David Foster Wallace’s Unfinished Work

in Books, Literature | March 5th, 2009

When David Fos­ter Wal­lace (Infi­nite Jest) com­mit­ted sui­cide last Sep­tem­ber, he left behind fam­i­ly, friends and an unfin­ished third nov­el, The Pale King. This week, The New York­er takes a long look at Wal­lace’s life, career, bouts with depres­sion, and the nov­el he began in 1997. The mag­a­zine has also post­ed an excerpt of The Pale King (which will be pub­lished next year by Lit­tle, Brown) and some actu­al pages from the man­u­script. Def­i­nite­ly worth a look.

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Kindle on iPhone

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPhone | March 4th, 2009

Just a quick fyi that Ama­zon has released a free app on iTunes that lets you down­load Ama­zon ebooks to the iPhone. This means that you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to buy a Kin­dle in order to pur­chase & read ebooks from the largest ven­dor of ebooks– although I find the Kin­dle read­er to be con­sid­er­ably prefer­able to the iPhone’s small screen. But that is just me. One nice fea­ture built into the new Ama­zon app is the abil­i­ty to keep text in sync on the two devices. So, for exam­ple, if you’re read­ing Anna Karen­i­na on the iPhone, your Kin­dle will know where you left off and auto­mat­i­cal­ly start you at the right place the next time that you pick it up. A nice idea. But will I use it? Not sure. You? For more details on the new app, see Life­hack­er’s cov­er­age.

Update: Vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, and load free books right to your PC, Smart Phone or Kin­dle.

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10 Classic Films from the Internet Archive

in Film, Internet Archive | March 3rd, 2009

Our hunt to find uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble Hitch­cock films brought us back to the Inter­net Archive yes­ter­day, and it now seems worth high­light­ing some of the oth­er gems buried in this col­lec­tion. This archive of fea­ture films con­tains some impor­tant clas­sics from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We’ve fea­tured ten good ones below, and don’t for­get to see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

  • The Kid (1921) — Here you have Char­lie Chap­lin’s first fea­ture-length film that launched his impor­tant career.
  • Nos­fer­atu (1922) —  A mem­o­rable adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. A mas­ter­piece from the era of silent films.
  • The Phan­tom of the Opera (1925) — Anoth­er major clas­sic (by Rupert Julian) from the silent film era.
  • His Girl Fri­day (1940) — One of the bet­ter known come­dies from the 1940s direct­ed by Howard Hawks and star­ring Cary Grant and Ros­alind Rus­sell.
  • Pen­ny Ser­e­nade (1941) —  A touch­ing roman­tic com­e­dy star­ring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
  • Scar­let Street (1945) — Direct­ed by Fritz Lang, oth­er­wise known for Metrop­o­lis (1927) and M (1931), dur­ing his Hol­ly­wood stint.
  • DOA (1950) — A film noir clas­sic direct­ed by Rudolph Maté.
  • Pan­ic in the Streets (1950) — Direct­ed by Elia Kazan and star­ring Jack Palance.
  • Beat the Dev­il (1953) — Direct­ed by John Hus­ton and star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt.
  • Sud­den­ly (1954) — A thriller fea­tur­ing Frank Sina­tra and James Glea­son.

    • Vis­it the Inter­net Archive for more fea­ture films.

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    Hitchcock Round II

    in Film | March 3rd, 2009

    For those of you who could­n’t see the Hitch­cock films post­ed yes­ter­day (down with Joost for geoblock­ing!), I’ve hope­ful­ly found an alter­na­tive resource. The Inter­net Archive hosts some clas­sic films, and there you’ll find 4 of the 5 Hitch­cock films men­tioned yes­ter­day. Folks on Twit­ter have con­firmed that the films can be accessed in Mex­i­co, Bel­gium, Sri Lan­ka, Ire­land and Cana­da. So hope­ful­ly you’ll be in good shape too. Thanks to an uniden­ti­fied read­er for the tip:

    The 39 Steps

    The Man Who Knew Too Much

    The Secret Agent

    Young and Inno­cent

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    Pulitzer Prize Winner Picks Essential US History Books

    in Books, History | March 3rd, 2009

    The Wall Street Jour­nal asked Gor­don Wood, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans, to pick his favorite works of US his­to­ry, and here is what he had to say. 

