Michael Crichton (RIP) on the Environment

in Science | November 5th, 2008

Michael Crich­ton has died of can­cer. You know him best as the author of Juras­sic Park and The Androm­e­da Strain. But some will remem­ber him for the con­tro­ver­sy that sur­round­ed his lat­er career. Crich­ton’s 2004 nov­el, State of Fear launched a lit­er­ary assault on envi­ron­men­tal­ism and the con­cept of glob­al warm­ing. And the next thing you know, Crich­ton tes­ti­fied before the US Sen­ate at the invi­ta­tion of Sen­a­tor James M. Inhofe, who called glob­al warm­ing “the great­est hoax ever per­pe­trat­ed on the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” (Inhofe also made State of Fear — a nov­el, mind you — required read­ing for the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Works.) Below, we fea­ture Crich­ton offer­ing his thoughts on why envi­ron­men­tal­ism is “one of the most pow­er­ful reli­gions in the West­ern world.”

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How Al Pacino Almost Missed The Godfather

in Film | November 5th, 2008

Imag­ine The God­fa­ther with­out Mar­lin Bran­do and Al Paci­no. Blas­phe­my! Well, it almost turned out that way. You can watch more here about how Bran­do almost nev­er made it. Below, we also have a clip that takes you through how Paci­no near­ly missed out on his career-defin­ing role. It includes orig­i­nal footage from his script read­ing ses­sions, and we’ve added it to our YouTube playlist.

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America Redeemed

in Current Affairs | November 4th, 2008

We’ve had some very low moments dur­ing recent years. And now the highs. The present buried the past, and the US elect­ed its first African-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent, prov­ing once again that Amer­i­ca is tru­ly the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty. This moment calls to mind the poignant quote that I heard this week. ‘Rosa sat so Mar­tin could walk, so Oba­ma could run, so our chil­dren can fly.’ Now watch them go. A beau­ti­ful moment.

Below, we present MLK’s full “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, which reminds of us how far we’ve come over the past 45 years.

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Picasso in Motion

in Art | November 2nd, 2008

Watch below, or get the video here.

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“Angels We Have Heard On High” Played with Broccoli

in Music, Random | October 30th, 2008

Clas­sic!

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The 13th Amendment

in Current Affairs, Film | October 30th, 2008

This week, CNN announced the win­ners of the iRe­port Film Fes­ti­val, the network’s first user-gen­er­at­ed short film com­pe­ti­tion. The fes­ti­val “chal­lenged film­mak­ers to doc­u­ment this year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign from their per­son­al van­tage point, whether they were vol­un­teer­ing for a cam­paign or had com­pelling sto­ries about this elec­tion they want­ed to doc­u­ment cre­ative­ly.” And the Grand Jury Award went to a short film called “13th Amend­ment.” Here, Mike Den­nis of Philadel­phia, Pa., fol­lows his 90-year-old grand­moth­er, who is African Amer­i­can, on her jour­ney to vote for the first seri­ous black can­di­date for the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy. (And, by the way, in case you were won­der­ing, the 13th Amend­ment banned slav­ery in the Unit­ed States in 1865.) Here it goes:

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The Political Wire

in Current Affairs, Television | October 29th, 2008

I’ve spent the past sev­er­al months work­ing through The Wire on DVD. A sim­ply bril­liant show. (Here’s a recap of Sea­son 1 in case you don’t know what you’re miss­ing. And for even more recaps click here.) Now some mem­bers of the cast, the good guys and the bad, have rolled out a com­mer­cial encour­ag­ing North Car­oli­na res­i­dents to get out the vote on Tues­day. It’s a good idea for all Amer­i­can vot­ers, no mat­ter who you sup­port in this race. Thanks to Kot­tke for point it out. Here it goes:

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Darwin’s Legacy

in Science, Stanford | October 28th, 2008

For weeks, it’s been one of the most pop­u­lar pod­casts on iTunes: Cre­at­ed by the Cas­siopeia Project, “Evo­lu­tion” (iTune­sU) offers a series of video pod­casts that explains what sci­en­tists know about evo­lu­tion in a visu­al­ly appeal­ing for­mat. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can always watch the series on your com­put­er by down­load­ing iTunes here.)

This all gives me a good excuse to high­light anoth­er pod­cast com­ing out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford. To com­mem­o­rate the 200th anniver­sary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species, we’re pre­sent­ing a course called Dar­win’s Lega­cy. (Access for free on iTunes here.) Led by Bill Durham, a MacArthur (“genius grant”) Prize Win­ner and Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy, the course brings togeth­er lead­ing Dar­win schol­ars from around the coun­try and explores Darwin’s lega­cy in fields as diverse as anthro­pol­o­gy, reli­gion, med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and biol­o­gy. Among oth­ers, you will find here talks (cap­tured in video) by Daniel Den­nett and Janet Browne (author of the defin­i­tive two-vol­ume Dar­win biog­ra­phy.) To access the com­plete course via iTunes, which is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments, sim­ply click here. Down the road, we will also be mak­ing the course avail­able on YouTube. For many oth­er free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, click here. 

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What Makes a Poem a Poem in 60 Seconds

in Literature | October 27th, 2008

A rather clever mini, mini-lec­ture from Charles Bern­stein, poet and pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, would­n’t you say?

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Free Tech How-To Books

in Web/Tech | October 22nd, 2008

Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing, you can get free access (for 30 days) to three pop­u­lar tech man­u­als:

• JavaScript: The Defin­i­tive Guide
• Learn­ing Perl
• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

Get details here