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.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

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.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

A World in Your Ear

in Podcasts | November 25th, 2007

Times Online (the large UK-based news web­site) has post­ed today a fea­ture that offers an intro­duc­tion to pod­cast­ing. It explains the whos, hows, whats, etc. and pro­vides some help­ful links, includ­ing one to our col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts.

Pod­cast­ing offers an amaz­ing way to access free, high-qual­i­ty media, across many top­ics, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er you want it. And it’s some­thing that even techno­phobes can eas­i­ly fig­ure out. For more infor­ma­tion on how to work with pod­casts, see our our Pod­cast Primer. We take you through pod­cast­ing step-by-step. Also check out our exten­sive Pod­cast Library, which gives you access to audio­books, cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, sci­ence pod­casts, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es and more.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

No Country for Old Men: The Coen Brothers’ Latest

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 24th, 2007

The film­mak­ers who brought you Far­go, Bar­ton Fink, and O Broth­er, Where Art Thou? have released their lat­est film based on a nov­el by Cor­mac McCarthy. No Coun­try for Old Men is, as The New York­er puts it, “a return to the dark, sim­mer­ing days of their best work, in Blood Sim­ple and Miller’s Cross­ing,” which is anoth­er way of say­ing that the film is vio­lent, but also extreme­ly well made. So far, there’s been no short­age of pos­i­tive reviews (look here for exam­ple). But, as always, you’ll find the occa­sion­al pan. Below, we have post­ed some scenes from the film, and we’ll leave you with this print­ed inter­view with Joel and Ethan Coen.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

100 Notable Books of 2007

in Books | November 23rd, 2007

Gift buy­ing sea­son is now offi­cial­ly upon us. If books are part of your gift buy­ing plan, then have a look at this list just pub­lished by The New York Times. The 100 books list­ed here include fic­tion, poet­ry and non­fic­tion. Among oth­ers, you’ll find Philip Roth’s lat­est book, Exit Ghost, and I men­tion it sim­ply because you may want to lis­ten to an inter­view with Roth that aired ear­li­er this week (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).

You should also spend some time look­ing at our list of Life-Chang­ing Books, all of which were select­ed by our read­ers this fall. Def­i­nite­ly some good, time-test­ed reads on this list.

Final­ly, a quick heads up: Apple is run­ning a one day sale, which gives up to $100 off some com­put­ers and $30 off iPod clas­sics. Plus there’s free ship­ping on all prod­ucts. If you have Apple prod­ucts on your hol­i­day list, then it may be worth your time. Again, the sale ends at mid­night.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Nixon and Kissinger: Best of Allies and Rivals

in History, Politics | November 21st, 2007

Robert Dallek’s lat­est book recounts in plen­ti­ful detail (752 pages) the odd work­ing rela­tion­ship that exist­ed between Richard Nixon and Hen­ry Kissinger (Nixon’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and, lat­er, sec­re­tary of state). They were part­ly allies, in many ways strong­ly depen­dent upon one anoth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it came to mak­ing Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. But they also dis­trust­ed one anoth­er, some­times deeply, and they’d occa­sion­al­ly maneu­ver behind each oth­ers’ backs. Dallek’s book, Nixon and Kissinger: Part­ners in Pow­er, has just come out in paper­back, which brings us to this NPR inter­view with the author (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Dallek, who has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten exten­sive­ly on Kennedy and John­son, gives a good inter­view that out­lines “Nixinger’s” sub­stan­tive accom­plish­ments and the many behind-the-scenes intrigues. Give a lis­ten.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Kindle v. The Book

in Web/Tech | November 20th, 2007

Val­ley­wag, the blog that tracks Sil­i­con Val­ley and things tech, post­ed an amus­ing com­par­i­son between the tra­di­tion­al book and Ama­zon’s new elec­tron­ic read­er (see yes­ter­day’s post). It’s clear­ly meant to be more wit­ty than seri­ous, but it makes some obvi­ous and valid points along the way. (See Val­ley­wag arti­cle here)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

U2’s Joshua Tree Remastered and Expanded

in Music | November 20th, 2007

Today, U2 is releas­ing a remas­tered ver­sion of the album that turned a pop­u­lar band into a super band. Com­mem­o­rat­ing its 20th anniver­sary (how can it be that old already?), the Joshua Tree is being re-issued in four ver­sions — 1) a remas­tered sin­gle CD, 2) a 2‑CD set that fea­tures the remas­tered album and b‑sides/rarities from the Joshua Tree record­ing ses­sions, 3) a 2‑CD/1‑DVD col­lectible box that includes a 56 page book; and 4) a dou­ble vinyl pack­age.

