10 Classic Films from the Internet Archive

in Film, Internet Archive | March 3rd, 2009

Our hunt to find uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble Hitch­cock films brought us back to the Inter­net Archive yes­ter­day, and it now seems worth high­light­ing some of the oth­er gems buried in this col­lec­tion. This archive of fea­ture films con­tains some impor­tant clas­sics from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We’ve fea­tured ten good ones below, and don’t for­get to see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Vis­it the Inter­net Archive for more fea­ture films.

Amazon

in | March 3rd, 2009

What We Can Learn from Past Presidents

in History, Life | March 2nd, 2009

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence in 2008, Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win talks about what we can all learn from Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, includ­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly Abra­ham Lin­coln and Lyn­don John­son. This is not anoth­er talk about what makes pres­i­dents great. It’s more about the bal­ance between work, love, and play, and how we can gen­er­al­ly be pro­duc­tive, shiny, hap­py peo­ple.

Kindle Book Sales Factoid

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | March 2nd, 2009

Quite the stat not­ed over on Seth God­in’s blog: “Ama­zon’s Kin­dle is cool and it’s gain­ing in trac­tion and peo­ple who have one buy a lot of books. 10% of Ama­zon’s book sales are now on the Kin­dle. [For books where both ver­sions are avail­able].”

Who knew that many e‑books were being sold on Ama­zon?

Five Classic Alfred Hitchcock Films

in Film | March 2nd, 2009

Def­i­nite­ly worth a men­tion. Craveon­line has pulled togeth­er some clas­sic Hitch­cock films. The list includes The 39 Steps, The Secret Agent, The Man Who Knew Too Much (above), Young and Inno­cent, and Black­mail. And from what I can tell, they’re all avail­able in full (sur­pris­ing­ly) and can be watched in full screen for­mat. If you’re hav­ing prob­lems view­ing these films, you can find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

The 39 Steps

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Secret Agent

Young and Inno­cent

Blogs & Podcasts for the Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | February 27th, 2009

There’s no doubt about it. We’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times, as the Chi­nese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s hap­pen­ing here. So, below, I have high­light­ed a num­ber of blogs and pod­casts that help make intel­li­gent sense of this eco­nom­ic deba­cle. Here they go…

• Plan­et Mon­ey: NPR is doing a great job of cov­er­ing the unwind­ing glob­al econ­o­my. The Plan­et Mon­ey blog is a good read, and it includes an essen­tial read­ing list. But the accom­pa­ny­ing pod­cast is one that I fol­low reg­u­lar­ly. It’s a must. And it’s gen­er­al­ly enter­tain­ing. You can access it here:  iTunes — Rss Feed — Web Site. (Note: the last episode is not the best exam­ple of what it’s usu­al­ly about.)

• Econo­Talk: Econ­Talk was vot­ed “Best Pod­cast” in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Host­ed by Russ Roberts (out of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty), the show “fea­tures one-on-one dis­cus­sions with an eclec­tic mix of authors, pro­fes­sors, Nobel Lau­re­ates, entre­pre­neurs, lead­ers of char­i­ties and busi­ness­es, and peo­ple on the street.” You can access the show via the fol­low­ing chan­nels: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site.

• The Base­line Sce­nario: Ded­i­cat­ed to “explain­ing some of the key issues in the glob­al econ­o­my and devel­op­ing con­crete pol­i­cy pro­pos­als,” The Base­line Sce­nario is writ­ten, among oth­ers, by Simon John­son, for­mer chief econ­o­mist of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, who is now a pro­fes­sor at the MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment. Although rel­a­tive­ly young, the blog has received a fair amount of acclaim as the finan­cial cri­sis has unfold­ed. You may want to par­tic­u­lar­ly check out their col­lec­tion of con­tent called Finan­cial Cri­sis for Begin­ners.

• Real­time Eco­nom­ic Issues Watch:  Here, senior fel­lows of the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics (a think tank based in Wash­ing­ton) “dis­cuss and debate their respons­es to glob­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial devel­op­ments as they occur each day and offer insights that oth­ers might over­look.”  You will find some of the folks from the Peter­son Insti­tute also appear­ing on the pod­casts and blogs men­tioned else­where on this list. Find the RSS feed here.

