The Life You Can Save

in Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2009

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Peter Singer is an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton and who wrote Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975, help­ing to launch the ani­mal rights move­ment. A prac­ti­tion­er of applied ethics, he has also tak­en con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on euthana­sia. Nowa­days, he’s work­ing on less sen­si­tive issues. His lat­est book is called The Life You Can Save: Act­ing Now to End World Pover­ty, and it makes the basic point that most of us could be doing more, with very lit­tle effort, to save lives around the world.

It’s a giv­en that we would rush to save a small child about to step into oncom­ing traf­fic. That’s a no-brain­er, an instinct. But, if we’re told that we can save the lives of chil­dren world­wide by giv­ing token amounts of mon­ey each month, we often react indif­fer­ent­ly and then go out and con­sume. In this inter­view heard on San Fran­cis­co air­waves this morn­ing, (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Singer gets into how small sac­ri­fices can make big dif­fer­ences, and why we should make them. And if you’re look­ing for char­i­ties that can help make these dif­fer­ences, Singer pro­vides a help­ful list on his web site.

David Foster Wallace’s Unfinished Work

in Books, Literature | March 5th, 2009

When David Fos­ter Wal­lace (Infi­nite Jest) com­mit­ted sui­cide last Sep­tem­ber, he left behind fam­i­ly, friends and an unfin­ished third nov­el, The Pale King. This week, The New York­er takes a long look at Wal­lace’s life, career, bouts with depres­sion, and the nov­el he began in 1997. The mag­a­zine has also post­ed an excerpt of The Pale King (which will be pub­lished next year by Lit­tle, Brown) and some actu­al pages from the man­u­script. Def­i­nite­ly worth a look.

Hitchcock Round II

in Film | March 3rd, 2009

For those of you who could­n’t see the Hitch­cock films post­ed yes­ter­day (down with Joost for geoblock­ing!), I’ve hope­ful­ly found an alter­na­tive resource. The Inter­net Archive hosts some clas­sic films, and there you’ll find 4 of the 5 Hitch­cock films men­tioned yes­ter­day. Folks on Twit­ter have con­firmed that the films can be accessed in Mex­i­co, Bel­gium, Sri Lan­ka, Ire­land and Cana­da. So hope­ful­ly you’ll be in good shape too. Thanks to an uniden­ti­fied read­er for the tip:

The 39 Steps

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Secret Agent

Young and Inno­cent

Pulitzer Prize Winner Picks Essential US History Books

in Books, History | March 3rd, 2009

The Wall Street Jour­nal asked Gor­don Wood, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans, to pick his favorite works of US his­to­ry, and here is what he had to say. 

1) The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Tra­di­tion and the Men Who Made It — Richard Hof­s­tadter

2) The Ide­o­log­i­cal Ori­gins of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion — Bernard Bai­lyn

3) White Over Black — Winthrop D. Jor­dan

4) Moth­ers of Inven­tion — Drew Gilpin Faust

5) Grand Expec­ta­tions — James T. Pat­ter­son

As a quick side note, if you live in the SF Bay Area, you can catch Gor­don Wood teach­ing at Stan­ford this spring along with two oth­er Pulitzer Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­ans. The course, The Amer­i­can Founders and Their World, comes out of the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram and is open to the pub­lic. Get details here.

via Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press Twit­ter Feed (also see Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here)

This American Life: The Financial Crisis in 59 Minutes

in Current Affairs, Economics | March 2nd, 2009

Last week, we cre­at­ed a handy list of blogs & pod­casts that reg­u­lar­ly cov­er the finan­cial cri­sis. And so it seemed worth flag­ging the lat­est episode of This Amer­i­can Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 — iTunes — Feed). It just came out this week­end. And it takes a close and enter­tain­ing look at what hap­pens when a bank goes bad/insolvent. The show gets into the real nit­ty grit­ty of the cri­sis and, once you’ve lis­tened, you’ll bet­ter under­stand bet­ter the pros and cons of solu­tions being tried out by the gov­ern­ment.

The episode fol­lows two oth­er insight­ful pro­grams by This Amer­i­can Life: The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). All three pro­grams are now added to our list of finan­cial cri­sis blogs and pod­casts.

William S. Burroughs’ “Writings” on eBay

in Literature | March 1st, 2009

You can now find some new writ­ings of the Beat author William S. Bur­roughs on eBay. What’s up for bid here is not a long lost nov­el, or an ear­ly draft of Naked Lunch. Nope, it’s sim­ply Bur­roughs’ shop­ping list, a lit­tle note remind­ing him to pick up some cans of Coke, cat food, vod­ka, Triscuits, and oth­er banal things. Buy it here for a cool $495.  All cred­it on this one goes to Boing­Bo­ing, which, by the way, is also fea­tur­ing today a free down­load of Sean Williams’ Dar­win­ian reli­gion nov­el Crooked Let­ter.

