Colbert Gives iPhone Zero Stars

in Apple, Comedy | June 29th, 2007

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Philosophy Bites

in Philosophy | June 27th, 2007

Back when we start­ed out, we men­tioned a radio show — and now pod­cast — com­ing out of Stan­ford that offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s engag­ing, if not enter­tain­ing. It’s called Phi­los­o­phy Talk, and you can catch some of the old pro­grams on iTunes.

Now, about 6,000 miles and eight time zones away, anoth­er phi­los­o­phy pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy Bites (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), has been launched in Eng­land by David Edmonds and Nigel War­bur­ton (see bios here). Inter­view­ing top philoso­phers, the two delve into some essen­tial philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions — what is the mean­ing of life? what is the nature of real­i­ty? what is evil?, etc. And then they get into some oth­er good ques­tions: Can philoso­phers con­tribute to pub­lic life, and is wine tast­ing sub­jec­tive?

The lat­est pod­cast (which can be accessed via the feed, but not yet via iTunes) fea­tures an inter­view with Alain de Bot­ton, who has man­aged to write snap­py best­sellers that tack­le philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. It takes a rare writer to pull that off, and his books are def­i­nite­ly worth a look. After launch­ing his career with How Proust Can Change Your Life, he has more recent­ly pub­lished The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy and The Archi­tec­ture of Hap­pi­ness. And it is this last book that the lat­est pod­cast revolves around.

As a final note, Nigel War­bur­ton has also put out anoth­er pod­cast, Phi­los­o­phy: The Clas­sics (iTunes) in which he reads from a recent­ly pub­lished book with the same title. You may want to give it a lis­ten.

For more pod­casts along these lines, see our Arts & Cul­ture pod­cast col­lec­tion.

French Podcasts — Learn French

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start speak­ing Man­darin or Can­tonese. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

• French for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Fun, effec­tive lessons for begin­ners. Pro­vid­ed by the French Ecole.
• Le Jour­nal en français facile iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Learn French by Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
• Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
  • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
• Ma France iTunes Feed Web Site
  • The BBC offers 24 video pod­casts that will teach you French.
• Mali French Feed Web Site
  • The Peace Corps teach­es you some of the French spo­ken in Mali.
• The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A very pop­u­lar col­lec­tion that teach­es stu­dents the French lan­guage and dif­fer­ent facets of French cul­ture.
• The Ver­b­cast — French Verbs by Relax­ation iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A four-week series of lessons that will allow you to refine your knowl­edge of French verbs.

English Podcasts — Learn English

in Uncategorized | June 24th, 2007

Our col­lec­tion of pod­casts will help you start get­ting com­fort­able in Eng­lish. To learn more lan­guages, see our com­plete col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts.

• Busi­ness Eng­lish iTunes Web Site
  • Learn the Eng­lish you will need to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment.
• Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A very well liked col­lec­tion of ESL lessons. Over 100 episodes in the col­lec­tion.
• Eng­lish for Span­ish Speak­ers (’Por Fin Aprende Ingles’) iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Si ust­ed haya asis­ti­do al menos a un cur­so de ingles, y ust­ed nece­si­ta la opor­tu­nidad de escuchar al ingles y hablar el ingles, entonces ‘Por Fin Aprende Ingles’ es el pod­cast per­fec­to para ust­ed. Pre­sen­ta­do por Car­la Staufert-Sauvi­er, una pro­fe­so­ra de Mex­i­co, y Jade Lindquist, una pro­fe­so­ra de los EE UU.
• ESL Busi­ness News iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A week­ly pod­cast of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness news read in slow, clear Eng­lish. Lis­ten to the pod­cast and fol­low along in the accom­pa­ny­ing script.
• On Demand Eng­lish iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Dai­ly pod­casts that will teach you Eng­lish and Amer­i­can cus­toms. Well done.
• The Bob and Rob Show: Week­ly Eng­lish Lessons from a Yan­kee and a Brit iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Tak­ing a more uncon­ven­tion­al approach to teach­ing Eng­lish, this pro­gram uses humor to teach inter­me­di­ate-to-advanced stu­dents idioms, gram­mar, and slang in both Amer­i­can and Eng­lish fla­vors.

