The Economist Presents the Global Online MBA Forum

in Business, Education | November 13th, 2010

This com­ing Mon­day and Tues­day (Novem­ber 15 & 16), The Econ­o­mist will host a free online MBA fair, giv­ing busi­ness school can­di­dates the chance to chat with admis­sions offi­cers and cur­rent stu­dents from over 20 inter­na­tion­al b‑schools. Schools par­tic­i­pat­ing in the online forum include Bran­deis, Cor­nell, Pep­per­dine, Queens Uni­ver­si­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, and the Copen­hagen Busi­ness School, just to name a few. The two-day event is free and open to the pub­lic. Once par­tic­i­pants reg­is­ter, they will find videos and pod­casts on press­ing MBA ques­tions, and also join chat ses­sions about MBA net­work­ing, career ser­vices, and inter­na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum choic­es. You can reg­is­ter for The Econ­o­mist Glob­al MBA Forum right here (or sim­ply click on the image above), and then get start­ed with the forum itself right here on Mon­day.

Writing Studio Floating in Foliage

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

When asked to design a writ­ing stu­dio in the woods of New York, archi­tect Andrew Berman began work on his dream project. And here’s what he deliv­ered. If only we could all write in such lux­u­ry…

via Media Bistro

Out My Window: An Interactive Documentary

in Film, Life, Web/Tech | November 11th, 2010

Out My Win­dow — it’s a new inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary, a film unlike any you have seen before. Kate­ri­na Cizek, the direc­tor, put it togeth­er over the course of years, and the award-win­ning film uses its nov­el approach to explore life, as it goes on, with­in high­ris­es — the most com­mon­ly built struc­tures dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry. Cre­at­ed with 360º video and high end web tech­nol­o­gy, Out My Win­dow brings you to 13 dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe, mov­ing from Chica­go to São Paulo, to Ban­ga­lore and Johan­nes­burg. And the sto­ry does­n’t unfold lin­ear­ly. You choose where and when you want the sto­ries (49 in total) to begin and end. The film is bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described. So my rec­om­men­da­tion: Watch the trail­er, or just jump into the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary and see for your­self.

Paul Auster Reads from New Novel, Sunset Park

in Books, Literature | November 10th, 2010

This week, Paul Auster releas­es his 16th nov­el, Sun­set Park, which gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the eco­nom­ic mis­for­tunes weigh­ing on the coun­try. The fore­clo­sures. The unem­ploy­ment. The reces­sion and depres­sion. The nov­el starts to paint the des­per­ate pic­ture quick­ly. Above, we have Paul Auster read­ing the begin­ning pages, and you can fol­low along with this tran­script post­ed online by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Auster also hap­pens to nar­rate the entire audio ver­sion of Sun­set Park, and, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here, you can down­load a free audio copy of the nov­el (or pret­ty much any oth­er book of your choice) if you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al of Audible.com. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it. It’s up to you. But, either way, you keep the book.

Thanks to Mike for spot­ting the Auster read­ing…

Welcome to the Plutocracy! Bill Moyers Presents the First Howard Zinn Lecture

in Current Affairs, History, Life | November 9th, 2010

Howard Zinn, the Peo­ple’s his­to­ri­an, taught at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty for 24 years, until he died ear­li­er this year. In late Octo­ber, Bill Moy­ers deliv­ered the first Howard Zinn Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture dur­ing which, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, he focus­es on the chal­lenges fac­ing our democ­ra­cy, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­ca’s long drift toward plu­toc­ra­cy, where the rich get rich­er at the expense of the aver­age cit­i­zen. The talk (fol­lowed by a Q&A ses­sion) runs a good two hours, and Moy­ers him­self starts speak­ing at the 6:40 minute mark. You can watch the video here, or read the tran­script here.

via Metafil­ter

A‑List Authors, Artists & Thinkers Draw Self Portraits

in Art, Literature | November 8th, 2010

Over the years, Burt Brit­ton con­vinced A‑list writ­ers and artists to draw self-por­traits of them­selves. He first enticed Nor­man Mail­er long ago, while work­ing as a bar­tender at the Vil­lage Van­guard in NYC. Then came Miles Davis, Jorge Luis Borges (who was already blind), Mar­garet Atwood, Frank Gehry, Saul Bel­low, David Hock­ney, Allen Gins­berg, Cor­mac McCarthy (see above) and a parade of oth­ers. The doo­dled por­traits were lat­er col­lect­ed in a now out-of-print book, Self-Por­trait: Book Peo­ple Pic­ture Them­selves. You can still find a small­er col­lec­tion online at The Dai­ly Beast. The New York Times gives you more of the back­sto­ry on this col­lec­tion here.

via Maud New­ton

Spalding Gray Archives Head to the University of Texas

in Art, Theatre | November 8th, 2010

This week, the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin acquired the archives of Spald­ing Gray (1941–2004), the actor and play­wright most well known for his per­for­mance piece “Swim­ming to Cam­bo­dia” (clip here). Accord­ing to The New York Times, the archive spans some 40 years and fea­tures per­for­mance note­books (see image above), diaries, and tapes of Gray’s per­for­mances, includ­ing an ear­ly ver­sion of “Swim­ming to Cam­bo­dia” record­ed in 1983, and a clip from “Life Inter­rupt­ed,” the mono­logue Gray was work­ing on when he died in 2004. Gray’s mate­ri­als will reside along­side the papers of David Mamet, Nor­man Mail­er, James Joyce, Samuel Beck­ett and oth­ers.

 The NYTimes has the full sto­ry here.

The Blue Ocean in RED

in Film, Life | November 8th, 2010

Dur­ing the past decade, Howard Hall has direct­ed four IMAX films that take you deep under the sea, right into the homes of amaz­ing marine life. Now, Hall has brought his act to Vimeo where he has post­ed a mon­tage of his favorite under­wa­ter shots from the past year. Filmed with a RED One cam­era, this footage was tak­en in the waters of the Mal­dives, Alas­ka, Cal­i­for­nia, Cos­ta Rica, and Mex­i­co. And it’s all fair­ly stun­ning. I would high­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing the video on Vimeo itself and siz­ing it to full screen. H/T to @eugenephoto.

3 Year Old Kid & Herbert von Karajan Conduct Beethoven’s 5th: Dueling Videos

in Music | November 7th, 2010

Going viral right now: 3 year old Jonathan con­duct­ing the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th, and doing a pret­ty good job of chan­nel­ing the spir­it of Her­bert von Kara­jan. What you hear in the back­ground is a record­ing of Kara­jan and the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker. And below we give you this: The real Kara­jan lead­ing the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic through the same move­ment of Beethoven’s mas­ter­piece cir­ca 1966.

via @neatorama

Reading While Driving, Seriously?

in Amazon Kindle, Books | November 6th, 2010

I gave up bik­ing on the roads this sum­mer for a good rea­son – too many knuck­le­heads tex­ting, chat­ting, even read­ing, while dri­ving. Read­ing a nov­el while dri­ving? A com­plete aber­ra­tion? Appar­ent­ly not. Join­ing the genius above, we have the Port­land, Ore­gon bus dri­ver giv­ing more thought to the Kin­dle than the road. And then this com­plete piece of work mind­less­ly mov­ing from the tra­di­tion­al book, to the Kin­dle, then to the smart­phone.

via Tech Crunch and Media Bistro

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