Warrantless Wiretaps: They’re Not Just for Terrorists Anymore; They’re for Pulitzer Prize Winners Too

in Current Affairs | June 19th, 2008

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s adven­tures with war­rant­less wire­tap­ping first began in Decem­ber 2005, when the New York Times broke the sto­ry. Dur­ing the months that fol­lowed, the whole debate remained fair­ly abstract. We talked about indi­vid­ual rights and the pow­er of the exec­u­tive. We nev­er thought about the indi­vid­u­als who were actu­al­ly mon­i­tored by the pro­gram. And that’s because we did­n’t know who was on the gov­ern­men­t’s list, and because we assumed that the gov­ern­ment was tar­get­ing ter­ror­ists, or those close­ly con­nect­ed to them … which isn’t exact­ly how things turned out.

The lat­est edi­tion of This Amer­i­can Life (enti­tled “The Truth Will Out”) fea­tures an inter­view with an appar­ent tar­get of the wire­tap­ping pro­gram. It’s none oth­er than Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for The New York­er mag­a­zine (see his lat­est piece here) who cov­ers the Mid­dle East and won the Pulitzer Prize (2007) for his book: The Loom­ing Tow­er: Al Qae­da and the Road to 9/11. Dur­ing the seg­ment (which starts at minute 26 of the hour-long pro­gram), Wright recounts how he dis­cov­ered the tap­ping, and how Mike McConnell, the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, react­ed when Wright con­front­ed him with this knowl­edge. You can down­load the pro­gram here: MP3 — iTunes — Feed.

By the way, This Amer­i­can Life, per­haps the most pop­u­lar pod­cast out there, is look­ing to raise mon­ey to keep the pod­cast going. You can donate mon­ey here and sup­port pub­lic radio at its best.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time

This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies the Housing/Credit Cri­sis

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Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (Free Lectures)

in Economics, Online Courses, Philosophy | June 18th, 2008

David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er, has got the right idea. Take what you know. Teach it in the class­room. Cap­ture it on video. Then dis­trib­ute it to the world. Keep it sim­ple, but just do it.

In launch­ing this new web site, Har­vey is mak­ing avail­able 26 hours of lec­tures, dur­ing which he gives a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Das Kap­i­tal (1867). This work, often con­sid­ered to be Marx’s mas­ter­piece, is where he elab­o­rat­ed a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and laid the ground­work for an ide­ol­o­gy that took the 20th cen­tu­ry by storm (and then it dis­ap­peared in a fair­ly quick snap). Har­vey is no stranger to this text. He has taught this class for over 40 years now, both in uni­ver­si­ties (Johns Hop­kins and CUNY) and in the com­mu­ni­ty as well.

The videos will be rolling out in stages. We have post­ed the first one below. (The first lec­ture actu­al­ly starts about 6 min­utes in. A short intro­duc­tion pre­cedes it). Gen­er­al­ly, the videos can be accessed via Har­vey’s web site, or via iTunes and RSS Feed. Also, we have placed the course in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, which keeps on grow­ing. Find it under the “Eco­nom­ics” sec­tion.

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Learn About Memory & Aging on YouTube

in Science, Video - Science, YouTube | June 18th, 2008

Here’s a quick pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment: UCSF, one of the lead­ing med­ical schools in the US, has launched a Mem­o­ry & Aging Chan­nel on YouTube, whose pur­pose is to “edu­cate patients, care­givers and health pro­fes­sion­als about the var­i­ous forms of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.” The dis­eases cov­ered here include Alzheimer’s, Fron­totem­po­ral demen­tia and Creutzfelt-Jakob. We’ve added the col­lec­tion to our larg­er list of edu­ca­tion­al video col­lec­tions on YouTube.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica, Adopting Collaborative Approach, Whispers Uncle

in Wikipedia | June 16th, 2008

Last week, the ven­er­a­ble Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca gave into the pres­sure cre­at­ed by Wikipedia when it announced that it is tri­alling a new ser­vice (see the beta site here) that will let the pub­lic write and edit arti­cles. The dif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, is that Bri­tan­ni­ca’s mod­el won’t be demo­c­ra­t­ic (not all can par­tic­i­pate) and its edi­to­r­i­al staff will enforce high­er stan­dards. Or, as the announce­ment put it, “we will wel­come and facil­i­tate the increased par­tic­i­pa­tion of our con­trib­u­tors, schol­ars, and reg­u­lar users, but we will con­tin­ue to accept all respon­si­bil­i­ty of what we write under our name. We are not abdi­cat­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ty as pub­lish­ers or bury­ing it under the now-fash­ion­able wis­dom of the crowds.”

