A Slew of New Audiobooks (for Free)

in Audio Books | January 23rd, 2008

Lib­rivox is on a roll late­ly. Since Decem­ber, the provider of free, pub­lic domain audio­books has released a num­ber of clas­sic works on audio. Below, we’ve list­ed some of the high­lights, which we’ve also includ­ed in our Audio­Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. (Here, you’ll also find free audio­books by oth­er providers.) For Lib­rivox’s com­plete cat­a­logue, click here.

2 B R 0 2 B, Kurt Von­negut (MP3 File)

A Child’s His­to­ry of Eng­land, Charles Dick­ens (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3s)

A Short His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States by Edward Chan­ning (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge, (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, Vol. IV, Charles Beard (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

Med­i­ta­tions on First Phi­los­o­phy, Rene Descartes (Full Zip - Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II, Edward Gib­bon (The Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3s)

The Life of Charle­magne, Ein­hard (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

The Mas­ter of the World, Jules Verne (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

The Prob­lems of Phi­los­o­phy, Bertrand Rus­sell (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The Three Mus­ke­teers, Alexan­dre Dumas (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual MP3 Files)

The Works of Tac­i­tus (Full Zip — Indi­vid­ual Files)

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Waves Freeze in Newfoundland

in Uncategorized | January 21st, 2008

This counts as sci­ence, right?

Also see 18 Stun­ning Bridges From Around The World via Metafil­ter.

The Future of Ideas: Download Your Free Copy (and More)

in Law | January 20th, 2008

In 2001, Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig pub­lished The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Com­mons in a Con­nect­ed World. Here, Lessig launched a cam­paign against Amer­i­can copy­right law, argu­ing that it has become so restric­tive that it sti­fles cul­tur­al inno­va­tion and social progress .… which under­mines the orig­i­nal point of copy­right law. Back in 1787, the found­ing fathers includ­ed the “copy­right clause” in the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, look­ing to give authors a short-term incen­tive to inno­vate and ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the pub­lic good. (Arti­cle I, Sec­tion 8 empow­ers Con­gress “To pro­mote the Progress of Sci­ence and use­ful Arts, by secur­ing for lim­it­ed Times to Authors and Inven­tors the exclu­sive Right to their respec­tive Writ­ings and Dis­cov­er­ies.”). At the out­set, copy­right law pro­tect­ed forms of expres­sion — and let authors prof­it from them — for a min­i­mum of 14 years and a max­i­mum of 28. Then, the mate­r­i­al went into the pub­lic domain. But over time, the pro­tec­tions placed on cul­tur­al expres­sion have been extend­ed, and now works are pro­tect­ed so long as an author is alive, and then anoth­er 70 years. That’s poten­tial­ly up to 140 years or more. All of this has hap­pened because Con­gress has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied by large media cor­po­ra­tions (e.g. Dis­ney), want­i­ng to mon­e­tize their media assets (think, Mick­ey Mouse) indef­i­nite­ly.

Any­way, this is a long way of telling you that you can now down­load The Future of Ideas for free. Lessig per­suad­ed Ran­dom House to release the book under a “Cre­ative Com­mons” license, using the argu­ment that free e‑books will actu­al­ly stim­u­late sales of paper copies. (Do you real­ly want to read 350 pages on your com­put­er screen?)

This is not the first time that Lessig has worked with this mod­el. One of his pre­vi­ous books, Free Cul­ture: How Big Media Uses Tech­nol­o­gy and the Law to Lock Down Cul­ture and Con­trol Cre­ativ­i­ty, was also made freely avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. (You can down­load a free audio­book ver­sion or buy the paper ver­sion here.)

As a final note, I should men­tion that Lessig will be leav­ing behind his focus on these copy­right issues, and turn­ing his sights to cor­rup­tion in Wash­ing­ton. Below you can watch him out­line the prob­lem that he’s look­ing to tack­le.

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Steve Jobs’ 90 Minute Keynote Boiled Down to 60 Seconds

in Apple | January 19th, 2008

Want the quick overview of what Apple has in the pipeline for ’08? Here it is:

The Second Amendment: Does It Really Let You Bear Arms?

in Law, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2008

What does the Sec­ond Amend­ment mean? It’s some­thing that the Supreme Court has nev­er real­ly said. In this hour long video, Cass Sun­stein, a very well known law pro­fes­sor from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, takes a crack at inter­pret­ing this amend­ment and see­ing whether its orig­i­nal mean­ing actu­al­ly con­fers the right to bear arms. Originalists/conservatives prob­a­bly won’t like his con­clu­sions, and they may be inclined to dis­miss this as a talk giv­en by anoth­er lib­er­al elit­ist. But they should keep in mind that Sun­stein actu­al­ly saw the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s wire­tap­ping as hav­ing a plau­si­ble legal basis, and he’s had any­thing but a harsh assess­ment of John Roberts’ track record as a judge.

