100 Notable Books of 2007

in Books | November 23rd, 2007

Gift buy­ing sea­son is now offi­cial­ly upon us. If books are part of your gift buy­ing plan, then have a look at this list just pub­lished by The New York Times. The 100 books list­ed here include fic­tion, poet­ry and non­fic­tion. Among oth­ers, you’ll find Philip Roth’s lat­est book, Exit Ghost, and I men­tion it sim­ply because you may want to lis­ten to an inter­view with Roth that aired ear­li­er this week (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).

You should also spend some time look­ing at our list of Life-Chang­ing Books, all of which were select­ed by our read­ers this fall. Def­i­nite­ly some good, time-test­ed reads on this list.

Final­ly, a quick heads up: Apple is run­ning a one day sale, which gives up to $100 off some com­put­ers and $30 off iPod clas­sics. Plus there’s free ship­ping on all prod­ucts. If you have Apple prod­ucts on your hol­i­day list, then it may be worth your time. Again, the sale ends at mid­night.

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Nixon and Kissinger: Best of Allies and Rivals

in History, Politics | November 21st, 2007

Robert Dallek’s lat­est book recounts in plen­ti­ful detail (752 pages) the odd work­ing rela­tion­ship that exist­ed between Richard Nixon and Hen­ry Kissinger (Nixon’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and, lat­er, sec­re­tary of state). They were part­ly allies, in many ways strong­ly depen­dent upon one anoth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it came to mak­ing Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. But they also dis­trust­ed one anoth­er, some­times deeply, and they’d occa­sion­al­ly maneu­ver behind each oth­ers’ backs. Dallek’s book, Nixon and Kissinger: Part­ners in Pow­er, has just come out in paper­back, which brings us to this NPR inter­view with the author (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Dallek, who has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten exten­sive­ly on Kennedy and John­son, gives a good inter­view that out­lines “Nixinger’s” sub­stan­tive accom­plish­ments and the many behind-the-scenes intrigues. Give a lis­ten.

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Landmark Moments in Film: Hitchcock’s Psycho

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 20th, 2007

Of all the scenes that Hitch­cock shot, this is the most well known. The icon­ic show­er scene (1960), which runs about 2 min­utes, took six days to film, used around 75 cam­era angles, and 50 cuts. After shoot­ing this sequence, Janet Leigh appar­ent­ly for­ev­er kept her show­ers to a min­i­mum and, while show­er­ing, locked all doors and win­dows and kept the bath­room & show­er doors open.

The Kindle v. The Book

in Web/Tech | November 20th, 2007

Val­ley­wag, the blog that tracks Sil­i­con Val­ley and things tech, post­ed an amus­ing com­par­i­son between the tra­di­tion­al book and Ama­zon’s new elec­tron­ic read­er (see yes­ter­day’s post). It’s clear­ly meant to be more wit­ty than seri­ous, but it makes some obvi­ous and valid points along the way. (See Val­ley­wag arti­cle here)

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Not The Daily Show

in Television, Video - Politics/Society | November 18th, 2007

As the weeks go on, more and more of us are start­ing to notice that Hol­ly­wood’s writ­ers are on strike. One by one new tele­vi­sion shows are run­ning out of fresh mate­r­i­al. But if you’re a fan of The Dai­ly Show, (and, well, we are) you were hit prac­ti­cal­ly on day one, since the top­i­cal news spoofs put on by Jon Stew­art and his mer­ry band are writ­ten on a short sched­ule.

So while the rest of us find alter­nate means of enter­tain­ing our­selves, the writ­ers are out there pick­et­ing in New York and L.A. What hap­pens when you leave a bunch of bored writ­ers with a side­walk and a griev­ance? Not The Dai­ly Show:

150 Monty Python Sketches (and a Related Prank)

in Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | November 17th, 2007

Some­one did a lot of leg­work and pulled togeth­er a heap of Mon­ty Python videos on YouTube. The list includes one famous seg­ment called “Dead Par­rot,” which is notable part­ly because it’s fun­ny, and part­ly because it forms the basis of a sec­ondary joke.

