YouTube Gets a Little More Intelligent

in Music, YouTube | December 1st, 2008

YouTube has had the mass mar­ket locked up for some time. But, dur­ing the past year, it has been giv­ing a lit­tle nod to more “high­brow” view­ers. We’ve seen chan­nels sprout­ing up on YouTube that fea­ture con­tent pro­duced by uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er high-val­ue con­tent providers. (See our col­lec­tion Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Video Col­lec­tions.) We’ve also watched the launch of The YouTube Screen­ing Room, which brings short inde­pen­dent films to the view­ing pub­lic. Now we have The YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. 

This project brings clas­si­cal music into the world of Web 2.0. As The New York Times explains it, the ini­tia­tive will pro­duce a mashup of orches­tral pieces con­tributed by users. And, it will also fea­ture a con­test in which musi­cians can upload sam­ples of their work, and, à la Amer­i­can Idol, win­ners will be cho­sen by a pan­el of judges and brought to per­form at Carnegie Hall under the direc­tion of Michael Tilson Thomas, music direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny. (Get more from the video below.)  Some purists will find this high­ly gim­micky, no doubt. Oth­ers may see it as a good way to keep clas­si­cal music rel­e­vant. Have an opin­ion? Let us know in the com­ments.

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Capitalism with Humility

in Current Affairs | December 1st, 2008

It’s pret­ty hard to pull this off, but the titans of Amer­i­can indus­try have made Her­bert Hoover look like a very wise man, at least when he said: “You know, the only trou­ble with cap­i­tal­ism is cap­i­tal­ists; they’re too damn greedy.”

But we should­n’t con­sid­er Hoover reha­bil­i­tat­ed. Not quite yet. The video clip below sug­gests that in Japan the CEOs have fig­ured out how to run their cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem with a degree of humil­i­ty. And they’re doing it vol­un­tar­i­ly. That’s a news flash that you can send to our polit­i­cal lead­ers before they fun­nel more tax­es to mis­man­aged insti­tu­tions with no real strings attached.

(A quick PS: Europe’s lead­ing philoso­pher and soci­ol­o­gist recent­ly spoke in the Ger­man press about the finan­cial cri­sis and what it means for the future of our glob­al­ized soci­ety. You can find an Eng­lish trans­la­tion here.)

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The New Psychology of Time

in Psychology | November 30th, 2008

The Time Para­dox, a new book by Philip Zim­bar­do & John Boyd, puts forth an intrigu­ing argu­ment — our atti­tudes toward time, often uncon­scious ones, can strong­ly shape our per­son­al­i­ties and the kind of lives we lead. They can con­tribute to our hap­pi­ness and suc­cess, or our unhap­pi­ness and depres­sion.

The argu­ment goes some­thing like this: Not entire­ly know­ing­ly, we all focus on the past, present or future. And, in mod­er­a­tion, each focus can have some net good. Future-ori­ent­ed peo­ple tend to be ambi­tious and suc­cess­ful; present-ori­ent­ed peo­ple tend to have friends and fun; and past-ori­ent­ed peo­ple often have close fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships. But when we asso­ciate too strong­ly with one of these “time zones” (again often with­out real­iz­ing it), we run into prob­lems. When we’re too strong­ly focused on the future, we sac­ri­fice friends, fam­i­ly and fun. When we’re too present-ori­ent­ed, we leave our­selves open to hedo­nism and addic­tions. And when we cling to the past, we sim­ply get stuck in the past, and depres­sion usu­al­ly fol­lows. The upshot then is that we need to find a “tem­po­ral bal­ance,” and this applies not just to indi­vid­u­als, but to nations, reli­gious groups and social class­es as well. Accord­ing to Zim­bar­do and Boyd, larg­er social groups can tend toward dis­tort­ed sens­es of time. The Amer­i­can finan­cial cri­sis boils down to an extreme focus on the present, or a lack of con­cern for future con­se­quences. That’s essen­tial­ly what the big cred­it give­away was all about.

You may rec­og­nize Philip Zim­bar­do’s name. He’s a wide­ly rec­og­nized psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who was behind the famous Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment (1971). He has served as the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. And, last year, he pub­lished The Lucifer Effect, a New York Times best­seller.

To delve a bit more deeply into The Time Para­dox, you should watch (below) the engross­ing pre­sen­ta­tion that Zim­bar­do gave at Google’s HQ last month. Or you can lis­ten to this radio inter­view that aired recent­ly in New York City (iTunes Feed MP3). Last­ly, you can take a sur­vey on The Time Para­dox web site and learn more about your tem­po­ral bal­ance.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire, or The World From 1949 to 1989

in History, Video - Politics/Society | November 29th, 2008

If you could sync up a pho­to with every name and event men­tioned in Bil­ly Joel’s “We Did­n’t Start the Fire,” you’d have a mon­tage that offers a pret­ty good glimpse into the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. That’s what a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go grad stu­dent fig­ured out when he put this viral video togeth­er. We’ve added it to our YouTube playlist. Thanks Bob for the tip!

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Books Authors Want (and Plan to Give) for the Holidays

in Books | November 28th, 2008

Pen­guin asked its sta­ble of writ­ers what books they plan to give friends dur­ing the hol­i­days, and what books they’d hope to receive. Here’s a quick sam­pling. And if you want to list your own gift ideas, feel free to add them to the com­ments below.

Khaled Hos­sei­ni, author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns, is giv­ing The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. And so, too, is Michael Pol­lan (The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma). It won the Pulitzer after all.

Michael Lewis (Liar’s Pok­er) not so secret­ly hopes to wind up with a copy of Mal­colm Glad­well’s new book Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess. He’s not the only one, to be sure.

Friends of Eliz­a­beth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) will be get­ting The Prin­ci­ples of Uncer­tain­ty by Maira Kalman. And, in turn, they may be giv­ing her biogra­phies of great adven­tur­ers like Cap­tain Cook and Ernest Shack­le­ton. (Per­son­al­ly, I’d rec­om­mend Endurance: Shack­le­ton’s Incred­i­ble Voy­age. Great read.)

Last­ly, Nick Hor­by (High Fideli­ty) is offer­ing up Mark Har­ris’ Pic­tures at a Rev­o­lu­tion.

For more book ideas, vis­it the full list and also see our read­er-cre­at­ed list: Life-Chang­ing Books.

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The Birth Of A Tornado

in Science, Video - Science | November 26th, 2008

It’s almost eerie to watch how a tor­na­do takes shape. As you’ll see below, it starts with a wisp of noth­ing much and, with­in min­utes, morphs into a ter­ri­ble force. For more pre­cise details on how tor­na­does form, you can check out this dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tion over at USA Today.

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Top 10 Amazing Biology Videos

in Biology, Science | November 26th, 2008

This week, Wired has post­ed a piece — Top 10 Amaz­ing Biol­o­gy Videos — that has start­ed swirling around the web. Here you’ll find some seri­ous videos (for exam­ple, a clip below show­ing high speed gene sequenc­ing in action) along­side some lighter videos that fea­ture, um, shrimp run­ning on a tread­mill. This piece is the log­i­cal fol­low up to Wired’s ear­li­er post: 10 Amaz­ing Physics Videos.

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Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash Together in 1969: Free MP3s

in Music | November 24th, 2008

Two Amer­i­can icons got togeth­er in Nashville in 1969 and record­ed at least 22 tracks togeth­er, includ­ing some well known clas­sics: Ring of Fire, I Walk The Line, Girl From the North Coun­try, and You Are My Sun­shine. You can lis­ten in on the his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion for free here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Peter Schiff on the Economy and What’s Coming Next

in Current Affairs | November 24th, 2008

Last week, we fea­tured a rather pre­scient video clip high­light­ing Peter Schiff and his warn­ings in 2006-07 that that our econ­o­my is in deep trou­ble. Since then, many have won­dered where Schiff sees things going next. So NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes — Rss Feed — Stream) caught up with him on Fri­day and asked him just that: The upshot is nowhere good. We’ve got some deep, under­ly­ing prob­lems — prob­lems that go well beyond asset bub­bles. We’re head­ed for anoth­er Depres­sion. And it’s in part because all of the gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion is hurt­ing, not help­ing, things. There’s noth­ing very hope­ful here. But, if Schiff is right again, it could pay to lis­ten and get his take on what the future could look like.

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The White Album Turns 40

in Music | November 23rd, 2008

The Bea­t­les’ White Album turned 40 last week. And that put the clas­sic album back in the spot­light, lead­ing crit­ics to revis­it the band’s most exper­i­men­tal and con­tro­ver­sial work. Was it their mas­ter­piece or biggest mess? (Feel free to post your thoughts in the com­ments below.) For one look back, you can lis­ten to this pod­cast from WNY­C’s Sound Check (iTunes — Feed — MP3). And, for good mea­sure, we’re throw­ing in some video clips from the album’s stu­dio ses­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day
What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot
The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

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