This talk was record­ed on Octo­ber 23, 2007.

Open Sourcing Congress

in Current Affairs, Politics, Web/Tech | January 14th, 2008

The tru­ism goes that laws and sausages are the two things you don’t want to see being made. Nev­er­the­less, if more of us paid atten­tion to what our con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives are real­ly up to (and let them know when they screw up), we’d prob­a­bly be a lit­tle hap­pi­er with how the sys­tem works over­all. Two thirds of Amer­i­cans think we’re on the wrong track (if recent polls are to be believed), and with the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions com­ing up there’s no bet­ter time to start pay­ing atten­tion.

All that’s a long run-up to men­tion­ing a new web­site ini­tia­tive called Open Con­gress designed to help the aver­age cit­i­zen fig­ure out what the heck is going on in Wash­ing­ton. Track rep­re­sen­ta­tives and bills that you’re inter­est­ed in; inter­act with oth­er users who share your con­cerns; sort through data by issue or indus­try. It just got a lit­tle eas­i­er to make your vote count.

Harold Bloom on the Ghastly Decline of the Humanities (and on Obama’s Poetry)

in Literature | January 14th, 2008

Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site) is back. The radio show host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon hit some finan­cial snags last sum­mer and went off-air. Now, thanks to the Wat­son Insti­tute at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, the pro­gram has found new life, and it’s already regain­ing some of its old momen­tum.

Right before the New Year, the show aired a three-part inter­view with Harold Bloom, Amer­i­ca’s most well known lit­er­ary crit­ic. As always, Bloom does­n’t hes­i­tate to share his views here. But he saves his sharpest remarks for when he address­es the state of the human­i­ties in the Amer­i­can acad­e­my (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). For Bloom, a long­time pro­fes­sor at Yale, it’s not a pret­ty pic­ture. The human­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the study of lit­er­a­ture, has “com­mit­ted sui­cide” by “going in for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness to a sim­ply sick­en­ing degree” and “get­ting away from canon­i­cal stan­dards [and] cog­ni­tive and aes­thet­ic stan­dards.” The human­i­ties, Bloom sum­mar­i­ly says, “are not worth cel­e­brat­ing until they estab­lish them­selves as a dis­ci­pline again,” and, until some res­ur­rec­tion takes place, they won’t have the insti­tu­tion­al stand­ing of the social sci­ences. These are strong words, but frankly they’re among his milder com­ments. Have a lis­ten, and find the com­ments men­tioned above about 13 min­utes in.

For­tu­nate­ly, the con­ver­sa­tion does end on a pos­i­tive note (at least sort of). Bloom gives a kind nod to the poet­ry writ­ten by the young Barack Oba­ma (read it here), liken­ing his poems to the work of Carl Sand­burg and Langston Hugh­es. It’s fair­ly high praise, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that he’s will­ing to call Jim­my Carter the “worst poet in North Amer­i­ca.”

Below find the two oth­er seg­ments of the record­ed inter­view with Harold Bloom.

1) On Walt Whit­man (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

2) The Jazz Bridge (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

And also see our ear­li­er piece: The Art of Read­ing a Poem (Accord­ing to Harold Bloom). Here you get to lis­ten to a class where Bloom gives a crit­i­cal read­ing of a Wal­lace Stevens poem. This one is long on straight­for­ward schol­ar­ship and short on polemics.

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Malcolm X at Oxford University 1964

in History, Video - Politics/Society | January 11th, 2008

We love find­ing these vin­tage media gems. Below, we have Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964. In this clas­sic speech, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage and also the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it. Then there’s his notion that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” can achieve lib­er­ty more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies (e.g., what MLK had in mind). You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But we’d also encour­age you to watch (see below) the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide — to how we get from Ham­let’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to tak­ing up arms against state enshrined racism. This piece of video is added to our YouTube playlist.

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Medieval Tech Support

in Video - Arts & Culture | January 10th, 2008

Added to our YouTube Playlist

The Launch of Wikia Search

in Web/Tech | January 7th, 2008

There’s lots of buzz today around the launch of Wikia Search, the new search engine cre­at­ed by Wikipedia founder Jim­my Wales. It’s premised on the same ideas that made Wikipedia, Wikipedia .… open source and the pow­er of peo­ple. Here’s Jim­my Wales giv­ing a quick expla­na­tion of the project. (For a longer con­ver­sa­tion with Wales, click here.)

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