no longer in effect.  Your brows­ing and inter­ac­tion on any oth­er web­site, includ­ing those that have a link on the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, is sub­ject to that website’s own rules and poli­cies. Please read over those rules and poli­cies before pro­ceed­ing.

11. Noti­fi­ca­tion Pro­ce­dures

It is our pol­i­cy to pro­vide noti­fi­ca­tions, whether such noti­fi­ca­tions are required by law or are for mar­ket­ing or oth­er busi­ness relat­ed pur­pos­es, to you via email notice, writ­ten or hard copy notice, or through con­spic­u­ous post­ing of such notice on the applic­a­ble Open Cul­ture web­site or ser­vice, as deter­mined by Open Cul­ture in its sole dis­cre­tion. We reserve the right to deter­mine the form and means of pro­vid­ing noti­fi­ca­tions to you, pro­vid­ed that you may opt out of cer­tain means of noti­fi­ca­tion as described in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy.

12. Gov­ern­ing Law

This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is gov­erned by the laws of the State of Cal­i­for­nia and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

13. Changes to this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy

Open Cul­ture may mod­i­fy or update this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy at its sole dis­cre­tion from time to time, and so you should review this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy peri­od­i­cal­ly.  When we change the pol­i­cy in a mate­r­i­al way, we will noti­fy you by means of a notice on our web­site pri­or to the change becom­ing effec­tive.  Changes to this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy are effec­tive when they are post­ed on this page.  Your con­tin­ued access to the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices after the Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy has been mod­i­fied and post­ed will sig­ni­fy your accep­tance of such mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

If you have any ques­tions about this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, the prac­tices of the Open Cul­ture Ser­vices, or your deal­ings with Open Cul­ture, please con­tact us at ma**@*********re.com.

14. Cal­i­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­va­cy Act (“CCPA”)

Satirizing Ahmadinejad: The New Yorker Picks Up Where SNL Left Off

in Current Affairs, Media | October 8th, 2007

The satirists are get­ting a lot mileage out of Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s dec­la­ra­tion that Iran is gay-free. Last week, Sat­ur­day Night Live spoofed Ahmadine­jad, as we not­ed. Then, The New York­er par­o­died Ahmadine­jad on the mag­a­zine’s cov­er with one of its famed car­toons. (The image includ­ed a not-so-oblique ref­er­ence to Lar­ry Craig, the con­ser­v­a­tive US Sen­a­tor who recent­ly got caught up in some mens’ room high jinks. Unfa­mil­iar read­ers can get the scoop on Craig here.) Of all the inane com­ments Ahmadine­jad has made, and there are many, it’s inter­est­ing that the satirists have cho­sen to focus on this one. Deny­ing the exis­tence of gays in Iran is no more empir­i­cal­ly absurd than deny­ing the Holo­caust. So why the empha­sis on the sex­u­al­i­ty com­ment? Because Ahmadine­jad has been play­ing the anti-semi­tism card for some time, but the homo­pho­bia card is rel­a­tive­ly new, hence mak­ing it wor­thy of atten­tion? Or is it because sex­u­al­i­ty offers an always con­ve­nient way to take a polit­i­cal ene­my down a peg? Or since there’s no good way to sat­i­rize a geno­cide, per­haps sex­u­al­i­ty becomes a good default. Ok, I’m stumped. Note to self: think twice next time before over-ana­lyz­ing jokes. Speak­ing of jokes, make you check out the footage we post­ed of Woody Allen doing standup in 1965.

Beyond Free Speech: Ahmadinejad at Columbia (on Video)

in Current Affairs | September 26th, 2007

There was a lot of hand-wring­ing lead­ing up to Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s appear­ance at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty on Mon­day. But, as it turns out, free­dom of speech seem­ing­ly worked as it was intend­ed. Ahmadine­jad entered the mar­ket­place of ideas and quick­ly came out the wrong side of the exchange. (You can watch the full video of his appear­ance here or read the tran­script here.) The decid­ing fac­tor was­n’t so much the unbe­com­ing intro­duc­tion offered by Lee Bollinger, Columbi­a’s pres­i­dent. It was more just a mat­ter of giv­ing Ahmadine­jad enough rope to hang him­self (i.e., let­ting him doubt the exis­tence of the Holo­caust and also gays in Iran) and then sit­ting back and watch­ing it hap­pen.

