Oliver Sacks Talks Music with Jon Stewart

in Comedy | June 30th, 2009

This con­ver­sa­tion, both fun­ny and a lit­tle infor­ma­tive, is worth your time. This will hope­ful­ly whet your appetite, and give you good rea­son to watch Oliv­er Sack­’s new pro­gram on NOVA. It’s called Musi­cal Minds and you can watch it here start­ing on July 1.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cen­tral Intel­li­gence: From Ants to the Web

If you have prob­lems watch­ing the clip above, you can find a link to the video here.

Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella

in Music | June 30th, 2009

“In 2009 Ben Folds released a great­est hits record, of sorts, sung entire­ly in a cap­pel­la. The album, Ben Folds Presents: Uni­ver­si­ty A Cap­pel­la! fea­tures two tracks per­formed by Ben him­self, but the bulk of the mate­r­i­al was per­formed by var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ty a cap­pel­la groups.” You can catch a doc­u­men­tary ver­sion above.

Streaming Movies Online: The Future is Almost Now

in Video - Arts & Culture | June 27th, 2009

Accord­ing to Net­flix’s CEO, the DVD is done, and the future is all about stream­ing movies online. (Read the Wall Street Jour­nal piece on that.) This segues nice­ly to a list that we have com­piled that con­tains 1) over 100 high qual­i­ty films that you can watch online for free, and 2) 35 web sites where you can watch free movies online. The col­lec­tion is called Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

A Master List of Free Language Learning Resources

in Language Lessons | June 24th, 2009

Look­ing to learn a new lan­guage this sum­mer? Then give this list a good look. The folks at Universitiesandcolleges.org have cre­at­ed “The Mas­ter List of Free Lan­guage Learn­ing Resources,” which pulls togeth­er mate­ri­als found across a range of dif­fer­ent media. Here, you’ll find pod­casts, open cours­es, iphone apps, and more. And the list notably includes our ever-pop­u­lar col­lec­tion How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, which will teach you about 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Just down­load the audio lessons to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er and you’ll be learn­ing new lan­guages on the go, at no cost.

Curb Your Enthusiasm With Hair

in Comedy | June 19th, 2009

Bike Tricks Courtesy of Thomas Edison

in Random | June 18th, 2009

Voila, the 1899 pre­cur­sor to this amaz­ing 2009 bike stunt video orig­i­nal­ly found on the @courosa Twit­ter stream. And who can doubt that we’re mak­ing progress?

via Andrew Sul­li­van

The American Founders and Their World

in History, Stanford | June 17th, 2009

Through­out this year, my pro­gram at Stan­ford has been cel­e­brat­ing its 20th anniver­sary, and we’ve put togeth­er some spe­cial cours­es for the occa­sion. This spring, we offered a class fea­tur­ing some of the finest Amer­i­can his­to­ri­ans in the coun­try, and togeth­er, they looked back at “The Amer­i­can Founders and Their World.” (Get it free on iTunes here; sor­ry that it’s not also avail­able via oth­er means.) Direct­ed by Jack Rakove (the Stan­ford his­to­ri­an who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Orig­i­nal Mean­ings), this short course brought to cam­pus Gor­don Wood (who received the Pulitzer Prize for The Rad­i­cal­ism of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion); Annette Gor­don-Reed (who won the Nation­al Book Award for The Hem­ingses of Mon­ti­cel­lo); and Alan Tay­lor, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning William Coop­er’s Town.

You can find this course list­ed in our large col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es, and below I have includ­ed a fuller course descrip­tion that ran in our cat­a­logues. Enjoy learn­ing more about Jef­fer­son, Madi­son, Hamil­ton, Wash­ing­ton, the Fed­er­al­ists, anti-Fed­er­al­ists and the rest:

By all accounts, pop­u­lar inter­est in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary era has nev­er been high­er. Books on Wash­ing­ton, Jef­fer­son, Adams, Hamil­ton, and oth­er founders roll off the press­es, make the best­seller lists, and pro­vide clear evi­dence that Amer­i­cans remain deeply fas­ci­nat­ed by the remark­able gen­er­a­tion that secured inde­pen­dence, formed a nation­al union, cre­at­ed the first mod­ern sys­tem of polit­i­cal parties—and espoused ideals of lib­er­ty and equal­i­ty while main­tain­ing a sys­tem of racial slav­ery.

How should we think about the Founders and their lega­cy? How can we account for the emer­gence of this group of lead­ers in the provin­cial iso­la­tion of 18th-cen­tu­ry British North Amer­i­ca? To answer these ques­tions, Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies invit­ed Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize–winning his­to­ri­an and W.R. Coe Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry and Amer­i­can Stud­ies at Stan­ford, to recruit an “A Team” of fel­low schol­ars from across the coun­try to dis­cuss the indi­vid­ual lives and col­lec­tive acts that turned the thir­teen colonies into a nation­al repub­lic. Pre­sen­ters will not lec­ture for­mal­ly; instead, in each class meet­ing Pro­fes­sor Rakove will engage in con­ver­sa­tion with his guests to explore their sub­ject in dia­logue.

How to Build Your Online Author Fan Base (in One Minute!)

in Books, Web/Tech | June 17th, 2009

Thanks to George Smyth of the One Minute How-To Pod­cast, I bring you this quick dis­cus­sion of how to build an online author fan base. This is a quick break­down of the method that’s worked for me. If you’re look­ing for more quick how-to’s, vis­it: www.oneminutehowto.com

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Stephen Colbert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses

in Audio Books, Books | June 16th, 2009

Every June 16 is Blooms­day, which com­mem­o­rates James Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio of the text here). In Dublin and around the world, cel­e­bra­tions usu­al­ly include a read­ing of Joyce’s clas­sic. Last 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.

Live-Tweeting The Revolution

in Current Affairs | June 15th, 2009

Andrew Sul­li­van has been embar­rass­ing Amer­i­ca’s tra­di­tion­al mass media. With his one man blog, he has pro­vid­ed rich­er and more imme­di­ate insight into what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground in Iran than even The New York Times. (I ask, some­what face­tious­ly, would we real­ly miss the belea­guered news­pa­per indus­try if it went away? Not this week, we would­n’t.) Now Sul­li­van has pulled togeth­er an impres­sive list of tweets com­ing straight from the front lines. A short 140 char­ac­ters can say more than you’d think, and, read­ing them, it seems fair­ly clear that the injuries, even fatal­i­ties, in Tehran may be high­er than the MSM has report­ed so far. Right now, we’re clear­ly see­ing two new forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — blog­ging and Twit­ter — hit­ting their stride.