Neuroscience and the 2008 Election

in Current Affairs, Science, UC Berkeley | July 17th, 2008

How does mod­ern neu­ro­science make sense of the cur­rent McCain-Oba­ma race? Have a lis­ten to Christo­pher Lydon’s fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with George Lakoff, a pro­fes­sor of cog­ni­tive lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).

Lakoff is the author of the new book, The Polit­i­cal Mind: Why You Can’t Under­stand 21st-Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics with an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Brain, and he’s essen­tial­ly argu­ing here that the Democ­rats have tra­di­tion­al­ly framed their argu­ments with a cold ratio­nal­ism .… and lost … while the Repub­li­cans have ground­ed theirs in a kind of emo­tion­al­ism that squares with how the brain func­tions. But, with Oba­ma, things are start­ing to change…

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Radiohead: Making Videos Without Cameras (or Lights)

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | July 17th, 2008

In Radio­head­’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cam­eras or lights were used. Instead “3D plot­ting tech­nolo­gies col­lect­ed infor­ma­tion about the shapes and rel­a­tive dis­tances of objects.” And the video was made entire­ly with visu­al­iza­tions of that data. You can watch the video below and find out more about the mak­ing of the video here.

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What Email Subscribers Missed Over the Past Week

in Uncategorized | July 16th, 2008

I want to send a quick apol­o­gy to our email sub­scribers. Long sto­ry short, we encoun­tered some prob­lems with our email sub­scrip­tion list over the past week (prob­lems that we’re beyond our con­trol). But things are work­ing again, and I want­ed to high­light some of the posts you may have missed. Sor­ry again. And here it goes:

• 70 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube
• 10 New iPhone Apps for the Think­ing Per­son
• Down­load Paul Coelho’s Best­seller, “The Alchemist,” for Free on iTunes
• Stephen Col­bert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses
• The African-Amer­i­can Free­dom Strug­gle & Barack Obama’s Amer­i­can Dream (Free Stan­ford Course)
• The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?
• Online Cours­es in the Age of High Gas Prices
• Archi­tec­ture in Motion
• Will Google Kill Sci­ence?
• Sey­mour Hersh Reveals Covert Oper­a­tions In Iran
• E=mc²: Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la
• Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Howard Zinn’s His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Empire
• Craphound: Down­load Cory Doctorow’s Short Sto­ry via Free MP3 (and oth­er Good­ies)

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School of Life: An Award-Winning Short Indie Film

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | July 15th, 2008

Now fea­tured in The YouTube Screen­ing Room: Jake Polon­sky’s School of Life. “The film may be set in an ele­men­tary school, but it tells a poignant­ly iron­ic sto­ry that any adult will relate to. School of Life won the 2004 British Inde­pen­dent Film Award for Best Short.” A high­er qual­i­ty ver­sion can be watched here. But make sure you have a high speed con­nec­tion.

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Craphound: Download Cory Doctorow’s Short Story via Free MP3 (and other Goodies)

in Audio Books | July 12th, 2008

Here’s a free audio ver­sion of Craphound, the first short sto­ry pub­lished by Cory Doc­torow, who is oth­er­wise known for his new book, Lit­tle Broth­er, and for his work on the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog. (As an fyi, you can find an alter­na­tive read­ing of the same sto­ry here.)

Look­ing for more free down­loads? Try the items below.

George Orwell’s 1984: Down­load Free Audio Book Ver­sion

Down­load Paul Coelho’s Best­seller, “The Alchemist,” for Free on iTunes

Scott Sigler’s Infect­ed: Free via Pod­cast, $16.47 on Ama­zon

Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion

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70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

• @GoogleTalks
  • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
• Al Jazeera Eng­lish
  • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
• Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
  • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
• BBC
  • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• BBC World­wide
  • Dit­to.
• Big Think
  • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
• Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • These videos are brought to you by the mak­ers of the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog.
• Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
• Char­lie Rose
  • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
• Cit­i­zen Tube
  • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
• Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
  • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
• Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
  • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

10 New iPhone Apps for the Thinking Person

in Apple, Most Popular, Web/Tech | July 10th, 2008

In advance of tomor­row’s release of the new 3G iPhone, Apple has launched its new App Store on iTunes, which fea­tures new tools that will imme­di­ate­ly make the iPhone (and iPod Touch) a more ver­sa­tile — and, in some cas­es, enlight­en­ing — device. Below, we have high­light­ed ten apps worth explor­ing if you’re hun­gry for enrich­ing infor­ma­tion. 9 of the 10 are free. (Please note: To access the App Store, you will need to down­load the lat­est ver­sion of iTunes (here) and also the new iPhone 2.0 firmware, which has yet to be offi­cial­ly released — although you can find an unof­fi­cial release and direc­tions on how to install it here. The offi­cial release should be com­ing any time now.)

