Stanford Online Writing Courses — The Spring Lineup

in Uncategorized | February 23rd, 2009

A quick fyi: This morn­ing, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its spring line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

As you will see, there are a cou­ple of cours­es offered in con­junc­tion with The New York Times. The idea here is that you’ll learn writ­ing from a Stan­ford  writ­ing instruc­tor and then get your work reviewed by a Times book crit­ic. Quite a perk, I must say.

For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion with The New York Times (one spot left)
• Writ­ing Fic­tion with The New York Times
• Fic­tion I: Begin­ning Short Sto­ry Writ­ing
• Fic­tion II: Voic­es That Live
• Trav­el Writ­ing
• Mag­a­zine Writ­ing
• Intro­duc­tion to Cre­ative Writ­ing
• Putting a Spin on Sci­ence Writ­ing
• Nov­el Writ­ing III: A Plan for Suc­cess
• Mem­oir I: What I Saw, What I Wore, What I Ate, and More
  

The Unrepentant Terrorist? A Conversation with Bill Ayers

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2009

Bill Ayers, founder of the Weath­er Under­ground and favorite whip­ping boy of the failed McCain cam­paign, gives a primer on the sum­mer of ’68, dis­cuss­es his favorite tat­too, and explains how the Chica­go Police Depart­ment now loves him. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by a col­league of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the iron­ic way it begins:

…our inter­view [start­ed] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lob­by and a wor­ried secu­ri­ty guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, point­ing to a back­pack and coat that were def­i­nite­ly not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few oth­er peo­ple. The own­er was not there. She radioed in. I con­sid­ered the irony of being blown up while inter­view­ing Bill Ayers. I fig­ured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.

Get the full inter­view over at The Rum­pus.

Stream the New U2 Album

in Music | February 20th, 2009

U2’s next album, No Line on the Hori­zon, will be released inter­na­tion­al­ly in ear­ly March. But not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly the album is already being cir­cu­lat­ed (not legal­ly) on Bit­Tor­rent. And this has moti­vat­ed the band to give fans free access to a streamed ver­sion on MySpace. To lis­ten, just click here, scroll down to the music play­er, and tog­gle the “Fea­ture Playlist” to No Line on the Hori­zon. You should be able to access the album in its entire­ty.

Hitchens & D’Souza Go Mano-a-Mano on Faith

in Religion | February 18th, 2009

I did­n’t think it would be pos­si­ble, but it hap­pened. I found my two least favorite intel­lec­tu­als togeth­er on the same stage, and King’s Col­lege in NYC made it all pos­si­ble. So, to mark the occa­sion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the acad­e­my’s dressed up ver­sion of Ann Coul­ter, debat­ing the ever surly Christo­pher Hitchens. The top­ic is faith and athe­ism. The debate is heat­ed. And as you watch, you’ll see the charm­ing per­son­al­i­ties come out. The video con­tin­ues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 min­utes in total.

Welcome to the New Age of Upheaval

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2009

Har­vard his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the rise and fall of great empires and finan­cial sys­tems. Writ­ing for For­eign Pol­i­cy, Fer­gu­son now warns that the spi­ral­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis may soon pose seri­ous threats to inter­na­tion­al peace and Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty. As we saw dur­ing the late 1930s, eco­nom­ic cri­sis often sets the stage for full-blown polit­i­cal and pos­si­bly mil­i­tary cri­sis, and we’re already see­ing the risk of upheaval in nine coun­tries, includ­ing Soma­lia, Rus­sia, and Mex­i­co. Fer­gu­son clos­es by say­ing: “Eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, plus eth­nic dis­in­te­gra­tion, plus an empire in decline: That com­bi­na­tion is about the most lethal in geopol­i­tics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.”

via The Dai­ly Dish

On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

in Web/Tech | February 18th, 2009

Ear­li­er in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twit­ter, prompt­ed part­ly by Makeuseof.com, which men­tioned our site in a Twit­ter-relat­ed arti­cle. (Thanks Mark for that.)

When we first cre­at­ed our Twit­ter feed, my hopes weren’t espe­cial­ly high. And while I’m still not com­plete­ly sold on the per­son­al uses of Twit­ter, I’m def­i­nite­ly lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”

Sounds of Opera 1907

in Music | February 17th, 2009

In 1907, exec­u­tives from the Gramo­phone Com­pa­ny head­ed to the base­ment of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax record­ings of famous opera singers. Now, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, these record­ings have been opened, dust­ed off, and (yes) even com­mer­cial­ized. Lat­er this month, EMI will release the record­ings under the title, “Trea­sures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes arti­cle and scroll down a lit­tle to the Mul­ti­me­dia sec­tion, you can sam­ple these cen­tu­ry old record­ings. The Times col­lec­tion fea­tures out­takes from Verdi’s Aida, Otel­lo and Rigo­let­to. Find them here.

Swapping Your Way to Enlightenment: A Recession Special

in Books | February 16th, 2009

Here’s a handy way to weath­er the reces­sion with your intel­lect and pock­et book intact…

In this very down econ­o­my, you can keep feed­ing your read­ing habit by book swap­ping. Yes, that’s right, book swap­ping. What goes on here is fair­ly straight­for­ward. You give away books that you’ve already read. In exchange, you get books that you want to read. And the cost (aside from ship­ping fees) is zero. Plus you’ll save more than a few trees.

On the web, you’ll find two major online book swap­ping ser­vices. The first is PaperBackSwap.com. The sec­ond is Book­Mooch. You can learn more about each ser­vice (respec­tive­ly) here and here.

Who Believes in Evolution?

in Science | February 15th, 2009

This chart comes from a new Pew Research Cen­ter study that looks at the world­wide accep­tance of evo­lu­tion 150 years after Dar­win’s On the Ori­gin of Species by Means of Nat­ur­al Selec­tion. At least in the Unit­ed States, only a minor­i­ty of the pub­lic believes in evo­lu­tion, large­ly because evan­gel­i­cal protes­tants (a large por­tion of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion) resist Dar­win’s think­ing far more strong­ly than oth­er world pop­u­la­tions. (The chart makes that sim­ple fact fair­ly clear.) A piece new­ly pub­lished by the Pew Cen­ter goes on to add:

Recent pub­lic opin­ion polls indi­cate that chal­lenges to Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion have sub­stan­tial sup­port among the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Accord­ing to an August 2006 sur­vey by the Pew Research Cen­ter’s Forum on Reli­gion & Pub­lic Life and the Pew Research Cen­ter for the Peo­ple & the Press, 63 per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe that humans and oth­er ani­mals have either always exist­ed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guid­ance of a supreme being. Only 26 per­cent say that life evolved sole­ly through process­es such as nat­ur­al selec­tion. A sim­i­lar Pew Research Cen­ter poll, released in August 2005, found that 64 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port teach­ing cre­ation­ism along­side evo­lu­tion in the class­room.

For more infor­ma­tion, see the Pew Cen­ter’s larg­er web col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the Dar­win debate. Also see a new Gallup poll that puts Amer­i­can belief in evo­lu­tion at 39%.

via The Dai­ly Dish

Watch Educational Videos Offline with YouTube

in Google, YouTube | February 12th, 2009

It’s anoth­er good day for the open edu­ca­tion move­ment. As part of an exper­i­ment, YouTube has part­nered with a select num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties (Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, and UCLA) to make lec­tures, cours­es and oth­er videos avail­able for free down­load. This gives edu­ca­tors and life­long learn­ers the free­dom to watch edu­ca­tion­al videos offline, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want, includ­ing air­planes or class­rooms with lim­it­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The videos (all high-res­o­lu­tion mp4s) can be watched on any com­put­er loaded with Quick­Time and also on many portable devices, includ­ing new­er iPods. When I spoke with the YouTube team today, they flagged anoth­er perk: the videos are being dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, which means that you can reuse them under cer­tain non-com­mer­cial con­di­tions.

For some­one who has helped devel­op cours­es appear­ing in Stan­ford’s YouTube col­lec­tion, today’s news was cer­tain­ly wel­come. These cours­es are not cheap to devel­op, and we do it as a pub­lic ser­vice. So we’re always hap­py when we encounter new ways of get­ting the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent to a broad­er audi­ence. This new down­load capa­bil­i­ty does just that. It extends our reach just a lit­tle more, and it’s hard to quib­ble with that.

As a prac­ti­cal note, if you’re won­der­ing how to down­load the YouTube videos men­tioned above, here’s what to do. Find a video from Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, or UCLA, look at the low­er left-hand cor­ner of the video, click the “Down­load this video” link, and you should be good to go.

Relat­ed Con­tent: