Orson Welles Reads ‘The Secret Sharer,’ by Joseph Conrad

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | December 3rd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of the writer Joseph Con­rad. He was born Józef Teodor Kon­rad Korzniows­ki on Decem­ber 3, 1857 in Berdichev, in the Pol­ish Ukraine. As a young man he trav­eled the world as a mer­chant sail­er, an expe­ri­ence that fur­nished mate­r­i­al and inspi­ra­tion for his Eng­lish-lan­guage books, which include such clas­sics as Nos­tro­mo, Lord Jim and Heart of Dark­ness.

To mark the occa­sion we bring you a record­ing of Orson Welles read­ing (lis­ten to it here) Con­rad’s short sto­ry “The Secret Shar­er” in 1985 as one of his selec­tions for The Orson Welles Library. “I think I’m made for Con­rad,” Welles once said. “I think every Con­rad sto­ry is a movie.” Con­rad wrote “The Secret Shar­er” in 1909. The sto­ry is told by the cap­tain of a ship. One night, while on watch in waters near the Gulf of Siam, the cap­tain dis­cov­ers a naked swim­mer cling­ing des­per­ate­ly to the side of the ship. He helps the mys­te­ri­ous man aboard and learns his sto­ry. The cap­tain is then faced with a dilem­ma: Should he help the man, or turn him over to the peo­ple who are look­ing for him?

You can find “The Secret Shar­er” and oth­er works by Joseph Con­rad in our col­lec­tions of  Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. And for more read­ings by Welles, please see our meta post: Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er.

h/t The Writer’s Almanac

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

in Apple, Television | December 2nd, 2012

Intro­duc­ing a new YouTube Chan­nel that gives you every Apple ad ever aired on TV — 485 ads, in total.

You can start with the icon­ic ones — the 1984 Super Bowl com­mer­cial direct­ed by Rid­ley Scott, which aired just weeks after Steve Jobs demoed the first Mac­In­tosh ever. Or, the famous “Think Dif­fer­ent” cam­paign from the late 1990s. The offi­cial “Think Dif­fer­ent” video was nar­rat­ed by Richard Drey­fuss, but we’d encour­age you to spend time with the nev­er-aired ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Jobs him­self. Oth­er vin­tage ads can be found in these chrono­log­i­cal­ly-orga­nized lists: 1977–1985, 1985–1996, 1996–2007 and 2007–2011. The 1981 Dick Cavett clip above appears in the first group.

But the col­lec­tion also lets you sort ads the­mat­i­cal­ly. So, for exam­ple, you can jump into the U.S. Get a Mac cam­paign, where you’ll get plen­ty of John Hodg­man. Also find ver­sions of the same cam­paign from the UK and Japan. Final­ly, Apple ads fea­tur­ing celebri­ties — from Bob Dylan to Zooey Deschanel to Spike Lee — are all neat­ly pack­aged togeth­er too. H/T @coudal

Ira Glass Makes Balloon Animals and Gives NSFW Advice to Teens — At the Same Time!!

in Art, Life | November 30th, 2012

Pri­or to pub­lic radio super­star­dom, Ira Glass enjoyed mod­est suc­cess as an ama­teur teenage magi­cian with a side in bal­loon ani­mals. At the behest of Rook­ie, an online mag­a­zine by and for teen girls, Glass shared some trade secrets gleaned from the 1974 pam­phlet, Roger’s Rub­ber Ark, Vol­ume II. Ignore the dia­bol­i­cal squeak­ing, and you’ll come out of this video know­ing every step that goes into a seat­ed Snoopy and a sur­pris­ing­ly ele­gant French poo­dle.

Even bet­ter than the bal­loon how-tos are Glass’ straight­for­ward respons­es to Rook­ie read­ers’ ques­tions, a chal­lenge pre­vi­ous­ly faced by Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd.

He applauds the courage of “Anony­mous,” who revealed her true feel­ings to a crush via text mes­sage. But, when pre­sent­ed with the facts, Glass con­cludes unequiv­o­cal­ly that her sen­ti­ment is not shared. (It’s not.)

