The 13th Amendment

in Current Affairs, Film | October 30th, 2008

This week, CNN announced the win­ners of the iRe­port Film Fes­ti­val, the network’s first user-gen­er­at­ed short film com­pe­ti­tion. The fes­ti­val “chal­lenged film­mak­ers to doc­u­ment this year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign from their per­son­al van­tage point, whether they were vol­un­teer­ing for a cam­paign or had com­pelling sto­ries about this elec­tion they want­ed to doc­u­ment cre­ative­ly.” And the Grand Jury Award went to a short film called “13th Amend­ment.” Here, Mike Den­nis of Philadel­phia, Pa., fol­lows his 90-year-old grand­moth­er, who is African Amer­i­can, on her jour­ney to vote for the first seri­ous black can­di­date for the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy. (And, by the way, in case you were won­der­ing, the 13th Amend­ment banned slav­ery in the Unit­ed States in 1865.) Here it goes:

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The Political Wire

in Current Affairs, Television | October 29th, 2008

I’ve spent the past sev­er­al months work­ing through The Wire on DVD. A sim­ply bril­liant show. (Here’s a recap of Sea­son 1 in case you don’t know what you’re miss­ing. And for even more recaps click here.) Now some mem­bers of the cast, the good guys and the bad, have rolled out a com­mer­cial encour­ag­ing North Car­oli­na res­i­dents to get out the vote on Tues­day. It’s a good idea for all Amer­i­can vot­ers, no mat­ter who you sup­port in this race. Thanks to Kot­tke for point it out. Here it goes:

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Darwin’s Legacy

in Science, Stanford | October 28th, 2008

For weeks, it’s been one of the most pop­u­lar pod­casts on iTunes: Cre­at­ed by the Cas­siopeia Project, “Evo­lu­tion” (iTune­sU) offers a series of video pod­casts that explains what sci­en­tists know about evo­lu­tion in a visu­al­ly appeal­ing for­mat. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can always watch the series on your com­put­er by down­load­ing iTunes here.)

This all gives me a good excuse to high­light anoth­er pod­cast com­ing out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford. To com­mem­o­rate the 200th anniver­sary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species, we’re pre­sent­ing a course called Dar­win’s Lega­cy. (Access for free on iTunes here.) Led by Bill Durham, a MacArthur (“genius grant”) Prize Win­ner and Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy, the course brings togeth­er lead­ing Dar­win schol­ars from around the coun­try and explores Darwin’s lega­cy in fields as diverse as anthro­pol­o­gy, reli­gion, med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and biol­o­gy. Among oth­ers, you will find here talks (cap­tured in video) by Daniel Den­nett and Janet Browne (author of the defin­i­tive two-vol­ume Dar­win biog­ra­phy.) To access the com­plete course via iTunes, which is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments, sim­ply click here. Down the road, we will also be mak­ing the course avail­able on YouTube. For many oth­er free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, click here. 

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Elephant Jumping On Trampoline

in Random | October 28th, 2008

This is half art/half ran­dom, or maybe it’s bet­ter to say half random/half art. Any­way, it calls to mind one of our pop­u­lar posts (Ele­phant Paint­ing) from months to go. So here it is, an ani­mat­ed short by Nico­las Deveaux.

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What Makes a Poem a Poem in 60 Seconds

in Literature | October 27th, 2008

A rather clever mini, mini-lec­ture from Charles Bern­stein, poet and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, would­n’t you say?

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From Washington to Lincoln — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Uncategorized | October 23rd, 2008

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Harold Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” Animated

in Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture | October 22nd, 2008

and con­densed…

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Paul Krugman On The Financial Crisis And the Coming Recession

in Business, Current Affairs | October 22nd, 2008

How does the new win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics think the US gov­ern­ment should man­age the big loom­ing reces­sion? And does the New Deal offer a mod­el for con­fronting this new jam? Have a lis­ten: iTunes — Rss Feed — MP3.

Electing a US President in Plain English

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 21st, 2008

We’re less than two weeks away (final­ly, at long last) from the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and that means that it’s a good time to deci­pher Amer­i­ca’s con­vo­lut­ed elec­toral sys­tem. So here’s a piece from The Com­mon Craft Show, which does it in a fair­ly cre­ative way:

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Your Digital Magazine Rack

in Web/Tech | October 21st, 2008

A quick fyi: All­top is a new web ser­vice (cre­at­ed by Guy Kawasa­ki) that aggre­gates RSS feeds about pop­u­lar top­ics. Name a top­ic and they bring you sto­ries from “the best web­sites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, you can take a look at the area where All­top was kind enough to list Open Cul­ture. We’re in their col­lege sec­tion. But you can also find hun­dreds of oth­er top­ic areas here — art, books, health, writ­ing, cof­fee, human rights, you get the pic­ture.

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