Essential Books for the Critic’s Library

in Books | October 26th, 2007

The Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle has a blog and they’ve asked some of the coun­try’s best lit­er­ary crit­ics to list the “five books a crit­ic believes review­ers should have in their libraries.” The series pro­vides a new list every week, and so far the choic­es are inter­est­ing not just for the books picked (and some of the over­laps in picks), but also for the expla­na­tions that the crit­ics offer for their choic­es. Here’s John Updike on Eric Auer­bach’s Mime­sis:

a stun­ning­ly large-mind­ed sur­vey from Homer and the Old Tes­ta­ment up to Woolf and Joyce. Quot­ing a lengthy para­graph or two from each clas­sic, Auer­bach gives us an essen­tial his­to­ry of, as his sub­ti­tle has it, “the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Real­i­ty in West­ern Lit­er­a­ture.”

Debating Religion The Dawkins Way

in Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | October 25th, 2007

When debat­ing reli­gion, you can take the low road (e.g., Ann Coul­ter’s recent flir­ta­tion with anti-semi­tism) or the high road. Here’s Richard Dawkins, an avowed athe­ist and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, hav­ing a high-mind­ed con­ver­sa­tion about the exis­tence (or non-exis­tence) of God with Alis­ter McGrath, who is Pro­fes­sor of His­tor­i­cal The­ol­o­gy at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and also has a back­ground in mol­e­c­u­lar bio­physics. We’ve post­ed the video­taped debate below. (And, by the way, you can down­load the video to an iPod by access­ing the video here, look­ing to the right where it says “Down­load to Video iPod” and fol­low­ing these instruc­tions).

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More Swapping

in Books | October 25th, 2007

After we men­tioned Book Mooch last week, one of our faith­ful read­ers alert­ed us to anoth­er site — PaperBackSwap.com. Paper­Back­Swap is report­ed­ly eas­i­er to use than Book Mooch, and the actu­al process of exchang­ing books runs more smooth­ly. Mean­while, despite the site’s name, you can swap both paper­back and hard­back books there. In case you missed our last piece, the idea of these sites is sim­ple. You can trade your old books for ones you haven’t read. The only cost is the postage for ship­ping. Not a bad deal. Thanks Mag­gie for the tip.

Got oth­er tips? Write us any time.

500 Years of Art in Morphing Action (Excellent Video)

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | October 22nd, 2007

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.

PS Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing for high­light­ing our inter­view today with Satoshi Kanaza­wa.

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Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” Now Online: 1999 — Present

in Comedy, Video - Arts & Culture | October 19th, 2007

Lis­ten close­ly. What’s that you hear? It’s the sound of Amer­i­can office pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tak­ing it on the chin.

Yes­ter­day, “The Dai­ly Show with Jon Stew­art” put its entire video archive online (see www.thedailyshow.com). The archive goes back eight years. It’s com­plete­ly free. And it’s all high­ly search­able. To get a feel for what this video trove offers, you can spend some time watch­ing these clas­sic Dai­ly Show moments.

As you’d expect, the video archive includes no short­age of fun­ny bits, includ­ing when Stephen Col­bert announced his pres­i­den­tial bid ear­li­er this week (see below), and when the show riffed on Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize last week. But, mixed in, you’ll also find some of the show’s more seri­ous moments. Take, for exam­ple, when Jon Stew­art asked John McCain the hard-nosed ques­tions about the Iraq war (here and here) that most jour­nal­ists won’t, and also when the show first returned to broad­cast­ing after 9–11. It’s all here. And appar­ent­ly a sim­i­lar site for The Col­bert Report will be launched some­where down the line.

Note to Read­ers: If you want to share good cul­tur­al con­tent (pod­casts, videos, etc.) with your fel­low read­ers, feel free to drop us a line. We’re always hap­py to get your sug­ges­tions, and, of course, we’ll glad­ly give you all the cred­it for them.

If you can’t hear the audio, sim­ply slide the lit­tle bar imme­di­ate­ly above to the right.

