Philip Roth’s Creative Surge & the Death of the Novel

in Books, Literature | August 31st, 2010

Philip Roth, now 77 years old, keeps pub­lish­ing with a cer­tain urgency. Every­man in 2006, Exit Ghost in 2007, Indig­na­tion 2008, The Hum­bling last year, and next comes Neme­sis, due to be released in ear­ly Octo­ber. After The Hum­bling hit the shelves, mag­a­zine edi­tor Tina Brown con­duct­ed a rare video inter­view with Roth, and they cov­ered a fair amount of ground in 14 min­utes: his cre­ative surge, how he approach­es writ­ing sex scenes, Oba­ma’s lit­er­ary tal­ents, the com­ing extinc­tion of the nov­el and whether the Kin­dle can make any bit of dif­fer­ence, etc. You can watch the video above, or read a tran­script here.

Now a lit­tle free­bie. A nice copy of Indig­na­tion goes to the first read­er who sends along a com­pelling piece of open/intelligent media that we choose to post on the site. (If you’re look­ing for more guid­ance on what we have in mind, please read the tips on this page.) You can sub­mit your media picks here. Cheers…

The Power of Music

in Life, Music | August 31st, 2010

The video says it all. CNN has more on Cap­tain Jack…

via Alec Couros aka @courosa

Richard Feynman: Fun to Imagine

in Physics, Science | August 31st, 2010

Back in 1983, the BBC aired Fun to Imag­ine, a tele­vi­sion series host­ed by Richard Feyn­man that used physics to explain how the every­day world works – “why rub­ber bands are stretchy, why ten­nis balls can’t bounce for­ev­er, and what you’re real­ly see­ing when you look in the mir­ror.” In case you’re not famil­iar with him, Feyn­man was a Nobel prize-win­ning physi­cist who had a gift for many things, includ­ing pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence and par­tic­u­lar­ly physics. The clip above comes from Fun to Imag­ine, and thanks to this YouTube video, you can now watch all six videos in the series, each run­ning about 12 min­utes.  If you’re look­ing for more Feyn­man videos, let me give you this: The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out, an hour-long BBC/PBS pro­gram from 1981, and Feyn­man’s leg­endary lec­tures on physics taped in 1964, now post­ed online cour­tesy of Bill Gates. And, oh yes, don’t for­get Feyn­man play­ing the bon­gos too…

Want to study some physics? Get Free Physics cours­es here. And Free Physics Text­books here.

Journalism for Our Century

in Current Affairs, Media | August 30th, 2010

As jour­nal­ists try to find their foot­ing in the new dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, News21, a Carnegie and Knight ini­tia­tive, has start­ed “incu­bat­ing” eight jour­nal­ism schools across the coun­try and help­ing stu­dents devel­op new forms of inves­tiga­tive report­ing in mul­ti­me­dia for­mats. Above, we have Spilling Over, a piece of dig­i­tal report­ing that lays bare the emo­tion­al toll the BP Oil spill has tak­en on a Louisiana com­mu­ni­ty. The eight minute video report was assem­bled by a News21 team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. NPR has more on the News21 project, and the News21 web­site fea­tures oth­er stu­dent projects. H/T to Mike S. for anoth­er superb find…

30 Years of Asteroids in 3 Minutes

in Animation, Science | August 29th, 2010

This amaz­ing lit­tle video charts the loca­tion of every aster­oid dis­cov­ered since 1980. As we move into the 1990s, the rate of dis­cov­ery picks up quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly because we’re now work­ing with vast­ly improved sky scan­ning sys­tems. And that means that you will espe­cial­ly want to watch the sec­ond half of the video. Below the jump, I’ve past­ed some more infor­ma­tion that explains what you’re see­ing. Thanks to @WesAlwan and Mike for send­ing this great lit­tle clip our way.

via Giz­mo­do

(more…)