Of course, the “mar­ket­place of ideas” metaphor only goes so far when you’re deal­ing with inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Ahmadine­jad’s speech was­n’t about win­ning a com­pe­ti­tion at Colum­bia. It was most­ly about play­ing to an audi­ence at home, one for whom his rhetor­i­cal strate­gies score points. But then there are the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences to con­sid­er. Far bet­ter than a dis­cred­it­ed Bush admin­is­tra­tion ever could, Ahmadine­jad real­is­ti­cal­ly soft­ened up the Amer­i­can pub­lic to any mil­i­tary plans that the US gov­ern­ment has on the table. At the very least, this has to qual­i­fy for a Dar­win Award. I’ll save fur­ther analy­sis for the pun­dits and talk­ing heads since I know that pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal opin­ions only go so far on this blog.

Relat­ed Note:

Last week, KQED’s Forum here in San Fran­cis­co had a good con­ver­sa­tion about free speech in the uni­ver­si­ty. It touched on Ahmadine­jad’s appear­ance at Colum­bia, but also Don Rums­feld’s invi­ta­tion to Stan­ford’s Hoover’s Insti­tu­tion and Lar­ry Sum­mers can­celed invi­ta­tion to speak before the UC Board of Regents. Lis­ten here: iTunes — Feed — Mp3 — Web site.

Life-Changing Books: Your Picks

in Books | August 19th, 2007

Image by George Red­grave, via Flickr Com­mons

We asked our read­ers what books made the biggest dif­fer­ence in their lives, and here’s what they had to say. The list below tells you what books shaped their lives and why.

1984 — George Orwell

1984 “was the first book I actu­al­ly enjoyed read­ing. It com­plete­ly blew my mind at the time (I was 16) and it opened my eyes to the pow­er of ideas and to the joy of read­ing a good book.” — Tim

A Short His­to­ry of Near­ly Every­thing — Bill Bryson

“Wow this book is incred­i­ble. At close to 500 pages Bryson cov­ers every­thing from the moment the uni­verse expand­ed from the intense­ly dense mat­ter that was (aka the big bang) to man’s ori­gin. Read­ing this book has impact­ed the way I look at every­thing from bac­te­ria to aster­oids.” — Alex

Ariel — Sylvia Plath

“After read­ing through these sug­ges­tions, I real­ized there’s a big hole: Poet­ry! So much poet­ry has affect­ed my life: Sylvia Plath’s _Ariel_; Camp­bell McGrath’s _Road Atlas_; James Wright’s _Above the River_; Bren­da Hillman’s _Cascadia_…Walt Whit­man, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Robert Bly… Poet­ry may not be the “win­ning pick” here, but it def­i­nite­ly should be cel­e­brat­ed! And not just in April.” — Aman­da

Cat’s Cra­dle — Kurt Von­negut

“This book reignit­ed the pilot light of my imag­i­na­tion like no oth­er book had done in quite awhile. The whim­sy of its nar­ra­tive, which end­ed with the utter destruc­tion of our world thanks to mankind, was stark, shock­ing, yet refresh­ing when it seemed every oth­er book I read was just an exer­cise towards get­ting to a hap­py end­ing. Great book!” — Spam­boy

Crooked Cucum­ber — The Life and Zen Teach­ing of Shun­ryu Suzu­ki

“Although I am not prac­tic­ing Zen (yet), this book is like my Bible in that I plan to always read over it and reflect upon the mes­sages there­in. Suzu­ki had a hum­ble vision that in order to change this world, we need to change the way peo­ple think and live, not just to change the symp­toms of what is wrong. Not just to get rid of pop-prej­u­dice and hatred, but to get rid of labels entire­ly, to ‘fight’ war and injus­tice with peace and under­stand­ing instead of anger.… That’s just some of the stuff that is shap­ing the way I think right now.” — Luel­la

Dis­turb­ing the Peace — Vaclav Hav­el

“I read it as a junior in high school, picked up on the bar­gain pile at a B. Dal­tons. It impact­ed me because it illus­trat­ed the con­cept of learn­ing through­out life and how peo­ple can live with dig­ni­ty. I’ve loaned it out sev­er­al times and re-bought it at least three times.” — Emmett

Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close — Jonathan Safran Foer

“…It’s as though that book has tak­en so much life from the past and made it all tan­gi­ble to us here in the present. I love the emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty that’s repli­cat­ed in the grandmother’s and grandfather’s man­u­script and let­ters, how they show how mem­o­ry is frag­ment­ed, over­whelm­ing, and some­times incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Seri­ous­ly, I could go on and on. And I can think of hun­dreds of oth­er books that have changed me just as much. It’s just this one has been at the fore­front of my mind ever since I read it a cou­ple of months ago.” — Aman­da

Great Expec­ta­tions — Charles Dick­ens

“I think it was the first time I had felt such a bond with a char­ac­ter. I tri­umphed with [Pip’s] suc­cess­es, felt the blow of fail­ure in his defeats, and felt sor­row when he broke his own prin­ci­ples. I saw val­ues in Pip that I want­ed to emu­late in my own life — a ded­i­ca­tion to pur­su­ing my dreams, over­com­ing my weak­ness­es, and treat­ing oth­ers respect­ful­ly regard­less of what frus­tra­tions I may have in my own life…” — Jamie

Heal­ing Invis­i­ble Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recov­ery in a Vio­lent World — Richard F. Mol­li­ca

“A stel­lar book released last year that I believe will qui­et­ly grow to clas­sic sta­tus on par with Vic­tor Fran­kl and Elie Wiesel… Mollica’s the­sis, rad­i­cal for a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine, is that humans have the tools to heal them­selves from even the worst imag­in­able trau­mas. He gen­tly shows the recipe for self-recov­ery, and reveals that the sur­vivor is, in fact, the great­est hero for us all.” — Megan

Hiroshi­ma — John Hersey

“Hersey retells what hap­pens when an atom­ic bomb falls on your city. Culled from inter­views with sur­vivors of the atom­ic bomb attack, this nar­ra­tive was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as an entire issue of The New York­er mag­a­zine. Haunt­ing.” — Mor­gan

How to Read a Book — Mor­timer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

“Quite sim­ply it has enabled me to get more out of the books that I’ve read.” — Greg

In Cold Blood — Tru­man Capote

It was the first “adult book that I read upon grad­u­at­ing to the adult sec­tion of the Munic­i­pal Library in Krakow. Hav­ing read all the clas­sic sci­ence fic­tion on the shelves, Capote’s mat­ter of fact prose was as dis­turb­ing to me as it was new. No aliens here among far away stars but a world almost ordi­nary and with­in reach, tan­gi­ble and so total­ly fright­en­ing. Read­ing it felt like being caged with a wild ani­mal, a quick fear fol­lowed repeat­ed­ly by the mind’s pangs of pride to sub­due the brute. This was no fic­tion yet it read stranger than any­thing else up till then.”

Lan­guage in Thought and Action — S.I. Hayakawa

A book that “pro­vides a whole ratio­nale for read­ing fic­tion that I have nev­er for­got­ten. I grew up in a time and a house­hold where read­ing fic­tion was analagous to wast­ing your time. Hayakawa writes of fic­tion as a tool to increase your expe­ri­ence of life, to increase the num­ber and vari­ety of expe­ri­ences in your life, your appre­ci­a­tion of those expe­ri­ences, to under­stand oth­ers and so much more!” — Ter­ry

Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez

–“It’s for me ‘life imi­tates art’ because an old lover appeared in my life after 31 years. And if I hadn’t read that book I think I would have refused him.” — Regi­na

–“Epic. Beau­ti­ful. My inspi­ra­tion to become a writer.” — Valenti­na

Man’s Search for Mean­ing — Vic­tor Fran­kl

“[It] is one of the best books I have read. The book describes the author’s impris­on­ment in sev­er­al con­cen­tra­tion camps. Faced with ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ing and loss he sur­vives by find­ing mean­ing in the midst of this. He dis­cov­ers that all of our free­doms can be tak­en from us….except one….the free­dom to choose how we think and act under the very worst of cir­cum­stances.” — Andrea

Med­i­ta­tions — Mar­cus Aure­lius

“A how-to man­u­al of human behav­iour, one that should be required read­ing for all aspir­ing politi­cians and lead­ers.” — Car­ol