The entire­ty of wom­ankind will embrace him for what he has to say to nerdy girls and those with short hair­dos.

And when the top­ic turns to con­dom eti­quette and fel­la­tio, well, let’s just say that the teenagers of the world could use more sex edu­ca­tors like Ira Glass.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

Filming a Sprinting Cheetah at 1,200 Frames Per Second

in Video - Science | November 30th, 2012

Chee­tahs are the fastest land ani­mals on Earth, able to reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.

Ear­li­er this year, the team at Nation­al Geo­graph­ic vis­it­ed the Cincin­nati Zoo and filmed chee­tahs run­ning at full sprint, as seen in the majes­tic video above. The Nation­al Geo­graph­ic team used a Phan­tom cam­era film­ing at 1,200 frames per sec­ond to cap­ture every nuance in the chee­tah’s gal­lop. The film­ing took three days and, so as not to bur­den the ani­mals, five dif­fer­ent chee­tahs were filmed.

You can read more about this ini­tia­tive here. Also be sure to check out the accom­pa­ny­ing Nation­al Geo­graph­ic arti­cle, “Chee­tahs on the Edge.”

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

15,000 Balloons Promote TEDxAmsterdam (Watch It Live on November 30)

in TED Talks | November 29th, 2012

So what is human nature? Who are we, how do we think, feel and act? What are our lim­i­ta­tions, and how can we over­come them? What do we share, how we are dif­fer­ent, how we can be fooled and how lucky are we to be alive?

Those are the ques­tions at the heart of the 2012 edi­tion of TEDx­Am­s­ter­dam, and you can watch it live online, in HD, start­ing tomor­row morn­ing at 9am Ams­ter­dam time. (The video will stream from the TEDx­Am­s­ter­dam home­page here.)

If you check out the pro­gram, you’ll see that Dan Ariely will be among the speak­ers. He’s the Duke prof who will teach “A Beginner’s Guide to Irra­tional Behav­ior,” a Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) start­ing next year. (It’s in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.)

In antic­i­pa­tion of the event, artist Gui­do Ver­hoef blew up 15,000 bal­loons to reveal the true face of human nature. You can see what it looks like above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1377 TED Talks List­ed in a Neat Spread­sheet

Johnny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

in Music, Television | November 26th, 2012

Recent­ly we fea­tured a video of Neil Young per­form­ing on The John­ny Cash Show in 1971. Today we bring you anoth­er extra­or­di­nary moment from the very same episode: John­ny Cash intro­duc­ing his now-clas­sic song, “Man in Black.”

It’s from a spe­cial called “John­ny Cash on Cam­pus” which aired on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1971. The per­for­mance was taped in front of an all-stu­dent audi­ence at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in down­town Nashville. A few days ear­li­er Cash had trav­eled across town to vis­it stu­dents on the cam­pus of Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty and, as he explains here in the intro­duc­tion, an idea began brew­ing.

1971 was a time of wide­spread stu­dent protests over the Viet­nam War and oth­er issues. The Kent State shoot­ings had hap­pened the year before. As a protest song, “Man in Black” shows Cash’s abil­i­ty to reach across gen­er­a­tions and appeal to audi­ences much wider than those usu­al­ly afford­ed to coun­try music.

When Cash first played the song at Ryman Audi­to­ri­um it was so new he need­ed cue cards to fol­low the words. The video offers a rare glimpse of an artist try­ing out a major work when the paint was still wet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Ai Weiwei’s Parody of ‘Gangnam Style’

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 23rd, 2012

Some­how this one slipped by me, and per­haps by you too. In recent weeks, Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei­wei post­ed a video par­o­dy­ing Gang­nam Style, the unex­pect­ed­ly mas­sive hit record­ed by the South Kore­an rap­per Psy. To date, the music video for Gang­nam Style has been viewed 792 mil­lion times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record. And every­one has had fun riff­ing on it. The North Kore­ans have used it to mock rival South Kore­an politi­cians. And Ai Wei­wei seems to be tak­ing a shot at Chi­na’s rul­ing par­ty (you see the hand­cuffs, no?). Or maybe he’s just blow­ing off some steam.

