Attack Ad Hall of Fame

in Current Affairs | March 23rd, 2008

Are polit­i­cal attack ads such a bad thing? John G. Geer, author of In Defense of Neg­a­tiv­i­ty: Attack Ads in Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paigns, doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think so. He main­tains that they often enrich, rather than cor­rode, the polit­i­cal process. And now his pub­lish­er has assem­bled The Attack Ad Hall of Fame. Includ­ed on the list is the most famous/controversial one — the “Daisy ad” from the 1964 John­son-Gold­wa­ter cam­paign. John­son’s ad, which was only aired once, nev­er men­tioned Gold­wa­ter by name, but it raised fears about whether Gold­wa­ter might bring us to the nuclear brink. For more ads, see the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image, and watch Geer him­self get swift-boat­ed on YouTube.

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Google Sky, Moon and Mars

in Astronomy, Google, Science | March 17th, 2008

Here’s what you get when Google engi­neers put their heads togeth­er with astronomers from large obser­va­to­ries: With Google Sky, “you can search for plan­ets, lis­ten to Earth & Sky pod­casts, watch some beau­ti­ful Hub­ble tele­scope images, or explore his­tor­i­cal maps of the sky from the com­fort of your brows­er.” The prod­uct was rolled out just last week, and you can get more info on the new release from Google’s offi­cial blog.

The new Sky prod­uct sits com­fort­ably along­side Google Moon and Google Mars, which have been around since 2005–2006. Cre­at­ed in con­junc­tion with sci­en­tists at the NASA Ames Research Cen­ter, Google Moon offers a col­lec­tion of lunar maps and charts and delves into the Apol­lo mis­sions. The Mars prod­uct, mean­while, offers some of the most detailed exist­ing maps of the red plan­et.

For more good sci­ence, see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion here.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

in Comedy, YouTube | March 17th, 2008

A mer­ry, musi­cal St. Pat’s greet­ing to you from your Irish-Amer­i­can cor­re­spon­dent, pre­sent­ed by his three favorite mup­pets:

via Boing­Bo­ing

100 Best Last Lines from Modern Novels

in Literature | March 16th, 2008

Put togeth­er by the Amer­i­can Book Review, this list (which comes in PDF for­mat) serves up some of the great last lines from mod­ern lit­er­a­ture. Rank­ing num­ber six on the list is a pas­sage that I hap­pened to read just yes­ter­day: “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pret­ty to think so?” –Ernest Hem­ing­way, The Sun Also Ris­es (1926).

via Gawk­er via Kot­tke

500 Years of Women in Art (Give This Video Points for Creativity)

in Art | March 11th, 2008

This video takes you on a fair­ly amaz­ing tour of the great por­traits of women in West­ern art. It moves from da Vin­ci to Picas­so, and, along the way, the por­traits seam­less­ly morph one into anoth­er. This mor­ph­ing allows you to see how artis­tic styles changed over time, and also how the human face has been artis­ti­cal­ly treat­ed dur­ing dif­fer­ent peri­ods. Watch the video below, which is accom­pa­nied by Bach’s Suite No. 1 per­formed by Yo-Yo Ma. For infor­ma­tion on the paint­ings cov­ered in the clip, click here. And also see the relat­ed video, Women in Film.

More Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 11th, 2008

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Samantha Power & the Obama Controversy

in Current Affairs, Politics | March 11th, 2008

It’s rare that pro­fes­sors find them­selves at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal firestorm. But that’s where Saman­tha Pow­er, Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice of Glob­al Lead­er­ship and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at Har­vard, found her­self last week when, dur­ing an off-the-record con­ver­sa­tion with a reporter, she referred to Hillary Clin­ton as a “mon­ster” and then had to resign as senior for­eign pol­i­cy to advis­er to Barack Oba­ma.

Until then, Pow­er had been rid­ing a big wave of suc­cess. Only 37 years old, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, A Prob­lem from Hell: Amer­i­ca and the Age of Geno­cide. She’s also now pro­mot­ing her sec­ond book, Chas­ing the Flame: Ser­gio Vieira de Mel­lo and the Fight to Save the World. (Watch a clip from the book tour here). And until this high pro­file slip-up, she was clear­ly help­ing shape Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy. You can hear Pow­er’s influ­ence in how Oba­ma answered the high­ly pub­li­cized ques­tion last sum­mer — would you, as pres­i­dent, nego­ti­ate direct­ly with Iran’s Ahmadine­jad? (He said yes.) Pow­er’s think­ing on inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy gets artic­u­lat­ed fair­ly well in this lengthy inter­view. Below, we’ve also post­ed a clip (from FORA.tv) of Pow­er speak­ing about Oba­ma and the ques­tion of nego­ti­at­ing with ene­mies. (Get the full talk here.)

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How Traffic Jams Begin

in Uncategorized | March 10th, 2008

In case you’ve ever won­dered .…

David Sedaris Delivers a Pizza

in Comedy | March 9th, 2008

Appar­ent­ly not the real deal, but a pret­ty good imper­son­ation nonethe­less…

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Top 10 Grammar Myths

in English Language | March 9th, 2008

For Nation­al Gram­mar Day (March 4), The Gram­mar Girl (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site) issued anoth­er pop­u­lar pod­cast that out­lines and debunks 10 com­mon gram­mar myths. If you’re already up to speed on these (pre­view them here), con­grats. If not, give a lis­ten.