MIT & Google for High School Students

in Google, Math, MIT | December 2nd, 2007

Here’s a quick fyi on two ini­tia­tives announced for high school stu­dents this past week:

For six years, MIT’s Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive has done a great job bring­ing free edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to adult learn­ers world­wide. (More on the ini­tia­tive here.) Now, it has launched a sec­tion of its web­site devot­ed to high school stu­dents and teach­ers. Here, you’ll find a series of “MIT intro­duc­to­ry cours­es” with­in 11 major areas of study (e.g. Engi­neer­ing, For­eign Lan­guages, Math, etc.). Plus, you can access infor­ma­tion that sup­ple­ments AP Biol­o­gy, Physics and Cal­cu­lus cours­es. This is a trove of mate­r­i­al that the ambi­tious stu­dent will cer­tain­ly want to explore.

Next, Google announced its first open source con­test for pre-uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. Called the “Google High­ly Open Par­tic­i­pa­tion Con­test” (a bit of a mouth­ful), it’s intend­ed to “help intro­duce sec­ondary school and high school stu­dents to open source soft­ware devel­op­ment and to encour­age young peo­ple through oppor­tu­ni­ties in the fields of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math.” For more infor­ma­tion you can click here and here.

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The Beginnings of New Journalism: Capote’s In Cold Blood

in Books | November 30th, 2007

Talk has recent­ly focused on the pass­ing of Nor­man Mail­er, a nov­el­ist remem­bered for many things. As The New York Times put it, he was “a prodi­gious drinker and drug tak­er, a wom­an­iz­er, a devot­ed fam­i­ly man, a would-be politi­cian who ran for may­or of New York, a hip­ster exis­ten­tial­ist, an anti­war pro­test­er, an oppo­nent of women’s lib­er­a­tion and an all-pur­pose feud­er and short-fused brawler, who with the slight­est provo­ca­tion would hap­pi­ly engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and ran­dom punch-throw­ing.” He was, of course, also a nov­el­ist, and, for some, “the great­est nov­el­ist of the sec­ond half of the Amer­i­can cen­tu­ry.” That’s at least how George Pack­er sized him up on his New York­er blog.

For Pack­er, Mail­er achieved his lit­er­ary great­ness when he ven­tured into the realm of “New Jour­nal­ism,” help­ing to cre­ate a new genre that brought fresh lit­er­ary tech­niques to con­ven­tion­al jour­nal­ism and his­tor­i­cal writ­ing. We need only men­tion The Exe­cu­tion­er’s Song, Mail­er’s heav­i­ly-researched account of the exe­cu­tion of Gary Gilmore, that earned him the Pulitzer Prize in fic­tion in 1980.

Although Tom Wolfe offi­cial­ly coined the expres­sion “New Jour­nal­ism” in 1973 (see the book with the same title and relat­ed book review), this lit­er­ary approach was not entire­ly new. Oth­er authors had already writ­ten mas­ter­pieces in the genre but referred to it by dif­fer­ent names. More than any­one else, Tru­man Capote gave form to the genre when he pub­lished In Cold Blood in 1965. Famous­ly cen­tered around the 1959 mur­der of the Clut­ter fam­i­ly in rur­al Kansas, this “non­fic­tion nov­el” was writ­ten to give real­i­ty to some­thing Capote believed for 20 years — that jour­nal­ism was “the most under­es­ti­mat­ed, the least explored of lit­er­ary medi­ums” and that in the right hands “jour­nal­ism, reportage, could be forced to yield a seri­ous new art form,” (See Capote’s inter­view with George Plimp­ton, 1966.)

In Cold Blood orig­i­nal­ly came out in four suc­ces­sive print­ings of The New York­er. And as the cur­rent edi­tor of the mag­a­zine describes it, “peo­ple were lit­er­al­ly chas­ing the deliv­ery trucks down the street.” Quite nice­ly, you can find the first install­ment of the nov­el in the New York­er’s online archive (for free). It cov­ers the first 70 pages of the cur­rent­ly pub­lished book, and here the stage for the rest of the non­fic­tion nov­el is set. To para­phrase a line from the recent film star­ring Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man, it’s in this sec­tion of the nov­el where two Amer­i­c­as col­lide — the qui­et con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca and its vio­lent under­bel­ly.

Quick after­thought: The New York­er should con­sid­er reprint­ing the four copies of the mag­a­zine which intro­duced In Cold Blood to the world. I imag­ine that copyright/contractual issues might stand in the way. But if they did­n’t, it could be a pret­ty excit­ing media event and read­ing expe­ri­ence.
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The 10 Best Books of 2007

in Books | November 29th, 2007

After recent­ly pub­lish­ing its list of 100 Notable Books of 2007, The New York Times has nar­rowed things down and select­ed The 10 Best Books of 2007 — five fic­tion, and five non­fic­tion. Have a look.

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Predictions for the World in 2008

in Current Affairs | November 28th, 2007

The Econ­o­mist has issued its pre­dic­tions for the world in 2008, and here’s what they’re bank­ing on: The Democ­rats, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hillary Clin­ton, nar­row­ly win the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Mean­while the Unit­ed States, which has nev­er met a bub­ble it does­n’t like, will get mired down with hous­ing and cred­it prob­lems. And look­ing for a new eco­nom­ic engine, the world will turn to Chi­na and India. Even bet­ter for Chi­na, it will host the Olympics in Bei­jing, win many medals, and feel like it has arrived (or rather re-arrived) as a nation. But per­haps feel­ing a bit too proud, it might ratch­et up ten­sions with Tai­wan, while the U.S. sur­pris­es every­one, even itself, by pos­si­bly strik­ing a “grand bar­gain” with Iran. Oth­er than that, George Bush will accom­plish lit­tle dur­ing the last year of his admin­is­tra­tion, and politi­cians will talk lots about cli­mate change. But whether they actu­al­ly do any­thing is any­one’s guess.