3D Light Show from Ukraine to Your Living Room

in Art, Random | August 28th, 2010

Build­ing becomes can­vas. Give it a minute to get going. Accord­ing to an OC read­er, the show was orga­nized to cel­e­brate the inde­pen­dence of Ukraine (August 24th). Thanks Olga!

via metafil­ter

All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes

in Music | August 25th, 2010

You’ve per­haps seen the “Nine Minute Sopra­nos” (all 6 sea­sons summed up in 9 min­utes) or “The Wire Wrap Up” (5 sea­sons of The Wire recapped in five short min­utes). Now you get 11 Great Operas in 10 Min­utes along with their plot lines that rival the dark twists and turns of any HBO series. (Or maybe it’s the oth­er way around.) La travi­a­ta, Car­men, Don Gio­van­ni, Aida – they’re all cov­ered here.

Karen Armstrong Weighs In on the Ground Zero Mosque Debate

in Current Affairs, Religion | August 25th, 2010

Amer­i­ca, as a nation, has some big fish to fry these days. But the ener­gy is being focused right now on a sym­bol­ic ques­tion. Can the nation tol­er­ate the build­ing of an Islam­ic cul­tur­al cen­ter and mosque near Ground Zero almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks? Or, more to the point, can Amer­i­ca uphold one of its core val­ues – reli­gious tol­er­ance? The debate has smol­dered on through­out the sum­mer, and we’ve seen the hard right and left con­demn the Cor­do­ba Ini­tia­tive and Islam more gen­er­al­ly. On the right, Newt Gin­grich has talked about  how we’re fac­ing an “Islamist cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal offen­sive designed to under­mine and destroy our civ­i­liza­tion.” And built into his think­ing is the assump­tion that when Chris­tians com­mit abhor­rent crimes, it’s a per­ver­sion of the reli­gion, not an indict­ment of its essence. But the same char­i­ty  does­n’t get extend­ed to the Islam­ic minor­i­ty faith in the coun­try. Mean­while, Sam Har­ris on the secular/atheist left gets in bed with Gin­grich when he says “there is much that is objectionable—and, frankly, terrifying—about the reli­gion of Islam and about the state of dis­course among Mus­lims liv­ing in the West.” If it mat­ters, the main dif­fer­ence between Har­ris and Gin­grich is Har­ris’ con­sis­ten­cy, which boils down to a con­sis­tent con­tempt for reli­gion. (Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life takes a much clos­er look at Har­ris’ argu­ments here).

All of this makes me won­der: What would some­one who actu­al­ly knows some­thing about Islam say about the whole affair? So here you have it. Karen Arm­strong, one of the most well known thinkers in the field of com­par­a­tive reli­gion, a for­mer Catholic nun, and the author most recent­ly of The Case for God, offer­ing her thoughts on the mat­ter above.

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

in Comedy, Film, Literature | August 24th, 2010

Com­ing to a the­atre near you. If only …

P.S. You can down­load Jane Austen’s nov­els for free. Find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, which Makeuseof.com was kind enough to fea­ture ear­li­er today.

via Zadi Diaz

Still Life: A Short Film about Tony Judt

in Life | August 24th, 2010

Tony Judt, one of our lead­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, died ear­li­er this month of ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Dis­ease. Judt was no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy, and he had his crit­ics. But he lived out his final years in a way that few could feel divid­ed about. He kept writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. The pace picked up instead of slow­ing down. And he stayed in the pub­lic light, when most would have backed away from it. The video above – a short trib­ute to his life – isn’t entire­ly fun to watch. I’ll admit that. But it says some­thing impor­tant about how we live, endure ill­ness, and die with our human­i­ty intact. Need­less to say, this makes the video even­tu­al­ly 100% rel­e­vant to you. Hence why we’re post­ing. Thanks Mike for anoth­er great clip.

PS You can find Tony Judt’s recent writ­ings in The New York Review of Books here. I would also encour­age you to read Tim­o­thy Gar­ton Ash’s intel­lec­tu­al obit of Judt here.