Lawrence Lessig’s Last Speech on Free Culture (Watch it)

in Current Affairs, Law, Stanford, Video - Politics/Society | February 20th, 2008

Below we have post­ed the last lec­ture that Lawrence Lessig will ever present on Free Cul­ture. It’s an area where he has spent the past decade work­ing, and this talk offers an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Lessig’s thought and work on this issue. Giv­en at Stan­ford on Jan­u­ary 31, the pre­sen­ta­tion is one that Steve Jobs could appre­ci­ate. Very well done. So give it a watch below (or here). Also, if you’d like to get free dig­i­tal copies of Lessig’s major writ­ings on Free Cul­ture, look here.

As for what Lessig plans to do next. He has talked about com­bat­ing cor­rup­tion in Wash­ing­ton (some­thing he talks about here). That’s part of the plan, but he may do it by run­ning for Con­gress. Read this arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal and check out the new site: Lessig08.com

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

A Nation of Dunces Revisted: Video + Podcast

in Current Affairs | February 20th, 2008

Here’s a quick fol­low up to our post on Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son.  Since the orig­i­nal post, we have pulled togeth­er some media fea­tur­ing Jaco­by and her views on Amer­i­ca’s drift toward anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism.

First, you can watch her recent inter­view with Bill Moy­ers: Video — Mp3 — iTunes — Feed.

Next, lis­ten to this radio pro­gram — “Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in the US” — that fea­tures Jaco­by and a pan­el of thinkers: Mp3 — iTunes — Feed — Web site.

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.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

A Nation of Dunces?

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2008

There is a lot of pub­lic­i­ty this week around Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. The new work fits into the tra­di­tion of Richard Hof­s­tadter’s 1963 clas­sic, Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. And it seem­ing­ly moves in the same orbit as Al Gore’s The Assault on Rea­son (2007). The upshot of Jacoby’s argu­ment is that “Amer­i­cans are in seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al trou­ble — in dan­ger of los­ing our hard-won cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to a vir­u­lent mix­ture of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, anti-ratio­nal­ism and low expec­ta­tions.” As she goes on to say in this op-ed appear­ing in The Wash­ing­ton Post, we’re now liv­ing in a moment when Amer­i­cans are read­ing few­er books than ever, and they know stag­ger­ing­ly lit­tle about the world: Only 23 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with some col­lege edu­ca­tion can iden­ti­fy Iraq, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel on a map, even though the US has a tremen­dous amount at stake there. (Source: NY Times book review.) And one fifth of Amer­i­can adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. This is all pret­ty bad. But what makes mat­ters worse is the “alarm­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who have smug­ly con­clud­ed that they do not need to know such things in the first place.” Igno­rance has some­how strange­ly gone from vice to virtue.

What are the solu­tions? I guess you’ll have to get the book, or get mil­lions of your friends to read Open Cul­ture (wink).

UPDATE: You can catch Bill Moy­ers’ inter­view with Susan Jaco­by here: video — mp3 — iTunes — feed. This will let you take a clos­er look at Jacoby’s argu­ment. Thanks Muriel for the tip!

Relat­ed Piece:

Amer­i­ca’s Philoso­pher Pres­i­dent

Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Christian Darwin You Don’t Know

in Religion, Science | February 17th, 2008

At least in Amer­i­ca, Charles Dar­win has become the favorite whip­ping boy for many fun­da­men­tal­ists on the right. In one neat pack­age, you get in Dar­win all things deplorable. A god­less “sec­u­lar human­ist” who denied the sanc­ti­ty of human­i­ty, God’s prov­i­dence, and the integri­ty of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?

Some­where lost in today’s cul­ture wars is the real Charles Dar­win. Aired first in Octo­ber, this pro­gram, pro­duced by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Medi­a’s Speak­ing of Faith (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site), revis­its Dar­win’s life & thought with James Moore, a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar who has writ­ten Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist. And here’s the pic­ture that we get. Like many impor­tant sci­en­tists who came before him — Galileo, Coper­ni­cus and New­ton — Dar­win believed that sci­ence could help explain the laws of nature cre­at­ed by God. Fur­ther, he saw his Ori­gin of Species as describ­ing the forms of life that owed their exis­tence to God’s law — a law that expressed itself in nat­ur­al selec­tion. Read­ers will find that Dar­win’s text is lit­tered with ref­er­ences to cre­ation. And Dar­win, him­self, was not­ed for say­ing that when he wrote the book, his faith in God was as strong as that of a bish­op, although his faith did wane lat­ter in life. Sim­ply put, Dar­win was hard­ly the ene­my of reli­gion that many con­sid­er him today.

Again, you can access this pro­gram with the fol­low­ing links: (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Addi­tion­al­ly, you can access a free e‑text of On the Ori­gin of Species here, along with a free audio­book ver­sion here.

You may also want to check out a relat­ed pro­gram by Speak­ing of Faith: Ein­stein and the Mind of God

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Harvard Opens Scholarship, Freeing Up Knowledge and Budgets

in Harvard | February 13th, 2008

Yes­ter­day, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty passed a motion (see pro­pos­al here) that will require its fac­ul­ty mem­bers to pub­lish their schol­ar­ly arti­cles online. On the face of things, this marks a big vic­to­ry for the open access move­ment, which is all about mak­ing infor­ma­tion free and acces­si­ble to all. In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, the real win­ner may even­tu­al­ly be Har­vard’s library bud­get (and the future of schol­ar­ship itself).