1.) The New York Times: Thanks to this app, you can read “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on your iPhone. It lets you cus­tomize the news you read, and also read arti­cles offline.

2.) AOL Radio: One down­side to the first gen­er­a­tion iPhone is that it did­n’t allow you to access inter­net radio. This app helps to change some of that. It gives you access to 150 CBS radio sta­tions across the US, includ­ing some key news sta­tions.

3.) Man­darin Audio Phrase­book: Lone­ly Plan­et, the pub­lish­er of fine trav­el guides, has pro­duced a free Man­darin audio phrase­book, which includes 630 com­mon­ly used phras­es. Via the iPhone you can hear how the phras­es are spo­ken (and also see how they are pho­net­i­cal­ly writ­ten). For $9.99, you can pur­chase phrase­books in nine oth­er lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai, Viet­namese and Czech. See full col­lec­tion here.

4.) Tru­veo Video Search: The Wall Street Jour­nal calls Tru­veo the “best web-wide video-search engine.” And now, with this Tru­veo app, you can use the iPhone to find videos from across the web, and, regard­less of their for­mat, play them all in one appli­ca­tion. This sounds like a great addi­tion, espe­cial­ly since many videos weren’t playable on 1st gen­er­a­tion iPhones.

5.) Net­NewsWire: With this app, you can add an RSS read­er to the iPhone, allow­ing you to read RSS feeds in a neat and clean way. It also lets you “clip” arti­cles that you like and read them lat­er. Don’t for­get to sign up for our feed, and you can always add more cul­tur­al feeds by perus­ing our list of 100 Cul­ture Blogs.

6.) Google Mobile App: Let’s face it. In today’s infor­ma­tion world, Google is a must-have. And so it’s nice to have an app that makes Google and its many func­tion­al­i­ties com­plete­ly iPhone friend­ly.

7.) AppEngines E‑Books: For 99 cents, you can down­load a clas­sic e‑book to your iPhone, and read it in a quite leg­i­ble for­mat. In this col­lec­tion, you will find Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Pride and Prej­u­dice, Dick­ens’ Great Expec­ta­tions, and about 40 oth­er e‑books.

8.) Talk­ing Span­ish Phrase­book: Too busy to learn a new lan­guage? Then you’re in luck. This app will do the talk­ing for you. It takes basic phras­es in Eng­lish and then con­verts them into spo­ken Span­ish. There are also free ver­sions in French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian.

9.) Epocrates: This free app turns your iPhone into a com­pre­hen­sive drug data­base. Very handy for the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty.

10.) NearPics: If you’re trav­el­ing, and if you want to dis­cov­er great places near­by, this app lets you dis­cov­er pic­tures that have been tak­en in the vicin­i­ty. The app offers a way to dis­cov­er intrigu­ing places (or things) that nor­mal­ly fly below the radar. Also, this oth­er app lets you put Flickr on your iPhone. More ways to sat­is­fy your inner pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get

Architecture in Motion

in Art, Random, Video - Arts & Culture | July 7th, 2008

When com­plet­ed in Dubai, this “dynam­ic build­ing” designed by David Fish­er will be in con­stant motion, always chang­ing its shape, and also gen­er­ate its own elec­tric ener­gy. You can reserve your apart­ment today, or wait for sim­i­lar build­ings to get erect­ed in Moscow and New York. The whole con­cept feels a bit Las Vegas-esque. But who knows, maybe this is the wave of the future. To see what I’m talk­ing about, watch the video below and get more info here.

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Stephen Colbert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses

in Comedy, Literature, Uncategorized | July 2nd, 2008

Every June 16 is Blooms­day, which com­mem­o­rates Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio here). In Dublin and around the world, cel­e­bra­tions usu­al­ly include a read­ing of Joyce’s clas­sic. This year, in New York City, one high-pro­file event fea­tured Stephen Col­bert read­ing the part of Leopold Bloom, the char­ac­ter around which the sprawl­ing nov­el turns. You can lis­ten to Col­bert read here and here. Enjoy, and I will catch you back here after the hol­i­day week­end.

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Seymour Hersh Reveals Covert Operations In Iran

in Current Affairs | July 1st, 2008

A quick fyi: Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Her­sch has a new piece in The New York­er detail­ing “a major esca­la­tion of covert oper­a­tions against Iran.” The plans draft­ed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and fund­ed by Con­gress brings the US anoth­er step clos­er to a mil­i­tary strike against Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, and such a strike becomes all the more like­ly, Hirsch believes, if Oba­ma wins the Novem­ber elec­tion. (Why? Because Oba­ma favors hav­ing direct talks rather than using pre­emp­tive force.) You can find an accom­pa­ny­ing audio inter­view with Her­sch here. He also appeared yes­ter­day on NPR’s Fresh Air and elab­o­rat­ed on all of this. You can lis­ten here: Stream — iTunes — Feed.

Down­load 250 Free Online Cours­es here

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