Animated Aurora Borealis

in Science, Video - Science | December 10th, 2008

While work­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, Astro­naut Don Pet­tit cre­at­ed this remark­able video of the auro­ra bore­alis (oth­er­wise known as The North­ern Lights). How? By stitch­ing togeth­er a large sequence of still images that he took from space. It makes for some good view­ing.

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via NYTimes DotEarth

A Short Introduction to The Great Depression & The New Deal

in Current Affairs, History | December 9th, 2008

Eric Rauch­way, an Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an at UC-Davis (and an old grad school col­league of mine), pub­lished a time­ly book ear­li­er this year, The Great Depres­sion and the New Deal: A Very Short Intro­duc­tion. And it sets him up per­fect­ly to talk about an his­tor­i­cal moment that’s now back on our minds.

Rauch­way appeared last week on Econ­Talk (iTunes — Feed — MP3), a pod­cast that’s get­ting some play late­ly, and spent a good hour sur­vey­ing the eco­nom­ic cri­sis that all oth­ers will be mea­sured against. The con­ver­sa­tion starts with the after­math of World War I, where John May­nard Keynes saw the eco­nom­ic prob­lems begin­ning. (Read online his 1919 book, The Eco­nom­ic Con­se­quences of the Peace.) Then, it moves through the 1920s, the stock mar­ket crash, Hoover’s attempts to restore sta­bil­i­ty (which weren’t as bungling as his his­tor­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion now sug­gests) and final­ly FDR’s New Deal and the effects of World War II. If you have an hour, you’ll learn a good deal.

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Download New Book From the Free Culture Movement

in Books, Law | December 9th, 2008

A quick heads up…

James Boyle, a law pro­fes­sor at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, has just put out a new book called The Pub­lic Domain: Enclos­ing the Com­mons of the Mind, and it basi­cal­ly tells cit­i­zens what they need to know about intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law to take mean­ing­ful part in our emerg­ing infor­ma­tion soci­ety. The book clear­ly com­ple­ments a lot of the work done by Lawrence Lessig. You can snap up a copy in three dif­fer­ent for­mats (Free PDF copy, Free HTML copy, Buy on Ama­zon) and also find oth­er free, down­load­able books at Cre­ative Com­mons.

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T.S. Eliot on YouTube

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | December 8th, 2008

Michael Gough (I believe) reads the poem that launched T.S. Eliot’s career in 1917, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (get the full text of the poem here)

For more free down­loads of clas­sic audio books and poet­ry, see our com­plete col­lec­tion.

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The Wire: Four Seasons in Four Minutes

in Television | December 3rd, 2008

Some have put it on the lev­el of a Tol­stoy nov­el. Oth­ers have made the com­par­i­son to Dick­ens. No mat­ter how you slice it, The Wire is TV at its best. Below, we have post­ed a fast-mov­ing sum­ma­ry of the first four sea­sons, which was made in the same for­mat as the viral video The Nine Minute Sopra­nos. The fifth and final sea­son of The Wire is not includ­ed here. But that’s just as well. If you want to watch the series in full, you don’t want to know how it ends. Actu­al­ly, on sec­ond thought, you may not want to watch any of this. Move for­ward at your own risk.  

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Voices from the Depression: Studs Terkel Interviews

in History | December 3rd, 2008

Not long after Studs Terkel, the his­to­ri­an of the every­man, died in Octo­ber, This Amer­i­can Life fea­tured a series of inter­views that Terkel once con­duct­ed with Amer­i­cans who lived through the Depres­sion. (Lis­ten to the mp3 here.) The tapes would even­tu­al­ly pro­vide the mate­r­i­al for his book, Hard Times: An Oral His­to­ry of the Great Depres­sion. And, as you’ll see, these record­ings make this trans­for­ma­tion­al moment real in a way that few oth­er his­tor­i­cal sources can. You’ll hear the voic­es of real peo­ple, recount­ing their dai­ly expe­ri­ences and remem­ber­ing the race and class divi­sions that ran deep in Amer­i­ca. You’ll also hear about the humil­i­a­tions and acts of kind­ness that were part of every­day life. (NOTE: The inter­views start about 6 min­utes into the record­ing.)

