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.

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Wind Powered Art

in Art | June 30th, 2008

When art meets engi­neer­ing:

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Find Any Song Online and Share. Now.

in Music | June 30th, 2008

Tinysong.com offers a ser­vice that’s rather impres­sive. You go to their home­page, search for a song, and then you can lis­ten to it online and share it with a friend (via a spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed url). Just how it all works (copy­right includ­ed), and just how deep the col­lec­tion actu­al­ly goes, I am not total­ly sure. But, the var­i­ous tests that I threw at it sug­gest that there’s a fair amount of depth there.

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Superstring Theory Explained Dynamically

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

“In clear, non­tech­ni­cal lan­guage, string the­o­rist Bri­an Greene explains how our under­stand­ing of the uni­verse has evolved from Ein­stein’s notions of grav­i­ty and space-time to super­string the­o­ry, where minus­cule strands of ener­gy vibrat­ing in 11 dimen­sions cre­ate every par­ti­cle and force in the uni­verse.” If you want to get deep­er into Greene’s work on string the­o­ry, I would rec­om­mend refer­ring back to this pre­vi­ous post.

This dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tion was made at the TED con­fer­ence. (PS You may also want to see Boing­Bo­ing’s new post: Top 10 TedTalks.)

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The Gas Mileage Illusion (and the Future of Electric Cars)

in Business, Science, Video - Science | June 26th, 2008

Giv­en the sud­den nation­al obses­sion with the price of oil & gas, it seems worth flag­ging this bit of video put togeth­er by two pro­fes­sors from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Some may find their per­spec­tive on gas mileage rather obvi­ous, oth­ers not. Either way, it can’t hurt to get their point across.

Sep­a­rate­ly, here’s a quick piece on the state of elec­tric cars and when they may be ready for prime time. You’ll learn here about the Tes­la Road­ster, a high-per­for­mance elec­tric sports car, that goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 sec­onds and gets the equiv­a­lent of 256 miles per gal­lon. Pret­ty impres­sive, even if it costs $109k.

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Salman Rushdie’s Book Tour Rolls Through Google

in Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | June 24th, 2008

Salman Rushdie’s lat­est book, The Enchantress of Flo­rence: A Nov­el, has hit the streets. And it comes just three years after his last one, Shal­i­mar the Clown, which makes him a good deal more pro­lif­ic than many of his con­tem­po­raries. (A piece in The Guardian — The Great Amer­i­can Pause — notes that many cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ists have been pub­lish­ing books a bit more leisure­ly, often once every 10, 12 or even 20 years.) Dur­ing his book tour last week, Rushdie trav­eled to Google’s HQ, where, among oth­er things, he talked about how he used Google and oth­er online tools to do the his­tor­i­cal research for The Enchantress of Flo­rence. The talk runs a good 70 min­utes, and it takes you through the process that brought his work from con­cept to real­i­ty. Watch the video below.

Want to know how to add YouTube videos to your iPod? Then check out our piece: 10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get.

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The Candid Side of George Carlin

in Comedy | June 24th, 2008

A quick find … I want­ed to flag a good inter­view with George Car­lin where he talks can­did­ly about his evo­lu­tion as a com­ic and the strange tra­jec­to­ry of his career. The con­ver­sa­tion was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York. You can down­load it here: iTunes — Feed — MP3 — Blog Post.

Also see the 92nd Street Y’s col­lec­tion on iTunes here, which we men­tioned in our ear­li­er post today.

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iTunesU Goes Beyond The Campus: Spotlight on the ResearchChannel

in Apple, Podcasts | June 23rd, 2008

In case you haven’t been watch­ing … Apple’s iTune­sU has start­ed strik­ing out in new direc­tions. When it launched a lit­tle more than a year ago, iTune­sU served up free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent exclu­sive­ly from uni­ver­si­ties. Now, it has gone “beyond the cam­pus.”

With this move, Apple is now fea­tur­ing edi­fy­ing mate­r­i­al from such insti­tu­tions as The New York Pub­lic Library, the 92nd Street Y (nice look­ing col­lec­tion here), the Nation­al Sci­ence Dig­i­tal Library, and the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies. Also in the mix, you’ll find pod­casts from the ResearchChan­nel. Based out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the ResearchChan­nel brings togeth­er con­tent from lead­ing research and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions (see mem­ber list here), and then dis­trib­utes it to con­sumers most­ly through satel­lite and cable, but also via the web. iTune­sU is a fair­ly new dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel. And even new­er is YouTube. (See their chan­nel here.)

What kind of con­tent does the ResearchChan­nel serve up? Here’s a sam­pling of the pro­grams you’ll find: Dark Ener­gy, or Worse: Was Ein­stein Wrong?; Bioen­er­gy and Bio­fu­els: An Overview; The Psy­chol­o­gy of Blink: Under­stand­ing How the Mind Works Uncon­scious­ly; The Teen Brain; and Mesopotamia to Iraq: Per­spec­tives on the Mid­dle East.

The ResearchChan­nel, I should men­tion, is not the only ven­ture in this line of busi­ness. The UChan­nel (for­mer­ly the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel), com­ing out of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, offers a rather sim­i­lar prod­uct: Web site — iTunes — Rss feed — YouTube . Like­wise, FORA.TV does a good job of aggre­gat­ing smart video: Web site — iTunes — Rss feeds — YouTube.

For more smart audio con­tent, check our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Zurich Chamber Orchestra Animated on YouTube

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | June 22nd, 2008

The Roller Coast­er…

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