On the Road: The Original Scroll

in Books | August 31st, 2007

Jack Ker­ouac’s “On the Road” is turn­ing 50 this month, some­thing we recent­ly not­ed. And to com­mem­o­rate the event, Viking has just pub­lished the orig­i­nal draft of the nov­el (check it out here) that Ker­ouac banged out in three quick weeks, in a New York apart­ment, on eight long sheets of trac­ing paper, which he lat­er taped togeth­er to cre­ate a 120-foot scroll (see pho­to). This new pub­li­ca­tion offers a repro­duc­tion of Ker­ouac’s first draft and lets you see how the beat clas­sic changed from ini­tial draft to pub­li­ca­tion. In the scroll, Ker­ouac uses the real names of friends instead of pseu­do­nyms, and some of the details are a lit­tle more graph­ic. If you want to see footage of Ker­ouac read­ing from “On the Road,” feel free to refer back to our post on August 15.

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Vis­it our Audio­books Pod­cast Col­lec­tion for free down­loads of major lit­er­ary works.

100 Great American Speeches

in Audio Books, English Language, History | August 30th, 2007

Amer­i­can Rhetoric has com­piled its list of the top 100 Amer­i­can speech­es, all of which can be con­ve­nient­ly accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speech­es list­ed here are known for their elo­quence, and many for the piv­otal role they played in effect­ing major polit­i­cal and social change. The com­pi­la­tion lets you lis­ten to F.D.R. lead­ing the US through the Depres­sion ( “There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself” ) as well as through World War II with his Fire­side Chats. Then, there is Tru­man and Kennedy ( “Ich bin ein Berlin­er” ) fight­ing the Cold War, Nixon bol­ster­ing sup­port for the Viet­nam War with his “Great Silent Major­i­ty” speech, and Mar­tin Luther King ( “I Have a Dream” ) and Mal­colm X ( “The Bal­lot or the Bul­let” ) press­ing for civ­il rights in their dif­fer­ent ways.

The speech­es can be heard large­ly in full, and, while most are polit­i­cal in con­tent, some gems are not. Take for exam­ple William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address, Ursu­la Le Guin’s “A Left-Hand­ed Com­mence­ment Address,” and Elie Wiesel’s “The Per­ils of Indif­fer­ence.” Give these speech­es some time, and it might be a while before you come back up for air.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Check out our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion
• Voic­es of Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents
• Vin­tage Radio Archive
• Mal­colm X at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty 1964

Learn the Art of Photography: The Nikon Way

in Art | August 28th, 2007

The advent of dig­i­tal cam­eras has changed pho­tog­ra­phy as we know it. It has dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ered the cost of pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’re now snap­ping more pho­tos than ever before. But we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures.

This is where Nikon steps in. Their cam­eras make casu­al pho­tog­ra­phers immense­ly bet­ter than they actu­al­ly are. (Trust me, I know.) And Nikon has now set up a free Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Cen­ter that offers tuto­ri­als and tips for tak­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pic­tures — por­traits, trav­el pho­tos, nature pho­tog­ra­phy, etc. Ques­tions that get tack­led here include, but are not lim­it­ed, to: “How can I take bet­ter por­traits?” “How can I take pho­tos at dusk with­out hav­ing them look com­plete­ly dark?” “How do I get true-to-life skin tones?” “How can I get the mov­ing fig­ures in my pho­tos to look like they’re in motion and not frozen?” “My por­traits have red eyes. How can I pre­vent this?” Give a tour of the Learn­ing Cen­ter here. And thanks to Life­hack­er for putting this on our radar screen.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• If you’d like to learn about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy using pod­casts, check out Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And, for that mat­ter, if you need to learn how to use a pod­cast, spend some time with our Pod­cast Primer here.

• Also Slate recent­ly put togeth­er a nice gallery of images fea­tur­ing the work of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, a mas­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern pho­to­jour­nal­ism.

• Final­ly, NPR’s Fresh Air just aired an inter­view with pho­to­jour­nal­ist Paul Wat­son on Wit­ness­ing War (iTunes Feed Web Site). It’s an intrigu­ing but also quite haunt­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

15 Ways to Avert a Climate Crisis

in Current Affairs, Science, Video - Science | August 27th, 2007

And now we bring you a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment.…

Below, you can watch Al Gore talk about tan­gi­ble ways that you can be a good envi­ron­men­tal cit­i­zen. The first 5 min­utes start with some wit and ban­ter that would have served him well in 2000; the next 10 min­utes get down to some busi­ness.

