The Thinking Man’s iPod

in Uncategorized | November 30th, 2006

Spend some time on iTunes, and you’ll find some excel­lent cul­tur­al pod­casts, sim­ply hours worth of high-touch intel­lec­tu­al con­tent. And the excel­lent part is that the trove is grow­ing, and the qual­i­ty con­tent keeps on com­ing.

The rub is that it takes time to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff — too much time, if you hon­est­ly ask me. So, for the ben­e­fit of our read­ers, we’ve rolled up our sleeves, sift­ed through it all, and iso­lat­ed the high-val­ue con­tent that’s worth your time. Spend some time rum­mag­ing through our iTunes Cul­tur­al Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, and you’ll be sure to find among the cul­tur­al pro­grams and audio texts some­thing that piques your inter­est. Sep­a­rate­ly, you can also explore our Uni­ver­si­ty iTunes Col­lec­tion, anoth­er col­lec­tion of pod­casts from 25 of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Togeth­er, they should keep you think­ing, learn­ing and grow­ing for a while.

Also check out our list of Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts on iTunes. It includes lots of great cam­pus lec­tures and full-fledged cours­es.

The 10 Best Books of the Year

in Books, Literature | November 29th, 2006

Last week, The New York Times’ Book Review pub­lished its list, 100 Notable Books of the Year and it has since fol­lowed up with a whit­tled down list, The 10 Best Books of 2006. It’s boiled down to 5 works of fic­tion, and 5 non-fic­tion, and here’s what it looks like:

FICTION

ABSURDISTAN — Gary Shteyn­gart
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL — Amy Hempel
THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN — Claire Mes­sud
THE LAY OF THE LAND — Richard Ford
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS — Mar­isha Pessl

NONFICTION

FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH: A Mem­oir — Danielle Trussoni
THE LOOMING TOWER: Al-Qae­da and the Road to 9/11. — Lawrence Wright.
MAYFLOWER: A Sto­ry of Courage, Com­mu­ni­ty, and War — Nathaniel Philbrick
THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA: A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Four Meals — Michael Pol­lan
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN — Rory Stew­art

(Note: This list won’t appear in print until the Decem­ber 10th.)

100 Notable Books of the Year

in Books | November 23rd, 2006

Gift buy­ing sea­son is upon us, and it’s time to start think­ing about a thought­ful gift for friends and fam­i­ly. On Decem­ber 3, The New York Times Book Review will pub­lish in print its list, “100 Notable Books of the Year.” How­ev­er, you can catch it online before­hand and use it to start mak­ing your list.

UPDATE: The New York Times has since fol­lowed up with its whit­tled down list, The 10 Best Books of 2006. Click here for more info.

Beyond Belief

in Religion | November 22nd, 2006

These days, the Enlight­en­ment project finds itself in a tense cul­tur­al com­pe­ti­tion with reli­gion. Go around the US and ask, “how did we come to be?” and you will get dif­fer­ent answers. Some, appeal­ing to sci­ence and rea­son, the chil­dren of the Enlight­en­ment, will look to evo­lu­tion for answers. Oth­ers, with a reli­gious bent, will refer you to the Bible or intel­li­gent design — which is anoth­er way of say­ing, God is behind it all.

Is the Enlight­en­ment project near­ing an end? Can sci­ence and rea­son even­tu­al­ly reassert them­selves, per­haps as pow­er­ful­ly as reli­gion recent­ly has? Or, can sci­ence and reli­gion at least co-exist and address dif­fer­ent ques­tions?

Ear­li­er this month, an impres­sive list of sci­en­tists and philoso­phers got togeth­er at the Salk Insti­tute for a con­fer­ence called, “Beyond Belief: Sci­ence, Reli­gion, Rea­son and Sur­vival.” The pre­sen­ters ranged from Richard Dawkins (Oxford’s well-known evo­lu­tion the­o­rist), to Joan Rough­gar­den (a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who recent­ly wrote Evo­lu­tion and Chris­t­ian Faith: Reflec­tions of an Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gist), to Craig Ven­ter (who helped decode the human genome). Thanks to The Sci­ence Net­work, the so-called “C‑SPAN of sci­ence,” you can watch the videos of the dif­fer­ent con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions for free online.

Robert Altman

in Film | November 21st, 2006

Robert Alt­man has died at 81, leav­ing behind a lega­cy of ambi­tious films. After mak­ing his mark with MASH in 1970, Alt­man’s career moved along in fits and starts. He would give us The Long Good­bye in 1973, Nashville in 1975, unfor­tu­nate­ly Pop­eye in 1980 (and noth­ing else too remark­able dur­ing the 1980s), then two career-reviv­ing films, The Play­er and Short Cuts, in 1992 & 1993, and Gos­ford Park in 2001. Despite being a five-time Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nee for best direc­tor, Alt­man nev­er received an Oscar until this past year, when he received a life­time achieve­ment award, rec­og­niz­ing his dis­tinc­tive film-mak­ing style. Glimpses into dis­crete slices of Amer­i­can life (Hol­ly­wood, the coun­try music scene, the fash­ion world, etc.), large casts, long impro­vised scenes, com­plex mosaics of char­ac­ters — these were all trade­marks of Alt­man’s film­mak­ing, and what his lega­cy will call to mind.

