iPod Classic Not Quite Ready for Primetime

in Apple | September 19th, 2007

Robert X. Cring­ley’s week­ly article/podcast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) may make you think twice about buy­ing an iPod Clas­sic … at least for now. Despite the name, the guts of the iPod Clas­sic are actu­al­ly new, and the bugs haven’t been ful­ly worked out. The list of prob­lems expe­ri­enced by users includes (and I quote Cring­ley direct­ly):

• VERY Slow menu switch­ing response
• Dis­play of clock rather than song info when “Now Play­ing”
• Inabil­i­ty to use exist­ing AUTHORIZED 3rd par­ty dock prod­ucts (includ­ing Apple-adver­tised)
• Audio skip­ping dur­ing oper­a­tion
• Slow con­nec­tion to Macs and PCs
• Inabil­i­ty to dis­able “split-screen” menus
• Lag­ging and unre­spon­sive Click Wheel
• Cam­era con­nec­tor not work­ing
• Inabil­i­ty to use EQ set­tings with­out skip­ping and dis­tor­tion

See­ing that the “Clas­sic” is Apple’s only iPod that cur­rent­ly has more than 16 gigs of stor­age, the com­pa­ny will be hus­tling to fix these prob­lems. But, for now, pod­cast lovers might want to stick to their tried and true mp3 play­er. Source: I, Cring­ley

See our Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

The New York Times “Opens Up” at Midnight

in Media | September 18th, 2007

Effec­tive at mid­night, The New York Times will make the “Times­S­e­lect” sec­tion of its web­site entire­ly free. (It used to cost sub­scribers $49.95 a year.) And it will also free up “its archives from 1987 to the present … , as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the pub­lic domain.”

In mak­ing this move, the paper will be giv­ing up $10 mil­lion in annu­al sub­scrip­tion rev­enue. But it will like­ly make up that mon­ey (and then some) by using ads to mon­e­tize those pages. For more info, read the full arti­cle here. And click here to see what for­mer­ly closed-off con­tent will now become freely avail­able.

Update: Have a look at Deeplink­ing’s piece called Min­ing the New York Times Archive. It pulls out of the archive some inter­est­ing finds, includ­ing reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Oscar Wilde’s Dis­grace (1895), plus arti­cles that sur­vey the dynam­ic art scene of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

Explore our list of 100 Great Cul­ture Blogs

500 Greatest Albums of All Time

in Music | September 17th, 2007

at least accord­ing to Rolling Stone. (Get the list here). Yes, these lists are always high­ly sub­jec­tive. But if I were the arbiter of musi­cal taste, I’d pick many of the same, so here it is.

SmartLinks From Our Readers

in Uncategorized | September 15th, 2007

Below, we have some links rec­om­mend­ed by our read­ers. Feel free to send oth­er good bits our way. The more we give, the more we get:

• Sean Penn reads an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Chron­i­cles, here. (Or check out the full audio­book ver­sion.)
• Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Col­lapse speaks at The Long Now Foun­da­tion about why civ­i­liza­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly endured or failed. Two impor­tant fac­tors include how they man­aged their nat­ur­al resources and dealt with cli­mate change. Does this ring any bells? Get the lec­ture here: (iTunes — Feed — MP3s)
• Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism. A piece in The New York Times explores Atlas Shrugged and its impact on Alan Greenspan.
• Inter­view with Hal Var­i­an, Chief Econ­o­mist at Google (and UC Berke­ley Pro­fes­sor), who talks (iTunes - Feed — MP3 — Web Site) about the inter­net as an “engine for democ­ra­cy.”
• Appear­ing in The New York Review of Books, this piece, enti­tled Cit­i­zen Gore, takes a look a Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Rea­son, and how Gore, being freed up from pol­i­tics, has been remark­ably able to prod the con­science of the nation. For some, how­ev­er, it’s not enough. Hence the recent “Draft Al Gore” cam­paign that has got­ten under­way.
• Check out the Voodoo Music Fes­ti­val com­ing up on Octo­ber 26, 27 & 28 in New Orleans. The line­up of artists includes Rage Against The Machine, Com­mon, Tiesto, The Smash­ing Pump­kins, Black Rebel Motor­cy­cle Club, M.I.A., Ben Harp­er, Wilco and more. To win pass­es to the show and some trav­el mon­ey, you can enter a con­test here.