• Paul Krug­man: A Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist, a Nobel Prize Win­ner, a New York Times op-ed writer, Paul Krug­man is blog­ging the glob­al finan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis dai­ly. It’s an opin­ion that you can’t afford to take light­ly. You’ll also want to see his new­ly released book, The Return of Depres­sion Eco­nom­ics and the Cri­sis of 2008.

• Econ­o­mists’ Forum: Run by the Finan­cial Times (UK), this blog brings togeth­er a large num­ber of econ­o­mists who offer a run­ning com­men­tary on the state of the frag­ile econ­o­my. The Wall Street Jour­nal has its own real time blog here.

• Fall­out: Amer­i­ca’s Finan­cial Cri­sis: Mar­ket­place, the night­ly radio pro­gram on pub­lic radio (iTunes — Feed), also hosts a blog that tracks the week’s top sto­ries on Amer­i­ca’s finan­cial cri­sis.

• New­sHour with Jim Lehrer: The PBS night­ly news pro­gram almost always includes an infor­ma­tive seg­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the finan­cial news of the day. The cov­er­age, which typ­i­cal­ly includes inter­views with experts, is excel­lent. You can down­load the pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site

• The Beck­er-Pos­ner Blog: While not updat­ed as fre­quent­ly as Krugman’s blog, The Beck­er-Pos­ner blog is a great place to read the thoughts of two Nobel prize win­ning econ­o­mists (Gary Deck­er and Richard Pos­ner) dis­cuss the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Thanks Bryce for the tip.

• This Amer­i­can Life: One of NPR’s beloved pro­grams has offered some excel­lent cov­er­age of the finan­cial cri­sis. It start­ed with a show called The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and it has since includ­ed a pro­gram called Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). Now there is a new one called Bad Bank, which explains what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing in the train­wrecks that are banks. These pro­grams were put togeth­er part­ly by mem­bers of the Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast men­tioned above.

Are we miss­ing some­thing good? Please let us know in the com­ments below…

Newspaper Front Pages from Across the World

in Media | February 26th, 2009

What’s the main news sto­ry of the day? It depends on where you live.

New­se­um has a handy web page that let’s you visu­al­ly scan the front page of over 700 news­pa­pers across 80 coun­tries. Open this web page, click on a con­ti­nent, then click on a dot with­in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic area, and you’ll see what an indi­vid­ual paper thinks mat­ters most today, tomor­row and the next day. It’s a pret­ty handy tool.

Sad­ly, as I looked at these maps, I could­n’t help but won­der (giv­en the state of news­pa­per busi­ness) how many of these dots will dis­ap­pear over time. Or, as my col­league put it, how long is it before the news­pa­per, as we know it, becomes an actu­al rel­ic of a muse­um. “New­se­um” may real­ly become a new­se­um.

If you want to track the grim demise of the print indus­try, you can fol­low The Media is Dying on Twit­ter. On an hour-to-hour basis, it records the grim unwind­ing of var­i­ous news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. And, while you’re at it, you can fol­low our Twit­ter feed here, too. It’s a hap­pi­er feed, I promise.

Thanks Denise for the heads up on this one. Got a cool piece of cul­tur­al media? Send it our way.

If Life Were Only Like This …

in Comedy, Film | February 24th, 2009

Some­how my mind turned back today to this clas­sic scene from Annie Hall — Woody Allen’s 1977 Acad­e­my Award­ing-win­ning film. The scene fea­tures Woody, Diane Keaton, and a cameo by Mar­shall McLuhan, who gave us media the­o­ry and the expres­sion “the medi­um is the mes­sage.” The bit is always good for a laugh.

Dylan and Baez Sing Blowin’ in the Wind

in Music | February 19th, 2009

Some­where back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites.  As men­tioned a few weeks back, Dylan recent­ly agreed to lend this clas­sic song to a TV com­mer­cial for an eth­i­cal bank­ing and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flag­ging that.

John Cheever Story Revived Online

in Literature | February 16th, 2009

John Cheev­er’s sto­ry “Of Love: A Tes­ti­mo­ny” has­n’t been anthol­o­gized or reprint­ed since it was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1943. Now, you can find it online at Fivechapters.com. Through­out the week, Fivechap­ters will roll out the sto­ry in nice dai­ly install­ments, as is their gen­er­al cus­tom.

via LA Times Books