The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy | March 10th, 2009

Writ­ing in The New Repub­lic, Leon Wieselti­er offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Human­i­ties Must Jus­ti­fy Their Worth. His argu­ment is worth a read, and here is one lengthy mon­ey quote:

The com­plaint against the human­i­ties is that they are imprac­ti­cal. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the expe­ri­ence, and the under­stand­ing, and the eval­u­a­tion, of the world. .… It is worth remem­ber­ing, then, that the cri­sis in which we find our­selves was the work of prac­ti­cal men. The secu­ri­ti­za­tion of mort­gages was not con­ceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost any­body their house. No his­to­ri­an cost any­body their job. Not even the most pam­pered of pro­fes­sors ever squan­dered $87,000 of some­one else’s mon­ey on a lit­tle rug. The cre­ativ­i­ty of bankers is a lux­u­ry that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defend­ing the virtues of the lib­er­al arts in a mon­ey-dri­ven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the per­spec­tive of mon­ey would be ashamed to show itself. What author­i­ty, real­ly, should the stand­point of finance any longer have for Amer­i­can soci­ety? Who gives a damn what Ken­neth D. Lewis thinks about any­thing? … The study of reli­gion, defend­ing itself to cap­i­tal­ists? …

In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings.… We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.

Very well said, and the log­ic out­lined here could be one rea­son why the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & pota­to human­i­ties cours­es — is so far far­ing quite well.
via the TNR Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

The New Open Source Textbook

in Media | March 9th, 2009

A lit­tle rev­o­lu­tion is get­ting under­way. The state of Vir­ginia has pub­lished a new open source physics text­book under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. As detailed in this piece from ZDNet, this peer-reviewed text­book was pro­duced in less than six months by a team of authors, which includ­ed “active researchers, high school teach­ers, and col­lege pro­fes­sors, as well as some retirees.” And it was launched on CK-12’s tech­nol­o­gy plat­form. Here comes the new world of text­book pub­lish­ing. Quick to press, vet­ted, easy to revise, pro­duced at a low cost by pub­lish­ers, free for stu­dents. What’s not to like … except if you’re in the tra­di­tion­al text­book pub­lish­ing busi­ness?

As a quick aside, you can find anoth­er free physics text­book (in e‑book for­mat) at motionmountain.net.

via ccLearn Twit­ter Feed (Open Cul­ture Twit­ter feed here)

The Life You Can Save

in Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2009

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Peter Singer is an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton and who wrote Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975, help­ing to launch the ani­mal rights move­ment. A prac­ti­tion­er of applied ethics, he has also tak­en con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on euthana­sia. Nowa­days, he’s work­ing on less sen­si­tive issues. His lat­est book is called The Life You Can Save: Act­ing Now to End World Pover­ty, and it makes the basic point that most of us could be doing more, with very lit­tle effort, to save lives around the world.

It’s a giv­en that we would rush to save a small child about to step into oncom­ing traf­fic. That’s a no-brain­er, an instinct. But, if we’re told that we can save the lives of chil­dren world­wide by giv­ing token amounts of mon­ey each month, we often react indif­fer­ent­ly and then go out and con­sume. In this inter­view heard on San Fran­cis­co air­waves this morn­ing, (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Singer gets into how small sac­ri­fices can make big dif­fer­ences, and why we should make them. And if you’re look­ing for char­i­ties that can help make these dif­fer­ences, Singer pro­vides a help­ful list on his web site.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Picks Essential US History Books

in Books, History | March 3rd, 2009

The Wall Street Jour­nal asked Gor­don Wood, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans, to pick his favorite works of US his­to­ry, and here is what he had to say. 

1) The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Tra­di­tion and the Men Who Made It — Richard Hof­s­tadter

2) The Ide­o­log­i­cal Ori­gins of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion — Bernard Bai­lyn

3) White Over Black — Winthrop D. Jor­dan

4) Moth­ers of Inven­tion — Drew Gilpin Faust

5) Grand Expec­ta­tions — James T. Pat­ter­son

As a quick side note, if you live in the SF Bay Area, you can catch Gor­don Wood teach­ing at Stan­ford this spring along with two oth­er Pulitzer Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­ans. The course, The Amer­i­can Founders and Their World, comes out of the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram and is open to the pub­lic. Get details here.

via Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press Twit­ter Feed (also see Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here)

This American Life: The Financial Crisis in 59 Minutes

in Current Affairs, Economics | March 2nd, 2009

Last week, we cre­at­ed a handy list of blogs & pod­casts that reg­u­lar­ly cov­er the finan­cial cri­sis. And so it seemed worth flag­ging the lat­est episode of This Amer­i­can Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 — iTunes — Feed). It just came out this week­end. And it takes a close and enter­tain­ing look at what hap­pens when a bank goes bad/insolvent. The show gets into the real nit­ty grit­ty of the cri­sis and, once you’ve lis­tened, you’ll bet­ter under­stand bet­ter the pros and cons of solu­tions being tried out by the gov­ern­ment.

