Audio Book FYI

in Audio Books | January 9th, 2009

A quick fyi: We’ve spent some time beef­ing up our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. The col­lec­tion now fea­tures over 250 works of fic­tion, non-fic­tion and poet­ry, all of which can be down­loaded to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er for free.

Among the new addi­tions you’ll find some media from The New York­er Mag­a­zine, includ­ing a series of mp3’s that fea­ture Paul Ther­oux read­ing a short work by Jorge Luis Borges, T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle read­ing Tobias Wolf­f’s Bul­let in the Brain, and Junot Diaz read­ing his short piece, How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie). Also you will find new­ly added works by Charles Dick­ens, Alexan­dre Dumas, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Shake­speare, Kurt Von­negut and more. You can peruse the full col­lec­tion here.  Enjoy.

The History of the Internet in 8 Minutes

in Technology, Web/Tech | January 6th, 2009

We have here a short, catchy ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary that explains how we get from the 1950s to the inter­net that we know and love today. Along the way, it cov­ers inven­tions rang­ing from time-shar­ing to file­shar­ing, from Arpanet to Inter­net. Have a look…

Stanford Online Writing Courses — The Winter Lineup

in Uncategorized | January 5th, 2009

A quick fyi: If you made a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion to become a seri­ous writer, then you might be inter­est­ed in these online writ­ing cours­es offered by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (which, caveat emp­tor, I help over­see) and Stan­ford’s Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram. These online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors. Class­es start next week. Unfor­tu­nate­ly some are already full … and they are not free. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ. And, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, feel free to look through the cours­es tak­ing place on the Stan­ford cam­pus.

• Mag­a­zine Writ­ing
  
• Short Sto­ry II: Sur­pris­ing Char­ac­ters and Sud­den Twists
• Craft­ing Suc­cess­ful Crime Fic­tion: How to Write the Action
• Poet­ry Writ­ing: Tran­scrib­ing from the Invis­i­ble
• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion: The Art of the Essay
  
• Get­ting Start­ed in Cre­ative Writ­ing (Closed)
• Con­tin­u­ing Your Nov­el (Closed)
• Writ­ing Mem­oir with The New York Times (Closed)

Bugs Bunny in The Big Snooze (1946)

in Television | January 4th, 2009

On the lighter side for a sleepy Sun­day .…

“The Big Snooze” (1946) was the last car­toon that ani­ma­tion direc­tor Bob Clam­pett ever worked on for Warn­er Broth­ers. The title? It’s an obvi­ous play on the Ray­mond Chan­dler nov­el, The Big Sleep, which was also turned into a film (star­ring Bog­a­rt and Bacall) in 1946. And the sleep­ing pill scene? Well, it was cen­sored on tele­vi­sion for some time. The clip can oth­er­wise be bought on The Looney Tunes Gold­en Col­lec­tion. For now, here it goes.

The Ten Best Classical Music Recordings of 2008

in Music | January 3rd, 2009

Alex Ross, the New York­er music crit­ic who recent­ly won a MacArthur Genius grant and pub­lished The Rest is Noise, a wide­ly praised work that makes sense of 20th cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal music, lists his favorite clas­si­cal music record­ings of 2008.

Put Tolstoy, Twain and Others on Your Mobile Phone

in Books | December 31st, 2008

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Des­jardins asks “Need a lit­tle Tol­stoy while you’re wait­ing in line? How about some Mark Twain on the sub­way? Booksin­my­phone puts — sur­prise! — books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to down­load clas­sics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.  

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John Lennon Returns to Promote “One Laptop Per Child”

in Music | December 31st, 2008

Thanks to some dig­i­tal hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and help­ing pro­mote One Lap­top Per Child, a char­i­ty work­ing to bring cheap com­put­ers and inter­net access to chil­dren in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the com­mer­cial stitch­es togeth­er old record­ings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a cou­ple of new words (did Lennon ever say “lap­top”?). In the end, it all comes out fair­ly seam­less­ly. If you want to give a lap­top (start­ing at $199) and change the world, go here. Oth­er­wise, here’s John:

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via Goings On via Rolling Stone

The Life of a Star: 12 Billion Years in Six Minutes

in Science, Video - Science | December 29th, 2008

Voila, the birth, life and death of a G‑type star, like our Sun. 12 bil­lion years boiled down to six sim­ple min­utes. We’ve added it to our YouTube Favorites.

Unauthorized Beatles Masterpieces

in Music | December 29th, 2008

This week­end’s New York Times ran a piece detail­ing how the record indus­try has dithered and con­tin­u­al­ly failed to release sev­er­al long-await­ed Bea­t­les’ projects. It also men­tioned how fans and col­lec­tors have forged ahead and put togeth­er unau­tho­rized boot­leg projects, some of which the Times calls “cura­to­r­i­al mas­ter­pieces.” In par­tic­u­lar, the arti­cle high­lights the Pur­ple Chick label, which “has assem­bled deluxe edi­tions of each com­mer­cial­ly released [Bea­t­les] album, offer­ing the orig­i­nal discs in their mono and stereo mix­es, along with the sin­gles (also in mono and stereo) released at the time, as well as every known demo, stu­dio out­take and alter­na­tive mix.” Some of Pur­ple Chick­’s include “Bea­t­les Deluxe” (which cov­ers 10 CDs);  “A/B Road” (which gives you 96 hours of the “Let It Be” ses­sions); and a series of BBC radio per­for­mances. 

So how do you get this stuff? It’s a ques­tion that Rolling Stone asked rhetor­i­cal­ly when it recent­ly gave anoth­er pos­i­tive review to Pur­ple Chick record­ings. And it answered the ques­tion with this: “Google is your friend: Try search­ing ‘pur­ple chick and megau­pload’ to get start­ed.”

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The Clash of Civilizations (and the Passing of its Author)

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | December 29th, 2008

When the twin tow­ers were tak­en down in Sep­tem­ber 2001, Amer­i­ca looked to make sense of what hap­pened. And it was­n’t long before many start­ed turn­ing to The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order, a book writ­ten by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, the Har­vard poli sci pro­fes­sor who passed on last week.

The book itself was an elab­o­ra­tion upon a con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle that Hunt­ing­ton pub­lished in For­eign Affairs in 1993. In the open­ing lines, he wrote: “World pol­i­tics is enter­ing a new phase… It is my hypoth­e­sis that the fun­da­men­tal source of con­flict in this new world will not be pri­mar­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal or pri­mar­i­ly eco­nom­ic. The great divi­sions among humankind and the dom­i­nat­ing source of con­flict will be cul­tur­al. Nation states will remain the most pow­er­ful actors in world affairs, but the prin­ci­pal con­flicts of glob­al pol­i­tics will occur between nations and groups of dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tions. The clash of civ­i­liza­tions will be the bat­tle lines of the future.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly he sug­gest­ed, it would be the “West ver­sus the Rest,” and with­in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, he lumped in Islam.

Below, we have post­ed Hunt­ing­ton’s 1997 appear­ance on the Char­lie Rose show, where he expand­ed on his world view. You can also get Edward Said’s gen­er­al retort, The Myth of the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions, here and Noam Chom­sky’s thoughts on the con­cept here.

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