Remembering Lenny Bruce and When Taboo-Breaking Comedy Collided with the Law

in Comedy, History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 14th, 2007

Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schnei­der) intro­duced a strong­ly satir­i­cal, taboo-break­ing form of com­e­dy dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, which paved the way for some of America’s great come­di­ans — Richard Pry­or, George Car­lin, Chris Rock, even John Stew­art. And for ush­er­ing in this new era of com­e­dy, Bruce paid a heavy per­son­al price. In 1961, San Fran­cis­co author­i­ties arrest­ed Bruce on obscen­i­ty charges. Then, in 1964, Bruce found him­self in the crosshairs of Manhattan’s Dis­trict Attor­ney, Frank Hor­gan. A six month tri­al fol­lowed, which raised impor­tant First Amend­ment issues, and which also brought Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Allen Gins­berg, Nor­man Mail­er, and William Sty­ron to Bruce’s defense. (Dylan would lat­er write a song about the affair.) But, regard­less, the tri­al end­ed bad­ly for Bruce, and, two years lat­er, the impov­er­ished come­di­an would die of a hero­in over­dose.

For Bruce’s lega­cy, things have got­ten a lit­tle bet­ter. In 2003, Gov­er­nor George Pata­ki grant­ed New York’s first posthu­mous par­don to the satirist, call­ing it “a dec­la­ra­tion of New York’s com­mit­ment to uphold­ing the First Amend­ment.” Mean­while, legal schol­ars have writ­ten books that paint Bruce and his First Amend­ment bat­tles in a rather sym­pa­thet­ic light. Below you can find a video clip of Lenny Bruce appear­ing on the very pop­u­lar Steve Allen Show. It gives you a pret­ty good look at the brand of com­e­dy that Bruce pre­sent­ed to the wider nation. (You can access Part II of the video here.) Beyond this, you may also want to check out the actu­al FBI file that was kept on Bruce. It’s been pub­lished thanks to the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. And if you’re up for more video footage, here is a clear­ly deflat­ed Bruce using his tri­al as fod­der for com­e­dy.

The New iPod Lineup Versus Its Rivals

in Apple, Web/Tech | September 13th, 2007

Since we talk a lot here about pod­casts and mp3 files, it seems worth flag­ging this Yahoo gad­get review that pits the new iPod line­up against its rivals. Here, we’ve got the new iPod Touch v. the Sam­sung Yepp YP-P2; the new Nano (with video) v. the Sansa View, and the iPod Clas­sic v. Microsoft­’s Zune. The net result is that the new iPods come out ahead, but not by much. Get review here.

(For anoth­er review of the new iPod Touch, have a look at this piece on Giz­mo­do.)

Quick note: As part of the new line­up, the iPod Clas­sic fea­tures a new 160 GB mod­el for $349. It appar­ent­ly holds 40,000 songs (twice as many as the pre­vi­ous mod­el), which trans­lates to three con­tin­u­ous months of lis­ten­ing enter­tain­ment. Imag­ine how many mind-expand­ing pod­casts that could include.

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The World Without Us: The Staggering Thought Experiment

in Science | September 10th, 2007

What if we dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth tomor­row? All of us, just like that? What would hap­pen? How would the remain­ing world sur­vive or thrive with­out us? That’s the sce­nario that sci­ence writer Alan Weis­man works through in his new eco-thriller, The World With­out Us.

Based on his con­sid­er­able research and exten­sive inter­views with experts, Weis­man sees things play­ing out like this (and here I’m quot­ing from the New York Times book review): “With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s sub­way tun­nels would fill with water in two days. With­in 20 years, Lex­ing­ton Avenue would be a riv­er. Fire- and wind-rav­aged sky­scrap­ers would even­tu­al­ly fall like giant trees. With­in weeks of our dis­ap­pear­ance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioac­tive blobs, while our petro­chem­i­cal plants, ‘tick­ing time bombs’ even on a nor­mal day, would become flam­ing gey­sers spew­ing tox­ins for decades to come… After about 100,000 years, car­bon diox­ide would return to pre­hu­man lev­els. Domes­ti­cat­ed species from cat­tle to car­rots would revert back to their wild ances­tors. And on every dehabi­tat­ed con­ti­nent, forests and grass­lands would reclaim our farms and park­ing lots as ani­mals began a slow parade back to Eden.” And, it’s also help­ful to know, per­haps, that not even cock­roach­es would fare well in a world with­out Homo sapi­ens.

How Weis­man researched this big ques­tion and drew his con­clu­sions is fas­ci­nat­ing, and for­tu­nate­ly it’s all explained in this Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that fea­tures two recent inter­views with Weis­man. You can also catch Weis­man speak­ing on John Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show in less sci­en­tif­ic terms. Watch the video here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• For more relat­ed pod­casts, check out our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion
• Also check out Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s June 12 inter­view with Jared Dia­mond (author of Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fate of Human Soci­eties), who talks about the “State of the World Envi­ron­ment.” (iTunes — Feed — Web Site).

