Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq has had mul­ti­ple costs for the US, with just one being the decline of Amer­i­can moral lead­er­ship on the inter­na­tion­al stage, and par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Mid­dle East. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, we know that Amer­i­ca’s pres­tige is momen­tar­i­ly shot. But to get a feel for what this means in prac­tice, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view (iTunes — MP3) with Lawrence Pin­tak, who directs the Adham Cen­ter for Elec­tron­ic Jour­nal­ism at The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. A long­time observ­er of the Mid­dle East, Pin­tak sees the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­ca’s image going some­thing like this: Before 9/11, the prover­bial Mid­dle East­ern cab dri­ver expressed deep admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­cans, even while dis­agree­ing with Amer­i­can lead­ers and poli­cies. When the Twin Tow­ers fell, sym­pa­thy for Amer­i­ca was nev­er greater. Now, six years lat­er, it’s all gone awry. The men­tal line that sep­a­rat­ed Amer­i­cans and Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is gone, and the antipa­thy toward Amer­i­ca is fair­ly com­plete.

What part­ly explains this shift is how the war has been refract­ed through the Mid­dle East­ern media. Ever since Al Jazeera start­ed air­ing in 1996 (you can watch it here in Eng­lish), the Mid­dle East has had its own free media and seen events through its own lens. And, in the case of the Iraq war, it has meant see­ing what we don’t see — the unsan­i­tized war, the bod­ies, the lev­eled build­ings, etc. — but also much more mun­dane things that shape over­all impres­sions. It means see­ing, for exam­ple, how tone-deaf US spokes­men in Bagh­dad show up at jour­nal­ist con­fer­ences in Abu Dhabi (a com­plete­ly non-mil­i­tary event out­side of Iraq) in army fatigues, leav­ing essen­tial­ly the impres­sion that the US sees the larg­er Mid­dle East as a mil­i­tary stage.

Pin­tak knows the region well, and he artic­u­lates Amer­i­ca’s per­cep­tion prob­lem in a bal­anced and thought­ful way. Check it out here: (iTunes — MP3) Also, on a relat­ed note, any­one who wants to digg more deeply into Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tives may want to explore Mosa­ic: World News from the Mid­dle East (iTunes  Feed). This Peabody award-win­ning pod­cast pro­vides a dai­ly com­pi­la­tion of tele­vi­sion news reports from across the Mid­dle East. The news comes from inde­pen­dent and state-run news ser­vices, and it is all trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

Over the past six months, we have cre­at­ed a series of resources that let you access uni­ver­si­ty resources for free and on-the-fly. Below, we have cen­tral­ized these mate­ri­als in one place to give you quick access:

• Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tion
  • A large trove of video con­tent from well-known uni­ver­si­ties. All video can be watched on your com­put­er.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts  — Gen­er­al Col­lec­tion
  • This col­lec­tion fea­tures large pod­cast col­lec­tions from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties in the US and Europe.  This col­lec­tion will def­i­nite­ly give your mind a work­out.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Law School
  • A more focused col­lec­tion of pod­casts from major Amer­i­can law schools.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts — Busi­ness School
  • Anoth­er spe­cial­ized col­lec­tion of pod­casts pro­duced by top-notch MBA pro­grams and busi­ness school pub­lish­ers (e.g. Har­vard Busi­ness Review). See relat­ed arti­cle here.
• 10 Excel­lent Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts
  • Title pret­ty much says it all.
• Learn 20+ Lan­guages on Your iPod
  • These pod­casts are most­ly not spon­sored by uni­ver­si­ties, but they seemed worth includ­ing in this mix of edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als.
• E‑learning Pro­grams from Top Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ties
  • There are many insti­tu­tions now offer­ing online cours­es. Many, how­ev­er, are of dubi­ous qual­i­ty. Here are some pret­ty good ones.
• 50+ Free Cours­es from UC Berke­ley on iTunes
  • Again, the title tells you pret­ty much all you need to know.
• Five Stan­ford Cours­es Avail­able as Free Pod­casts on iTunes
  • Dit­to

Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   - Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Below, you’ll find a list of 25 fine cinema/film blogs, all for the cin­e­ma buff.

This list fig­ures into a larg­er col­lec­tion of Cul­ture Blogs that we’re putting togeth­er over time. It’s a work in progress, so watch it grow. If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us and let us know.

