Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers

in Current Affairs, Economics, Harvard | December 12th, 2011

Last Wednes­day, the Occu­py move­ment gained a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum when eight fac­ul­ty mem­bers from Har­vard, Boston Col­lege, and N.Y.U. gath­ered in Cam­bridge to present a day­long Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor of Democ­ra­cy and Cit­i­zen­ship and Co-Direc­tor of Trans­paren­cy Pol­i­cy Project at Har­vard) took a vague the­sis of the Occu­py move­ment — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bull­shit” — and gave it some aca­d­e­m­ic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequal­i­ty Grown in Amer­i­ca? And What Should We Do About It?” The oth­er talks are avail­able on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Het­ero­dox Eco­nom­ics: Alter­na­tives to Manki­w’s Ide­ol­o­gy - Stephen Mar­glin, Wal­ter Bark­er Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Wall Street’s Role in the Euro­pean Finan­cial Cri­sis - Richard Park­er, Lec­tur­er in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Senior Fel­low at the Shoren­stein Cen­ter, Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Occu­py Move­ment and Stu­dent Debt Refusal — Andrew Ross, Pro­fes­sor of Social and Cul­tur­al Analy­sis, New York Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics for the 99% — Juli­et Schor, Pro­fes­sor of Soci­ol­o­gy, Boston Col­lege

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynam­ics of Mod­ern Mon­ey — Chris­tine Desan, Pro­fes­sor of Law, Har­vard Law School, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Fear and Pow­er — Brad Epps, Pro­fes­sor of Romance Lan­guages & Lit­er­a­tures and Depart­ment Chair for Stud­ies in Women, Gen­der, and Sex­u­al­i­ty, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Vig­i­lance, Inquiry, Alien­ation & Hope at Har­vard and in the USA - John Wom­ack, Robert Woods Bliss Pro­fes­sor of Latin Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-Esque Event

Philosophy in Prison: Weighty Conversations about Right and Wrong

in Life, Philosophy | December 7th, 2011

When not found­ing tech com­pa­nies, Damon Horowitz teach­es phi­los­o­phy through the Prison Uni­ver­si­ty Project, bring­ing col­lege-lev­el class­es to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In three min­utes, Horowitz raps about phi­los­o­phy meet­ing real life — about how pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of seri­ous crimes come to terms with Socrates (who fin­ished his days in prison), Hei­deg­ger, Kant, cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tives, ques­tions of right and wrong, and the rest. The “talk” was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at TED 2011 last March.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

Post-Apocalyptic Cover Art Created in Amazing Time-Lapse Film

in Animation, Art | December 1st, 2011

Dei Gaztelu­men­di is a young Span­ish artist. He was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a cov­er illus­tra­tion for the com­ic book mag­a­zine Xabiroi, and decid­ed to make a time-lapse video of the process. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the artist begins with a rough sketch on paper and then builds lay­er upon lay­er of detail using the Adobe Cre­ative Suite soft­ware. Thir­ty hours of work are com­pressed into 11 min­utes. “A lot of emo­tion went into this paint­ing,” Gaztelu­men­di said on his blog, “since I made it as a gift to one of my bud­dies, who trag­i­cal­ly lost a leg in a motor­bike acci­dent about a year ago.” Gaztelu­men­di was born in San Sebas­t­ian, Basque Coun­try, Spain in 1987, and began illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books as a teenag­er. He stud­ied ani­ma­tion at Sheri­dan Col­lege in Ontario, Cana­da, where his the­sis film was a whim­si­cal tale called Earlth & Moonch. Since grad­u­at­ing with high hon­ors last year, Gaztelu­men­di has been work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor, spe­cial­iz­ing in crea­ture and char­ac­ter art. You can see more of his work at Deisign.com.

Striking Posters From Occupy Wall Street: Download Them for Free

in Art, Current Affairs | November 23rd, 2011

Occu­py Wall Street and the glob­al Occu­py Move­ment have inspired some strik­ing art­work. Graph­ic artists from around the world (includ­ing Shep­ard Fairey men­tioned here ear­li­er today) have con­tributed their tal­ents to the move­ment. Many of their posters are avail­able for free or at low cost, either direct­ly from the artist or through orga­ni­za­tions like Occuprint and Occu­py­To­geth­er. You can post them in your town.

New York­er cov­er artist and book illus­tra­tor Eric Drook­er has cre­at­ed sev­er­al beau­ti­ful posters, includ­ing the one above. You can down­load a high-res­o­lu­tion copy suit­able for print­ing at OccupyTogether.org.