Alt­man’s com­plete fil­mog­ra­phy

A.O. Scot­t’s Look Back

Vari­ety Obit

New York­er Review of Nashville (1975)

Here, Alt­man talks about the dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing MASH

Milton Friedman Remembered

in Uncategorized | November 19th, 2006

Mil­ton Fried­man, a Nobel Prize win­ner, archi­tect and lead­ing advo­cate of free mar­kets, and one of the most impor­tant econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, died this past week at 94.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, where Fried­man taught since 1946, has col­lect­ed a series of arti­cles review­ing his life and accom­plish­ments. Along sim­i­lar lines, Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion, with which Fried­man was affil­i­at­ed from 1977 until his death, has post­ed a page that includes links to videos fea­tur­ing the econ­o­mist. (Look for the videos under the area called “Pub­li­ca­tions.”)

Final­ly, from the Youtube archives, you can see a short clip from 1980, where we find a younger Mil­ton Fried­man and Don Rums­feld in con­ver­sa­tion.

Google Presents the Classics (for Free)

in Books, Literature | November 16th, 2006

There’s more to Google Book Search than a good law­suit. These days, they’re serv­ing up the clas­sics — all in the pub­lic domain– for free. Lit­er­ary folks can now read and search the com­plete col­lec­tion of Shake­speare’s works. And, in some cas­es, you can even down­load PDF ver­sions to your com­put­er. Beyond the Bard, you can also get The Ili­ad and The Odyssey, from the orig­i­nal bard, Homer. A lit­tle Dan­te’s Infer­no in Ital­ian, plus Machi­avel­li’s The Prince in trans­la­tion. And Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice. I think you get the pic­ture. If it’s old and clas­sic, you can nab it at Google Book Search.

Resources:

• Oth­er Major eText Col­lec­tions: check out this Open Cul­ture page.

• Google’s Scary Sto­ries — For Hal­loween, Google put togeth­er a nice page where you can read or down­load some spooky clas­sics on the cheap. Here, you’ll find Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, Hen­ry Jame’s Turn of the Screw, Robert Louis Steven­son’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, and more. For more info, see Google’s Blog entry.

• Relat­ed Google Blog Entries
  • Down­load the Clas­sics
  • Pre­serv­ing Pub­lic Domain Books
  • A New Way to Browse Books — On Google’s Blog, they men­tion that, with the help of Ajax, they just improved the usabil­i­ty of Book Search. It’s worth read­ing how you can now get the most out of the prod­uct.
  • See our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

A Harvard Free Ride

in Harvard | November 3rd, 2006

What do sleep­ing and com­put­ing have in com­mon? Not a whole lot (nor real­ly should they), except for this. We sleep and use com­put­ers a good chunk of our lives, and yet we gen­er­al­ly have no idea how either works. Sleep is the 33% of our lives that we hard­ly give a thought to. And com­put­ing, well, few of us know what’s going on inside that box when we turn it on, open a pro­gram, surf the web or, alas, get a virus.

As usu­al, Har­vard has answers, at least for the techies among us. But instead of ask­ing stu­dents to go into hock to get them, this time the uni­ver­si­ty is giv­ing the answers away. (Con­sid­er it a gift from the school’s $29.2 bil­lion endow­ment.) Cour­tesy of the Har­vard Exten­sion School, any stu­dent who can’t make it to Cam­bridge can freely access the online course Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net. The course, which revolves around a series of 14 lec­tures, is con­ve­nient­ly deliv­ered in sev­er­al for­mats — one ver­sion that down­loads to your com­put­er, anoth­er that down­loads to the Ipod/iTunes, and final­ly one that streams over the web, which you can find at Google Video and Youtube. To get start­ed, to get your lit­tle piece of Har­vard for free, click here.

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Creation

in Books, Religion | October 28th, 2006

A world renowned biol­o­gist, devot­ed Dar­win­ist, and unabashed sec­u­lar human­ist, Har­vard’s E.O. Wil­son has tak­en an intrigu­ing reli­gious turn with his lat­est work, “The Cre­ation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.” A Bap­tist by upbring­ing, Wil­son offers lit­er­al­ly a ser­mon addressed to Amer­i­ca’s large and grow­ing evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The essence of the mes­sage is sim­ple: We might have our polit­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al dif­fer­ences, but, when it comes to staving off envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, we need to put our sim­mer­ing dif­fer­ences aside and work togeth­er to solve a prob­lem that affects us all. We need to save God’s cre­ation. If you con­sid­er the divide between red and blue Amer­i­ca, you’d fig­ure that Wilson’s over­ture would fall on deaf ears. But, as Wil­son tells it on NPR, it’s any­thing but the case, and the first signs sug­gest that the cul­ture wars aren’t blind­ing either side from the much big­ger issues at stake.

Recent reviews:

Wash­ing­ton Post: “Sci­ence and Sal­va­tion”

New York Times: “God is Green”

The Chris­t­ian Post “Heed­ing Edward O. Wil­son”

Science Podcast Collection

in Uncategorized | October 1st, 2006

Please vis­it this page at the fol­low­ing url:

https://www.openculture.com/weblog/2007/02/science_podcast.html