• Alter­na­tive Film Guide: A nice resource for any­one who wants to go beyond main­stream movies.
• Cahiers du ciné­ma: This is not exact­ly a blog. Rather it’s the site for the very influ­en­tial French film mag­a­zine found­ed in 1951. If you read French, def­i­nite­ly give it a look.
• Cinecultist: This cin­e­ma blog comes straight to you from the East Vil­lage in NYC, and it’s put togeth­er main­ly by Karen Wil­son, a free­lance writer and edi­tor with a film back­ground.
• Cin­e­ma Min­i­ma: A news blog for movie mak­ers that digests infor­ma­tion about movie mak­ing, act­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and film fes­ti­vals.
• Cin­e­ma Strikes Back: The site cov­ers movies world­wide with news, reviews, inter­views and film fes­ti­val reports. It also offers advanced looks at upcom­ing movies and DVDs. Has a par­tic­u­lar focus on genre, cult and for­eign films.
• Cin­e­marati: Cre­at­ed by the The Web Alliance for Film Com­men­tary, this blog brings togeth­er online film crit­ics for seri­ous, and seri­ous­ly fun, dis­cus­sion about film, and also coun­ters the notion that “any­one with a modem can be a crit­ic.”
• Cin­e­mat­i­cal: Part of the Weblogs, Inc. net­work, Cin­e­mat­i­cal keeps tabs on what’s new in film.
• Clip Joint: Put out by the Guardian, this blog presents a roundup of top cin­e­ma-relat­ed clips on the inter­net.
• Cyn­thia Rock­well’s Wait­ing Room: A site that you’ll find list­ed on many A‑list film blogs.
• Dave Kehr.com: When not blog­ging, Dave writes “Critic’s Choice: New DVDs,” a
  col­umn that appears in The New York Times and is archived here.
• Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Dai­ly: Pub­lished by LA Week­ly, this blog is writ­ten by jour­nal­ist Nik­ki Finke, who writes about the busi­ness, pol­i­tics and cul­ture of the info­tain­ment indus­try.
• Drift­ing: David Low­ery dis­cours­es here on film, at least most of the time.
• Film Expe­ri­ence Blog: What you get here are cin­e­mat­ic mus­ings from Nathaniel R with fre­quent dips into pop cul­ture mis­cel­la­nia.
• Flick­head: Keep­ing it reel!
• Green Cine Dai­ly: GreenCine Dai­ly is pri­mar­i­ly writ­ten by GC Edi­tor David Hud­son. A nice com­pre­hen­sive blog.
• Hell on Frisco Bay: The jour­nal of a cinephile haunt­ing the remain­ing movie hous­es of the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.
• If Char­lie Park­er Was a Gun­slinger: Cul­tur­al obser­va­tions by Tom Sut­pen, Stephen Cooke and Richard Gib­son.
• Like Anna Kari­na’s Sweater: A film and cul­ture blog with a focus on non-main­stream top­ics, writ­ten by a pro­fes­sion­al screen­writer and a part-time mis­an­thrope.
• Lost in Neg­a­tive Space:  For provoca­tive film crit­i­cism with an under­dog bite. Writ­ten by Peter Gelderblom.
• Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma: Five blog­gers from three dif­fer­ent
  coun­tries bring per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion togeth­er in one place
  for afi­ciona­dos of World Cin­e­ma.
• Movie City Indie: Inde­pen­dent movies, inde­pen­dent think­ing by Ray Pride.
• Not Com­ing to a The­ater Near You: A site with a bias towards old­er, often unpop­u­lar, and some­times unknown films that mer­it a sec­ond look.
• Notes from the Under­dog: On writ­ing, screen­writ­ing, films, music, and the polit­i­cal land­scape.
• Scan­ners: A film blog writ­ten by Jim Emer­son, a Seat­tle-based writer and film crit­ic, who is also the found­ing edi­tor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com.
• Ser­gio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: Hard to sum­ma­rize this one (as the title kind of demon­strates). Bet­ter just to see it instead.

Over the past cou­ple weeks, our read­ers have sent some new links our way. Here’s some of the good stuff that they’ve had to offer:

• Ency­clopo­dia (Wikipedia on Your Ipod): If this works, it’s a great idea. Ency­clopo­dia is a free soft­ware project that brings Wikipedia to the Apple iPod. Ency­clopo­dia can be installed on iPod gen­er­a­tions 1 through 4, plus on iPod Min­is.

• Down­load Free Music Thanks to Peter Gabriel: You can can down­load songs free and legal­ly through a new ser­vice backed by Peter Gabriel. The new ven­ture, We7, pro­vides DRM-free music. And in exchange for it, lis­ten­ers agree to lis­ten to “per­son­al­ized mes­sages” (read ads) that are “graft­ed” onto the begin­ning of song tracks. Mean­while, anoth­er read­er sug­gests look­ing at Groove­shark, which is also offer­ing DRM-free music.