New Look on WordPress

in Uncategorized | June 17th, 2007

No, you came to the right site. We’ve sim­ply moved to Word­Press and we’ll be spend­ing the com­ing day doing some last minute fix ups. If you see any big prob­lems, please don’t hes­i­tate to let us know. Thanks for your patience. And a big word of thanks goes out to Eric “Herr Dok­tor” Ober­le for his help on mak­ing this switch hap­pen, and to Emma Hip­kens for her design work.

Reader Favorites

in Uncategorized | June 16th, 2007

Most Popular

April 30, 2007

10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod

New tech­nolo­gies often have unin­tend­ed uses. Take the Ipod as a case in point. It was devel­oped with the inten­tion of play­ing music (and lat­er videos), but its appli­ca­tions now go well beyond that. Here are 10 rather unfore­seen, even sur­pris­ing, uses:

See Our Pod­cast Col­lec­tions — Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture — Buy a New iPod & iPod Gear

1. Train Doc­tors to Save Lives: A new study pre­sent­ed at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy indi­cates that iPods can dou­ble interns’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy heart sounds that are indica­tive of seri­ous heart prob­lems (i.e., aor­tic or mitral steno­sis). By using the iPod to repeat­ed­ly lis­ten to record­ings of nor­mal and abnor­mal heart beat pat­terns, interns can effec­tive­ly hear when some­thing is going awry.

Or how about this for anoth­er med­ical appli­ca­tion: Will Gilbert, who heads up the bioin­for­mat­ics group in the Hub­bard Cen­ter for Genome Stud­ies, stores the entire human genome on his iPod. As you can read in Wired, he has found that the iPod is a great way to store the gene sequence, all 3 bil­lion chem­i­cal let­ters of it, and, com­pared to using a net­work, he can access data more quick­ly with the lit­tle Apple gad­get. [Thanks to one of our read­ers for point­ing this one out.]

2. Bring Crim­i­nals to Jus­tice: On an exper­i­men­tal basis, a Unit­ed States fed­er­al dis­trict court has start­ed using iPods to hold copies of wire­tap trans­mis­sions in a large drug-con­spir­a­cy case. Why? Because it’s eas­i­er than stor­ing the record­ings on cas­sette tapes or CDRoms; the defen­dants and attor­neys can access and work through the record­ings with ease; and it can all be done in a secure envi­ron­ment.

3. Get Your­self Into Seri­ous Shape: Many jog­gers love how their iPods can pro­vide enter­tain­ment that will spice up a monot­o­nous rou­tine. But prob­a­bly few know that you can use the iPod to plan train­ing routes for their runs. Trail­Run­ner lets run­ners do pre­cise­ly that. This free pro­gram helps you plan your route and then loads your iPod with maps, dis­tances, and time goals.

4. Tour Around Great Cities: iSub­wayMaps lets you down­load sub­way maps from 24 major cities across the globe. They range from New York City, Paris and Berlin to Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong. (Get the full list here.) To take advan­tage of these maps, your iPod will need to sup­port pho­tos, but that should­n’t be a prob­lem for most recent iPods.

We’ve also talked recent­ly about a ven­ture called Sound­walk that pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris (plus Varanasi in India). In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict, among oth­er places. In Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each audio tour is nar­rat­ed by a celebri­ty of sorts and can be down­loaded for about $12.

5. Cal­cu­late the Right Tip: If you’re a lit­tle math chal­lenged, you can use your iPod when you’re out to din­ner to cal­cu­late the cor­rect tip. Tip­Kalc helps you fig­ure out both the tip and the grand total on your bill, and it even lets you split your check up to five dif­fer­ent ways.

6. Record Flight data: Accord­ing to a report in Flight Glob­al, a com­pa­ny called LoPresti Speed Mer­chants has announced plans to use iPods as flight data recorders in light air­craft. The lit­tle white box will serve as the “black box” with­in the air­planes and will have the abil­i­ty to record over 500 hours of flight time data. Does this mean that iPods can sur­vive plane crash­es? Who would have thunk it.

