Intelligent Design on Trial

in Religion, Video - Science | November 16th, 2007

Ear­li­er this week, PBS’s NOVA aired a two-hour pro­gram revis­it­ing the con­tro­ver­sial fed­er­al case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School Dis­trict, which asked whether “intel­li­gent design” could be taught in Amer­i­can schools along­side Dar­win’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. Intel­li­gent design essen­tial­ly holds that “life is too com­plex to have evolved nat­u­ral­ly and there­fore must have been designed by an intel­li­gent agent.” And, along the way, it effec­tive­ly attempts to make God’s role in cre­at­ing the world a sci­en­tif­ic fact, not an item of faith. You can see how the back­ers of intel­li­gent design ulti­mate­ly fared. NOVA has made the pro­gram avail­able online for free. It’s divid­ed into 12 videos, and you can watch them here. For a com­plete descrip­tion of the pro­gram, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• 5,000 Years of Reli­gion in 90 Sec­onds
• Phi­los­o­phy Talk and Intel­li­gent Design

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Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Some Yo-Yo Ma and More: Free Classical Music Podcasts

in Music, Uncategorized | November 14th, 2007

With last year being the 250th anniver­sary of Mozart’s birth, there was no short­age of pod­casts ded­i­cat­ed to Mozart’s mas­ter­pieces. First, Radio Swe­den (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) reis­sued a dig­i­tal archive of Mozart record­ings by the Roy­al Swedish Opera from the 1940s and 1950s. And, along very sim­i­lar lines, Dan­marks Radio (Feed — Web Site) issued pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies record­ed by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny
Orches­tra. (You’ll find here sym­phonies num­bers 15, 17, 23, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, and 41. Since the web site is in Dan­ish, we’d rec­om­mend access­ing these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the rss feed list­ed above.) Last­ly, we should men­tion here that, as part of last year’s fes­tiv­i­ties, The Inter­na­tion­al Mozart Foun­da­tion pub­lished online for the first time the entire­ty of of Mozart’s musi­cal scores.

Along with Mozart, you can find plen­ty of Beethoven. We have high­light­ed here before, but it’s worth not­ing again, Deutsche Welle’s pod­cast col­lec­tion called Beethoven­fest (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). You’ll want to give it a look, and also see the pod­cast col­lec­tion put togeth­er by the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This edu­ca­tion­al series offers an exten­sive overview and record­ings of Beethoven’s work, as well as that of Arnold Schoen­berg. You can also catch more Beethoven (as well as a lit­tle Mozart and Bach) with the pod­cast series called The Con­cert (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which fea­tures record­ings from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um in Boston.

Speak­ing of Bach, you may want to give some time to these two pod­casts: Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia (Feed — Web Site).

Let’s now leave you with a few oth­er good finds: Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) lets you lis­ten in on record­ings from the annu­al Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, plus more. An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) offers essen­tial­ly what the title says. Final­ly, we’d rec­om­mend Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance (iTunes Feed Web Site), which con­sists of clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston; The New York Phi­la­har­mon­ic Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) which intro­duces you to the music and per­form­ers fea­tured in the con­certs of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic; and From the Top. Live from Carnegie Hall Video Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast that show­cas­es the top-notch skills and com­pelling sto­ries of Amer­i­ca’s best young clas­si­cal musi­cians.

Oth­er Pod­cast Sur­veys:

• Lis­ten­ing to Poet­ry Pod­casts
• Sci­ence Pod­casts At a Glance
• Bet­ter Think­ing Through Pod­casts

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20+ Public Domain E‑Book Sources

in Books | November 13th, 2007

Mash­able has post­ed a list of over 20 sites from where you can down­load lots of e‑books, and it’s all appar­ent­ly legal. Here’s the list.

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Want free audio­books? Check out this col­lec­tion.