The not­ed Los Ange­les graph­ic artist, car­toon­ist and radio per­son­al­i­ty Lalo Alcaraz cre­at­ed this par­o­dy of the top­pling of the Sad­dam Hus­sein stat­ue in Bagh­dad for Occu­py Los Ange­les. In a mes­sage on his web­site, Alcaraz invites peo­ple to dis­trib­ute the image.

Alexan­dra Clot­fel­ter is a stu­dent of adver­tis­ing design and illus­tra­tion at the Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design in Geor­gia. Since donat­ing her design, “The Begin­ning is Near,” to Occuprint.org, it has become one of the most pop­u­lar posters to emerge from the move­ment. In response to requests, Clot­fel­ter is offer­ing a high-qual­i­ty Giclee print for sale, with a por­tion of the prof­its going to sup­port Occuprint­’s project of dis­trib­ut­ing free posters world­wide.

In this poster, Zucot­ti Park is por­trayed as the “Tip of the Ice­berg.” Indeed, the Occu­py move­ment extends to places like Lawrence, Kansas, where mural­ist, print­mak­er and writer Dave Loewen­stein is based. Loewen­stein’s design is avail­able for free at Occuprint.org.

Poster artist Rich Black of Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia cre­at­ed this image for Occu­py Oak­land. It’s avail­able for free down­load at Occuprint.org.

To see a vari­ety of Occu­py posters by oth­er artists (and to down­load them for free) you can vis­it Occuprint.org and OccupyTogether.org.

And don’t miss our post ear­li­er today: Shep­ard Fairey Caves In, Revis­es Occu­py Wall Street Poster.

Steve Jobs Muses on What’s Wrong with American Education, 1995

in Apple, Education | November 10th, 2011

In late Octo­ber, Com­put­er­world unearthed a lengthy inter­view with Steve Jobs orig­i­nal­ly record­ed back in 1995, when Jobs was at NeXT Com­put­er, and still two years away from his tri­umphant return to Apple. Filmed as part of an oral his­to­ry project, the wide-rang­ing inter­view begins with Jobs’ child­hood and his ear­ly school days, and it all sets the stage for Jobs to muse on the state of pub­lic edu­ca­tion in Amer­i­ca. He began:

I’d like the peo­ple teach­ing my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the com­pa­ny I work for, mak­ing a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars a year. Why should they work at a school for thir­ty-five to forty thou­sand dol­lars if they could get a job here at a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars a year? Is that an intel­li­gence test? The prob­lem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever hap­pened to edu­ca­tion because it’s not a mer­i­toc­ra­cy. It turns into a bureau­cra­cy, which is exact­ly what has hap­pened. The teach­ers can’t teach and admin­is­tra­tors run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s ter­ri­ble.

Asked what changes he would make, Jobs con­tin­ued:

I’ve been a very strong believ­er in that what we need to do in edu­ca­tion is to go to the full vouch­er sys­tem. I know this isn’t what the inter­view was sup­posed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.… The prob­lem that we have in this coun­try is that [par­ents] went away. [They] stopped pay­ing atten­tion to their schools, for the most part. What hap­pened was that moth­ers start­ed work­ing and they did­n’t have time to spend at PTA meet­ings and watch­ing their kids’ school. Schools became much more insti­tu­tion­al­ized and par­ents spent less and less and less time involved in their kids’ edu­ca­tion. What hap­pens when a cus­tomer goes away and a monop­oly gets con­trol … is that the ser­vice lev­el almost always goes down.

And so the answer. Vouch­ers, entre­pre­neur­ship and mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion:

I’ve sug­gest­ed as an exam­ple, if you go to Stan­ford Busi­ness School, they have a pub­lic pol­i­cy track; they could start a school admin­is­tra­tor track. You could get a bunch of peo­ple com­ing out of col­lege tying up with some­one out of the busi­ness school, they could be start­ing their own school. You could have twen­ty-five year old stu­dents out of col­lege, very ide­al­is­tic, full of ener­gy instead of start­ing a Sil­i­con Val­ley com­pa­ny, they’d start a school. I believe that they would do far bet­ter than any of our pub­lic schools would. The third thing you’d see is I believe, is the qual­i­ty of schools again, just in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. A lot of the pub­lic schools would go broke. There’s no ques­tion about it. It would be rather painful for the first sev­er­al years.… The biggest com­plaint of course is that schools would pick off all the good kids and all the bad kids would be left to wal­low togeth­er in either a pri­vate school or rem­nants of a pub­lic school sys­tem. To me that’s like say­ing “Well, all the car man­u­fac­tur­ers are going to make BMWs and Mer­cedes and nobody’s going to make a ten thou­sand dol­lar car.” I think the most hot­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket right now is the ten thou­sand dol­lar car area. You’ve got all the Japan­ese play­ing in it. You’ve got Gen­er­al Motors who spent five mil­lion dol­lars sub­si­diz­ing Sat­urn to com­pete in that mar­ket. You’ve got Ford which has just intro­duced two new cars in that mar­ket. You’ve got Chrysler with the Neon.…