• Free Travelling/Touring Pod­casts: In our Mon­day piece that looked at 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod, we men­tioned a prod­uct that let’s you take guid­ed tours of New York and Paris, and they hap­pen to run about $12. It turns out that you can get user-cre­at­ed city tours for free. Check out iToors, Podguides.net (where you can get user-gen­er­at­ed city guides), and also iaudioguide.com, which fea­tures audio guides for over 40 cities. Anoth­er one sug­gest­ed by a read­er is Tour­dio.

• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts: As you may know, we keep a nice col­lec­tion of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts, which include free lec­tures, cours­es, and speech­es by impor­tant thinkers. Here’s a cou­ple new ones that read­ers sent our way: one from the School of Visu­al Arts in NYC, and yet anoth­er from the Uni­ver­sité de Provence, where, if you speak French, you’ll find an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of pod­casts from the human­i­ties and sci­ences. And while we’re at it, you may want to check out a new pod­cast by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion.

• More French Cul­ture Pod­casts: This is from John­nyB in Brook­lyn: “France Cul­ture (iTunes) has a vast col­lec­tion of pro­gram­ming avail­able for down­load, includ­ing dai­ly news updates and lots of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming. One of my favorites is Repliques (iTunes), host­ed by Alain Finkelkraut. The tenet of the pro­gram is to invite two authors with either slight­ly or wide­ly diver­gent points of view on a sin­gle top­ic, and to let the dis­cus­sion roll. Some­times it’s won­der­ful, some­times vapid, and Finkelkraut often impress­es me as a one-note John­ny with his wail­ing about La Defaite de la Pensee, but I always find it bet­ter than lis­ten­ing to my neigh­bor’s hip-hop beats in the sub­way ride to work.”

• Lan­guage Learn­ing Pod­casts: Rox­anne sug­gests a cou­ple pod­casts that will teach you Kore­an: One is called Kim­chi­girls; the oth­er is called Core­an 4 Life, which despite the mis­spelling appears to be teach­ing Kore­an. Then Hank rec­om­mends Span­ish­Sense that will help you pick up some Span­ish, and Frank offers up a pod­cast for stu­dents learn­ing Khmer.

See Our Pod­cast Col­lec­tions — Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   — Buy a New iPod & iPod Gear

The PEN Amer­i­can Cen­ter just wound up World Voic­es 2007, a con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a slew of major authors, includ­ing Salman Rushdie, Don DeLil­lo, Neil Gaiman, and many more. One of the pan­els this year fea­tured some lit­er­ary heavy hit­ters read­ing works to raise aware­ness for envi­ron­men­tal issues: Bil­ly Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Moses Isegawa, Pico Iyer, Geert Mak, Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, Rox­ana Robin­son, Salman Rushdie, Gary Shteyn­gart, Janne Teller and Col­son White­head all par­tic­i­pat­ed (mp3).

The PEN orga­ni­za­tion works for lit­er­ary free­dom world­wide, and the con­fer­ence keynote (mp3) fea­tures Israeli author David Gross­man and Nobel Prize-win­ner Nadine Gordimer dis­cussing the “Free­dom to Write.” Con­sid­er­ing the news in Turkey these days, you may also want to give last year’s lec­ture with Orhan Pamuk and Mar­garet Atwood a lis­ten (mp3).

The Cen­ter also has an iTunes pod­cast series and an audio archive, but since the con­fer­ence just end­ed it will prob­a­bly take some time for them to process the lat­est audio. iTunes Feed Site

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

These days, if you spend enough time on the web, you’ll inevitably hear talk about RSS feeds, feed read­ers, and sub­scrib­ing to feeds – talk that can seem fair­ly obscure and off-putting if you’re not already famil­iar with these terms.

If this has been your expe­ri­ence, then you should real­ly watch this short video below. This instruc­tive, even amus­ing, video uses sim­ple lan­guage and images to demon­strate how to use feeds and feed read­ers. In a mat­ter of min­utes, all of this will be demys­ti­fied, and you’ll dis­cov­er a much quick­er, more effi­cient and pow­er­ful way to access news and blog con­tent, includ­ing sto­ries from Open Cul­ture. You can sub­scribe to our feed here. And if you’re look­ing for a good feed read­er, def­i­nite­ly give Google Read­er a look.