Not Your Father’s Scientific American

in Science | November 13th, 2007

The pop­u­lar sci­ence mag­a­zine, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, has been around a long time, since 1845 in fact. That makes it the old­est peri­od­i­cal in con­tin­u­ous pub­li­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States. Now, the mag­a­zine that your great-great-great grand­fa­ther read has launched a new web­site called 60 Sec­ond Sci­ence. Based on Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s dai­ly pod­cast that’s also called 60 Sec­ond Sci­ence (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the new site gets updat­ed 12 times a day, and it fea­tures its own audio/video pod­casts, links to key Sci­Am arti­cles and oth­er good stuff. Have a look, and don’t for­get to check out our broad­er col­lec­tion of Sci­ence Pod­casts.

Bob Dylan — Like A Rolling Stone 1966

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2007

It’s the num­ber one song on Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine’s list of The 500 Great­est Songs of All Time. But could a mag­a­zine with its name say oth­er­wise?

As a quick PS, check out the new Bob Dylan Pod­cast (iTunes — Web Site). Host­ed by Pat­ti Smith, this pod­cast looks at Dylan’s friends and ear­ly influ­ences, and also col­lab­o­ra­tors dis­cuss their close rela­tion­ships with Dylan, the sto­ries behind his great­est songs and oth­er mem­o­rable moments of his career.

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201 Stories by Anton Chekhov

in Science | November 11th, 2007

Among Rus­si­a’s great­est writ­ers, Anton Chekhov rev­o­lu­tion­ized Russ­ian dra­ma and short-sto­ry writ­ing. In this col­lec­tion, you’ll find 201 trans­lat­ed sto­ries pre­sent­ed in the order of their pub­li­ca­tion. If you’re new to Chekhov, it’s rec­om­mend­ed by the web site that you begin (and I’m quot­ing ver­ba­tim) “with a few humor­ous sto­ries, such as Oh! the Pub­lic!, The Ora­tor, and A Trans­gres­sion. Next try one of Chekhov’s most mov­ing sto­ries, Mis­ery. Among the longer sto­ries, I sug­gest begin­ning with Ward No. 6, The Duel, and The Steppe, which con­tains the most famous thun­der­storm in lit­er­a­ture. Final­ly, be sure to read the famous tril­o­gy made of The Man in a Case, Goose­ber­ries, and About Love.” (Source: Metafil­ter)

Get free audio­book of fic­tion and non-fic­tion clas­sics. Vis­it our Audio­Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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100 Photographs that Changed the World

in Media | November 9th, 2007

Dig­i­tal Jour­nal­ist, a web site affil­i­at­ed with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, has post­ed 100 world-chang­ing pho­tographs by the icon­ic LIFE mag­a­zine. You can read the intro­duc­tion to the col­lec­tion here, or start with the first pow­er­ful image and then advance through a sam­pling of the oth­er impact-filled images that topped their list.

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Feed read­ers, check out our Pod­cast Library here.

Deadhead Hunter and Dirty Hairy

in Comedy | November 7th, 2007

Catch the full col­lec­tion of ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toons here on YouTube and our per­son­al favorite here.

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How Radiohead’s Experiment Turned Out

in Music | November 7th, 2007

In mid-Octo­ber, Radio­head released its lat­est album, In Rain­bows, and began a fair­ly nov­el exper­i­ment. They cut the record labels out of the equa­tion and let fans down­load the album direct­ly from the Radio­head web site, for what­ev­er price they saw fit. A few weeks lat­er, some finan­cial fig­ures are com­ing out, giv­ing us a sense of how well the exper­i­ment went.