7. Throw a Mean­er Curve­ball: Jason Jen­nings, a pitch­er for the Hous­ton Astros, start­ed using a video iPod last year to review his pitch­ing frame by frame and to improve his over­all tech­nique. He also reviews video of all oppos­ing bat­ters before each game. Since incor­po­rat­ing the iPod into his train­ing, he has since seen his ERA go down, and oth­er teams — notably the Mar­lins and Mariners — have looked into using the iPod in sim­i­lar ways.

8. Learn For­eign Lan­guages: iPods are becom­ing more com­mon­place in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms, with stu­dents using them to record lec­tures, take notes, and even cre­ate elec­tron­ic flash cards. (See in depth arti­cle here.) The gad­gets are also being used to help stu­dents for­mal­ly study music and learn for­eign lan­guages. Now, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll know that you don’t need to be a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent to learn for­eign lan­guages with the help of an iPod. With the help of our pod­casts col­lec­tion, you can pick up most any lan­guage on your own.

9. Learn to Love and Buy Wine: Here’s a nov­el way to get intro­duced to wine. For $35, you can down­load an audio file called Mark Phillips Wine Guide onto your iPod. This primer will, among oth­er things, teach you how to describe, taste, and buy wine, and you’ll come away with a cer­tain je ne sais quoi.

10. Test Cheat­ing: Yes, unfor­tu­nate­ly tech­nol­o­gy can be used for bad as well as good. It was wide­ly report­ed just this past week that stu­dents are appar­ent­ly using the iPod to cheat on exams. Dur­ing tests, they’ll appar­ent­ly sneak ear­buds into their ears and tap into valu­able for­mu­las, class notes, voic­es record­ings, etc. Oth­ers will even write out crib notes and enmesh them with­in song lyrics.

Bonus: The iPod as Flash­light: Dur­ing the major black­out in 2003, many New York­ers impro­vised after night­fall and used the light gen­er­at­ed by their iPods to get around their apart­ments. It was a makeshift way of doing things. But now there is a more for­mal way of using your iPod to light your way. For about $13, you can pur­chase Griffin’s iBeam, an attach­ment that will quick­ly turn your iPod into a com­bo flash­light and laser point­er. As they say, be pre­pared.

Bill Clinton at Harvard

in Current Affairs, Harvard | June 13th, 2007

Amer­i­ca’s 42nd pres­i­dent spoke this week­end at Har­vard’s Class Day, a tra­di­tion­al event held for grad­u­at­ing seniors. While Class Day often fea­tures pop icons and come­di­ans — take this speech by Ali G from a few yeas ago — Clin­ton’s speech was a bit more seri­ous and ide­al­is­tic, and it reminds us that there may be again a day when we can look to the White House for sub­stance and inspi­ra­tion. This too shall pass. You can watch Part 1 of his pre­sen­ta­tion below. Here are links to Parts 2 and 3.

David Chase Speaks

in Television | June 12th, 2007

David Chase, the cre­ator of The Sopra­nos, smart­ly decid­ed to spend some time in France while the rest of Amer­i­ca watched and debat­ed the last episode of his mas­ter­ful series. How­ev­er, he did agree to one inter­view, and it will appar­ent­ly be his last on the sub­ject. After this, it’s radio silence.

Richard Rorty: 1931 — 2007

in Philosophy | June 11th, 2007

The prince of prag­ma­tism and a lion of Stan­ford, Richard Rorty, died last week in Palo Alto at age 75. Rorty was most famous­ly a philo­soph­i­cal prag­ma­tist, believ­ing that the philoso­pher’s role in life is to answer our press­ing every­day ques­tions, not to get lost in abstract the­o­ries. Accord­ing to his obit­u­ary, in his lat­er years he “fierce­ly crit­i­cized the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the reli­gious right, Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats and anti-Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­als.” And despite the pes­simism caused by any extend­ed con­tem­pla­tion of these groups, he had hope for his coun­try to the end.

You can lis­ten to one of Rorty’s last pub­lic speak­ing engage­ments, the annu­al Dewey lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, here.

Interview with Khaled Hosseini (in Video)

in Video - Arts & Culture | June 9th, 2007

Catch Khaled Hos­sei­ni talk­ing about his lat­est best­seller,  A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns, which comes on the heals of the The Kite Run­ner. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by Jef­frey Tra­cht­en­berg at The Wall Street Jour­nal.