William F. Buckley v. Gore Vidal — 1968

in History | February 27th, 2008

William F. Buck­ley, Jr., the intel­lec­tu­al force behind the strand of con­ser­vatism that peaked with Ronald Rea­gan, died yes­ter­day. (See NY Times obit.) Here, we have some vin­tage Buck­ley. The video clip below fea­tures Buck­ley and Gore Vidal going at it, almost com­ing to blows, dur­ing the con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1968. It offers a good reminder that Amer­i­can polit­i­cal dis­course has­n’t been agree­able for quite some time. Com­par­a­tive­ly, things look down­right civ­il today.

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Not Always a Nation of Dunces

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | February 27th, 2008

Here’s a nice coun­ter­point to our post last week cov­er­ing Susan Jacoby’s new book The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son and her lament that Amer­i­ca has declined into a morass of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism and low expec­ta­tions.

Let’s set the scene: A reporter selects a young Barack Oba­ma sup­port­er at a ral­ly and starts pep­per­ing him with ques­tions about the can­di­date. And it all feels like a staged effort to demon­strate that the mobi­lized youth has no real han­dle on the issues. He’s just blind­ly buy­ing the hype. With­out wast­ing time, the reporter leads the young man into a con­ver­sa­tion on the com­plex­i­ties of health care. It’s the per­fect set­up. But then it sud­den­ly becomes clear that the reporter chose the wrong kid (who is a nat­u­ral­ized immi­grant, by the way) to play the fool. Watch the video below (and check out this fol­low up video that gives you more of the back sto­ry).

via Think on These Things

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How to Learn a Foreign Language

in Language Lessons | February 26th, 2008

We stum­bled across this video (below) over on YouTube. It offers a quick sur­vey of web resources that will teach you for­eign lan­guages for free. Among oth­er items, the video men­tions our For­eign Lan­guage Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and, for that, we want­ed to say thanks to who­ev­er put this togeth­er.

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The Best Place on the Web for Film Junkies

in Film | February 26th, 2008

Some of you may know GreenCine as a high­brow video-rental com­pa­ny, one that serves as an alter­na­tive to Net­flix and Block­buster. But the best thing about Greencine is its blog, main­tained by David Hud­son and updat­ed sev­er­al times a day. A though­ful and unpre­ten­tious col­lec­tion of reviews, inter­views, fes­ti­vals and oth­er worth­while online film dis­cus­sions, refresh­ing­ly free of snark or inva­sive opin­ion­at­ing. Think of it as a very, very smart aggre­ga­tor. This par­tic­u­lar cineaste makes it her home­page.

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Cracking Tarantino

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | February 25th, 2008

“Taran­ti­no’s Mind,” an award win­ning short film from Brazil, decodes the fil­mog­ra­phy of Quentin Taran­ti­no, draw­ing con­nec­tions most Taran­ti­no fans might not have drawn them­selves. Act­ing in the film is Seu Jorge, a great Brazil­ian musi­cian (check this album out) who has gained recent fame in the US. The clip runs a good ten min­utes. The only down­sides are the small sub­ti­tles and lan­guage not suit­able for puri­tan­i­cal types. But we are in Taran­ti­no ter­ri­to­ry, so what could you real­ly expect? (The video below has been added to our YouTube Playlist.)

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80 Years of Academy Award Winning Films in Posters

in Film | February 25th, 2008

Great poster col­lec­tion of Oscar win­ning films, from 1927 to this week. Check it out here.

via Kottke.org

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Online Writing Courses at Stanford (Spring)

in Stanford | February 24th, 2008

Quick fyi: Start­ing Mon­day, you can sign up for online writ­ing cours­es at Stan­ford. (See list below.) Offered by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors and smart peers. Just to be clear, the cours­es are not free, and they will start the first week of April. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

(Full dis­clo­sure: I helped set up these cours­es and think they’re a great edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty. But nonethe­less take my opin­ion with a grain of salt.)

Spring Cours­es:

By the way, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area and want to keep the mind engaged, give some thought to Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. Our full spring cat­a­logue is here.

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Free Books from HarperCollins

in Books | February 23rd, 2008

As dis­cussed in this NY Times arti­cle, Harper­Collins has made a few of its books avail­able online for free. You can read them from start to fin­ish in dig­i­tal for­mat. But you can’t down­load them, and they’ll only be avail­able for a few more weeks. (Pre­sum­ably new books will be made avail­able in the future.) Here’s what you’ll cur­rent­ly find.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

For more free books, see our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and 45 Free Cut­ting-Edge Books … Cour­tesy of Cre­ative Com­mons

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An Animated History of Evil

in Uncategorized | February 21st, 2008

This ani­mat­ed mock­u­men­tary traces the his­to­ry of evil from Ancient Greece until today. It’s been get­ting some play on the inter­net this week. And, if any­thing, you have to give it points for cre­ativ­i­ty. We’ve added it to our YouTube Playlist.

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Paul McCartney Goes Classical

in Music | February 21st, 2008

Sir Paul talks about his clas­si­cal album “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold My Heart). It was per­formed live at Roy­al Albert Hall, and it’s now being released on DVD.

via The New York­er’s Goings On blog

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Lawrence Lessig’s Last Speech on Free Culture (Watch it)

in Current Affairs, Law, Stanford, Video - Politics/Society | February 20th, 2008

Below we have post­ed the last lec­ture that Lawrence Lessig will ever present on Free Cul­ture. It’s an area where he has spent the past decade work­ing, and this talk offers an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Lessig’s thought and work on this issue. Giv­en at Stan­ford on Jan­u­ary 31, the pre­sen­ta­tion is one that Steve Jobs could appre­ci­ate. Very well done. So give it a watch below (or here). Also, if you’d like to get free dig­i­tal copies of Lessig’s major writ­ings on Free Cul­ture, look here.

As for what Lessig plans to do next. He has talked about com­bat­ing cor­rup­tion in Wash­ing­ton (some­thing he talks about here). That’s part of the plan, but he may do it by run­ning for Con­gress. Read this arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal and check out the new site: Lessig08.com

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