To make a long sto­ry short, there are some folks out there called “scam­baiters” who take revenge against 419 scam­mers — you know, the peo­ple who gen­er­ate those emails that begin some­thing like this: “I have picked-up the trust and courage to write you this let­ter with divine con­fi­dence that you are a reli­able and hon­est per­son who will be capa­ble for this impor­tant busi­ness trans­ac­tion believ­ing also that you will let me down either now or in the future.” When one scam­baiter named Mike Berry received one such email, he some­how man­aged to turn the tables on the scam­mers and duped them into recre­at­ing the Python Dead Par­rot skit. The prank all gets explained at the start of the video below, and you can read more about it here.

Intelligent Design on Trial

in Religion, Video - Science | November 16th, 2007

Ear­li­er this week, PBS’s NOVA aired a two-hour pro­gram revis­it­ing the con­tro­ver­sial fed­er­al case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School Dis­trict, which asked whether “intel­li­gent design” could be taught in Amer­i­can schools along­side Dar­win’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. Intel­li­gent design essen­tial­ly holds that “life is too com­plex to have evolved nat­u­ral­ly and there­fore must have been designed by an intel­li­gent agent.” And, along the way, it effec­tive­ly attempts to make God’s role in cre­at­ing the world a sci­en­tif­ic fact, not an item of faith. You can see how the back­ers of intel­li­gent design ulti­mate­ly fared. NOVA has made the pro­gram avail­able online for free. It’s divid­ed into 12 videos, and you can watch them here. For a com­plete descrip­tion of the pro­gram, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• 5,000 Years of Reli­gion in 90 Sec­onds
• Phi­los­o­phy Talk and Intel­li­gent Design

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Steve Jobs on Life

in Uncategorized | November 15th, 2007

I like re-post­ing this from time to time.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Com­put­er, deliv­ered this speech at Stan­ford’s com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny in June 2005. I some­how doubt that the grad­u­at­ing class could have tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed what Jobs is say­ing here. (At that age, I could­n’t have.) But if you’re a lit­tle fur­ther down the road, you’ll under­stand that Jobs (who iron­i­cal­ly nev­er grad­u­at­ed from col­lege) points to a sim­ple set of guide­lines that can make the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing and so-so life. Sad­ly, these prin­ci­ples get lost all too often in the noise, iner­tia and blur of every­day life.

By the way, the pod­cast ver­sion of this speech con­sis­tent­ly remains the num­ber #1 pod­cast on Stan­ford’s iTunes site. You can down­load it in video here, or audio here.

Bob Dylan — Like A Rolling Stone 1966

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2007

It’s the num­ber one song on Rolling Stone Mag­a­zine’s list of The 500 Great­est Songs of All Time. But could a mag­a­zine with its name say oth­er­wise?

As a quick PS, check out the new Bob Dylan Pod­cast (iTunes — Web Site). Host­ed by Pat­ti Smith, this pod­cast looks at Dylan’s friends and ear­ly influ­ences, and also col­lab­o­ra­tors dis­cuss their close rela­tion­ships with Dylan, the sto­ries behind his great­est songs and oth­er mem­o­rable moments of his career.

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201 Stories by Anton Chekhov

in Science | November 11th, 2007

Among Rus­si­a’s great­est writ­ers, Anton Chekhov rev­o­lu­tion­ized Russ­ian dra­ma and short-sto­ry writ­ing. In this col­lec­tion, you’ll find 201 trans­lat­ed sto­ries pre­sent­ed in the order of their pub­li­ca­tion. If you’re new to Chekhov, it’s rec­om­mend­ed by the web site that you begin (and I’m quot­ing ver­ba­tim) “with a few humor­ous sto­ries, such as Oh! the Pub­lic!, The Ora­tor, and A Trans­gres­sion. Next try one of Chekhov’s most mov­ing sto­ries, Mis­ery. Among the longer sto­ries, I sug­gest begin­ning with Ward No. 6, The Duel, and The Steppe, which con­tains the most famous thun­der­storm in lit­er­a­ture. Final­ly, be sure to read the famous tril­o­gy made of The Man in a Case, Goose­ber­ries, and About Love.” (Source: Metafil­ter)

Get free audio­book of fic­tion and non-fic­tion clas­sics. Vis­it our Audio­Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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