Plagiarism Software Discovers New Shakespeare Play

in Literature | October 12th, 2009

Or so that’s the claim of Bri­an Vick­ers, a pro­fes­sor at the Insti­tute of Eng­lish Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. Accord­ing to a short piece in The New York Times, a soft­ware pack­age called Pl@giarism, usu­al­ly used to detect cheat­ing stu­dents, demon­strates that “The Reign of King Edward III,” a play pub­lished anony­mous­ly in 1596, has ele­ments of Shake­speare’s lin­guis­tic fin­ger­print. In short, phras­es used in the play match phras­es found in ear­li­er Shake­speare plays at least 200 times. Inter­est­ing­ly, the soft­ware also iden­ti­fies phras­es match­ing the lin­guis­tic fin­ger­print of anoth­er play­wright, Thomas Kyd, sug­gest­ing that Shake­speare did­n’t write the Edward play (or oth­er plays?) alone. The Times of Lon­don has more on these new claims.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Shake­speare on the iPhone

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like

50 Years of Space Exploration in One Image

in Science | October 11th, 2009

50 years of space explo­ration con­densed into one rather beau­ti­ful image. Make sure that you click the items to get the his­tor­i­cal details…

Lis­ten to great lec­tures and uni­ver­si­ty cours­es on the iPhone. Get our free iPhone app.

via @courosa

John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated

in Music | October 11th, 2009

This clip of Coltrane’s 1960 clas­sic comes to us via @hughmcguire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Fifth: The Ani­mat­ed Score

How a Bach Canon Works. More Bril­liant Ani­ma­tion

John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

in Music, Television | October 9th, 2009

A lit­tle birth­day present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This mem­o­rable inter­view, record­ed in 1971, fea­tures John and Yoko in a can­did, relaxed and wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion with one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full inter­view, see  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. These inter­views, and oth­er Lennon inter­views with Cavett, are all part of a DVD that you pur­chase at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les Remas­tered: An Inside Look

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

James Ellroy on Re-Writing History

in Books, Literature | October 8th, 2009

James Ell­roy’s new crime fic­tion nov­el, Blood­’s a Rover, takes you back to the tumul­tuous sum­mer of 1968, to a world inhab­it­ed by J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hugh­es, the Black Pan­thers, and the mob run­ning their rack­ets in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Above, in his own inim­itable style, Ell­roy gives you the scoop on how he goes about writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. To get a feel for the book, you can read a PDF of the first chap­ter here. And if you want to get the audio book for free, check out Audible.com’s stand­ing offer.

via Media Bistro

Richard Dawkins on “The Greatest Show on Earth”

in Sci Fi | October 7th, 2009

Richard Dawkins, the promi­nent Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gist, has fol­lowed up The God Delu­sion (2006) with The Great­est Show on Earth (Sep­tem­ber, 2009). After hav­ing made the case for athe­ism, Dawkins now looks to debunk “Intel­li­gent Design” and lay out the sheer vol­ume of evi­dence sup­port­ing evo­lu­tion. Above, Dawkins reads pas­sages from his book and then talks about evo­lu­tion and why, rel­a­tive to oth­er sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries, it tends to meet so much oppo­si­tion. The video comes from the Guardian where you can also find a review of Dawkins’ new book.

Note: you should be able to down­load Dawkins’ book for free (in audio for­mat) through Audible.com’s stand­ing offer. Details here.

Free Film Noir at Archive.org

in Film | October 7th, 2009

Mark Frauen­felder, over at Boing­Bo­ing, has flagged a nice film noir col­lec­tion housed at Archive. org. All films are pub­lic domain and free. Among the 43 films you’ll find Beat the Dev­il (1953), a John Hus­ton film star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt. (Watch it here.) Archive.org also hosts a good num­ber of oth­er films, and I’ve high­light­ed some in a pre­vi­ous post: 35 Places to Watch Free Movies Online

via Boing­Bo­ing

The Case for God: The First Chapter

in Religion | October 7th, 2009

As we men­tioned last week, Karen Arm­strong’s new book, The Case for God, is out. And now you can read the first chap­ter for free. Just click on this link, and then the book view­er on the left side of the page. It will expand, and from there you can start flip­ping through the pages. Be warned, the viewer/reader is a lit­tle clunky. The down­side of free, I guess.

The 10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes

in Television | October 5th, 2009

Last Fri­day marked the 50th anniver­sary of The Twi­light Zone’s debut on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, a big occa­sion for fans of sci-fi, hor­ror and sus­pense. To cel­e­brate the anniver­sary, TV Squad pulled togeth­er a list of the 10 best episodes of Rod Ser­ling’s show. At the top, you might put the episode called “Eye of the Behold­er,” which we’ve post­ed above. For the remain­ing nine, vis­it the TV Squad list and also see the inter­views with Rod Ser­ling toward the end of their page. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

Hidden America Exposed

in Art | October 4th, 2009

Taryn Simon pho­tographs the hid­den and unfa­mil­iar in Amer­i­ca (see book here). Above, her 18 minute pre­sen­ta­tion takes you inside the Amer­i­ca not often seen, pro­vid­ing glimpses of the CIA’s abstract art col­lec­tion, the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s mar­i­jua­na grow room, a Braille edi­tion of Play­boy pro­duced by the Library of Con­gress (just the arti­cles, not the pic­tures, of course), and more. I’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites. Thanks to the var­i­ous Twit­ter streams that flagged this clip for me this week­end.