Malcolm Gladwell on the Beatles — Prodigies or Not?

in Music | May 12th, 2009

The last sen­tence is the clinch­er…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day

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

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

Shakespeare on the iPhone

in iPhone, Literature | May 11th, 2009

Last week, we flagged for you a list called the 100 Best iPhone Apps for Seri­ous Self-Learn­ers. What the list missed is anoth­er nice app that puts the com­plete works of Shake­speare on your iPhone. And, the best part, it’s all free. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy func­tion­al­i­ty: you can search the text by key­word and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app auto­mat­i­cal­ly remem­bers the last page you read. Not bad. And, again, you can find the Bard app here.

Dramatizing the Middle East

in Theatre | May 5th, 2009

When Israel entered Gaza ear­li­er this year, Caryl Churchill, whom Tony Kush­n­er calls “one of the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial play­wrights liv­ing,” wrote a nine minute play enti­tle “Sev­en Jew­ish Chil­dren: A Play for Gaza.” In Feb­ru­ary, it had a brief run at Lon­don’s Roy­al Court The­atre and elicit­ed very dif­fer­ent reac­tions. Some cel­e­brat­ed the play, call­ing it “dense, beau­ti­ful, elu­sive and inten­tion­al­ly inde­ter­mi­nate” but also appro­pri­ate­ly “dis­turb­ing” and “provoca­tive;” oth­ers labeled it  a blood libel and essen­tial­ly anti-semit­ic. Although con­tro­ver­sial, the Guardian felt that it was impor­tant for peo­ple to see the play and form their own views. So they com­mis­sioned a per­for­mance and had it dis­trib­uted online. You can watch it above, draw you own con­clu­sions, and, if you want, read more about the project over at the Guardian.

This piece of video was sent to us by rkcli­brary over Twit­ter. Thanks for think­ing of us.

Free PDF Download of The Alchemyst

in Books | May 2nd, 2009

A quick fyi: You can down­load a free PDF of Michael Scot­t’s Young Adult nov­el, The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel. It runs about 375 pages and is avail­able for a lim­it­ed time thanks to Pow­ell’s web site. Get it free here. Or buy a copy (and read user reviews) here.

Ballard Rediscovered

in Literature | May 1st, 2009

J.G. Bal­lard, the con­tro­ver­sial author of Crash and Empire, died last month. One of our read­ers (Stephen) point­ed us to a Bal­lard short sto­ry pub­lished in the Guardian. “The Dying Fall” was lit­tle known and nev­er pub­lished in a Bal­lard col­lec­tion. And it’s here that the mod­ern world col­lides with the Renais­sance. 

The Invention of Self: One Woman, Eight Characters

in Random | April 30th, 2009

At the TED Con­fer­ence, actress Sarah Jones takes a fun­ny look at “the inven­tion of self,” which is a fan­cy way of say­ing she does some good imper­son­ations. Com­ing up, Jones imper­son­ates an elder­ly Jew­ish women, a young fast-talk­ing Domini­can col­lege stu­dent, peo­ple from var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties (Chi­na, India, France, Ger­many, Jor­dan, etc.). And it’s all mixed with some humor. Runs about 21 min­utes.

How the E‑Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Google | April 27th, 2009

Accord­ing to Steven John­son’s piece in The Wall Street Jour­nal, the “break­through suc­cess of Ama­zon’s Kin­dle e‑book read­er, and the mat­u­ra­tion of the Google Book Search ser­vice”  could “make 2009 the most sig­nif­i­cant year in the evo­lu­tion of the book since Guten­berg ham­mered out his orig­i­nal Bible.” John­son goes on to explain why e‑book read­ers (like the Kin­dle) will stim­u­late book sales (nev­er a bad thing for a bat­tered indus­try), and why it will also trans­form the way we find, read, talk and write about books. Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick read. And if you have more thoughts on what the dig­i­tal book uni­verse will look like, add them to the com­ments below.

When Galaxies Collide

in Science, Video - Science | April 26th, 2009

What will hap­pen 3 to 5 bil­lion years from now, when our galaxy will like­ly merge with the Androm­e­da galaxy? The (sound­less) video above will give you a quick pre­view. This footage from the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope offers mul­ti­ple views of recent galaxy col­li­sions. It’s worth not­ing that when galax­ies “col­lide,” they don’t lit­er­al­ly hit one anoth­er. Rather they pull on one anoth­er, as the New Sci­en­tist explains. And the grav­i­ta­tion­al force is enough to do some seri­ous vio­lence — the kind cap­tured in the footage above.

Bill Moyers with The Wire’s David Simon

in Television | April 23rd, 2009

Here Bill Moy­ers sits down with David Simon, exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of The Wire, the stun­ning HBO pro­duc­tion. As any­one who has watched the show knows, The Wire is not just a splen­did dra­ma. It is, as Simon has once called it, “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” It takes a pen­e­trat­ing and aes­thet­i­cal­ly rich look at some of Amer­i­ca’s most vex­ing social issues. And it’s why Moy­ers says, “What Edward Gib­bon was to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or Charles Dick­ens to the smokey, mean streets of Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don, David Simon is to Amer­i­ca today.” To access this 40 minute inter­view, you can watch it on the web or on iTunes. You can also grab an audio mp3 here.

Final­ly, as a quick aside, the video below recaps The Wire’s 5 sea­sons in 5 min­utes. It hard­ly does the show jus­tice, but it gives you a quick feel for things. If you haven’t watched the show, do your­self a big favor and get your­self a Net­flix sub­scrip­tion and spend the new few months watch­ing it from begin­ning to end.

World Digital Library

in Art, Books, History, Media | April 22nd, 2009

Anoth­er big dig­i­tal archive went live this week. Backed by the Unit­ed Nations, the World Dig­i­tal Library wants to cen­tral­ize cul­tur­al trea­sures from around the world. Man­u­scripts, maps, rare books, musi­cal scores, record­ings, films, prints, pho­tographs, and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings — they will all be absorbed into this grow­ing online col­lec­tion, and users will be able to nav­i­gate through these mate­ri­als in sev­en dif­fer­ent lan­guages (Ara­bic, Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Por­tuguese, Span­ish and Russ­ian). The col­lec­tion (to which Google con­tributed $3 mil­lion in 2005) now hosts about 1,250 arti­facts, a frac­tion of what it will even­tu­al­ly include. The ini­tial col­lec­tion fea­tures some gems. Take for exam­ple the Tale of the Gen­ji, a Japan­ese text from the ear­ly 11th cen­tu­ry that’s often con­sid­ered “the first great nov­el in world lit­er­a­ture.” You can also take a close look at some Ora­cle Bones from Chi­na cir­ca 1200 BC. Or how about these icon­ic pho­tos from The Great Depres­sion or these shots of the great Jack­ie Robin­son. To learn more about this new dig­i­tal archive, read this piece in The Wash­ing­ton Post.