For more pre­dic­tions, check out The Econ­o­mist’s full write-up, and keep an eye on The Econ­o­mist pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) where I’m sure these issues will get fuller cov­er­age in the com­ing days.

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The MIT Lecture Browser & A Beautiful Mind

in MIT, Science | November 27th, 2007

MIT has released a new search engine that draws on speech recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy and lets users search MIT audio & video lec­tures by key­word. For exam­ple, if you type “NASA” into the search box, the search results will include all of the instances where a speak­er utters the word NASA in a record­ed lec­ture. (You can get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on the new search engine here.)

Now, what’s nice about using this exam­ple is that a “NASA” search will bring you to an intrigu­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Sylvia Nasar. (Click here and type “NASA” or “Sylvia.”) She’s the author of the bestelling book, A Beau­ti­ful Mind, which offers a bio­graph­i­cal account of the Nobel Prize-win­ning math­e­mati­cian John Nash and his strug­gles with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia. The book was turned into an Acad­e­my Award-win­ning film, and here you can find Nasar deliv­er­ing a lec­ture at MIT called “A Beau­ti­ful Mind: Genius, Mad­ness, Reawak­en­ing.” She’s a very able speak­er and tells a good sto­ry. Have a look. (You can also access Nasar’s talk here.)

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How to Watch DVDs on Your iPod?

in Podcasts, Web/Tech | November 27th, 2007

The answer is sim­ple: Hand­brake. This free, open source soft­ware (which works on MacOS X, Lin­ux and Win­dows) makes it sim­ple to load and watch DVDs on your video iPod. Here are some help­ful instruc­tions to get you start­ed.

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The Graduate at 40

in Film | November 27th, 2007

The film that spoke to a gen­er­a­tion of alien­at­ed youth dur­ing the 1960s is now 40 years old (and actu­al­ly look­ing much tamer than it first did). To mark the occa­sion, a 40th anniver­sary col­lec­tor’s edi­tion DVD has been released, filled with a good amount of extra mate­ri­als. Also, Fresh Air broad­cast­ed a show last week (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that brought togeth­er inter­views with var­i­ous mem­bers of the film’s cast and crew. As Lar­ry David would say, it’s pret­ty, pret­ty, pret­ty good. And, by the way, have a look back at our ear­li­er post: Meet Lar­ry David (in Video)

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The Future of Print

in Literature, Media | November 27th, 2007

WNY­C’s lat­est On The Media (iTunes — Feed — Site) cov­ers the cri­sis of tra­di­tion­al book pub­lish­ing in a new media age. While Ama­zon rolls out the Kin­dle and more and more con­tent comes out in pure dig­i­tal form, we’re still pub­lish­ing more books than ever before. One inter­est­ing note from the pro­gram is that pub­lish­ers have dis­cov­ered that offer­ing more free con­tent online (i.e. not just excerpts but whole chap­ters of new books) serves to increase sales even more. The show was great–worth a lis­ten.

Guest on FORA.tv This Week

in Uncategorized | November 26th, 2007

Here’s a quick fyi: I’m mak­ing a small guest appear­ance on FORA.tv this week.

In case you’re not famil­iar with it, FORA.tv hosts a large and con­stant­ly grow­ing col­lec­tion of videos that fea­ture impor­tant thinkers grap­pling with con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al, social and polit­i­cal ques­tions. Or, put sim­ply, it’s YouTube made intel­li­gent. As you’ll see, their mis­sion is rather sim­i­lar to our own. So I was pleased when they asked me to be “a guest” for the week and high­light some of my favorite videos from their video trove. Here is what I select­ed:

• The 20th Cen­tu­ry on Tri­al: Nor­man Mail­er
• Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse
• Fran­cis Fukuya­ma: The End Of His­to­ry Revis­it­ed
• Jim­my Wales on Wikipedia

Seg­ments of FORA’s talks are also avail­able by audio and video pod­cast. (Get more info here.) Also, on a relat­ed note, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty spear­heads a some­what sim­i­lar video ser­vice, except that it is more specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic affairs. It’s called UChan­nel. (Have a look here.) Final­ly, if you like what FORA and UChan­nel have to offer, you may also want to spend some time with our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Our full pod­cast library is here.

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When Bob Dylan Went Electric: Newport, 1965

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 25th, 2007

First there was the folk Bob Dylan. Then came the elec­tric Bob Dylan. And it all hap­pened one night at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. The date was July 25, 1965.

In the clip below, you can see how the tran­si­tion was received. In a word, not well. Appear­ing in front of a folk audi­ence that lament­ed the rise of rock, Dylan hit the stage with his elec­tric band and played three songs, includ­ing “Like a Rolling Stone.” Much of the crowd react­ed vio­lent­ly (you can hear it at the end of the clip), and Pete Seeger, the folk leg­end, raged back­stage: “Get that dis­tor­tion out of his voice … It’s ter­ri­ble. If I had an axe, I’d chop the micro­phone cable right now.” After his short set, Dylan tried to exit the stage. But, as you’ll see, he was coaxed back, with acoustic gui­tar in hand, to give the peo­ple what they want­ed — an excel­lent ver­sion of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. For more on this con­tro­ver­sy (which the music world even­tu­al­ly got over), check out Mar­tin Scors­ese’s doc­u­men­tary “No Direc­tion Home” as well as this Wikipedia entry.

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