Nar­row Road to a Far Province — Basho

“A quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago, I set out on a bicy­cle trip across North Amer­i­ca, and a friend stuck a paper­back copy of Basho’s ‘Nar­row Road to a Far Province’ in one of my pan­niers. ‘Nar­row Road’ … is a diary kept by the Japan­ese poet Basho in 1689 as he made a jour­ney into the north­ern provinces of Japan. When I was in the Sier­ras, delayed by snow, I read through ‘Nar­row Road’ two or three times. I don’t know whether the book affect­ed me more great­ly because I was trav­el­ing or my trav­el­ing affect­ed my per­cep­tion of the book (one of those zen­ny ques­tions), but I came away with a much bet­ter sense of the jour­ney that we all make through life, both the phys­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal jour­ney, and a more hum­ble sense of my place among the sojourn­ers.” — Char­lie

Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direc­tion — Lau­ra Berman Fort­gang

“I’ve read this book 3 times over the past 2 years and it’s allowed me to over­come my fears, real­ize my dreams and start work­ing toward new goals in my career, rela­tion­ships, etc. It’s giv­en me the courage to leave the things (mar­riage, career, etc.) that weren’t work­ing for me and to face the fear of the unknown to start work­ing toward a new future.” — Mer­lene

Slaugh­ter­house 5 — Kurt Von­negut

“Read at 12 or 13 this book cer­tain­ly opened my eyes to a whole new world.” — Jason

Teach­ing as a Sub­ver­sive Activ­i­ty — Neil Post­man

“One title that has had a big impact on me through­out my teach­ing career has been Neil Postman’s Teach­ing as a Sub­ver­sive Activ­i­ty. His con­cepts of help­ing kids devel­op their instincts for eval­u­at­ing and ana­lyz­ing all the mes­sages tossed at them dur­ing their lives (he called it their crap detec­tor) are more valid today than when he wrote the book in the 70’s.” — Tim

The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov — Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky

“As a teenag­er I was mys­ti­fied by the audac­i­ty of the grand inquisi­tor. I’d nev­er read such a suc­cint indict­ment of faith. As I got to my twen­ties I read the whole book, but in my late twen­ties I began to appre­ci­ate it. I’ve nev­er read a more pow­er­ful and real­is­tic tes­ta­ment to faith in my life, and as I’ve grown, my read­ing of the book has grown with me.” — Don

The Can­dles of Your Eyes – James Pur­dy

“If the dev­il were alive he would be writ­ing the works of James Pur­dy. ‘The Can­dles of Your Eyes’ changed my out­look on lit­er­a­ture for­ev­er.” — John

The Catch­er in the Rye — J. D. Salinger

–“This nov­el touched my heart deeply.” — Ellen

–“I’m going to go back to high school and say that Catch­er in the Rye had a big impact on my life. While the con­tent of the book in terms of char­ac­ter and sto­ry were acces­si­ble to me at 16, that isn’t real­ly what made the dif­fer­ence. It was only after read­ing some crit­i­cism and talk­ing with oth­ers in school and out that I began to see all that was going on in a nov­el beyond the plot: sym­bol­ism, irony, lan­guage and the rest. When I saw how much could go on in a book, how many things were going on simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, I became very impressed with the com­plex­i­ty of lit­er­a­ture as art. From then on I was pret­ty well hooked on books.” — Jack

The Chaneysville Inci­dent — David Bradley

This book “arrived in my library, as part of our rental col­lec­tion, in the mid-70s. Since then, I have giv­en away at least half a dozen copies, bought it for oth­er libraries I’ve worked at, and had a brief cor­re­spon­dence with David Bradley, the author. It’s about time for me to reread it…. If only one of you, read­ing this, gets the book, I’ll be sat­is­fied. Even if you don’t get past the dis­ser­ta­tion on long dis­tance pub­lic trans­porta­tion.” — Paper­maven

The Cho­sen — Chaim Potok

“I read this book as a teenag­er. I remem­ber being com­plete­ly fas­ci­nat­ed with the Jew­ish cul­ture por­trayed in the nov­el, but the main impact came in the way Potok empha­sized the val­ues of intel­li­gence, intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ment, and com­pas­sion for oth­ers. I was incred­i­bly moved by the con­flict between these val­ues, and find myself re-read­ing this nov­el and the sequel “The Promise” almost year­ly for over 20 years.” — Judy

