Puppies for These Hard Times

in Uncategorized | November 12th, 2008

In case you were won­der­ing what kind of media we would be most hun­gry for in hard times (big bud­get action movies? escapist sit-coms), don’t for­get that this is reces­sion 3.0. Intro­duc­ing The pup­py cam, with 22,000 view­ers and count­ing. The shibu pup­pies are adorable, wor­ry-free, and of course, non-union.  Click here and tell us are you not enter­tained? (Thanks SA for the tip.)

Thomas Friedman on the Green Revolution

in Business, Economics, Science, Video - Science | November 11th, 2008

Thomas Fried­man has a new book out, Hot, Flat, and Crowd­ed. And it gets into the whole ques­tion of what a “green rev­o­lu­tion” is real­ly all about. New books mean book tours, and here we have an out­take from a spir­it­ed talk he recent­ly gave in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. You can watch the full talk on Fora.tv here.

By the way, Fried­man starts talk­ing at the out­set about “ET,” and it hap­pens to stand for “Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy.”

This American Life: Another Frightening Show About the Economy

in Current Affairs | November 6th, 2008

Back in May, This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) aired an episode called The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (stream here). The show, which demys­ti­fied the mort­gage cri­sis in an unsu­al way, became a major hit. Now, they have aired a sequel: Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show About the Econ­o­my (stream here), and it explains the rip­ple effects of the orig­i­nal mort­gage cri­sis that have pushed the Amer­i­can finan­cial sys­tem to the brink. How did com­mer­cial paper freeze up, and why does this paper mat­ter? What exact­ly are cred­it default swaps, why was­n’t this mas­sive mar­ket reg­u­lat­ed, and how does this poor­ly under­stood mar­ket threat­en our eco­nom­ic well being? It’s all answered here. Give a lis­ten.

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Volcano Eruption Captured By Satellite

in Science | November 6th, 2008

A NASA satel­lite caught Alaska’s Mount Cleve­land in the act. An amaz­ing image. For more bril­liant vol­cano action pho­tos, have a look here.

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The African-American Freedom Struggle & Barack Obama’s American Dream (Free Stanford Course)

in Current Affairs | November 6th, 2008

I men­tioned this free course back in July, but, giv­en the his­toric nature of Tues­day’s elec­tion, it seems worth giv­ing it anoth­er men­tion.

On Stan­ford’s YouTube channel, you’ll find a com­plete series of lec­tures from an under­grad­u­ate course called “African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle.” Taught by Clay­borne Car­son, a promi­nent his­to­ry pro­fes­sor who has edit­ed and pub­lished the papers of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., the course overviews the strug­gle for lib­er­ty and com­plete equal­i­ty, mov­ing from W.E.B. Du Bois (ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry), to MLK and Mal­colm X, down to Barack Oba­ma today. The lec­ture below, enti­tled “Barack Oba­ma’s Amer­i­can Dream,” sit­u­ates Oba­ma with­in the larg­er sweep of African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s rather con­ver­sa­tion­al in style, and it does a good job of get­ting into Oba­ma’s per­son­al biog­ra­phy. The com­plete lec­tures can be watched in their entire­ty on YouTube here, or down­loaded in video via iTunes. And be sure to see our larg­er col­lec­tion of 250 Free Online Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties, where you’ll also find this course.

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From Nixon to W — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Current Affairs, History | November 5th, 2008

We’re down to the next to last lec­ture, tak­ing you from Nixon to Bush. (Next week, this Stan­ford course ends with a post­mortem of Oba­ma’s vic­to­ry in 2008.) You can access Lec­ture 4 via Tunes U in high res­o­lu­tion or watch the YouTube ver­sion below. If you missed the pre­vi­ous lec­tures, grab them on iTunes here and YouTube here.

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Ricky Gervais Does Biblical Creation Stand-Up

in Comedy, Religion | November 2nd, 2008

Stand-up com­e­dy and Bib­li­cal cre­ation don’t usu­al­ly go togeth­er. But some­how they do for Ricky Ger­vais, the cre­ator of the ever-pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion show, The Office. (Watch episodes here.) The bit runs about 10 min­utes, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist.

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Farewell to Studs Terkel

in Current Affairs, History | October 31st, 2008

Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning his­to­ri­an of the every­man, has passed away at the ripe old age of 96. (Get the NYTimes obit here.) Below, we have a lengthy con­ver­sa­tion with Terkel, record­ed when he was 91. As you’ll see, being a nona­ge­nar­i­an did lit­tle to slow him down.

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From the Civil War to the Vietnam War — The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Stanford | October 30th, 2008

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Elephant Jumping On Trampoline

in Random | October 28th, 2008

This is half art/half ran­dom, or maybe it’s bet­ter to say half random/half art. Any­way, it calls to mind one of our pop­u­lar posts (Ele­phant Paint­ing) from months to go. So here it is, an ani­mat­ed short by Nico­las Deveaux.

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