Ear­li­er this month, the artist also pro­duced a new video titled “How to Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Remove a Shiny Screw with Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics From a Mov­ing Vehi­cle in Eigh­teen Turns.” The video, writes Hint­mag, fol­lows Ai Wei­wei “on a bus mak­ing its way through Beijing—notably pass­ing by Tianan­men Square—while lit­er­al­ly unscrew­ing a screw. It’s thought to be a state­ment on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na and the new 18th Nation­al Con­gress, which took office two weeks ago.” You can watch it right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Wei­wei and the Seeds of Free­dom

Watch the “Biblio-Mat” Book-Vending Machine Dispense Literary Delight

in Books, Random | November 21st, 2012

We thought that Brazen­head Books might qual­i­fy as the quirki­est book­store we’ve encoun­tered. After all, it’s run out of Michael Sei­den­berg’s apart­ment in New York City. But get a load of this: The Monkey’s Paw, which calls itself “Toronto’s most idio­syn­crat­ic sec­ond-hand book­shop,” has installed the Bib­lio-mat, a vend­ing machine that dis­pens­es ran­dom books for a very nom­i­nal fee — $2 per book. (If you’re look­ing for $0, see our lists below.) In a recent inter­view with QuillandQuire.com, Stephen Fowler, the book­store’s own­er, explained the sto­ry behind the Bib­lio-mat:

I went fish­ing this past sum­mer with Craig Small, co-founder of The Jug­ger­naut, an ani­ma­tion stu­dio in Toron­to. I had this idea that I would love to have a vend­ing machine that gave out ran­dom books. I pic­tured it as a paint­ed refrig­er­a­tor box with one of my assis­tants inside; peo­ple would put in a coin and he would drop a book out. But Craig is more prag­mat­ic and vision­ary then I am. He said, “You need to have an actu­al mechan­i­cal vend­ing machine.” That was beyond my wildest imag­in­ings, but not Craig’s, so he just built it for me.

Thanks to Small, you can now watch the Bib­lio-mat in action above. It whirrs. It vibrates. And it final­ly deliv­ers a book with a sat­is­fy­ing clunk.

via Gal­ley Cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

Going West: A Stop Motion Nov­el

Philip Roth Reads the Last Pages of His Last Work of Fiction: “The End of the Line After Thirty-One Books”

in Books, Literature | November 20th, 2012

After half a cen­tu­ry and 31 books, Philip Roth casu­al­ly announced last month in an inter­view with a French mag­a­zine that he was call­ing it quits. He actu­al­ly made the deci­sion back in 2010, after the pub­li­ca­tion of his Book­er Prize-win­ning nov­el Neme­sis. “I did­n’t say any­thing about it because I want­ed to be sure it was true,” the 79-year-old Roth told New York Times reporter Charles McGrath last week in what he said would be his last inter­view. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, don’t announce your retire­ment and then come out of it.’ I’m not Frank Sina­tra. So I did­n’t say any­thing to any­one, just to see if it was so.”

Although Roth had been pri­vate­ly telling friends about his retire­ment for two years, accord­ing to David Rem­nick in The New York­er, the pub­lic announce­ment came as a shock for many. From his 1959 Nation­al Book Award-win­ning debut Good­bye, Colum­bus and Five Short Sto­ries and his out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny 1969 clas­sic Port­noy’s Com­plaint through his remark­ably pro­lif­ic late peri­od, with its steady stream of beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed nov­els like Oper­a­tion Shy­lock, Sab­bath’s The­ater and The Human Stain, it seemed as though Roth had the cre­ative ener­gy to keep writ­ing until he took his last breath.