The Com­plete Sto­ries of Edgar Allan Poe

“Short and punchy, his macabre tales pack a visu­al whol­lop that mod­ern longer sto­ries lack. He can cre­ate mood and tone in less than a page. When I need a break from stu­dent nar­ra­tives, I read a short sto­ry by Poe. There is a rea­son the guy’s writ­ing has sur­vived.” — Chris

The Grapes of Wrath — John Stein­beck

“I read The Grapes of Wrath in the 7th grade. That was 43 years ago. Steinbeck’s ten­der and lov­ing prose and voice have nev­er left me. I don’t think it’s too much to say that I actu­al­ly, fac­tu­al­ly, love that book, and its author, very, very much.” — Fuz­zo

The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty & Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish — Michel Fou­cault

“Both of these books philo­soph­i­cal­ly ush­ered me into the mod­ern world, chang­ing the way I saw pow­er, sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, school, and noth­ing less than the Mod­ern Self.” — Drag­on Man­age­ment

The Jour­ney to the East — Her­mann Hesse

“For a young read­er, this became a por­tal for enjoy­ing books.” — Bob

The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien

“The book that most influ­enced my life was “The Lord of the Rings” that I read when I was 15 years old. That book intro­duced me to the world of fan­ta­sy books. Ever since I keep read­ing this genre of books (plus a lot oth­ers of course), both in Eng­lish and in Ital­ian.” — Francesco

The Illu­mi­na­tus! Tril­o­gy - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wil­son

– “It’s chock full of free-think­ing anar­chism and did a lot to push me towards my cur­rent semi-lib­er­tar­i­an view point.” — Dave

–“I would imag­ine this book had a sim­i­lar effect on a lot of peo­ple who read it. This book real­ly changed the way I think and intro­duced me to a lot of real­ly great infor­ma­tion. I went on to read almost all of Robert Anton Wilson’s books. He was a great philoso­pher who wasn’t afraid to state his mind. He recent­ly passed away and I know a lot of peo­ple will and are miss­ing him. His great­est effect on me was the intro­duc­tion of ‘maybe log­ic.’” — Cyen

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out — Richard Feyn­man

“A col­lec­tion of assort­ed writ­ings by a great sci­en­tist shows the full palette of a sharp intel­li­gence ani­mat­ed by all-around curios­i­ty.” — Davide

The Secret Gar­den — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett

“I have two books that impact­ed my life; one from child­hood and one from ear­ly adult­hood. In the sixth grade, our teacher read The Secret Gar­den to us every day. I was cap­ti­vat­ed by the imag­i­na­tion, com­pas­sion, and touch of fan­ta­sy that this book awak­ened in me.” — Jan

The Stranger — Albert Camus

“I love it so much. This book is for me pure phi­los­o­phy.” — Ellen

Ways of See­ing — John Berg­er

“A book that first opened up my eyes to the fact that there are many ways that one can exam­ine things.” — Dar­cy

Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance: An Inquiry into Val­ues — Robert M. Pir­sig

–“Although I am not too much into phi­los­o­phy, this book real­ly made me see a lot of things dif­fer­ent­ly!” — Har­ish

–“After 18 years explor­ing philoso­phies I still return to Pir­sig for clar­i­ty. Although I see many par­al­lels now with more “respectable” philoso­phers, such as Hume, there is also a very human dimen­sion to these books which man­ages always to move me. There is a sen­sa­tion for many who read Pir­sig of re-con­nect­ing with some long-for­got­ten well­spring of wis­dom long lost to the reduc­tion­ism of our dai­ly exis­tences.” — David