One of the fig­ures behind the open­ing of Har­vard’s schol­ar­ship is Robert Darn­ton, an emi­nent his­to­ri­an who now over­sees Har­vard’s libraries. And, in a piece called The Case for Open Access, Darn­ton under­scores how dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing can relieve some impor­tant finan­cial pres­sures on the acad­e­my. Under the cur­rent pub­lish­ing mod­el, aca­d­e­mics write arti­cles for schol­ar­ly jour­nals and then the jour­nals get sold back to the uni­ver­si­ty libraries at exor­bi­tant prices, with some cost­ing more than $20,000 per year. And here the real prob­lem begins: “in order to pur­chase the jour­nals, libraries have had to reduce their acqui­si­tions of mono­graphs; the reduced demand among libraries for mono­graphs has forced uni­ver­si­ty press­es to cut back on the pub­li­ca­tion of them; and the near impos­si­bil­i­ty of pub­lish­ing their dis­ser­ta­tions has jeop­ar­dized the careers of a whole gen­er­a­tion of schol­ars in many fields.” Dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing solves this spi­ral­ing prob­lem in a straight­for­ward way. The cost of pub­lish­ing direct­ly to the web is neg­li­gi­ble. There’s no pulp to buy, no pub­lish­er’s over­head to pay; no cor­po­ra­tion (e.g., Reed Else­vi­er, the own­er of many schol­ar­ly jour­nals) look­ing to pad its prof­its and get thanked by Wall Street. The cost sav­ings are every­where.

The tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers will be quick to point out a flaw in the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing mod­el — name­ly, that it gen­er­al­ly means work­ing out­side of a peer-review sys­tem that ensures the over­all integri­ty of research. But my sense is that there’s no rea­son that dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and peer review can’t go togeth­er. It’s not hard to imag­ine ways in which con­ven­tion­al forms of peer review could be pre­served. But dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing also makes pos­si­ble new forms of peer review that did­n’t exist before. Pub­lish­ing to the web will almost nec­es­sar­i­ly increase the over­all read­er­ship of arti­cles, which will encour­age more fact check­ing and crit­i­cal com­men­tary in turn. And, because we’re pub­lish­ing on the web, these schol­ar­ly arti­cles can become liv­ing doc­u­ments that get bet­ter over time. It’s a new way of doing things. It may take a gen­er­a­tion to get all the kinks worked out and habits changed. But we will get there.

As a final aside, if you’re inter­est­ed in the Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources (OER) move­ment, then you’ll want to check this new site spon­sored by the Hewlett Foun­da­tion. It aggre­gates blogs that reg­u­lar­ly focus on all things OER, offer­ing you a great start­ing point for read­ing in this area.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Vegetable Orchestra

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 13th, 2008

It’s right up there with the Ukulele Orches­tra per­form­ing ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it.’ Both are added to our YouTube Playlist, which now has 130 sub­scribers, which is not bad for a fledg­ling col­lec­tion.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Psychedelics Revisited

in Science, Video - Science | February 10th, 2008

On Fri­day, we men­tioned the BBC pro­duc­tion called “What on Earth is Wrong with Grav­i­ty.” Below is anoth­er video by the same pro­duc­ers called “Psy­che­del­ic Sci­ence,” which sur­veys the past and present of psy­che­del­ic drugs, and the new era of sci­en­tists explor­ing ways to use these drugs again for ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es (i.e., the treat­ment of schiz­o­phre­nia and addic­tion).

via Boing Boing

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Podcasts | February 9th, 2008

Every now and then, we like to list the top rank­ing edu­ca­tion­al on pod­casts on iTunes. No mat­ter how much time goes by, one thing seems to stay the same: peo­ple like pod­casts that teach for­eign lan­guages, par­tic­u­lar­ly Span­ish, above all else. Have a look, and if you want to learn more for­eign lan­guages, vis­it our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. It cov­ers 26 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

#1. Cof­fee Break Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#2. Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing iTunes Feed Web Site

#3. Learn Span­ish at SpanishPod101 iTunes Feed Web Site

#4. Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide iTunes Feed Web Site

#5. Learn to Speak Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#6. The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site

#7. Span­ish Pod­casts for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site

#8. Learn French with Cof­fee Break French iTunes Feed Web Site

#9. LearnItalianPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#10. JapanesePod101.com iTunes Feed Web Site

(more…)

The Mystery of Gravity

in Uncategorized | February 7th, 2008

Cour­tesy of the BBC, this video fea­tures Bri­an Cox, a par­ti­cle physi­cist and ex D:Ream key­board play­er, who trav­els across the US, fir­ing lasers at the moon and going wild in the Ari­zona desert, all in order to under­stand the deep secrets of grav­i­ty — some­thing that nei­ther New­ton nor Ein­stein ful­ly under­stood. It’s in grav­i­ty, Cox thinks, that we can find the mean­ing and log­ic of the Uni­verse.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

Sub­scribe to Our Feed