The full tran­script appears here. Or, if you want to watch the inter­view on video, you can jump to Com­put­er­world, where, rather lame­ly, you will need to reg­is­ter before watch­ing the actu­al talk. Bad job by Com­put­er­world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Copy of Steve Jobs Biog­ra­phy; Plus Inter­view with Author

Steve Jobs Demos the First Mac­in­tosh in 1984

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

20 Christian Academics Speaking About God

in Religion | October 21st, 2011

This sum­mer, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God and then Anoth­er 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God. If you’re count­ing, that makes 100. Right along­side these twin videos came 20 Chris­t­ian Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God, a mon­tage fea­tur­ing some respect­ed fig­ures (save Dinesh D’Souza) try­ing to square reli­gious beliefs with their sci­en­tif­ic work.

You could per­haps add Karl W. Giber­son and Ran­dall J. Stephens to this list, two pro­fes­sors who teach at a Chris­t­ian lib­er­al arts col­lege in Boston. Ear­li­er this week, Giber­son and Stephens pub­lished The Anoint­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Truth in a Sec­u­lar Age and an accom­pa­ny­ing op-ed in The New York Times called The Evan­gel­i­cal Rejec­tion of Rea­son. And it all points to a ten­sion with­in Amer­i­ca’s reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty — the one side that is “intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged, hum­ble and for­ward-look­ing” (like some of the folks shown above) and the oth­er side that is “lit­er­al­is­tic, over­con­fi­dent and reac­tionary” and often hos­tile to basic sci­ence. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the authors argue, this back­ward-look­ing view has become the main­stream with­in evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, and it does a strug­gling nation no favors.

Yes­ter­day, Giber­son appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. You can lis­ten to the inter­view here, or read the tran­script here.

(more…)

Legendary Folklorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

in Music | October 20th, 2011

In 1933, 18-year-old Alan Lomax took a break from col­lege to trav­el into the Amer­i­can South with his father, John Avery Lomax, on a quest to dis­cov­er and record tra­di­tion­al folk songs for the Library of Con­gress. It was the begin­ning of a jour­ney that would last the rest of his life.

With his father, and lat­er on his own, Lomax trav­eled the back roads of Appalachia and the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, from reli­gious revival meet­ings to prison chain gangs, in pur­suit of South­ern folk music in all its forms. Along the way he dis­cov­ered and record­ed such sin­gu­lar artists as Mis­sis­sip­pi Fred McDow­ell, Vera Hall and Lead Belly. Lat­er, Lomax would widen his field of research to focus on Euro­pean folk music, but in 1978 he went back to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta with a cam­era crew to doc­u­ment a cul­ture that was rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.

The result, The Land Where the Blues Began (watch it online here), is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at tra­di­tion­al coun­try blues in its native envi­ron­ment. Filmed in lev­ee camps, church­es, juke joints and on front porch­es across Mis­sis­sip­pi, the doc­u­men­tary draws atten­tion to musi­cians unknown out­side the Delta. The Land Where the Blues Began is a must-see for blues fans, and is now part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train

The History of Philosophy … Without Any Gaps

in Philosophy | August 31st, 2011

On Mon­day, we told you where you can down­load Free Cours­es from Top Philoso­phers (Fou­cault, Sear­le, Rus­sell and the rest). As the day went along, our list grew thanks to read­er sug­ges­tions, and we also dis­cov­ered anoth­er promis­ing resource — a pod­cast called “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don:

Begin­ning with the ear­li­est ancient thinkers, the series will look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Avi­cen­na, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.

That’s what Adam­son promis­es, and he does­n’t dis­ap­point. Over the past 34 months, Adam­son has pro­duced 136 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. That’s rough­ly 45 hours of audio, and there’s no telling how many more hours of audio will bring us to the mod­ern peri­od. The more, the bet­ter, we say.

