Galapagos Rap: 3.5* ’til infinity…

in Music, Science | October 27th, 2009

Stan­ford stu­dents head to the Gala­pa­gos Islands, then rap about what they’ve learned. Evo­lu­tion­ary rap. What a con­cept…

Mean­while, the pro­fes­sor whose voice you hear at the out­set, Bill Durham, taught a course in Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) last year, and we have made it avail­able as a free pod­cast. It’s called Dar­win’s Lega­cy, and it brought togeth­er some of the world’s lead­ing Dar­win schol­ars for the 200th anniver­sary of Darwin’s birth. You access and learn more about the course here.

via Stan­ford’s Face­book page

Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | October 25th, 2009

The mar­ket­ing around the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kin­dle, has begun, even though the prod­uct won’t be sold (for $259) until Novem­ber. Above, you’ll find a B&N video that demos the fea­tures of the new e‑book read­er. Giz­mo­do is already giv­ing the Nook some nice reviews. See 8 Rea­sons You Can Final­ly Love Ebook Read­ers (Thanks to Nook). And you can learn more about the Nook’s fea­tures over at Engad­get.

Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling

in Art, Media, Radio | October 23rd, 2009

Since 1995, Ira Glass has host­ed and pro­duced This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the award-win­ning radio show that presents mas­ter­ful­ly-craft­ed sto­ries to almost 2 mil­lion lis­ten­ers each week. What’s the secret sauce that goes into mak­ing a great sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Part 1 (above) gets into the build­ing blocks of a good sto­ry. Part 2 talks about the impor­tance of find­ing the right sto­ry. Part 3 reas­sures you that cre­ative excel­lence takes time to devel­op. It also comes with hard work. And Part 4 flags com­mon errors to avoid. Give Glass 17 min­utes, and you will be a bet­ter sto­ry­teller for it…

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Wallace Stevens Reads His Own Poetry

in Literature, Poetry | October 23rd, 2009

This lit­tle col­lec­tion gives you access to Wal­lace Stevens (1879–1955), one of Amer­i­ca’s great poets, read­ing his own poet­ry. Among the poems, you will hear “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “The Poem that Took the Place of a Moun­tain,” “Vacan­cy in the Park,” and “To an Old Philoso­pher in Rome.” For more, you should see our pre­vi­ous post, Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work, and then below watch the clip below of ever-pro­lif­ic Yale lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor Harold Bloom recit­ing Stevens’ “Tea at the Palace of Hoon.”

Reader Podcast Picks

in Podcasts | October 22nd, 2009

Ear­li­er this week, one of our read­ers, Scott Dumont, offered up some excel­lent thoughts on a few pod­casts that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. Since he put things so well, I fig­ured why not pass along his thoughts direct­ly to you. Here they go, and thanks Scott …

I’d like to make three sug­ges­tions for addi­tions to your library. Two polit­i­cal pod­casts and one his­tor­i­cal one. For the polit­i­cal ones, you’re lack­ing in the more inde­pen­dent depart­ment; you’ve got Democ­ra­cy Now, which is good enough but I’d sug­gest adding Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a true inde­pen­dent news show, putting the cur­rent pol­i­tics in per­spec­tive and ana­lyz­ing the dis­con­nect between what is pro­pa­gan­da and what is truth. His descrip­tion is:

Com­mon Sense with Dan Car­lin is a blend of audio com­men­tary and news analy­sis by one of the lead­ing thinkers among today’s polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent crowd. Author, reporter and talk show host Dan Car­lin takes a look at the issues in the news through the prism of his tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can “for­ward-think­ing prag­ma­tism” while push­ing a fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, social­ly lib­er­al approach to solv­ing prob­lems. Whether he’s rail­ing against the “Fat Police”, explain­ing the exis­tence of “The Chick­en Lit­tle Gene” or con­tin­u­al­ly bring­ing up his­tor­i­cal events no one has ever heard of, Car­lin man­ages to be enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive in a unique­ly non-par­ti­san way. His style has been com­pared to Sein­feld’s George Costan­za on steroids. Whether that’s true or not, he does often talk real­ly fast. You’ll have to keep up.

