J.D. Salinger Dies at 91

in Books, Life, Literature | January 28th, 2010

More sad news. J.D. Salinger, who brought us The Catch­er in the Rye, has died at 91. Here’s the ini­tial news release.

Boy, when you’re dead, they real­ly fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die some­body has sense enough to just dump me in the riv­er or some­thing.  Any­thing except stick­ing me in a god­dam ceme­tery.  Peo­ple com­ing and putting a bunch of flow­ers on your stom­ach on Sun­day, and all that crap.  Who wants flow­ers when you’re dead?  Nobody.  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catch­er in the Rye, Chap­ter 20

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

in Economics | January 27th, 2010

Russ Roberts, the George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist and host of Econ­Talk (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) recent­ly teamed up with John Pap­o­la, a tele­vi­sion exec, to pro­duce “Fear the Boom and Bust.” It’s a rap song/video with intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance that fol­lows this premise:

John May­nard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, come back to life to attend an eco­nom­ics con­fer­ence on the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Before the con­fer­ence begins, and at the insis­tence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a boom and bust cycle in mod­ern economies and good rea­son to fear it.

This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites. You can get the full lyrics, sto­ry and free down­load of the song in high qual­i­ty MP3 and AAC files at: http://www.econstories.tv

via the always great Plan­et Mon­ey Pod­cast

The 2:30 A.M. Nobel Prize Call

in Life, Science | January 27th, 2010

Appar­ent­ly, the Swedes call when they know you’ll be home. Worth a lis­ten.

Howard Zinn Dies at 87

in History | January 27th, 2010

Sad news. Howard Zinn, the Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an best known for his book, A Peo­ple’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, died today of a heart attack at the age of 87. The Boston Her­ald has more on his life and pass­ing here. If you’re famil­iar with Zin­n’s biog­ra­phy, you’ll know that he served in World War II and lat­er took a strong posi­tion against the Viet­nam War. So, per­haps fit­ting­ly, we fea­ture Zinn talk­ing above about wars and the role gov­ern­ments play in man­u­fac­tur­ing them…

First Glimpse of Apple’s New eReader

in Amazon Kindle, Apple | January 27th, 2010

Wel­come the new Kin­dle com­peti­tor. Above, you’ll find some of the first pic­tures show­ing the ebook capa­bil­i­ties of Apple’s new iPad. We should have more thoughts on the iPad com­ing lat­er today. Pic­tures come via gdgt.com, which has been pro­vid­ing excel­lent live cov­er­age of the Apple event.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

in Art, History | January 26th, 2010

Work­ing with the BBC, Neil Mac­Gre­gor, the Direc­tor of the British Muse­um, has launched a down­right smart project. A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects uses impor­tant pieces from the muse­um’s col­lec­tions to recount the long his­to­ry of human­i­ty. Through­out the year, the seri­al­ized radio pro­gram will air 100 episodes, each aver­ag­ing 15 min­utes, and they will cov­er two mil­lion years of human inno­va­tion and artis­tic cre­ation. Below, I’ve includ­ed a recent episode that revis­its the Oldu­vai hand axe, a tool invent­ed some 1.2 mil­lion years ago that proved vital to human evo­lu­tion and our migra­tion out of Africa. You can access the full series in audio via iTunes, RSS Feed, as well as oth­er for­mats found here. A big thanks to Stephen in the UK for flag­ging this pro­duc­tion for us.

The History of the Seemingly Impossible Chinese Typewriter

in History, Stanford, Web/Tech | January 26th, 2010

The Chi­nese lan­guage has tens of thou­sands of char­ac­ters, and many have con­sid­ered it near­ly impos­si­ble to fit these char­ac­ters onto a sin­gle work­able type­writer. But that has­n’t stopped inven­tors from try­ing … and, to a cer­tain degree, suc­ceed­ing. Stan­ford his­to­ri­an Thomas Mul­laney is now writ­ing the first his­to­ry of the Chi­nese type­writer, and he has found evi­dence for numer­ous patents and pro­to­types that incor­po­rate the most com­mon­ly used char­ac­ters. In addi­tion to mak­ing a polit­i­cal impact in Chi­na, these machines have also poten­tial­ly influ­enced inno­va­tions in mod­ern com­put­ing. You can read more about Mul­laney’s work on Stan­ford’s Human Expe­ri­ence web­site, and also watch him dis­cuss his work in this YouTube clip.

Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Science

in Science | January 24th, 2010

Here’s some vin­tage Richard Dawkins. Back in 1991, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gist pre­sent­ed a series of lec­tures for the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion. In the very first lec­ture (pre­sent­ed above), Dawkins forces his audi­ence to con­front some big ques­tions. (What’s the ori­gin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on plan­et Earth? What’s our role in the larg­er uni­verse? etc.) And he reminds us that we’re extreme­ly priv­i­leged to have the brains and tools (name­ly, rea­son and sci­ence) to make sense of the awe­some won­ders that sur­round us. We’ve evolved and grown up, he says. We don’t need super­sti­tion and the super­nat­ur­al to explain it all. We just need our­selves and our faith in sci­ence and its meth­ods. It’s clas­sic Dawkins.

The 55-minute talk is now added to our YouTube favorites, and we’ve also added Dawkins’ YouTube Chan­nel to our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels.

via TED

Peter Singer on Greed & Wall Street Excesses

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | January 18th, 2010

Peter Singer, an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton, cre­at­ed the ani­mal rights move­ment back in the 1970s, and, more recent­ly, launched a cam­paign to end world pover­ty. One can’t con­tem­plate pover­ty with­out also con­sid­er­ing greed, and that brings us to the clip above. Inter­viewed in 2009, Singer sug­gests that greed dri­ves us bio­log­i­cal­ly (as does social col­lab­o­ra­tion for­tu­nate­ly). Greed helps us sur­vive and inno­vate. But there is also a point where it becomes point­less and patho­log­i­cal, and that’s what we have wit­nessed in the finan­cial world. Greed brought us Bernie Mad­off. But it has also brought us (my infer­ences) bankers who cre­ate a cat­a­stro­phe one year and take record bonus­es the next. And it has brought us to the point where  our coun­try has dan­ger­ous­ly slipped off of its demo­c­ra­t­ic moor­ings. Lloyd Blank­fein, this clip is for you. Thanks Ted for send­ing this one along.

Look­ing for free phi­los­o­phy cours­es? Vis­it the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our Free Course col­lec­tion.

I Have a Dream

in History | January 18th, 2010

For MLK’s birth­day, we bring back the full “I Have a Dream” speech, deliv­ered at The Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al on August 28, 1963. Sev­en­teen elo­quent and brave min­utes that changed the world and made it a bet­ter place.