A few, quick relat­ed items: Google offers a free online copy of Gore’s major book on the envi­ron­ment, Earth in the Bal­ance. Pub­lished first in 1992, the book demon­strates, among oth­er things, Gore’s sus­tained com­mit­ment to this issue. Next, if you’ve nev­er seen An Incon­ve­nient Truth, then you may want to give a lis­ten to Gore’s speech at Stan­ford’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness (lis­ten on iTunes here). It cov­ers much of the same ground. Final­ly, this all reminds me of a tele­vi­sion exposé that Bill Moy­ers aired a few months back. It’s called “Is God Green?,” and it takes a lengthy look at how con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal move­ments in the US are increas­ing­ly tak­ing glob­al warm­ing seri­ous­ly as an issue. (You can watch it here.) And if you know Amer­i­ca, you know that’s essen­tial for chang­ing the nation’s envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies.

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A Short History of Man, God, and Political Philosophy

in Current Affairs, Harvard, Politics | August 24th, 2007

In case you missed it, The New York Times pub­lished a lengthy arti­cle — The Pol­i­tics of God — last week­end which essen­tial­ly traces how the thought of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and oth­er major polit­i­cal philoso­phers gave us sec­u­lar pol­i­tics, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. They’re inno­va­tions with many upsides, but also the down­side that they put us at an intel­lec­tu­al dis­tance from entire regions where faith still gov­erns polit­i­cal affairs. This includes large swathes of the Mid­dle East and oth­er areas with­in the “Mus­lim orbit.” It’s a good piece to read if you’ve ever won­dered how phi­los­o­phy tan­gi­bly shapes our mod­ern world. Writ­ten by Mark Lil­la, a Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, the high­ly-read­able arti­cle is adapt­ed from his new book, The Still­born God: Reli­gion, Pol­i­tics, and the Mod­ern West. Get the arti­cle here, and don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our feed.

Relat­ed Con­tent for Phi­los­o­phy Buffs:

• Phi­los­o­phy Bites (Philoso­phers Inter­views on Pod­cast)
• Enlight­en­ment on iTunes: The Phi­los­o­phy of Immanuel Kant
• Phi­los­o­phy Talk and Intel­li­gent Design
• Pla­to To Go (The Repub­lic Now on iTunes)

William Gibson, Father of Cyberpunk, Reads New Novel in Second Life

in Books, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | August 21st, 2007

William Gib­son, who launched the cyber­punk genre with the 1984 clas­sic Neu­ro­mancer, has­n’t lost any steam. Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion, pub­lished a good 20+ years lat­er, won wide praise in 2005. Now, he’s come out with Spook Coun­try, and it’s cur­rent­ly #66 on the Ama­zon best­seller list. Below, you can catch Gib­son read­ing from his new work in Sec­ond Life. What can be more fitting?Also, you may want to check out Boing­Bo­ing’s “nerdgas­mic” inter­view with Gib­son (iTunes — Feed — MP3 Stream), plus Cory Doc­tor­row’s rev­er­en­tial review of the new work. And final­ly, if you need more, you can watch Gib­son give a book talk at Cody’s in Berke­ley CA, cour­tesy of Fora.Tv.For your dai­ly dose of dig­i­tal cul­ture, sub­scribe to our feed.

The New Grammar Podcast on the Block

in English Language | August 21st, 2007

It did­n’t seem like an obvi­ous block­buster at first — at least not to me — but The Gram­mar Girl (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has remained one of the most down­loaded edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts on iTunes. To be pre­cise, each week, about 100,000 peo­ple down­load these short pod­casts that offer “quick and dirty tips” for clean­ing up your writ­ing. And thanks to the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of her free audio lessons, plus an appear­ance on Oprah, Mignon Fog­a­r­ty, the cre­ator of the Gram­mar Girl, has also man­aged to spin-off an audio­book ($9.95) that has dri­ven strong sales. Plus she’s got a good, old-fash­ioned pulp book some­where still in the pipeline.

It was per­haps, then, only a mat­ter of time before Fog­a­r­ty faced some friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion. The Gram­mar Grater (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) is a new pod­cast that approach­es lan­guage issues from a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. It focus­es on “Eng­lish words, gram­mar and usage for the Infor­ma­tion Age,” which is to say that it deals with gram­mar issues that often arise when we write emails, blog posts, instant mes­sages and beyond. Luke Tay­lor is the host, and, with him, you get a well-pro­duced, often enter­tain­ing, pod­cast that touch­es on gram­mar issues that you’re bound to encounter in your dai­ly elec­tron­ic writ­ing. Give the Girl and the Grater both a lis­ten and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly learn small bits that’ll make a big dif­fer­ence.