The Return of Dr. Strangelove?

in Books, Current Affairs, Film | September 7th, 2007

The Stan­ley Kubrick clas­sic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb cen­ters around a Sovi­et dooms­day device. If Rus­sia is attacked by nuclear weapons, the device will set off count­less nuclear bombs auto­mat­i­cal­ly, there­by ren­der­ing the Earth unin­hab­it­able. It was dark humor when Peter Sell­ers brought it to life on the sil­ver screen…but what if it’s real?

That’s just what a new book from the U.K. is argu­ing. Dooms­day Men by P. D. Smith pro­vides evi­dence that a Russ­ian dooms­day sys­tem called “Perimetr” went oper­a­tional in the mid-1980s, and still is. As Ron Rosen­baum points out in Slate, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly upset­ting news since Vladimir Putin recent­ly announced that Russ­ian nuclear bombers would recom­mence “strate­gic flights”–potentially armed with nukes. The prospect of war between the U.S. and Rus­sia might seem remote, but the return to nuclear pos­tur­ing is not a good sign for human­i­ty. Rosen­baum once inter­viewed some of the Min­ute­man com­man­ders who con­trol our own nuclear arse­nal and his arti­cle makes a great read:

“This dooms­day appa­ra­tus, which became oper­a­tional in 1984, dur­ing the height of the Rea­gan-era nuclear ten­sions, is an amaz­ing feat of cre­ative engi­neer­ing.” Accord­ing to Blair, if Perimetr sens­es a nuclear explo­sion in Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry and then receives no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Moscow, it will assume the inca­pac­i­ty of human lead­er­ship in Moscow or else­where, and will then grant a sin­gle human being deep with­in the Kosvin­sky moun­tains the author­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty to launch the entire Sovi­et nuclear arse­nal.

Oth­er con­tent worth explor­ing:

• How to Learn 21 Lan­guages with Your iPod
• 25 UC Berke­ley Cours­es Avail­able via Free Video
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Free Audio­book
• James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Pod­cast
• Best­selling Nov­el­ist Sells Sto­ry Ideas for $1
• Sub­scribe to our feed in a read­er

New Springsteen Album: Free Download of Lead Single

in Music | September 4th, 2007

Quick fyi: Bruce Spring­steen’s next album, Mag­ic, will be released on Octo­ber 2. To whet appetites, the lead sin­gle, “Radio Nowhere,” has been released. You can down­load the mp3 here. (PC users, right click ‘save tar­get as’; Mac users, con­trol and click, then Down­load Linked File.) To watch the free music video of the sin­gle, just click here and scroll down. Final­ly, here are the new­ly announced dates for Spring­steen’s upcom­ing tour.

A Bungled Beauty Pageant and Our Reason for Being

in Uncategorized | September 3rd, 2007

By now, mil­lions of web users have watched Miss Teen South Car­oli­na explain in mor­ti­fy­ing fash­ion (see below) why many Amer­i­cans can’t find the Unit­ed States on a map. And, in their own unin­tend­ed way, her com­ments effec­tive­ly answered the ques­tion posed to her. Edu­ca­tion sim­ply isn’t what it should be in Amer­i­ca. And that holds true for many oth­er nations.

All of this sets the stage for explain­ing Open Cul­ture’s rea­son for being. Put sim­ply, we try to put peo­ple, no mat­ter what their age or where they live, in a posi­tion to con­tin­ue learn­ing and improv­ing them­selves. With the help of our pod­cast col­lec­tions, you can now start learn­ing over 25 for­eign lan­guages, lis­ten to over 100 audio­books, includ­ing clas­sic works in lit­er­a­ture, poet­ry and phi­los­o­phy, and take over 75 com­plete cours­es from some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties (MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Oxford, etc.). Our pod­cast library includes many more edu­ca­tion­al resources as well, and the best part is that they’re com­plete­ly free. Hours of free edu­ca­tion are at your dis­pos­al when­ev­er you want it. To ben­e­fit, you sim­ply need the desire and the will, and the abil­i­ty to use pod­casts. (If you don’t know how, sim­ply read our Pod­cast Primer. We’ll get you up to speed.) We hope that you prof­it from these pod­cast col­lec­tions and our dai­ly posts (sub­scribe to our feed), and, if they can ben­e­fit a friend, please let them know about us at www.openculture.com.

P.S. For those who want to bone up on geog­ra­phy, check out Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures on iTunes. This infor­ma­tive course was taught by Mar­tin Lewis at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.