The episode fol­lows two oth­er insight­ful pro­grams by This Amer­i­can Life: The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). All three pro­grams are now added to our list of finan­cial cri­sis blogs and pod­casts.

Blogs & Podcasts for the Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | February 27th, 2009

There’s no doubt about it. We’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times, as the Chi­nese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s hap­pen­ing here. So, below, I have high­light­ed a num­ber of blogs and pod­casts that help make intel­li­gent sense of this eco­nom­ic deba­cle. Here they go…

• Plan­et Mon­ey: NPR is doing a great job of cov­er­ing the unwind­ing glob­al econ­o­my. The Plan­et Mon­ey blog is a good read, and it includes an essen­tial read­ing list. But the accom­pa­ny­ing pod­cast is one that I fol­low reg­u­lar­ly. It’s a must. And it’s gen­er­al­ly enter­tain­ing. You can access it here:  iTunes — Rss Feed — Web Site. (Note: the last episode is not the best exam­ple of what it’s usu­al­ly about.)

• Econo­Talk: Econ­Talk was vot­ed “Best Pod­cast” in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Host­ed by Russ Roberts (out of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty), the show “fea­tures one-on-one dis­cus­sions with an eclec­tic mix of authors, pro­fes­sors, Nobel Lau­re­ates, entre­pre­neurs, lead­ers of char­i­ties and busi­ness­es, and peo­ple on the street.” You can access the show via the fol­low­ing chan­nels: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site.

• The Base­line Sce­nario: Ded­i­cat­ed to “explain­ing some of the key issues in the glob­al econ­o­my and devel­op­ing con­crete pol­i­cy pro­pos­als,” The Base­line Sce­nario is writ­ten, among oth­ers, by Simon John­son, for­mer chief econ­o­mist of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, who is now a pro­fes­sor at the MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment. Although rel­a­tive­ly young, the blog has received a fair amount of acclaim as the finan­cial cri­sis has unfold­ed. You may want to par­tic­u­lar­ly check out their col­lec­tion of con­tent called Finan­cial Cri­sis for Begin­ners.

• Real­time Eco­nom­ic Issues Watch:  Here, senior fel­lows of the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics (a think tank based in Wash­ing­ton) “dis­cuss and debate their respons­es to glob­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial devel­op­ments as they occur each day and offer insights that oth­ers might over­look.”  You will find some of the folks from the Peter­son Insti­tute also appear­ing on the pod­casts and blogs men­tioned else­where on this list. Find the RSS feed here.

• Paul Krug­man: A Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist, a Nobel Prize Win­ner, a New York Times op-ed writer, Paul Krug­man is blog­ging the glob­al finan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis dai­ly. It’s an opin­ion that you can’t afford to take light­ly. You’ll also want to see his new­ly released book, The Return of Depres­sion Eco­nom­ics and the Cri­sis of 2008.

• Econ­o­mists’ Forum: Run by the Finan­cial Times (UK), this blog brings togeth­er a large num­ber of econ­o­mists who offer a run­ning com­men­tary on the state of the frag­ile econ­o­my. The Wall Street Jour­nal has its own real time blog here.

• Fall­out: Amer­i­ca’s Finan­cial Cri­sis: Mar­ket­place, the night­ly radio pro­gram on pub­lic radio (iTunes — Feed), also hosts a blog that tracks the week’s top sto­ries on Amer­i­ca’s finan­cial cri­sis.

• New­sHour with Jim Lehrer: The PBS night­ly news pro­gram almost always includes an infor­ma­tive seg­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the finan­cial news of the day. The cov­er­age, which typ­i­cal­ly includes inter­views with experts, is excel­lent. You can down­load the pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site

• The Beck­er-Pos­ner Blog: While not updat­ed as fre­quent­ly as Krugman’s blog, The Beck­er-Pos­ner blog is a great place to read the thoughts of two Nobel prize win­ning econ­o­mists (Gary Deck­er and Richard Pos­ner) dis­cuss the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Thanks Bryce for the tip.

• This Amer­i­can Life: One of NPR’s beloved pro­grams has offered some excel­lent cov­er­age of the finan­cial cri­sis. It start­ed with a show called The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and it has since includ­ed a pro­gram called Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). Now there is a new one called Bad Bank, which explains what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing in the train­wrecks that are banks. These pro­grams were put togeth­er part­ly by mem­bers of the Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast men­tioned above.

Are we miss­ing some­thing good? Please let us know in the com­ments below…

Public Radio on the iPhone

in iPhone, Media, Radio | February 26th, 2009

Here’s a quick fyi for iPhone users: The Pub­lic Radio Tuner, a free app avail­able on iTunes, gives you (free) access to hun­dreds of pub­lic radio streams from across the US. Released in late Jan­u­ary, the Tuner brings togeth­er feeds from NPR, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media, and PRI, among oth­ers. This is a handy way to lis­ten wire­less­ly to local news and cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, plus many well-known shows (All Things Con­sid­ered, Fresh Air, Car Talk, etc.) So far, the app works like a charm. You can down­load it here, or vis­it this web site to learn more about this new ini­tia­tive.

Last­ly, if you don’t have an iPhone, then this page does a good job of aggre­gat­ing pub­lic radio feeds, and you can always lis­ten to them as pod­casts on your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. Def­i­nite­ly worth a look…

Newspaper Front Pages from Across the World

in Media | February 26th, 2009

What’s the main news sto­ry of the day? It depends on where you live.

New­se­um has a handy web page that let’s you visu­al­ly scan the front page of over 700 news­pa­pers across 80 coun­tries. Open this web page, click on a con­ti­nent, then click on a dot with­in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic area, and you’ll see what an indi­vid­ual paper thinks mat­ters most today, tomor­row and the next day. It’s a pret­ty handy tool.

Sad­ly, as I looked at these maps, I could­n’t help but won­der (giv­en the state of news­pa­per busi­ness) how many of these dots will dis­ap­pear over time. Or, as my col­league put it, how long is it before the news­pa­per, as we know it, becomes an actu­al rel­ic of a muse­um. “New­se­um” may real­ly become a new­se­um.

If you want to track the grim demise of the print indus­try, you can fol­low The Media is Dying on Twit­ter. On an hour-to-hour basis, it records the grim unwind­ing of var­i­ous news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. And, while you’re at it, you can fol­low our Twit­ter feed here, too. It’s a hap­pi­er feed, I promise.

Thanks Denise for the heads up on this one. Got a cool piece of cul­tur­al media? Send it our way.

The American Future

in Current Affairs, History | February 25th, 2009

Through his books and doc­u­men­taries, Simon Schama, a British born his­to­ri­an, has cov­ered a lot of fer­tile ground. The French Rev­o­lu­tion, the slave trade, the pow­er of art, Rem­brandt, ear­ly mod­ern Dutch cul­ture, the his­to­ry of Britain — Schama has cov­ered it all. And now he has pulled a Toc­queville on us. He spent the bet­ter part of a year trav­el­ing across Amer­i­ca, siz­ing it up, and pro­duc­ing a lengthy TV doc­u­men­tary (now avail­able on DVD) and a relat­ed book (not avail­able in the US yet) called The Amer­i­can Future: A His­to­ry. His analy­sis of Amer­i­ca, of its past and its future, takes into account sev­er­al major themes: reli­gion, immi­gra­tion, land and resources, and war. In this recent con­ver­sa­tion with Bill Moy­ers, Schama talks at length about Amer­i­ca and where it finds itself today. The first 15 min­utes focus on Oba­ma and the chal­lenges he faces. The remain­ing part gets into themes dis­cussed in The Amer­i­can Future. You can access it here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

P.S. I am real­ly sor­ry about the frus­trat­ing down­time this morn­ing. My host­ing ser­vice — Dreamhost — had some “issues.” Hope­ful­ly this was an excep­tion.

On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

in Web/Tech | February 18th, 2009

Ear­li­er in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twit­ter, prompt­ed part­ly by Makeuseof.com, which men­tioned our site in a Twit­ter-relat­ed arti­cle. (Thanks Mark for that.)

When we first cre­at­ed our Twit­ter feed, my hopes weren’t espe­cial­ly high. And while I’m still not com­plete­ly sold on the per­son­al uses of Twit­ter, I’m def­i­nite­ly lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”