For your dai­ly dose of dig­i­tal cul­ture, sub­scribe to our feed.

Also check out these oth­er fine items:

• Life-Chang­ing Books: Your Picks
• Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es as Pod­casts
• Authors@Google: Video Talks From the Epi­cen­ter of the Uni­verse
• Every­thing You Always Want­ed to Know About Sex
• 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod

Your Secret iPod Shame

in Music | August 17th, 2007

We talk a good deal about vir­tu­ous pod­casts here. But this episode of The Bri­an Lehrer Show (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) com­ing out of NYC, focus­es on the down­right embar­rass­ing songs that you have hid­den on your iPod. And they talk about it with Kele­fa San­neh, the pop music crit­ic from The New York Times. If you care to admit to your own songs of shame, you can use the veil of anonymi­ty and list them in the com­ments below. And don’t wor­ry, we won’t hold it against you… Have a good week­end.

Tracking Wikipedia’s Manipulations

in Web/Tech | August 14th, 2007

In 2006, we learned that staff mem­bers on Capi­tol Hill logged into Wikipedia and gave a par­ti­san air-brush­ing to the biogra­phies of var­i­ous Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors. Mean­while, in 2005, 15 para­graphs were mys­te­ri­ous­ly delet­ed from a Wikipedia entry on Diebold, the major Amer­i­can vot­ing machine ven­dor that has found itself at the cen­ter of recent elec­tion con­tro­ver­sies. And soon enough, these edits were traced back to a Diebold IP address.

All of this raised the ques­tion: Just how often is Wikipedia the vic­tim of biased edit­ing? And to what extent can cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal entries be trust­ed? Accord­ing to Wired, some of these ques­tions may be soon put to rest. A new web site called Wikipedia Scan­ner pro­vides a “search­able data­base that ties mil­lions of anony­mous Wikipedia edits to orga­ni­za­tions where those edits appar­ent­ly orig­i­nat­ed…” Much more eas­i­ly, users can now get a bead on just how preva­lent these spin jobs are, and, more impor­tant­ly, they can help keep these par­ti­san edits under bet­ter con­trol. Will Wikipedia Scan­ner (and pro­gram like it) help save Web 2.0? Per­haps so.

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Relat­ed con­tent:

• Wikipedi­a’s (Some­times Dirty) Lit­tle Secret
• Col­lege Bans Wikipedia
• How Web 2.0 Will Trans­form the Human­i­ties

Voices of American Presidents

in History | August 14th, 2007

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple of pod­casts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, you can lis­ten to audio record­ings of twen­ty mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), start­ing with Grover Cleve­land (1892) and end­ing with GWB. The record­ings most­ly tak­en from inau­gu­ra­tion address­es and State of the Union speech­es include some good his­tor­i­cal finds. Here you get Ted­dy Roo­sevelt blast­ing the elite’s sub­ver­sion of the pop­u­lar will, FDR speak­ing of an endur­ing democ­ra­cy, Har­ry Tru­man call­ing for a last­ing peace after World War II, JFK out­lin­ing the US response to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, and Bill Clin­ton tout­ing the longest peace­time eco­nom­ic expan­sion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

For more archives of pres­i­den­tial speech­es, here are a few oth­er col­lec­tions worth check­ing out:

FDR: A Pres­i­den­cy Revealed (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pre­sent­ed by the His­to­ry Chan­nel, this col­lec­tion fea­tures some of FDR’s famous speech­es, includ­ing his Fire Side Chats and his first inau­gur­al address. (“There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself.”)

Pres­i­den­tial Archives Uncov­ered (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pro­duced by the Pres­i­den­tial Libraries of the Nation­al Archives, this col­lec­tion presents clips of pres­i­dents’ seri­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions as well as their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers. Includes talks by Pres­i­dents Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea­gan, Bush, and Clin­ton.

Tru­man Library Pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Among these record­ings you will notably find a lengthy talk by David McCul­lough, Tru­man’s Pulitzer Priz­ing Win­ning biog­ra­ph­er.

The Speech­es of John F. Kennedy (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) A new but still small col­lec­tion. Looks poised to grow, how­ev­er.