This exper­i­ment with col­lab­o­ra­tive author­ing may — or may not — yield a bet­ter ency­clo­pe­dia (although some experts have ques­tioned whether the gen­er­al Bri­tan­ni­ca mod­el has any inher­ent advan­tages). It’s hard to know how things will turn out. But what’s more read­i­ly clear is the speed with which the 240 year-old Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca got out­flanked by Wikipedia, born just sev­en years ago. We have seen this sce­nario played out over and over again. But it nev­er ceas­es to amaze. The tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions, just when they seem as per­ma­nent as things can get, sud­den­ly get upend­ed. And, they don’t see it com­ing. Caught flat­foot­ed, they try to adapt, usu­al­ly by adopt­ing the meth­ods used by their com­peti­tor. But it’s most­ly too late, and the real game is over.

Bri­tan­ni­ca may stick around. But will this gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren — or the next — grow up think­ing of Bri­tan­ni­ca as the default research resource? A ques­tion that I’ll leave to you to answer.

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Stanford Launches YouTube Channel; Oprah Gives Graduation Speech

in Stanford | June 15th, 2008

Today, Stan­ford is offi­cial­ly launch­ing its YouTube chan­nel (get it here). Among the videos, you will find Oprah Win­frey’s com­mence­ment speech (giv­en this week­end) and oth­er grad­u­a­tion speech­es from recent years. From there, you can peruse the larg­er video col­lec­tion. Notably, the chan­nel offers access to some com­plete cours­es, includ­ing Clay Car­son­’s African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle and Leonard Susskind’s two cours­es on mod­ern Physics — Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics and Quan­tum Mechan­ics. (Four more Susskind cours­es trac­ing the arc of mod­ern physics will fol­low.)

The Stan­ford Chan­nel also fea­tures many indi­vid­ual speeches/lectures that cur­rent­ly have a strong bent toward sci­ence and busi­ness. (You’ll like­ly find the human­i­ties and social sci­ences get­ting bet­ter rep­re­sent­ed over time.) One par­tic­u­lar video worth watch­ing is a round­table con­ver­sa­tion called “Anx­ious Times.” Host­ed by Ted Kop­pel, the par­tic­i­pants includ­ed Antho­ny Kennedy (US Supreme Court), William Per­ry (for­mer US Sec­re­tary of Defense), George Shultz (for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State), Jer­ry Yang (CEO, Yahoo!), and John Hen­nessy (Pres­i­dent, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty), among oth­ers. And they spent a good two hours think­ing about the many threats now con­fronting the world (glob­al flu pan­demics, North Kore­a’s nuclear ambi­tions, threats to civ­il lib­er­ties, etc.), and how we can get beyond them.

You can explore the com­plete Stan­ford YouTube Chan­nel here and dip into oth­er uni­ver­si­ty chan­nels on YouTube here. Mean­while, here’s Oprah in action below.

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Not Sure What to Title This: Just Some Video Goodness

in Business | June 15th, 2008

The Sam­sung f480, which is essen­tial­ly an iPhone clone, may not have scored too many points with the tech crit­ics. But its gueril­la mar­ket­ing on YouTube deserves some cred­it. Make a real­ly cre­ative video, sneak in some social com­men­tary, add some prod­uct place­ment at the very end, put it on YouTube, and watch it go viral:

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File This Under “I Don’t Get It”

in Music | June 14th, 2008

YouTube is high­light­ing today a video that fea­tures a young girl play­ing Mozart around the world. Hence, the video’s title “Where in Heav­en is Mozart?” Now, the idea is nice. But why is Pachel­bel’s Canon the sound­track for the clip? Is Eine kleine Nacht­musik no longer rec­og­niz­able enough? Kind of sug­gests that we’ve offi­cial­ly achieved Pachel­bel Overkill (if it did­n’t hap­pen long, long ago). Per­haps this explains why you can now find com­ic rants against P’s Canon on YouTube as well.

Find free Clas­si­cal Music pod­casts here.

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Harry Potter Prequel Now Online

in Books | June 14th, 2008

The Har­ry Pot­ter pre­quel that JK Rowl­ing wrote for char­i­ty is now avail­able online. To read it, click here, then click “Read our authors’ sto­ries,” and then click JK Rowl­ing.

Relat­ed:

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grad­u­ates What They Need to Know

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What’s Wrong With What We Eat?

in Random | June 11th, 2008

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman sums up “what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too lit­tle home cook­ing), and why it’s putting the entire plan­et at risk.” As you may notice, some of Bittman’s com­ments echo the think­ing in Michael Pol­lan’s recent work. (The clip has been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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Classic Photographs Remade Lego Style

in Art | June 10th, 2008

Take some of the most impor­tant pho­tographs of the 20th cen­tu­ry, then remake them with Legos, and here’s what you get. You get Robert Capa’s 1944 pho­to­graph of the D‑Day inva­sion, look­ing some­thing like this: (see below). The famous Lunch Atop a Sky­scraper pho­to sud­den­ly looks like this. The image of Roger Ban­nis­ter break­ing the four-minute mile becomes that. And Buzz Aldrin walk­ing on the Moon takes on this look. The full col­lec­tion is here. Thanks to Chop­per Bob for the laugh on this one.

via WWdN: In Exile

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