Stay in Bed & Grow Your Hair: John Lennon and Yoko Ono Protesting the Vietnam War

in Music | January 25th, 2008

This looks like it’s the real deal — Yoko Ono’s trib­ute to John Lennon on YouTube. Among the video clips housed in the col­lec­tion, you’ll find footage that recap­tures the “bed-ins” that John and Yoko famous­ly staged in Mon­tre­al and Ams­ter­dam in 1969 to protest the Viet­nam War. As Lennon puts it, there’s no bet­ter way to protest the war than to “stay in bed and grow your hair.” That’s a form of protest that the lost slack­er in me can appre­ci­ate.

The footage is accom­pa­nied by the song, “Give Peace a Chance,” which was writ­ten dur­ing the bed-in. It was fol­lowed lat­er that year by “War is Over! If You Want It — Hap­py Christ­mas From John and Yoko.” The heart­break­ing YouTube video set to this song has over one mil­lion views.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day
• What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot
• The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z
• The Com­plete Bea­t­les in One Hour (and The Sopra­nos in Sev­en Min­utes)

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Earthrise & Earthset in HD

in Science, Video - Science | January 23rd, 2008

In Novem­ber, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon with a high-def cam­era onboard. You can see the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set” by check­ing out these still images (Earth­rise and Earth­set) or watch­ing the video footage below, which has also been added to our YouTube playlist.

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Obama Speaks at Martin Luther King’s Church

in Current Affairs | January 23rd, 2008

The cel­e­bra­tion of Mar­tin Luther King’s birth­day was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent this year. It had a polit­i­cal edge to it, and unavoid­ably so. Dr. King’s work made pos­si­ble what we’re final­ly see­ing today — a black can­di­date mak­ing a seri­ous run at the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy. So it seemed entire­ly appro­pri­ate that Barack Oba­ma spoke Sun­day before the con­gre­ga­tion at Ebenez­er Bap­tist Church in Atlanta, where MLK preached long ago. In this 34-minute speech, you get a per­fect reminder of King’s lega­cy and also a stump speech deliv­ered in an ora­tor­i­cal style that King would appre­ci­ate. The video clip below has been viewed close to 450,000 times on YouTube. It’s also been added to our YouTube playlist.

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A Slew of New Audiobooks (for Free)

in Audio Books | January 23rd, 2008

Lib­rivox is on a roll late­ly. Since Decem­ber, the provider of free, pub­lic domain audio­books has released a num­ber of clas­sic works on audio. Below, we’ve list­ed some of the high­lights, which we’ve also includ­ed in our Audio­Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. (Here, you’ll also find free audio­books by oth­er providers.) For Lib­rivox’s com­plete cat­a­logue, click here.

2 B R 0 2 B, Kurt Von­negut (MP3 File)

A Child’s His­to­ry of Eng­land, Charles Dick­ens (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3s)

A Short His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States by Edward Chan­ning (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge, (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, Vol. IV, Charles Beard (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

Med­i­ta­tions on First Phi­los­o­phy, Rene Descartes (Full Zip - Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II, Edward Gib­bon (The Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3s)

The Life of Charle­magne, Ein­hard (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

The Mas­ter of the World, Jules Verne (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

The Prob­lems of Phi­los­o­phy, Bertrand Rus­sell (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The Three Mus­ke­teers, Alexan­dre Dumas (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The Works of Tac­i­tus (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

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Comments We Love to Hear

in Uncategorized | January 22nd, 2008

In one of our recent pieces, we high­light­ed a video that fea­tured law pro­fes­sor Cass Sun­stein inter­pret­ing the sec­ond amend­ment and ques­tion­ing whether it con­ferred the right to bear arms. In response, one of our read­ers offered this com­ment:

“Reeeeeal­ly good talk. My friend and I sat down to watch it, and before we start­ed, we laid out our posi­tions, basi­cal­ly one on each side of the debate. Sun­stein pro­ceeds to explain how we’re both wrong. Awe­some.”

I men­tion this sim­ply because it’s great to see the media (videos/podcasts) fea­tured here being used in this way. It’s great to see read­ers real­ly engag­ing with the mate­r­i­al and allow­ing it to shape their views. It’s the ulti­mate com­pli­ment in some ways. Thanks Ben.

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The Future of Ideas: Download Your Free Copy (and More)

in Law | January 20th, 2008

In 2001, Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig pub­lished The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Com­mons in a Con­nect­ed World. Here, Lessig launched a cam­paign against Amer­i­can copy­right law, argu­ing that it has become so restric­tive that it sti­fles cul­tur­al inno­va­tion and social progress .… which under­mines the orig­i­nal point of copy­right law. Back in 1787, the found­ing fathers includ­ed the “copy­right clause” in the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, look­ing to give authors a short-term incen­tive to inno­vate and ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the pub­lic good. (Arti­cle I, Sec­tion 8 empow­ers Con­gress “To pro­mote the Progress of Sci­ence and use­ful Arts, by secur­ing for lim­it­ed Times to Authors and Inven­tors the exclu­sive Right to their respec­tive Writ­ings and Dis­cov­er­ies.”). At the out­set, copy­right law pro­tect­ed forms of expres­sion — and let authors prof­it from them — for a min­i­mum of 14 years and a max­i­mum of 28. Then, the mate­r­i­al went into the pub­lic domain. But over time, the pro­tec­tions placed on cul­tur­al expres­sion have been extend­ed, and now works are pro­tect­ed so long as an author is alive, and then anoth­er 70 years. That’s poten­tial­ly up to 140 years or more. All of this has hap­pened because Con­gress has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied by large media cor­po­ra­tions (e.g. Dis­ney), want­i­ng to mon­e­tize their media assets (think, Mick­ey Mouse) indef­i­nite­ly.