If I had to rec­om­mend a few from the ones cur­rent­ly in his feed, I’d say take a lis­ten to the fol­low­ing shows before you decide: “137- A Vote For None”, “143- The Black Dog”, “146- The Con­ti­nu­ity Of Errors”“154- A Con­flict of Inter­est”, “157- Read It and Weep”, “161- Shhh!”. I know it’s a lot, feel free to pick any of those, but those are prob­a­bly var­ied enough for you to get a taste of what he means.

My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics is exact­ly what it sounds like; it puts cur­rent polit­i­cal events in a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and ana­lyzes the his­to­ry to allow us to under­stand our pol­i­tics. For a good sam­pling, just take a look at this most recent stuff. He’s not schiz­o­phrenic like Dan Car­lin and his show is fair­ly for­mu­la­ic, but that’s not to say it’s not infor­ma­tive. (more…)

Big Canadian Film Archive Online

in Film | October 21st, 2009

A nice tip from Life­hack­er. Canada’s Nation­al Film Board makes 1000s of films (includ­ing doc­u­men­taries, ani­mat­ed films, trail­ers and some Oscar win­ners) freely avail­able via the web and now the iPhone. Vis­it the NFB col­lec­tion here, and get the free iPhone app here.

via Life­hack­er

E‑Books in OverDrive

in e-books | October 14th, 2009

Anoth­er sign of the chang­ing times…

5,400 pub­lic libraries are now lend­ing free e‑books and audio books to their patrons. With the help of Over­Drive, library cus­tomers can down­load texts to their Sony e‑book read­ers, com­put­ers and var­i­ous hand held devices. They get two to three weeks with the book, and then, poof, it expires. It’s yet anoth­er trend wor­ry­ing pub­lish­ers, and I have to think it might make the Ama­zon Kin­dle peo­ple a lit­tle ner­vous too. The New York Times has the full details here.

Mean­while, on a quite relat­ed note, the Times sep­a­rate­ly pos­es the ques­tion Does the Brain Like e‑Books? to five promi­nent thinkers. When you read their replies, you can’t help but won­der whether we’re gen­er­al­ly devel­op­ing a flawed dig­i­tal read­ing experience–one that does­n’t real­ly give much thought to how we read when we read well. But then it’s impor­tant to remem­ber. We’re ear­ly on in this game. And, with a lit­tle time and smarts, we’ll end up with some­thing much bet­ter, even if it’s some strange fusion of the tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal book.

Rare Interview with Alfred Hitchcock Now Online

in Film | October 14th, 2009

Jason Kot­tke has unearthed a rare and lengthy inter­view with the great direc­tor, Alfred Hitch­cock. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by Tom Sny­der back in 1973, and he starts with a good ques­tion. “All of the pic­tures that you do scare peo­ple. What fright­ens you?” Watch it above.

Anne Frank’s Diary: From Reject Pile to Bestseller

in History, Literature | October 13th, 2009

We’re lucky to have Anne Frank’s diary — lucky that the diary was ever dis­cov­ered, and lucky, too, that some­one took a chance on pub­lish­ing the even­tu­al best­seller. This is all nice­ly out­lined by Francine Prose, who has a new book out called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The After­life. You can lis­ten to her full book talk here. And also be sure to see our recent post show­ing the only exist­ing video of Anne Frank. It’s now online.

Arts & Letters Daily

in Media | October 12th, 2009

A very quick fyi: If you haven’t already, you should spend some time at Arts & Let­ters Dai­ly. It is essen­tial­ly a meta site that gath­ers links to the “most intel­li­gent, provoca­tive, and illu­mi­nat­ing news sto­ries, crit­i­cal reviews, polit­i­cal essays, and com­men­taries pub­lished online.” Updat­ed six days a week, the site is divid­ed into three main areas. “Arti­cles of Note,” “New Books,” and “Essays and Opin­ion.” The only thing that Arts & Let­ters Dai­ly is miss­ing? A link to Open Cul­ture on the left hand side…