The re-release of this album has a cer­tain unwel­comed com­mer­cial feel to it. I’ll grant that. But, regard­less, I’m buy­ing it. The Joshua Tree loomed in the back­ground dur­ing a great moment in my life. And just hear­ing it brings me back to the sounds and smells of that peri­od. So, if I can hear it remas­tered and get more songs from the record­ing ses­sions, I guess I’ll take it.

In the mean­time, I’ll leave you with these bits of free U2 media. First, spend some time with “Bono: The Rolling Stone Inter­view” (iTunes - Feed — Web Site). Here Jann Wen­ner, the founder of Rolling Stone, leads a long and wide-rang­ing inter­view with Bono Vox. The sec­ond item is a video (below) fea­tur­ing Bono singing and telling the sto­ry behind “Wave of Sor­ry,” one of the b‑sides from the new Joshua Tree release.

For more music pod­casts, click here.

Sub­scribe to our feed

Museums Crossing the Line?: An Interview with Jori Finkel

in Art, Museums | November 19th, 2007

The New York Times fea­tured yes­ter­day a piece that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about the art world. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, some major muse­ums are now allow­ing art gal­leries to finan­cial­ly under­write their exhi­bi­tions. And, of course, the gal­leries often have a direct finan­cial stake in the work on dis­play. This trend, which seems to be grow­ing, nat­u­ral­ly prompts ques­tions of influ­ence: are some of the most well-regard­ed muse­ums let­ting financ­ing — some­thing that’s always in short sup­ply — deter­mine what exhi­bi­tions they will put on dis­play? Are the lines between church and state get­ting crossed? (The muse­ums insist that the answer is no.) Then, there are ques­tions of com­merce: are non-prof­it muse­ums help­ing for-prof­it gal­leries, whether inten­tion­al­ly or not, bump up the pres­tige and finan­cial val­ue of their artists — some­thing which almost always redounds to the finan­cial ben­e­fit of the gal­leries?

I had a chance to catch up with Jori Finkel, the author of the arti­cle. She’s an arts jour­nal­ist based in LA where she cov­ers con­tem­po­rary art for The Times, among oth­er places. I asked her a few ques­tions and here’s what she had to say:

DC: What’s essen­tial­ly dri­ving the muse­ums to work so close­ly, per­haps too close­ly, with gal­leries? In short, how did we get here?

JF: One thing I dis­cov­ered in report­ing this sto­ry is just how com­mon it is for gal­leries to help out muse­ums behind the scenes—with research, with loans, and with things gal­leries do in the nor­mal course of busi­ness like fram­ing works of art. But it’s much more unusu­al to find gal­leries writ­ing checks for muse­um shows. Peo­ple I inter­viewed see this as a sign of the art world spin­ning out of con­trol or out of bal­ance because of all the mon­ey chas­ing con­tem­po­rary art late­ly. The imbal­ance being that gal­leries are rich­er than ever before, while muse­ums, which are not sup­posed to be part of the mar­ket, can find them­selves strug­gling or even beg­ging for fund­ing. A muse­um direc­tor once told me he felt his job was a lot like being a beggar—a glam­orous, well-con­nect­ed beg­gar, but a beg­gar.

DC: As I recall, some muse­ums have got­ten into trou­ble when seek­ing out spon­sors for exhi­bi­tions in the past — for exam­ple, from some cor­po­ra­tions. Is what’s hap­pen­ing now any dif­fer­ent, and does it raise par­tic­u­lar­ly new eth­i­cal con­cerns?

JF: We saw a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sies in the late 1990s over cor­po­rate sponsorship—like Armani report­ed­ly gift­ing the Guggen­heim $15 mil­lion and get­ting a show in return, and BMW under­writ­ing a motor­cyle show, also at the Guggen­heim. Then there was the scan­dal over the “Sen­sa­tion” show at the Brook­lyn Muse­um of Art, which fea­tured works from Charles Saatchi’s per­son­al col­lec­tion and was fund­ed in part by Saatchi. Sev­er­al of my sources men­tioned these cas­es because they think gallery spon­sor­ship rais­es rough­ly the same set of eth­i­cal ques­tions. The only dif­fer­ence they point­ed out is that gallery con­flicts might have the poten­tial to be more per­va­sive. (more…)

Free eBook on iTunes: The Millionaires

in Audio Books | November 18th, 2007

iTunes is serv­ing up a free­bie for audio­book fans. Writ­ten by Brad Meltzer, The Mil­lion­aires runs close to 15 hours. Pub­lish­ers Week­ly calls it “a fast-paced, fresh-scrubbed tale of finan­cial adven­ture.” Down­load it here, and check out our larg­er col­lec­tion of free audio­book pod­casts. (Source: Boing Boing)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Newsweek’s piece on Jeff Bezos’ plans to rein­vent the future of read­ing.

Sub­scribe to our feed