Did Tony Get Whacked? (And The First Full Episode of John From Cincinnati)

in Television | June 17th, 2007

If you haven’t quite got­ten the last episode of The Sopra­nos out of your head (clear­ly, I haven’t) … if you’re still mulling over what hap­pened dur­ing those clos­ing moments, then you may want to peruse a TV writer’s intrigu­ing and informed take on whether Tony got whacked in the last episode. There’s a lot of good analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion here. For an alter­na­tive view, you can also lis­ten to this week’s pod­cast from TV Talk Machine. Here, Tim Good­man, who writes for The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, and Joe Garo­foli mull over which inter­pre­ta­tions hold water, and which don’t. Plus, you can also read Good­man’s blog entry — “Sopra­nos” finale: What real­ly hap­pened” — and the many read­er com­ments, reac­tions and the­o­ries at the bot­tom of the page.Now, with this chap­ter of tele­vi­sion his­to­ry closed, HBO is hop­ing to start anoth­er new and impor­tant one with John From Cincin­nati. If you don’t have cable, you can watch the first episode here in its entire­ty. Good think­ing HBO. Have they found anoth­er Sopra­nos? I’m not too opti­mistic. Have a look and see what you think.

The Death of the Book Review?

in Books, Video - Arts & Culture | May 11th, 2007

The Supreme Court Goes Digital

in Law | May 8th, 2007

The Supreme Court has long tak­en heat for being in the tech­no­log­i­cal arrière-garde, a crit­i­cism that has seemed fair giv­en its unwill­ing­ness to even allow cam­eras into its oral argu­ments.

Slow­ly, how­ev­er, that per­cep­tion may be about to change. Accord­ing to the ABA Jour­nal eRe­port, the Court has stuck a small toe into the tech­nol­o­gy waters by pro­vid­ing web access to video­taped evi­dence that fig­ured into a recent case, Scott v. Har­ris. The url for the video gets ref­er­enced with­in the writ­ten opin­ion for the case, and a link is pro­vid­ed from the Court’s opin­ions web page. (You’ll need Real Play­er to watch it.)

The video itself is noth­ing spe­cial. It fea­tures very low qual­i­ty footage of a car chase tak­en from the dash­board of a police car, and it’s essen­tial­ly the same sce­nario that Amer­i­ca has seen played out for almost 20 years on Fox’s COPS. As you watch the video, you can’t help but feel that this land­mark moment for the court is a non-moment. But that’s per­haps to be expect­ed when a tra­di­tion-bound insti­tu­tion banal­ly enters a brave new world.

25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video

in Most Popular, Online Courses, UC Berkeley | March 10th, 2007

Not long ago, we wrote a pop­u­lar piece about UC-Berke­ley’s iTunes ini­tia­tive which, to sum it up,allows any­one, any­where, to down­load com­plete uni­ver­si­ty cours­es to their iPods for free. Amaz­ing. Today, we want to point out that Berke­ley also makes avail­able full-fledged cours­es via video/webcast. You can find the com­plete list of cours­es here, but below we have list­ed below 25 cours­es that fig­ure into a “core” under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts cours­es, which will teach you a lot and, even bet­ter, cost you noth­ing. Each of these cours­es, com­ing straight from the class­room, can be accessed with Real Play­er, and some can also be accessed as MP3s.

On a relat­ed note, our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es will give you access to many more uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures and cours­es, so be sure to give them a look. You may also want to check out our “playlist” of intel­li­gent videos on YouTube as well as our recent piece: 10 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube.

UC Berke­ley Cours­es:

• Bud­dhist Psy­chol­o­gy
• Cell Biol­o­gy
• Descrip­tive Intro­duc­tion to Physics
• Eco­nom­ic Analy­sis — Micro
• Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to the Present
• Gen­er­al Bio­chem­istry and Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy
• Gen­er­al Biol­o­gy
• Gen­er­al Human Anato­my
• Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy
• Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ers
• Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry
• Intro­duc­tion to Gen­er­al Astron­o­my
• Intro­duc­tion to Human Nutri­tion
• Intro­duc­tion to Non­vi­o­lence
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics
• Issues in For­eign Pol­i­cy After 911
• Open Source Devel­op­ment and Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Dig­i­tal Infor­ma­tion
• Macro­eco­nom­ic Analy­sis
• Physics for Future Pres­i­dents
• Search Engines: Tech­nol­o­gy, Soci­ety and Busi­ness
• The Amer­i­can Lan­guages
• The Struc­ture and Inter­pre­ta­tion of Com­put­er Pro­grams
• US His­to­ry: from Civ­il War to Present
• US For­eign Pol­i­cy After 9/11
• XML Foun­da­tions