Any­way, this is a long way of telling you that you can now down­load The Future of Ideas for free. Lessig per­suad­ed Ran­dom House to release the book under a “Cre­ative Com­mons” license, using the argu­ment that free e‑books will actu­al­ly stim­u­late sales of paper copies. (Do you real­ly want to read 350 pages on your com­put­er screen?)

This is not the first time that Lessig has worked with this mod­el. One of his pre­vi­ous books, Free Cul­ture: How Big Media Uses Tech­nol­o­gy and the Law to Lock Down Cul­ture and Con­trol Cre­ativ­i­ty, was also made freely avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. (You can down­load a free audio­book ver­sion or buy the paper ver­sion here.)

As a final note, I should men­tion that Lessig will be leav­ing behind his focus on these copy­right issues, and turn­ing his sights to cor­rup­tion in Wash­ing­ton. Below you can watch him out­line the prob­lem that he’s look­ing to tack­le.

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Resolving the Omnivore’s Dilemma: Pollan’s New Book

in Books | January 17th, 2008

Com­ing off of the run­away suc­cess of Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, Michael Pol­lan has just pub­lished a log­i­cal sequel — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Man­i­festo. His new book tells us what to eat, what not to eat, and how to stay healthy. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, his advice can be boiled down to a few words: “Eat food. Not too much. Most­ly plants.” But there is obvi­ous­ly much more to it than that. To fill in the gaps, you can buy the book or lis­ten to two recent inter­views with Pol­lan:

1.) The Leonard Lopate Show (Jan­u­ary 9) : MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site 

2.) Sci­ence Fri­day (Jan­u­ary 4): MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site

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Central Intelligence: From Ants to the Web

in Science, Video - Science | January 16th, 2008

Some­times order seem­ing­ly comes out of nowhere. It just mate­ri­al­izes. It hap­pens in ant colonies, in cities, on the web, in the brain. This episode of Radio Lab (MP3 — iTunes — Feed) takes a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how groups orga­nize and direct them­selves with­out the help of a leader, or some kind of cen­tral com­mand. The show includes con­ver­sa­tions with biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son, econ­o­mist James Surowiec­ki, and neu­rol­o­gists Oliv­er Sacks and Christof Koch. Also includ­ed in the mix is Deb­o­rah Gor­don, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who has spent years study­ing ants, which are indi­vid­u­al­ly incom­pe­tent but do remark­ably com­plex things as colonies. There’s more to ants than you’d first think, so we’ve also includ­ed below Deb­o­rah Gor­don’s pre­sen­ta­tion at the TED Talks con­fer­ence. It’s called “How Do Ants Know What to Do?” And it’s added to our YouTube Playlist.

The Long Shadow of Henry Kissinger

in History, Politics | January 16th, 2008

Although he has­n’t served in gov­ern­ment for more than 30 years, Hen­ry Kissinger still exer­cis­es more pow­er inter­na­tion­al­ly than Jim­my Carter, George HW Bush and Bill Clin­ton com­bined. That’s a strong claim, and it comes from Pro­fes­sor Jere­mi Suri, who has a new book out on the for­mer Sec­re­tary of State. In a wide-rang­ing and fast mov­ing con­ver­sa­tion (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Suri talks about Kissinger’s lega­cy and how his realpoli­tik for­eign pol­i­cy shapes Amer­i­can deci­sion mak­ing down to this very day.

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Harold Bloom on the Ghastly Decline of the Humanities (and on Obama’s Poetry)

in Literature | January 14th, 2008

Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site) is back. The radio show host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon hit some finan­cial snags last sum­mer and went off-air. Now, thanks to the Wat­son Insti­tute at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, the pro­gram has found new life, and it’s already regain­ing some of its old momen­tum.

Right before the New Year, the show aired a three-part inter­view with Harold Bloom, Amer­i­ca’s most well known lit­er­ary crit­ic. As always, Bloom does­n’t hes­i­tate to share his views here. But he saves his sharpest remarks for when he address­es the state of the human­i­ties in the Amer­i­can acad­e­my (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). For Bloom, a long­time pro­fes­sor at Yale, it’s not a pret­ty pic­ture. The human­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the study of lit­er­a­ture, has “com­mit­ted sui­cide” by “going in for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness to a sim­ply sick­en­ing degree” and “get­ting away from canon­i­cal stan­dards [and] cog­ni­tive and aes­thet­ic stan­dards.” The human­i­ties, Bloom sum­mar­i­ly says, “are not worth cel­e­brat­ing until they estab­lish them­selves as a dis­ci­pline again,” and, until some res­ur­rec­tion takes place, they won’t have the insti­tu­tion­al stand­ing of the social sci­ences. These are strong words, but frankly they’re among his milder com­ments. Have a lis­ten, and find the com­ments men­tioned above about 13 min­utes in.

For­tu­nate­ly, the con­ver­sa­tion does end on a pos­i­tive note (at least sort of). Bloom gives a kind nod to the poet­ry writ­ten by the young Barack Oba­ma (read it here), liken­ing his poems to the work of Carl Sand­burg and Langston Hugh­es. It’s fair­ly high praise, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that he’s will­ing to call Jim­my Carter the “worst poet in North Amer­i­ca.”

Below find the two oth­er seg­ments of the record­ed inter­view with Harold Bloom.

1) On Walt Whit­man (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

2) The Jazz Bridge (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

And also see our ear­li­er piece: The Art of Read­ing a Poem (Accord­ing to Harold Bloom). Here you get to lis­ten to a class where Bloom gives a crit­i­cal read­ing of a Wal­lace Stevens poem. This one is long on straight­for­ward schol­ar­ship and short on polemics.

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