You can access more of Terkel’s audio record­ings over at the web site, www.studsterkel.org. The site notably fea­tures more inter­views from the Hard Times record­ing ses­sions.

Thanks Robin for send­ing these clips our way.

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100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes

in Film | December 3rd, 2008

In case you haven’t seen this yet …

YouTube Gets a Little More Intelligent

in Music, YouTube | December 1st, 2008

YouTube has had the mass mar­ket locked up for some time. But, dur­ing the past year, it has been giv­ing a lit­tle nod to more “high­brow” view­ers. We’ve seen chan­nels sprout­ing up on YouTube that fea­ture con­tent pro­duced by uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er high-val­ue con­tent providers. (See our col­lec­tion Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Video Col­lec­tions.) We’ve also watched the launch of The YouTube Screen­ing Room, which brings short inde­pen­dent films to the view­ing pub­lic. Now we have The YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. 

This project brings clas­si­cal music into the world of Web 2.0. As The New York Times explains it, the ini­tia­tive will pro­duce a mashup of orches­tral pieces con­tributed by users. And, it will also fea­ture a con­test in which musi­cians can upload sam­ples of their work, and, à la Amer­i­can Idol, win­ners will be cho­sen by a pan­el of judges and brought to per­form at Carnegie Hall under the direc­tion of Michael Tilson Thomas, music direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny. (Get more from the video below.)  Some purists will find this high­ly gim­micky, no doubt. Oth­ers may see it as a good way to keep clas­si­cal music rel­e­vant. Have an opin­ion? Let us know in the com­ments.

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Capitalism with Humility

in Current Affairs | December 1st, 2008

It’s pret­ty hard to pull this off, but the titans of Amer­i­can indus­try have made Her­bert Hoover look like a very wise man, at least when he said: “You know, the only trou­ble with cap­i­tal­ism is cap­i­tal­ists; they’re too damn greedy.”

But we should­n’t con­sid­er Hoover reha­bil­i­tat­ed. Not quite yet. The video clip below sug­gests that in Japan the CEOs have fig­ured out how to run their cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem with a degree of humil­i­ty. And they’re doing it vol­un­tar­i­ly. That’s a news flash that you can send to our polit­i­cal lead­ers before they fun­nel more tax­es to mis­man­aged insti­tu­tions with no real strings attached.

(A quick PS: Europe’s lead­ing philoso­pher and soci­ol­o­gist recent­ly spoke in the Ger­man press about the finan­cial cri­sis and what it means for the future of our glob­al­ized soci­ety. You can find an Eng­lish trans­la­tion here.)

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Books Authors Want (and Plan to Give) for the Holidays

in Books | November 28th, 2008

Pen­guin asked its sta­ble of writ­ers what books they plan to give friends dur­ing the hol­i­days, and what books they’d hope to receive. Here’s a quick sam­pling. And if you want to list your own gift ideas, feel free to add them to the com­ments below.

Khaled Hos­sei­ni, author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns, is giv­ing The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. And so, too, is Michael Pol­lan (The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma). It won the Pulitzer after all.

Michael Lewis (Liar’s Pok­er) not so secret­ly hopes to wind up with a copy of Mal­colm Glad­well’s new book Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess. He’s not the only one, to be sure.

Friends of Eliz­a­beth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) will be get­ting The Prin­ci­ples of Uncer­tain­ty by Maira Kalman. And, in turn, they may be giv­ing her biogra­phies of great adven­tur­ers like Cap­tain Cook and Ernest Shack­le­ton. (Per­son­al­ly, I’d rec­om­mend Endurance: Shack­le­ton’s Incred­i­ble Voy­age. Great read.)

Last­ly, Nick Hor­by (High Fideli­ty) is offer­ing up Mark Har­ris’ Pic­tures at a Rev­o­lu­tion.

For more book ideas, vis­it the full list and also see our read­er-cre­at­ed list: Life-Chang­ing Books.

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