Accord­ing to a study by com­Score Inc., 62% of the esti­mat­ed 1.2 mil­lion vis­i­tors (in Octo­ber) to the Radio­head site down­loaded the album and paid noth­ing what­so­ev­er. The remain­ing 38% paid an aver­age of $6. Over­all, the band aver­aged $2.26 per down­load and net­ted about $2.7 mil­lion dol­lars in total, a num­ber that’s well below the ear­li­er esti­mates of $6-$10 mil­lion. In the end, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that the band gets to keep all the rev­enue (instead of shar­ing it with the record com­pa­nies), and appar­ent­ly the traf­fic to Radio­head­’s web site gen­er­at­ed hand­some incre­men­tal sales of high-priced dis­cbox­es. It’s esti­mat­ed that for every $1 spent on dig­i­tal down­loads, anoth­er $2 was spent on hard copies, which makes Radio­head­’s over­all take even high­er. What con­clu­sions to draw? One is that Radio­head fans did­n’t exact­ly deliv­er the goods and demon­strate the pow­er of this new direct dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el. It may have worked mod­er­ate­ly well for Radio­head. But will a less­er band take the risk? Not so like­ly. At least not now.

A quick PS: It looks like Radio­head is plan­ning to do its first web­cast in five years. Watch for more infor­ma­tion here.

Source: com­Score press release and blog

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America’s Endless Capacity to Reward Failure

in Current Affairs | November 7th, 2007

Please God give me the luck to enter the upper echelons of the American elite — the upper, upper crust where normal rules don’t apply, where illogic reigns, where failure doesn’t have consequences, only out-sized rewards. Please give me the luck to fail splendidly one day (even to bring a major company or a nation itself to near ruin) and yet get nothing less than the platinum parachute that a lucky few deserve:

• Stan O’Neal, CEO of Mer­ill Lynch, recent­ly led the bank to take a $7.9 bil­lion write-down because of bad deals in the sub-prime mar­ket, result­ing in a $2.3 bil­lion loss, the worst loss in 93 years for Mer­rill. As he began to feel the heat, O’Neal secret­ly start­ed look­ing to sell the bank to Wachovia, a deal that could have per­son­al­ly net­ted him an esti­mat­ed $250 mil­lion. Instead, the board of direc­tors oust­ed him last week and he got to walk with $161.5 mil­lion in secu­ri­ties and retire­ment ben­e­fits, the fifth-largest exit-pay pack­age for a U.S. exec­u­tive. It’s good to be the king.

• As the sub­prime mort­gage mar­ket melt­ed down this sum­mer, James Cayne, the chief exec­u­tive of Bear Stearns, was nowhere to be found. In this midst of the cri­sis, two of the bank’s hedge funds col­lapsed. But, accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, Cayne was out of town for ten days and incom­mu­ni­ca­do. No cell­phone. No Black­ber­ry. Noth­ing. Where was he? Play­ing in a bridge tour­na­ment in Nashville (and it’s alleged by the Jour­nal that he has a pen­chant for smok­ing pot at such tour­na­ments). For­tu­nate­ly, his team placed in the top third of the com­pe­ti­tion, and he gets to keep his high­ly lucra­tive job. In the mean­time, Cayne let War­ren Spec­tor, the com­pa­ny’s Pres­i­dent, take the fall. And Bear just announced that it’s lay­ing off 2% of its work­force. It’s good to be the king.

• Don Rums­feld, the for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense, used the Iraq War as a prov­ing ground for his the­o­ries about how the US army should fight the mod­ern war and defend itself against the unknown and the unex­pect­ed. Rums­feld’s mantra was to keep the armies small, mobile and high-tech. And that’s what we did for four years in Iraq, despite mount­ing evi­dence that we had too few troops on the ground. Rums­feld, who could nev­er adjust his the­o­ries to the real­i­ties in Iraq (see this piece in the Armed Forces Jour­nal), even­tu­al­ly got forced out, leav­ing behind a mess that will con­sume the US for a decade or more. What’s the fall­out? Months lat­er, Rums­feld gets Stan­ford’s seal of approval. In Sep­tem­ber, Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion announced that he will join as a “dis­tin­guished vis­it­ing fel­low” where he will par­tic­i­pate on a task force of schol­ars and experts focus­ing on “issues per­tain­ing to ide­ol­o­gy and ter­ror” in a post 9–11 envi­ron­ment. It’s pre­cise­ly the same flawed vision that land­ed the US in a deep hole that the Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed think tank is choos­ing to hon­or. Once again, it’s good to be the king.

Amen.

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