A quick PS: one of our read­ers claims this is a pho­to of Bur­roughs shop­ping. This has not been ver­i­fied, but if you’re curi­ous what it might have looked like to put the shop­ping list in action, here it goes. :)

The New Kindle and the Audio Book Threat

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Media | February 27th, 2009

It took until Feb­ru­ary 26, but I final­ly got my back­o­rdered x‑mas present — the Kin­dle 2 (check it out here). There’s a lot to like about it. It’s thin & light. The screen is very read­able. It holds a ton of books (1500). It down­loaded War & Peace in a mat­ter of sec­onds. The bat­tery life is long. And as for the oth­er good stuff, you can read Wal­ter Moss­berg’s review in The Wall Street Jour­nal.

But noth­ing is per­fect, and I’m under­whelmed by the Kindle’s new text-to-audio func­tion­al­i­ty, which the­o­ret­i­cal­ly turns any book into an instant audio book. The com­put­er­ized voice is rather painful to lis­ten to. The rhythms and into­na­tions are off. The sub­tleties of the human voice just aren’t there.  I doubt that this func­tion­al­i­ty will get much use. But it is not stop­ping the Authors Guild from com­plain­ing.

Ear­li­er this week, Roy Blount Jr., the Guild’s pres­i­dent, wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes (“The Kin­dle Swin­dle”) ques­tion­ing the legal­i­ty of the new fea­ture, and com­plain­ing that it deprives authors of rev­enue from audio book rights. Per­haps some day, when this tech­nol­o­gy dra­mat­i­cal­ly improves, Blount may have a point. But, for now, the Kin­dle does­n’t plau­si­bly pose much threat to com­mer­cial­ly-sold audio books. Indeed, you only need to remem­ber that Ama­zon bought Audi­ble, the largest provider of com­mer­cial audio books in the US, and has already inte­grat­ed Audi­ble into the Kin­dle. (Thanks Gideon for point­ing that out.) Is Ama­zon going to let text-to-voice under­mine its Audi­ble invest­ment? Not a chance. In the mean­time, I should note that you can test out Audi­ble’s ser­vice and down­load two free audio books along the way. Not a bad deal.

Allan Bloom on YouTube

in Philosophy | February 27th, 2009

Allan Bloom, per­haps best remem­bered for his con­tro­ver­sial best­seller The Clos­ing of the Amer­i­can Mind, spent his career study­ing and lec­tur­ing on the great books, writ­ing exten­sive­ly on Pla­to, Shake­speare, Rousseau, Hegel and oth­ers. Per­haps not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly, some of his lec­tures have popped up on YouTube. (What does­n’t even­tu­al­ly pop up there?) The lec­tures are actu­al­ly audio record­ings with some pho­tos mixed in, and above we’ve post­ed the first in a series of lec­tures on Pla­to’s Apol­o­gy. The rest of the Pla­to lec­tures can be found here. The gen­er­al col­lec­tion is here. And remem­ber, you can get hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty course here.

Via The Dai­ly Dish

Public Radio on the iPhone

in iPhone, Media, Radio | February 26th, 2009

Here’s a quick fyi for iPhone users: The Pub­lic Radio Tuner, a free app avail­able on iTunes, gives you (free) access to hun­dreds of pub­lic radio streams from across the US. Released in late Jan­u­ary, the Tuner brings togeth­er feeds from NPR, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media, and PRI, among oth­ers. This is a handy way to lis­ten wire­less­ly to local news and cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, plus many well-known shows (All Things Con­sid­ered, Fresh Air, Car Talk, etc.) So far, the app works like a charm. You can down­load it here, or vis­it this web site to learn more about this new ini­tia­tive.

Last­ly, if you don’t have an iPhone, then this page does a good job of aggre­gat­ing pub­lic radio feeds, and you can always lis­ten to them as pod­casts on your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. Def­i­nite­ly worth a look…

The American Future

in Current Affairs, History | February 25th, 2009

Through his books and doc­u­men­taries, Simon Schama, a British born his­to­ri­an, has cov­ered a lot of fer­tile ground. The French Rev­o­lu­tion, the slave trade, the pow­er of art, Rem­brandt, ear­ly mod­ern Dutch cul­ture, the his­to­ry of Britain — Schama has cov­ered it all. And now he has pulled a Toc­queville on us. He spent the bet­ter part of a year trav­el­ing across Amer­i­ca, siz­ing it up, and pro­duc­ing a lengthy TV doc­u­men­tary (now avail­able on DVD) and a relat­ed book (not avail­able in the US yet) called The Amer­i­can Future: A His­to­ry. His analy­sis of Amer­i­ca, of its past and its future, takes into account sev­er­al major themes: reli­gion, immi­gra­tion, land and resources, and war. In this recent con­ver­sa­tion with Bill Moy­ers, Schama talks at length about Amer­i­ca and where it finds itself today. The first 15 min­utes focus on Oba­ma and the chal­lenges he faces. The remain­ing part gets into themes dis­cussed in The Amer­i­can Future. You can access it here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

P.S. I am real­ly sor­ry about the frus­trat­ing down­time this morn­ing. My host­ing ser­vice — Dreamhost — had some “issues.” Hope­ful­ly this was an excep­tion.