McNamara & The Fog of War

in Film, History | July 6th, 2009

Robert McNa­ma­ra, the archi­tect of the failed Viet­nam War, died ear­li­er this week. He was a major force on the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene through­out the 1960s. Then, he re-emerged in 2004, when Errol Mor­ris released The Fog of War, an Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tary that fea­tures McNa­ma­ra look­ing back on his career and high­light­ing the lessons learned from the Viet­nam expe­ri­ence.  You can watch the film above. (Admit­ted­ly the film qual­i­ty is not the best.) Or you can buy it here.

In the mean­time, a quick fac­toid: After McNa­ma­ra left the John­son admin­is­tra­tion under a fair amount of dis­grace, he was appoint­ed to lead The World Bank. Fast for­ward to 2005, and we have Paul Wol­fowitz, a key archi­tect of the Iraq War, leav­ing the Dept. of Defense also under dis­grace and get­ting to lead The World Bank. Now we know where our next mil­i­tary bun­gler will go and save some face…

Jefferson, Adams and the Declaration of Independence

in History | July 3rd, 2009

With­out Thomas Jef­fer­son and John Adams, Amer­i­cans wouldn’t have the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence (lis­ten to a read­ing here). Rather strange­ly, both men died on the same day, exact­ly fifty years after the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion — July 4, 1826. Quite the fac­toid. Below, we have a clip from HBO’s excel­lent mini series “John Adams,” and here you can see the two men at work on the Dec­la­ra­tion.

Al Franken Effortlessly Draws the Map of America

in Comedy, Current Affairs | July 2nd, 2009

Al Franken, the for­mer SNL come­di­an, the Har­vard grad­u­ate, and now US Sen­a­tor, has a spe­cial tal­ent. He can draw the map of Amer­i­ca, state-by-state, while chat­ting up a crowd. Almost makes me feel the 4th of July spir­it…

Thanks for Eric for this one.

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Cosmology Online

in Physics | June 28th, 2009

Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his newish book on that sub­ject) offers a course on Cos­mol­o­gy, which stud­ies the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the uni­verse. It’s actu­al­ly the fifth course in a larg­er six-course intro­duc­tion to Mod­ern Physics (find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es). But the course stands on its own, and, along the way, it takes a close look at the Big Bang, the geom­e­try of space-time, infla­tion­ary cos­mol­o­gy, dark mat­ter, dark ener­gy, the string the­o­ry land­scape and more. You can access the full course on YouTube here, and also on iTunes here. Final­ly, the course comes out of Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which brings engag­ing class­es to the broad­er pub­lic. If you hap­pen to live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area (0r want to take top-notch writ­ing cours­es online), give the pro­gram a look.

PS We’ve got a new cus­tom url for our Face­book page. Check us out at facebook.com/openculture.

The 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time

in Film | June 27th, 2009

IFC.com (the web site of the Inde­pen­dent Film Chan­nel) has worked up a list of the all-time best movie trail­ers — or, as they put it, the films that pro­mote the actu­al films. The list cuts across dif­fer­ent eras and fea­tures many old­er clas­sics (Psy­cho, Cit­i­zen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, etc.) as well as more recent films. Above, we’ve includ­ed their num­ber one pick, Rid­ley Scot­t’s Alien. And below, we’ve added IFC’s descrip­tion, which sets the stage for view­ing the trail­er:

Mas­ter­ful­ly cut and art­ful to boot, the first glimpse of Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1979 sci-hor­ror clas­sic fea­tures not a sin­gle word of dia­logue and begins in abstract: a ride through a star field, a hov­er above some sort of moon rock, blocky shapes that slow­ly mate­ri­al­ize into the let­ters of the title, crag­gy land­scape tra­versed with a macro lens before pulling back to clar­i­fy what lies on that cratered sur­face — the egg of an alien life form. It cracks open, releas­ing an ill-omened white light and the high-pitched alarm (an ani­mal­is­tic squeal?) that unnerves through­out the rest of the trail­er.

Philip Roth on Aging

in Life, Literature | June 26th, 2009

File under Lit­er­a­ture & Life…

Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Streets of Tehran

in Current Affairs | June 24th, 2009

Bernard-Hen­ri Lévy, one of France’s lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als (you can tell by the way he but­tons his shirt) pays dra­mat­ic homage to the upris­ing in Iran. The rhythm of the speech is vague­ly MLK’esque. But the con­tent is dis­tinct­ly French intel­lo. (Some­how Michel Fou­cault gets worked into an analy­sis of what’s hap­pen­ing on the streets of Tehran.)

via TELOS

Hodgman (and Obama) on Geeks, Jocks & Nerds

in Comedy | June 21st, 2009

All cred­it to Jason Kot­tke on this one. Per­fect for our read­ers. From the 2009 Radio and TV Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. Give it a lit­tle time. Here it goes:

Relat­ed Video:

John Hodgman@Google

The Back Story in Iran

in Current Affairs | June 20th, 2009

If you’re look­ing to get more con­text for what’s hap­pen­ing right now in Iran, let me direct you to two pieces of media. First, you’ll find above a talk by Abbas Milani, the direc­tor of the Iran­ian Stud­ies Pro­gram at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. It was giv­en last August at Google’s HQ in Moun­tain View, CA, and it overviews how pow­er is struc­tured in Iran and what dri­ves Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics. Then, about 15 min­utes into the talk, Milani address­es the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and under­scores Ahmadine­jad’s declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and poor elec­toral chances. Milani also reflects on the emerg­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment and its abil­i­ty to get trac­tion. As you’ll see, many of his com­ments (democ­ra­cy will come on its own — if we don’t start a war over nukes) are start­ing to look rather prophet­ic. But let’s not get too far ahead of our­selves.

Next, you can lis­ten to a talk record­ed this morn­ing, which brings togeth­er Milani, Juan Cole (the his­to­ri­an of the Mid­dle East who writes the Informed Com­ment blog) and Scott Peter­son (Istan­bul bureau chief for The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor). This hour long con­ver­sa­tion (MP3 — iTunes) delves into the elec­tion and its after­math and exam­ines what’s at stake for Iran, the Mid­dle East and the US.

James Joyce Reading from Finnegans Wake

in Audio Books, Literature | June 19th, 2009

On Blooms­day (June 16), Boing­Bo­ing fea­tured a rare audio record­ing of James Joyce read­ing from Finnegans Wake (mp3). It’s a bit intrigu­ing to hear his voice and accent. Also, we came across anoth­er Joyce record­ing, where, this time, he’s read­ing Anna Livia Plura­belle, anoth­er sec­tion of the same nov­el. For kicks, you can catch an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the same record­ing on YouTube here.