Or watch it here.
Cheap Culture on Amazon
More just a heads up than anything else. If you’re spending money downloading MP3s from iTunes, you may want to give Amazon MP3 downloads a serious look. Amazon MP3s are generally cheaper, and you can find some outstanding deals there. Take, for example, $3.99 for The Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace, or $1.99 for John Coltrane’s Blue Train. (Both deals were mentioned over at Largehearted Boy.) For more cheap music on Amazon, visit this page. And find 500 free songs here, although caveat emptor, these may be geo-restricted.
It’s worth mentioning that Amazon MP3s are all DRM-free (that’s not the case over at Apple), which means that you can play these sound files in any music program and on any MP3 device. Amazon also notably makes the purchasing process easy for iPod users. Once you download a little installer, all purchases will be automatically uploaded to iTunes or Windows Media Player. This makes the buying experience pretty seamless and removes all barriers to enjoying Amazon’s lower prices.
Jon Stewart v. CNBC, or The Failure of the Financial Media
A pretty brilliant saga played out over the last week on The Daily Show. It started when Jon Stewart tweaked Rick Santelli and his widely-publicized rant against homeowner bailouts. Apparently Santelli’s network, CNBC, couldn’t take a little joke and fought back, which only provided The Daily Show with more comic fodder. (You can watch the follow-up segments here and here. Very funny stuff.) Then, it all culminated last night when Stewart brought Jim Cramer, a leading CNBC personality and investment advisor, on the show. Here, the jokes end and a long and deadly serious interview begins, and we all get to see how the financial media failed, if not betrayed, us during the rise and fall of the credit bubble. Sad that a comedian has to make the point. But I’ll take it.
As a quick side note, it shouldn’t be said that no one ever warned the American public about the programming being put out by CNBC and especially Jim Cramer. Last year, David Swensen, who manages Yale’s multibillion dollar endowment (which has fared quite well during this decline, at least relative to other large endowments) took aim at Jim Cramer in the NYTimes, noting: “There is nothing that Cramer says that can help people make intelligent decisions.” “He takes something that is very serious and turns it into a game. If you want to have fun, go to Disney World.”
Sita Sings the Blues
Nina Paley, a self-taught animator, released in 2008 an 82-minute animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, that mingles the classic Indian myth, The Ramayana, with contemporary autobiographical events, and it’s all set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The film, which launched the San Francisco International Animation Festival (and was also recently featured in the MoMA’s series “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You”) has won awards and gathered a lot of fans. In late February, Paley handed the film over to the public, releasing it under a Creative Commons license (download it here). You can now take it and pretty much do whatever you want with it (broadcast it, share it, remix it, etc.). The only thing you can’t do is copyright the film or attach digital rights management to it.
You can read more in the NYTimes about Sita Sings the Blues. The film will be added to our collection 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.
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No Title; Just Watch
Appearing last month at the TED Conference, jazz pianist Eric Lewis presented a quite amazing version of Evanescence’s hit Going Under. As you’ll see from the very outset, the piece has some rather unconventional elements (some won’t like it), but stay with it. It all hangs together in a strangely beautiful way.
Leonard Cohen, Live From The Beacon Theatre
Legendary Canadian musician Leonard Cohen is now touring the United States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Considered provides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. (It was recorded on or around February 19th.) The set should run about 1:14 and includes 12 songs. You can get it here: Stream — RSS Feed — iTunes.
Colonial and Revolutionary America: A Free Course
Although the flow of open educational resources has been slowing down lately (another casualty of the recession), the stream has not yet run dry.
Stanford has recently added another free course to its iTunes collection. Taught by Jack Rakove, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Colonial and Revolutionary America (iTunesU — Feed) covers the early phase of the traditional American history survey course. The major themes addressed here include “the character of colonial society; the origins and consequences of the American Revolution, from the Stamp Act controversy to the adoption of the Federal Constitution; the impact of the Revolution on the general population and culture; and (implicitly) the long-term significance of the social and political history of this era for our conceptions of American nationhood, society and citizenship.” This course is being rolled out in weekly installments. You’ll currently find seven lectures, but there will eventually be 30.
I’ve added the course to our big collection of Free University Courses, and it will be permanently housed there. This page is loaded with links to thousands of hours of free lectures and courses from major universities. A great resource in general, and particularly for these lean times. Check it out, and please forward it to a friend (or mention it on your web site) if you have a chance. Thanks.
The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter
Writing in The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth. His argument is worth a read, and here is one lengthy money quote:
The complaint against the humanities is that they are impractical. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the experience, and the understanding, and the evaluation, of the world. .… It is worth remembering, then, that the crisis in which we find ourselves was the work of practical men. The securitization of mortgages was not conceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost anybody their house. No historian cost anybody their job. Not even the most pampered of professors ever squandered $87,000 of someone else’s money on a little rug. The creativity of bankers is a luxury that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defending the virtues of the liberal arts in a money-driven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the perspective of money would be ashamed to show itself. What authority, really, should the standpoint of finance any longer have for American society? Who gives a damn what Kenneth D. Lewis thinks about anything? … The study of religion, defending itself to capitalists? …
In tough times, of all times, the worth of the humanities needs no justifying. The reason is that it will take many kinds of sustenance to help people through these troubles. Many people will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on outer ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of meanings.… We are in need of fiscal policy and spiritual policy. And spiritually speaking, literature is a bailout, and so is art, and philosophy, and history, and the rest. … Regression analysis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of consumer behavior can teach. These are the hours when the old Penguin paperbacks must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.
Very well said, and the logic outlined here could be one reason why the continuing education program that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & potato humanities courses — is so far faring quite well.
via the TNR Twitter Feed (ours here)
Ricky Gervais on American Optimism
Ricky Gervais, the comedian and brains behind The Office, talks here about the difference between British and American humor, and it really gets down to deep cultural differences. Optimism, the belief that anything is possible, versus an ingrained pessimism and penchant for the underdog. I wonder whether UK readers would agree with this characterization. And, more so, I wonder which outlook, the British or American, can better get you through these difficult times. The answer, to me, is not obvious…
The New Open Source Textbook
A little revolution is getting underway. The state of Virginia has published a new open source physics textbook under a Creative Commons license. As detailed in this piece from ZDNet, this peer-reviewed textbook was produced in less than six months by a team of authors, which included “active researchers, high school teachers, and college professors, as well as some retirees.” And it was launched on CK-12’s technology platform. Here comes the new world of textbook publishing. Quick to press, vetted, easy to revise, produced at a low cost by publishers, free for students. What’s not to like … except if you’re in the traditional textbook publishing business?
As a quick aside, you can find another free physics textbook (in e‑book format) at motionmountain.net.
via ccLearn Twitter Feed (Open Culture Twitter feed here)
Learn Acoustic Guitar with YouTube
It was time to do something new. So I bought an acoustic guitar and decided to see what I could learn on my own. And this, then, led me to look for free resources on the web. Not shockingly, YouTube has a fair amount to offer. A number of different video providers have posted lessons that can get you going. How to buy an acoustic guitar, how to tune it by ear, how to strum, how to finger pick (a video viewed close to 1 million times), how to play various chord progressions (above), etc. It’s all there — although it’s also kind of jumbled together, and you’ll need to do some sifting to find what you need. Some of the major YouTube channels featuring free guitar lessons can be found here, here, and here.
As a last note, you’ll notice that these videos are generally produced by vendors looking to upsell more complete video packages. This means that you’ll have to suffer through a little bit of marketing. But, it’s hardly unbearable and the lessons are otherwise quite helpful.
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