Lawrence Lessig Speaks Once Again About Copyright and Creativity

in Law | November 9th, 2009

Last year, Lawrence Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, gave what was sup­posed to be his last talk on the mod­ern copy­right regime that once ben­e­fit­ed cre­ativ­i­ty but now sti­fles it and brings big bucks to cor­po­ra­tions. But, at EDUCAUSE last week, he came back as the keynote speak­er and returned to these still-burn­ing issues once again. Lessig has post­ed his art­ful­ly pre­sent­ed talk online, and you can now watch it above.

PS Once you start the video, it will take a lit­tle while for you to see any­thing.

Jonathan Lethem on Art & The Digital Future

in Books, Literature | November 9th, 2009

Jonathan Lethem, the writer behind Moth­er­less Brook­lyn (one of my faves) and Fortress of Soli­tude, has a new book out, Chron­ic City. Above, he talks about the sur­re­al qual­i­ty of his work, the future of dig­i­tal books, and the per­son­al guide­lines that deter­mine what he writes, and won’t write. With­in this last point, you will find a good les­son for all of us. Find your unique tal­ent, ded­i­cate your­self to it, avoid the work com­mon­ly done by oth­ers, and you can achieve some­thing notable and worth­while.

A Smart Guide to Free Magazines

in Media | November 8th, 2009

A good find via Life­hack­er. Mag­g­wire is a rel­a­tive­ly new site that will do two things for you. It will direct you to free mag­a­zine con­tent online (a good thing). And (per­haps even bet­ter) it will learn what you like to read, and then start feed­ing you con­tent based on your pref­er­ences. If Mag­g­wire can deliv­er on this promise, it will help you nav­i­gate the very large vol­ume of con­tent that you encounter every day. To get start­ed with Mag­g­wire, check out this video.

Paul McCartney on the Cheap

in Music | November 6th, 2009

A quick note: Paul McCart­ney’s album, Mem­o­ry Almost Full, is going today for $2.99 on Ama­zon. Sup­pos­ed­ly, it’s just a one day deal, so it seemed worth a men­tion…

Leading Like the Great Conductors

in Music | November 4th, 2009

This comes to us cour­tesy of TED Talks. Here, Itay Tal­gam, an Israeli con­duc­tor, talks about the art of lead­ing an orches­tra and shows the styles of six great 20th-cen­tu­ry con­duc­tors. Ulti­mate­ly, there are some gen­er­al lessons here. Lessons about lead­er­ship. Give it a few min­utes, and it gets going. Mean­while, on a relat­ed note, you might want to check out Yale’s new open course, Lis­ten­ing to Music, which uses clas­si­cal musi­cal to make sense of music more gen­er­al­ly. Thanks Vick­ie for the great find.

Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss Remembered

in Life, Philosophy | November 3rd, 2009

News broke today that Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of France’s tow­er­ing intel­lec­tu­als, has died. He was 100 years old. The New York Times has a lengthy obit that cov­ers the career of the anthro­pol­o­gist who brought us “struc­tural­ism” and helped us look at diverse cul­tures in new ways. NPR has also aired a short piece (in audio) that high­lights Lévi-Strauss’ intel­lec­tu­al accom­plish­ments. You can lis­ten below.

Audi­ble Starter Kit: Get 3 Audio­books, Plus a Free Phillips Spark 2GB MP3 Play­er

Sita Sings the Blues Now on YouTube

in Film | October 28th, 2009

Nina Paley, a self-taught ani­ma­tor, released in 2008 an 82-minute ani­mat­ed film, Sita Sings the Blues, that min­gles the clas­sic Indi­an myth, The Ramayana, with con­tem­po­rary auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Han­shaw. The film, which launched the San Fran­cis­co Inter­na­tion­al Ani­ma­tion Fes­ti­val, has won awards and gath­ered a lot of fans. In late Feb­ru­ary, Paley hand­ed the film over to the pub­lic, releas­ing it under a Cre­ative Com­mons license (down­load it here). And she has now made it avail­able on YouTube. Hence the visu­al­ly stun­ning film above. Nat­u­ral­ly, we’ve added Sita Sings the Blues to our col­lec­tion of YouTube favorites.

In the mean­time, check out our new col­lec­tion, 30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online

Free Philip Glass Album (Act Today)

in Music | October 28th, 2009

A quick note: Ama­zon will let you down­load a Philip Glass sam­pler that con­tains 21 tracks. You can get them as mp3s, and they’re all free. But the deal ends (it seems) by the end of the day. So act quick­ly.

via Life­hack­er

Richard Dawkins v. Bill O’Reilly: Round 2

in Media, Science | October 26th, 2009

Back when Richard Dawkins (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) pub­lished The God Delu­sion in 2007, he made a fair­ly unex­pect­ed appear­ance on Bill O’Reil­ly’s show. Quite the con­trast in char­ac­ters. Now that he has pub­lished his lat­est book, The Great­est Show on Earth, it was time for Dawkins to meet up with the bump­tious one again. Here it goes. Watch above.

Yale Adds New Batch of Free Open Courses

in Online Courses, Yale | October 25th, 2009

A quick update for you. Yale Uni­ver­si­ty has added its third batch of cours­es to its open edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive, bring­ing the total num­ber of cours­es to 25. (Find the com­plete list here.) The lat­est round is slight­ly big­ger than pre­vi­ous ones, which bucks the trend that we’re gen­er­al­ly see­ing. (Open Cours­es have been in a notice­able slump for the past year.) Below, I have list­ed the new­ly added cours­es and pro­vid­ed links to iTunes, YouTube, and pages where you can down­load the cours­es in var­i­ous oth­er for­mats. I have also added these cours­es to our online col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. This col­lec­tion now fea­tures over 250 free cours­es, all ready to down­load to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. iPhone own­ers can also find many oth­er cours­es on our free iPhone app.

• Dante in Trans­la­tion — YouTube — iTunes Audio - iTunes Video — Down­load Course – Giuseppe Maz­zot­ta
• Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion, 1648–1945 -YouTube – iTunes Audio –iTunes Video — Down­load Course - John Mer­ri­man
• Fresh­man Organ­ic Chem­istry — YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Down­load Course  - J. Michael McBride
• Glob­al Prob­lems of Pop­u­la­tion Growth — YouTube — iTunes Audio– iTunes Video – Down­load Course - Robert Wyman
• Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture — YouTube – iTunes – Down­load Course — Dale B. Mar­tin
• Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture —  YouTube — iTunes Audio –iTunes Video — Down­load Course — Paul H. Fry
• Lis­ten­ing to Music — Down­load Course — Craig Wright
• Prin­ci­ples of Evo­lu­tion, Ecol­o­gy and Behav­ior — YouTube – iTunes Audio –iTunes Video — Down­load Course — Stephen C. Stearns
• The Psy­chol­o­gy, Biol­o­gy and Pol­i­tics of Food — Down­load Course — Kel­ly D. Brownell
• Roman Archi­tec­ture — YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video- Down­load Course — Diana E. E. Klein­er