You can access all episodes via these links: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site. Or find oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Download Free Courses from Famous Philosophers: From Bertrand Russell to Michel Foucault

in Philosophy | August 29th, 2011

You can down­load hun­dreds of Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. (Per­haps you already knew that.) And that includes cours­es by some of the biggest minds teach­ing in phi­los­o­phy. (Is that old news too? Or some wel­comed good news?) So we’re start­ing the week by giv­ing you a run­down of some notable men­tions.

John Sear­le began teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at UC-Berke­ley in 1959, and first did impor­tant work on “speech act” the­o­ry. Lat­er he turned to con­scious­ness and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, out of which came his famous “Chi­nese room” thought exper­i­ment. You can find a nice trio of class­es online.

• Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage — iTunes
• Phi­los­o­phy of Mind — iTunes
• Phi­los­o­phy of Soci­ety — iTunes

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Nietzsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker. Here he deliv­ers three lec­tures on exis­ten­tial­ists.

• Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre — Web Site

Leo Strauss land­ed at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go in 1949, where he spent decades teach­ing and writ­ing on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, espe­cial­ly the polit­i­cal thought of the Ancients. His intel­lec­tu­al lega­cy is con­tro­ver­sial, but his cours­es valu­able.

• Hegel: The Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry - Web Site
• Kant — Web Site
• Niet­zsche, Beyond Good and Evil - Web Site

Find many more Strauss cours­es here.

Bertrand Rus­sell was one of the most impor­tant British philoso­phers of the last cen­tu­ry — a logi­cian, essay­ist and social crit­ic best known for his work in math­e­mat­i­cal log­ic and ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy. When it comes to this lec­ture series, start with the bot­tom lec­ture first and then work your way up.

• Author­i­ty & the Indi­vid­ual: Six BBC Lec­tures — Web Site

Michel Fou­cault taught his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy at the Col­lège de France and pub­lished influ­en­tial writ­ings on pow­er, knowl­edge, and dis­course.

• Six Lec­tures on Truth & Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty pre­sent­ed on the UC Berke­ley cam­pus (Eng­lish) - YouTube

Find more Fou­cault audio here and here.

Hubert Drey­fus has taught many pop­u­lar exis­ten­tial­ism and phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy cours­es also at UC Berke­ley, some of which laid the foun­da­tion for his new book, All Things Shin­ing: Read­ing the West­ern Clas­sics to Find Mean­ing in a Sec­u­lar Age.

• Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film — iTunes
• Hei­deg­ger — iTunes
• Heidegger’s Being & Time — iTunes

Michael Sandel has taught polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard since 1980. His course on jus­tice (below) has been tak­en by more than 15,000 stu­dents, mak­ing it the most pop­u­lar under­grad­u­ate course at Har­vard. This ver­sion aired on PBS and the web.

• Jus­tice: A Jour­ney in Moral Rea­son­ing - YouTube — Web Site

For all 75 phi­los­o­phy cours­es, please see the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our list of 575 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy & Unbe­lief

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita: Just Another Great Love Story?

in Books, Literature | August 16th, 2011

We take you back to the mid 1950s, to an inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov and lit­er­ary crit­ic Lionel Trilling con­duct­ed soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of Loli­ta (1955). Loli­ta’s basic plot is well known — mid­dle-aged Hum­bert Hum­bert devel­ops a pas­sion­ate obses­sion for twelve-year old Dolores Haze and takes her on the road. For some crit­ics, this was enough to reject the book out of hand. One British review­er called it “the filth­i­est book I have ever read” (which per­haps did­n’t say much about the scope of his read­ing). Oth­er lit­er­ary observers, Trilling includ­ed, rec­og­nized the book’s lit­er­ary mer­its straight­away. And years lat­er, crit­ics still agree. Recent­ly, The Mod­ern Library called it the fourth most impor­tant nov­el pub­lished in Eng­lish dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The video above fea­tures Nabokov and Trilling talk­ing inter­est­ing­ly about how Loli­ta finds its place in a grand lit­er­ary tra­di­tion that’s more con­cerned with love, often scan­dalous love, than with sex per se. And, it’s in this sense that Loli­ta sits in the same tra­di­tion as Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na.

The video is actu­al­ly the sec­ond part of a longer inter­view. You can start with Part I here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Nabokov Tweaks Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”