50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

in Comedy, Television | April 9th, 2008

Nerve and IFC have pulled togeth­er a fun list that counts down the 50 fun­ni­est sketch­es in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Hap­pi­ly, the list fea­tures many video clips, and this inspired us to post one of our own. Here we have John Belushi, appear­ing on Sat­ur­day Night Live in the late 1970s, per­form­ing a clas­sic bit called “Samu­rai Del­i­cat­assen.” Check out the full list of 50 here, and find many more SNL skits on Hulu.com here (if you’re liv­ing in the US).

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Philosophy Makes a Comeback

in Philosophy | April 7th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle from today’s New York Times is this piece, which talks about the revival of phi­los­o­phy on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es. The rea­sons for this revival are var­ied — Some see phi­los­o­phy offer­ing “good train­ing for look­ing at larg­er soci­etal ques­tions, like glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.” Oth­ers see it build­ing skills val­ued by law schools (argu­men­ta­tion and rea­son­ing). Still oth­ers believe that phi­los­o­phy and exis­ten­tial angst can be good for “good for get­ting girl­friends.” Mean­while, all seem to agree that philo­soph­i­cal think­ing is not sim­ply for “frou-frou” intel­lec­tu­als. The net result: the num­ber of phi­los­o­phy majors is up, with some schools see­ing increas­es of 50–100% over the past 5–6 years.

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Daily Caffeine ‘Protects Brain’

in Uncategorized | April 7th, 2008

Thank good­ness.

In Search of TV 2.0

in Film, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech | April 3rd, 2008

One of the things they promised us in the hey­day of the 1990s Inter­net boom was the end of tele­vi­sion and a brave new world of high qual­i­ty video online, on demand. Well, we’re still wait­ing. Youtube is great for short clips, but not designed for the tech­ni­cal (or legal) chal­lenge of serv­ing up whole TV shows or movies.

How­ev­er, things are get­ting bet­ter. You can pay for rea­son­ably good enter­tain­ment, and you can even watch some things for free on net­work web­sites (not to men­tion the many uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er groups putting video online). But nobody has come quite as close to the orig­i­nal promise as Hulu.com. This promis­ing new site seems to strike a decent bal­ance between com­mer­cials and con­tent. They have entire sea­sons of sev­er­al decent tele­vi­sion shows and a small library of movies–all avail­able for free. So is Hulu the future of Hol­ly­wood online? Check it out and let us know what you think.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• How Ein­stein Became Ein­stein

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Elephant Painting

in Art | March 30th, 2008

The video above is fair­ly mind-blow­ing. And here you can watch the ele­phant from anoth­er angle. The ele­phant appar­ent­ly resides in a safe haven in Thai­land, after hav­ing been abused in Bur­ma. For more info, see The Ele­phant Art & Con­ser­va­tion Project. (Video has been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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Dith Pran on Genocide

in History | March 30th, 2008

Dith Pran, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal activist who sur­vived The Killing Fields in Cam­bo­dia, and whose expe­ri­ence was nar­rat­ed in the 1984 film by the same name, has died at 65. You can revis­it his pho­to­graph­ic work here, and watch a talk he gave in 2006. Here, Pran recounts what hap­pened in Cam­bo­dia — how The Viet­nam War spread to Cam­bo­dia, empow­er­ing the mur­der­ous Khmer Rouge — and ques­tions whether we’re gen­er­al­ly get­ting clos­er to mak­ing geno­cide a thing of the past.

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The Real Cost of the Iraq War

in Current Affairs | March 27th, 2008

Dur­ing the run up to the Iraq war, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion esti­mat­ed that the mil­i­tary mis­sion would run around $50 bil­lion, even though experts doubt­ed those num­bers at the time. (In 2002, Yale’s William Nord­haus guessed that the costs could reach $500 bil­lion with­in five years.) Now, here we are in 2008, and new tal­lies sug­gest that the real costs could rise to some­where between $1 tril­lion and $3 tril­lion. This award-win­ning piece — MP3 — iTunes — Feed — delin­eates the mount­ing costs and intro­duces you to some of think­ing in Joseph Stiglitz and Lin­da Bilmes’ new book: The Three Tril­lion Dol­lar War.

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David Lynch: The Lesser Known Work

in Film | March 24th, 2008

David Lynch fans, here you go. Below (and added to our YouTube playlist), we have Lynch’s anti-lit­ter­ing pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment that has a fair­ly high creepi­ness fac­tor. He’s actu­al­ly not new to the world of com­mer­cials. This site col­lects Lynch’s pre­vi­ous com­mer­cial work, start­ing with his 1988 series of Calvin Klein Obses­sion ads that played on the work of F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and D.H. Lawrence. And, while we’re at it, let’s not for­get Lynch’s recent anti-iPhone spot, which is usu­al­ly good for a laugh.

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The Kindle: Amazon Has a Winner

in Books | March 24th, 2008

When Ama­zon’s Kin­dle hit the streets last Novem­ber, the crit­ics gave the new­fan­gled ebook read­er mixed reviews. The cus­tomers, how­ev­er, have been say­ing some­thing a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. Sales have been brisk, a bit too brisk actu­al­ly. Wait­ing up to six weeks to get the Kin­dle, cus­tomers have been get­ting huffy, and last week Ama­zon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, had to post an apol­o­gy on Ama­zon’s home­page. If you’re won­der­ing what makes the $399 Kin­dle so sought after, Life­hack­er’s review does a good job of sum­ming up its virtues. In the mean­time, if you want to get your hands on one, get in line.