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Einstein and the Mind of God

in Physics, Religion, Science | October 18th, 2007

Speak­ing at a con­fer­ence on sci­ence, reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy in 1941, Albert Ein­stein famous­ly said that “sci­ence with­out reli­gion is lame; reli­gion with­out sci­ence is blind.” Ein­stein, a Ger­man-born Jew, con­sid­ered him­self reli­gious. But what he meant by reli­gion was not straight­for­ward. The first episode of a two-part pod­cast called Ein­stein and the Mind of God (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site) tries to sort out Ein­stein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. For Ein­stein, reli­gion con­sist­ed of a belief, not in a per­son­al God, but a uni­ver­sal spir­it that man­i­fests itself in nature. And it was the task of physics to make sense of nature, of God’s uni­verse. Or, so that is how it’s explained by Free­man Dyson, a famed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who appears on the show. In the sec­ond part, the pod­cast turns to look at Ein­stein’s ethics (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site). Although not with­out per­son­al flaws (he often fell short in his personal/domestic life), Ein­stein had a strong moral sense informed by his Jew­ish upbring­ing. He saw sci­en­tists hav­ing a deep moral oblig­a­tion to soci­ety; he took strong posi­tions against war (except when Hitler came along); he opposed racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and lament­ed the plight of African-Amer­i­cans well before the civ­il rights move­ment; and he laud­ed reli­gious lead­ers’ efforts to use non-vio­lent action to oppose immoral con­di­tions. Each of these pod­casts runs around 53 min­utes in length, and they form part of a larg­er radio/podcast series called Speak­ing of Faith (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which is issued by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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Religion: 5000 Years in 90 Seconds

in Religion | October 15th, 2007

How has the geog­ra­phy of reli­gion evolved over the cen­turies, and where has it sparked wars? This inter­ac­tive map sum­ma­rizes in a brief 90 sec­onds the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, and Judaism. It shows where & when each reli­gion orig­i­nat­ed, how the reli­gions some­times came into con­flict, and how they spread across the globe. This short his­to­ry les­son is pro­duced by a site called Maps of War, which fea­tures oth­er inter­ac­tive lessons, includ­ing The Impe­r­i­al His­to­ry of the Mid­dle East and Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship & War. Enjoy.

Via Boing Boing

Stephen Colbert For President

in Books, Comedy | October 15th, 2007

In yes­ter­day’s New York Times, Stephen Col­bert took over Mau­reen Dowd’s reg­u­lar opin­ion col­umn and made a fun­ny case for why he could be the next US pres­i­dent. Read it here. Also lis­ten to his inter­view last week on NPR’s Fresh Air (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). These appear­ances all fig­ure into a media blitz designed to boost sales of Col­bert’s new­ly-released book I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!), which is already #4 on Ama­zon’s best­seller list. Not bad.

Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”: A Free, Environment Friendly Copy (Almost)

in Books, Current Affairs, Google | October 15th, 2007

Since the release of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, Al Gore has had quite a run. He first won him­self an Emmy, then an Oscar, and now the Nobel Peace Prize. Although the film rep­re­sents Gore’s most well known work on the envi­ron­ment, it’s hard­ly where his envi­ron­men­tal efforts began. His cam­paign goes back to the late 1970s, when he held con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on cli­mate change and green­house gas­es. And it moves through the 1980s and then the 1990s, when he occu­pied the Vice Pres­i­den­cy. In 1992, while oth­er polit­i­cal lead­ers quib­bled over the pros and cons of NAFTA, Gore put the envi­ron­ment on the nation­al agen­da, real­ly for the first time, when he pub­lished Earth in the Bal­ance: Ecol­o­gy and the Human Spir­it. (The Bush admin­is­tra­tion then took it off the agen­da, regret­tably.) Gore’s book became a nation­al best­seller, and it has since gone through sev­er­al new edi­tions, the lat­est hav­ing been issued just last year. You could buy the book, but the good news is that Google serves up large por­tions of the book online for free. It’s at a price you can’t beat, and it goes easy on the pulp. Have a good look. And also see below Gore’s com­ments upon learn­ing about the Nobel Prize.

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How Doris Lessing Reacts to Winning the Nobel Prize

in Books | October 11th, 2007

The reac­tion is price­less (and just a tad bit dif­fer­ent than when Halle Berry won her Oscar.)