But per­haps if we’d paid clos­er atten­tion we would­n’t be so sur­prised. In this 2011 video, for exam­ple, which shows Roth read­ing a few pages from Neme­sis after it won the Man Book­er Inter­na­tion­al Prize, he basi­cal­ly says it: “Com­ing where they do, they’re the pages I like best in Neme­sis. They con­sti­tute the last pages of the last work of fic­tion I’ve published–the end of the line after 31 books.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Philip Roth on Aging

Philip Roth’s Cre­ative Surge and the Death of the Nov­el

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Noam Chomsky Explains Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

in MIT, Philosophy, Psychology, Science | November 20th, 2012

While pop­u­lar­ly known for his pierc­ing and relent­less cri­tiques of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy and eco­nom­ic neolib­er­al­ism, Noam Chom­sky made his career as a researcher and pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics and cog­ni­tive sci­ence. In his 50 years at MIT he earned the appel­la­tion “the father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics” and—after over­turn­ing B.F. Skinner’s behav­ior­ist paradigm—founder of the “cog­ni­tive rev­o­lu­tion.” But these are labels the self-effac­ing Chom­sky rejects, in his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly under­stat­ed way, as he rejects all tri­umphal­ist nar­ra­tives that seem to promise more than they deliv­er.

Such is the case with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. The term, coined in 1956 by com­put­er sci­en­tist John McCarthy, once described the opti­mism with which the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty pur­sued the secrets of human cog­ni­tion in order to map those fea­tures onto machines. Opti­mism has turned to puz­zle­ment, ambiva­lence, or in Chomsky’s case out­right skep­ti­cism about the mod­els and method­olo­gies embraced by the field of AI.

Nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly san­guine about the prospects of unlock­ing the “black box” of human cog­ni­tion through so-called “asso­ci­a­tion­ist” the­o­ries, Chom­sky has recent­ly become even more crit­i­cal of the sta­tis­ti­cal mod­els that have come to dom­i­nate so many of the sci­ences, though he is not with­out his crit­ics. At an MIT sym­po­sium in May of last year, Chom­sky expressed his doubts of a method­ol­o­gy Nobel-win­ning biol­o­gist Syd­ney Bren­ner has called “low input, high through­put, no out­put sci­ence.”

Recent­ly Yarden Katz, an MIT grad­u­ate stu­dent in Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences, sat down with Chom­sky to dis­cuss the prob­lems with AI as Chom­sky sees them. Katz’s com­plete inter­view appeared this month in The Atlantic. He also video­taped the inter­view and post­ed clips to his Youtube chan­nel. In the clip above, Katz asks Chom­sky about “for­got­ten method­olo­gies in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” Chom­sky dis­cuss­es the shift toward prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion in engi­neer­ing and com­put­ing tech­nol­o­gy, which “direct­ed peo­ple away from the orig­i­nal ques­tions.” He also express­es the opin­ion that the orig­i­nal work was “way too opti­mistic” and assumed too much from the lit­tle data avail­able, and he describes how “throw­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed machine” at the prob­lem leads to a “self-rein­forc­ing” def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess that is at odds with sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.

In the clip below, Chom­sky dis­cuss­es a new field in sys­tems biol­o­gy called “Con­nec­tomics,” an attempt to map the wiring of all the neu­rons in the brain—an endeav­or prick­ly biol­o­gist Syd­ney Bren­ner calls “a form of insan­i­ty.” Katz asks if the “wiring dia­gram” of the brain would pro­vide “the right lev­el of abstrac­tion” for under­stand­ing its work­ings.

The inter­view is worth read­ing, or watch­ing, in full, espe­cial­ly for stu­dents of neu­ro­science or psy­chol­o­gy. Chom­sky dis­cuss­es the work of his one­time col­league David Marr, whose posthu­mous­ly pub­lished book Vision has had an enor­mous influ­ence on the field of cog­ni­tive sci­ence. Chom­sky also prais­es the work of Randy Gal­lis­tel, who argues that devel­op­ments in cog­ni­tive and infor­ma­tion sci­ence will trans­form the field of neu­ro­science and over­turn the par­a­digms embraced by ear­ly researchers in AI. While this is an excit­ing time to be a cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist, it seems, per­haps, a dif­fi­cult time to be a pro­po­nent of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, giv­en the com­plex­i­ties and chal­lenges the field has yet to meet suc­cess­ful­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.