A Nation of Dunces?

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2008

There is a lot of pub­lic­i­ty this week around Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. The new work fits into the tra­di­tion of Richard Hof­s­tadter’s 1963 clas­sic, Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. And it seem­ing­ly moves in the same orbit as Al Gore’s The Assault on Rea­son (2007). The upshot of Jacoby’s argu­ment is that “Amer­i­cans are in seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al trou­ble — in dan­ger of los­ing our hard-won cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to a vir­u­lent mix­ture of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, anti-ratio­nal­ism and low expec­ta­tions.” As she goes on to say in this op-ed appear­ing in The Wash­ing­ton Post, we’re now liv­ing in a moment when Amer­i­cans are read­ing few­er books than ever, and they know stag­ger­ing­ly lit­tle about the world: Only 23 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with some col­lege edu­ca­tion can iden­ti­fy Iraq, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel on a map, even though the US has a tremen­dous amount at stake there. (Source: NY Times book review.) And one fifth of Amer­i­can adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. This is all pret­ty bad. But what makes mat­ters worse is the “alarm­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who have smug­ly con­clud­ed that they do not need to know such things in the first place.” Igno­rance has some­how strange­ly gone from vice to virtue.

What are the solu­tions? I guess you’ll have to get the book, or get mil­lions of your friends to read Open Cul­ture (wink).

UPDATE: You can catch Bill Moy­ers’ inter­view with Susan Jaco­by here: video — mp3 — iTunes — feed. This will let you take a clos­er look at Jacoby’s argu­ment. Thanks Muriel for the tip!

Relat­ed Piece:

Amer­i­ca’s Philoso­pher Pres­i­dent

Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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The Christian Darwin You Don’t Know

in Religion, Science | February 17th, 2008

At least in Amer­i­ca, Charles Dar­win has become the favorite whip­ping boy for many fun­da­men­tal­ists on the right. In one neat pack­age, you get in Dar­win all things deplorable. A god­less “sec­u­lar human­ist” who denied the sanc­ti­ty of human­i­ty, God’s prov­i­dence, and the integri­ty of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?

Some­where lost in today’s cul­ture wars is the real Charles Dar­win. Aired first in Octo­ber, this pro­gram, pro­duced by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Medi­a’s Speak­ing of Faith (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site), revis­its Dar­win’s life & thought with James Moore, a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar who has writ­ten Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist. And here’s the pic­ture that we get. Like many impor­tant sci­en­tists who came before him — Galileo, Coper­ni­cus and New­ton — Dar­win believed that sci­ence could help explain the laws of nature cre­at­ed by God. Fur­ther, he saw his Ori­gin of Species as describ­ing the forms of life that owed their exis­tence to God’s law — a law that expressed itself in nat­ur­al selec­tion. Read­ers will find that Dar­win’s text is lit­tered with ref­er­ences to cre­ation. And Dar­win, him­self, was not­ed for say­ing that when he wrote the book, his faith in God was as strong as that of a bish­op, although his faith did wane lat­ter in life. Sim­ply put, Dar­win was hard­ly the ene­my of reli­gion that many con­sid­er him today.

Again, you can access this pro­gram with the fol­low­ing links: (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Addi­tion­al­ly, you can access a free e‑text of On the Ori­gin of Species here, along with a free audio­book ver­sion here.

You may also want to check out a relat­ed pro­gram by Speak­ing of Faith: Ein­stein and the Mind of God

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What Does 47 Billion Light Years (in Radius) Look Like?

in Science, Video - Science | February 15th, 2008

That’s one esti­mate of the size of our uni­verse, and this video (added to our YouTube Playlist), using pic­tures from the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, tries to put it in per­spec­tive. For more amaz­ing pho­tos from the Hub­ble, see this col­lec­tion.

Harvard Opens Scholarship, Freeing Up Knowledge and Budgets

in Harvard | February 13th, 2008

Yes­ter­day, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty passed a motion (see pro­pos­al here) that will require its fac­ul­ty mem­bers to pub­lish their schol­ar­ly arti­cles online. On the face of things, this marks a big vic­to­ry for the open access move­ment, which is all about mak­ing infor­ma­tion free and acces­si­ble to all. In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, the real win­ner may even­tu­al­ly be Har­vard’s library bud­get (and the future of schol­ar­ship itself).

One of the fig­ures behind the open­ing of Har­vard’s schol­ar­ship is Robert Darn­ton, an emi­nent his­to­ri­an who now over­sees Har­vard’s libraries. And, in a piece called The Case for Open Access, Darn­ton under­scores how dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing can relieve some impor­tant finan­cial pres­sures on the acad­e­my. Under the cur­rent pub­lish­ing mod­el, aca­d­e­mics write arti­cles for schol­ar­ly jour­nals and then the jour­nals get sold back to the uni­ver­si­ty libraries at exor­bi­tant prices, with some cost­ing more than $20,000 per year. And here the real prob­lem begins: “in order to pur­chase the jour­nals, libraries have had to reduce their acqui­si­tions of mono­graphs; the reduced demand among libraries for mono­graphs has forced uni­ver­si­ty press­es to cut back on the pub­li­ca­tion of them; and the near impos­si­bil­i­ty of pub­lish­ing their dis­ser­ta­tions has jeop­ar­dized the careers of a whole gen­er­a­tion of schol­ars in many fields.” Dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing solves this spi­ral­ing prob­lem in a straight­for­ward way. The cost of pub­lish­ing direct­ly to the web is neg­li­gi­ble. There’s no pulp to buy, no pub­lish­er’s over­head to pay; no cor­po­ra­tion (e.g., Reed Else­vi­er, the own­er of many schol­ar­ly jour­nals) look­ing to pad its prof­its and get thanked by Wall Street. The cost sav­ings are every­where.

The tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers will be quick to point out a flaw in the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing mod­el — name­ly, that it gen­er­al­ly means work­ing out­side of a peer-review sys­tem that ensures the over­all integri­ty of research. But my sense is that there’s no rea­son that dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and peer review can’t go togeth­er. It’s not hard to imag­ine ways in which con­ven­tion­al forms of peer review could be pre­served. But dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing also makes pos­si­ble new forms of peer review that did­n’t exist before. Pub­lish­ing to the web will almost nec­es­sar­i­ly increase the over­all read­er­ship of arti­cles, which will encour­age more fact check­ing and crit­i­cal com­men­tary in turn. And, because we’re pub­lish­ing on the web, these schol­ar­ly arti­cles can become liv­ing doc­u­ments that get bet­ter over time. It’s a new way of doing things. It may take a gen­er­a­tion to get all the kinks worked out and habits changed. But we will get there.

As a final aside, if you’re inter­est­ed in the Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources (OER) move­ment, then you’ll want to check this new site spon­sored by the Hewlett Foun­da­tion. It aggre­gates blogs that reg­u­lar­ly focus on all things OER, offer­ing you a great start­ing point for read­ing in this area.

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James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books | February 13th, 2008

Note: We post­ed this find back in 2008. But, since then, we’ve found a bet­ter audio ver­sion of the text. Please find it here.

This is a book that needs no intro­duc­tion, but we will give it a short one any­way. Pub­lished in ser­i­al for­mat between 1918 and 1920, James Joyce’s Ulysses was ini­tial­ly reviled by many and banned in the US and UK until the 1930s. Today, it’s wide­ly con­sid­ered a clas­sic in mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture, and The Mod­ern Library went so far as to call it the most impor­tant Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­el pub­lished dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry. Although chron­i­cling one ordi­nary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in 1904 Dublin, Ulysses is no small work. It sprawls over 750 pages, using over 250,000 words, and takes over 32 hours to read aloud. Or, at least that’s how long it took the folks over at Lib­rivox. In the Blooms­day tra­di­tion, a cast of read­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project, offer­ing cre­ative read­ings with “pub-like back­ground noise.” The audio files can be down­loaded as many indi­vid­ual mp3 files here, or as one big zip file here. You can also stream an excel­lent alter­na­tive ver­sion at Archive.org.

This is not the only Joycean audio that you can down­load for free. Also at Lib­rivox, you can find sev­er­al key sto­ries from Dublin­ers — includ­ing, The Sis­ters (mp3), Ara­by (mp3), Eve­line (mp3), and The Dead (mp3 in zip file).

For more free clas­sics on audio, see our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

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

Speak­ing of psy­che­delics, we’ve post­ed a doc­u­men­tary below (yet anoth­er BBC pro­duc­tion) that takes a not entire­ly flat­ter­ing look at the life of Tim­o­thy Leary, the Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who went coun­ter­cul­ture in 1960s and advo­cat­ed the ther­a­peu­tic and spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of LSD. I remem­ber see­ing him years lat­er when I was in col­lege. My mem­o­ry of the man: Spunky and about as non­lin­ear as you could get.

The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Podcasts | February 9th, 2008

Every now and then, we like to list the top rank­ing edu­ca­tion­al on pod­casts on iTunes. No mat­ter how much time goes by, one thing seems to stay the same: peo­ple like pod­casts that teach for­eign lan­guages, par­tic­u­lar­ly Span­ish, above all else. Have a look, and if you want to learn more for­eign lan­guages, vis­it our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. It cov­ers 26 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

#1. Cof­fee Break Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#2. Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing iTunes Feed Web Site

#3. Learn Span­ish at SpanishPod101 iTunes Feed Web Site

#4. Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide iTunes Feed Web Site

#5. Learn to Speak Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#6. The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site

#7. Span­ish Pod­casts for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site

#8. Learn French with Cof­fee Break French iTunes Feed Web Site

#9. LearnItalianPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#10. JapanesePod101.com iTunes Feed Web Site

(more…)

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

in Current Affairs | February 7th, 2008

We cov­ered the Sec­ond Amend­ment a cou­ple of weeks ago. (Does it con­fer the right to bear arms?) So why not touch on the First Amend­ment this week and point you to an engag­ing inter­view (MP3 — iTunes — Feed) with the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Antho­ny Lewis, who has just released the new book: Free­dom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biog­ra­phy of the First Amend­ment.

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How to Extend the Life Of Your iPod Battery

in Apple, Podcasts | February 6th, 2008

For those who use their iPod to take advan­tage of our copi­ous pod­cast col­lec­tions:

via Life­hack­er

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Ukulele Orchestra Performs ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 4th, 2008

Is this blog­wor­thy? Amus­ing?  You be the judge: