JFK in 1960, Romney in 2007 — Religion in America

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society | December 6th, 2007

Mitt Rom­ney, a Mor­mon, looked yes­ter­day to set aside lin­ger­ing con­cerns about his reli­gion in a high­ly pub­li­cized speech. Imme­di­ate­ly, the speech revived mem­o­ries of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, dur­ing the 1960 cam­paign, to ease con­cerns about his Catholi­cism. We’ve post­ed both speech­es below. The sim­i­lar­i­ties are there. But the dif­fer­ences are more pro­found. I’ll resist the temp­ta­tion to point them out. You can watch the clips and draw your own con­clu­sions.

John F. Kennedy — 1960

Mitt Rom­ney — 2007

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Agatha Christie Radio Mysteries

in Audio Books, Media | December 5th, 2007

Pod­cast­ing is a new form of media dis­tri­b­u­tion that’s done a good job of reviv­ing old forms of media, par­tic­u­lar­ly old radio shows. In the past, we’ve point­ed you to sev­er­al old radio broad­casts, includ­ing Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio dra­ma that led many Amer­i­cans to hun­ker down in base­ments, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to avoid an unfold­ing mar­t­ian inva­sion. Today, we’re high­light­ing a vin­tage radio col­lec­tion (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that fea­tures drama­ti­za­tions of mys­ter­ies writ­ten by Agatha Christie, the ‘Queen of Crime.’ Here, at your leisure, you can lis­ten to the adven­tures of Her­cule Poirot, the fic­tion­al Bel­gian detec­tive who appeared through­out much of her writ­ing. To be pre­cise, he fig­ured into 33 of her nov­els, and 54 of her short sto­ries. Right now, you can access 27 indi­vid­ual record­ings of Christie’s work, and there’s seem­ing­ly more to come.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for more old time media, I’d encour­age you to vis­it this pro­duc­er’s larg­er col­lec­tion of pod­casts on iTunes. Among oth­er things, you’ll find revived pro­duc­tions of Abbott & Costel­lo, Jack Ben­ny, Flash Gor­don and more.

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Favorite Books of the Year

in Books | December 5th, 2007

The rou­tine is always the same here in the Bay Area. Wake up, get in the car, lis­ten to Forum on KQED. Today, the host Michael Kras­ny invit­ed lis­ten­ers to call in and pick the best books of the year, or those they plan to give as gifts this hol­i­day sea­son. To get some good reading/gift tips, you can lis­ten here (iTunes — Feed — MP3) or sim­ply read the print­ed list here. (Forum can be found in our col­lec­tion of Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­casts.)

Also, in case you missed them, you may want to review these recent selec­tions by The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2007 and The 10 Best Books of 2007.

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The 50 Greatest Independent Films

in Film | December 3rd, 2007

Empire Online has pub­lished its list of the 50 best indie films. Skewed towards action/crime films, the list won’t appeal to all. But there are some indis­putably amaz­ing movies of the list. We’ve post­ed the top 10 below. But some­how I think the bet­ter ones are actu­al­ly low­er down on the list — for exam­ple, #17, City of God, the Brazil­ian film that mix­es Taran­ti­no aes­thet­ics & vio­lence with mean­ing­ful social com­men­tary. See trail­er below.

The top 10 movies in descend­ing order are: Mean Streets, Side­ways, The Usu­al Sus­pects, Sex, Lies and Video­tape, The Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an, Clerks, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Don­nie Darko, and Reser­voir Dogs.

Look­ing for free movies? Dive into our col­lec­tion here.

Wikipedia Dominates Search

in Web/Tech | November 30th, 2007

Inter­est­ing stats:

In Decem­ber 2005, how often did Wikipedia come up as the first search engine result in a giv­en search? Just about nev­er in Google’s case, and 7% of the time in Yahoo’s case. Now, Wikipedia is the first search result 27% of the time on Google and 31% of the time on Yahoo. Rather astound­ing.

This is all revealed in a study which chalks this change up to “the increas­ing dif­fi­cult­ly [search] engines have in cal­cu­lat­ing sat­is­fac­to­ry rank­ing.”  (Source: John Bat­telle’s Search­blog)

The 10 Best Books of 2007

in Books | November 29th, 2007

After recent­ly pub­lish­ing its list of 100 Notable Books of 2007, The New York Times has nar­rowed things down and select­ed The 10 Best Books of 2007 — five fic­tion, and five non­fic­tion. Have a look.

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Predictions for the World in 2008

in Current Affairs | November 28th, 2007

The Econ­o­mist has issued its pre­dic­tions for the world in 2008, and here’s what they’re bank­ing on: The Democ­rats, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hillary Clin­ton, nar­row­ly win the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Mean­while the Unit­ed States, which has nev­er met a bub­ble it does­n’t like, will get mired down with hous­ing and cred­it prob­lems. And look­ing for a new eco­nom­ic engine, the world will turn to Chi­na and India. Even bet­ter for Chi­na, it will host the Olympics in Bei­jing, win many medals, and feel like it has arrived (or rather re-arrived) as a nation. But per­haps feel­ing a bit too proud, it might ratch­et up ten­sions with Tai­wan, while the U.S. sur­pris­es every­one, even itself, by pos­si­bly strik­ing a “grand bar­gain” with Iran. Oth­er than that, George Bush will accom­plish lit­tle dur­ing the last year of his admin­is­tra­tion, and politi­cians will talk lots about cli­mate change. But whether they actu­al­ly do any­thing is any­one’s guess.

For more pre­dic­tions, check out The Econ­o­mist’s full write-up, and keep an eye on The Econ­o­mist pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) where I’m sure these issues will get fuller cov­er­age in the com­ing days.

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Stephen King on Britney, Lindsay, Jenna & Waterboarding

in Current Affairs | November 27th, 2007

Below, you’ll find excerpts from TIME Mag­a­zine’s con­ver­sa­tion with Stephen King. You can access the full inter­view here. King turns up the heat after the jump.

STEPHEN KING: So who’s going to be TIME Per­son of the Year?

TIME: I real­ly don’t know, there’s a very small group of peo­ple who make that deci­sion.

STEPHEN KING: I was think­ing, I think it should be Brit­ney Spears and Lind­say Lohan.

TIME: Real­ly?

STEPHEN KING: Yeah. You know, I just filmed a seg­ment for Night­line, about [the movie ver­sion of his novel­la] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, “You guys are just cov­er­ing — what do they call it — the scream of the pea­cock, and you’re miss­ing the whole fox hunt.” Like water­board­ing [or] where all the mon­ey went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to dis­ap­pear. And yet you get this cov­er­age of who’s gonna get cus­tody of Brit­ney’s kids? Whether or not Lind­say drank at her twen­ty-first birth­day par­ty, and all this oth­er shit. You know, this morn­ing, the two big sto­ries on CNN are Kanye West­’s moth­er, who died, appar­ent­ly, after hav­ing some plas­tic surgery. The oth­er big thing that’s going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peter­son] killed his… wife. And mean­while, you’ve got Pak­istan in the midst of a real cri­sis, where these peo­ple have nuclear weapons that we helped them devel­op. You’ve got a guy in charge, who’s basi­cal­ly declared him­self the mil­i­tary strong­man and is being sup­port­ed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, whose rai­son d’e­tre for going into Iraq was to spread democ­ra­cy in the world.
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WIRED SCIENCE: What’s Inside Rainn Wilson?

in Science, Video - Science | November 26th, 2007

Fun­ny and yet it counts as sci­ence.

Chris Hard­wick and Rainn Wil­son, star of The Office, “dive deep into the chem­i­cal guts of a com­mon house­hold prod­uct” to dis­cov­er “What’s Inside.” For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it https://www.pbs.org/wiredscience (Source: Boing­Bo­ing)

When Bob Dylan Went Electric: Newport, 1965

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 25th, 2007

First there was the folk Bob Dylan. Then came the elec­tric Bob Dylan. And it all hap­pened one night at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. The date was July 25, 1965.

In the clip below, you can see how the tran­si­tion was received. In a word, not well. Appear­ing in front of a folk audi­ence that lament­ed the rise of rock, Dylan hit the stage with his elec­tric band and played three songs, includ­ing “Like a Rolling Stone.” Much of the crowd react­ed vio­lent­ly (you can hear it at the end of the clip), and Pete Seeger, the folk leg­end, raged back­stage: “Get that dis­tor­tion out of his voice … It’s ter­ri­ble. If I had an axe, I’d chop the micro­phone cable right now.” After his short set, Dylan tried to exit the stage. But, as you’ll see, he was coaxed back, with acoustic gui­tar in hand, to give the peo­ple what they want­ed — an excel­lent ver­sion of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. For more on this con­tro­ver­sy (which the music world even­tu­al­ly got over), check out Mar­tin Scors­ese’s doc­u­men­tary “No Direc­tion Home” as well as this Wikipedia entry.

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