    1) The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Tra­di­tion and the Men Who Made It — Richard Hof­s­tadter

    2) The Ide­o­log­i­cal Ori­gins of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion — Bernard Bai­lyn

    3) White Over Black — Winthrop D. Jor­dan

    4) Moth­ers of Inven­tion — Drew Gilpin Faust

    5) Grand Expec­ta­tions — James T. Pat­ter­son

    As a quick side note, if you live in the SF Bay Area, you can catch Gor­don Wood teach­ing at Stan­ford this spring along with two oth­er Pulitzer Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­ans. The course, The Amer­i­can Founders and Their World, comes out of the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram and is open to the pub­lic. Get details here.

    via Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press Twit­ter Feed (also see Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here)

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    What We Can Learn from Past Presidents

    in History, Life | March 2nd, 2009

    Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence in 2008, Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win talks about what we can all learn from Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, includ­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly Abra­ham Lin­coln and Lyn­don John­son. This is not anoth­er talk about what makes pres­i­dents great. It’s more about the bal­ance between work, love, and play, and how we can gen­er­al­ly be pro­duc­tive, shiny, hap­py peo­ple.

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    Kindle Book Sales Factoid

    in Amazon Kindle, e-books | March 2nd, 2009

    Quite the stat not­ed over on Seth God­in’s blog: “Ama­zon’s Kin­dle is cool and it’s gain­ing in trac­tion and peo­ple who have one buy a lot of books. 10% of Ama­zon’s book sales are now on the Kin­dle. [For books where both ver­sions are avail­able].”

    Who knew that many e‑books were being sold on Ama­zon?

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    This American Life: The Financial Crisis in 59 Minutes

    in Current Affairs, Economics | March 2nd, 2009

    Last week, we cre­at­ed a handy list of blogs & pod­casts that reg­u­lar­ly cov­er the finan­cial cri­sis. And so it seemed worth flag­ging the lat­est episode of This Amer­i­can Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 — iTunes — Feed). It just came out this week­end. And it takes a close and enter­tain­ing look at what hap­pens when a bank goes bad/insolvent. The show gets into the real nit­ty grit­ty of the cri­sis and, once you’ve lis­tened, you’ll bet­ter under­stand bet­ter the pros and cons of solu­tions being tried out by the gov­ern­ment.

    The episode fol­lows two oth­er insight­ful pro­grams by This Amer­i­can Life: The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). All three pro­grams are now added to our list of finan­cial cri­sis blogs and pod­casts.

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    Five Classic Alfred Hitchcock Films

    in Film | March 2nd, 2009

    Def­i­nite­ly worth a men­tion. Craveon­line has pulled togeth­er some clas­sic Hitch­cock films. The list includes The 39 Steps, The Secret Agent, The Man Who Knew Too Much (above), Young and Inno­cent, and Black­mail. And from what I can tell, they’re all avail­able in full (sur­pris­ing­ly) and can be watched in full screen for­mat. If you’re hav­ing prob­lems view­ing these films, you can find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

    The 39 Steps

    The Man Who Knew Too Much

    The Secret Agent

    Young and Inno­cent

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    William S. Burroughs’ “Writings” on eBay

    in Literature | March 1st, 2009

    williamburroughsYou can now find some new writ­ings of the Beat author William S. Bur­roughs on eBay. What’s up for bid here is not a long lost nov­el, or an ear­ly draft of Naked Lunch. Nope, it’s sim­ply Bur­roughs’ shop­ping list, a lit­tle note remind­ing him to pick up some cans of Coke, cat food, vod­ka, Triscuits, and oth­er banal things. Buy it here for a cool $495.  All cred­it on this one goes to Boing­Bo­ing, which, by the way, is also fea­tur­ing today a free down­load of Sean Williams’ Dar­win­ian reli­gion nov­el Crooked Let­ter.

    A quick PS: one of our read­ers claims this is a pho­to of Bur­roughs shop­ping. This has not been ver­i­fied, but if you’re curi­ous what it might have looked like to put the shop­ping list in action, here it goes. :)

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    Blogs & Podcasts for the Financial Crisis

    in Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | February 27th, 2009

    There’s no doubt about it. We’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times, as the Chi­nese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s hap­pen­ing here. So, below, I have high­light­ed a num­ber of blogs and pod­casts that help make intel­li­gent sense of this eco­nom­ic deba­cle. Here they go…

    • Plan­et Mon­ey: NPR is doing a great job of cov­er­ing the unwind­ing glob­al econ­o­my. The Plan­et Mon­ey blog is a good read, and it includes an essen­tial read­ing list. But the accom­pa­ny­ing pod­cast is one that I fol­low reg­u­lar­ly. It’s a must. And it’s gen­er­al­ly enter­tain­ing. You can access it here:  iTunes — Rss Feed — Web Site. (Note: the last episode is not the best exam­ple of what it’s usu­al­ly about.)
    • Econo­Talk: Econ­Talk was vot­ed “Best Pod­cast” in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Host­ed by Russ Roberts (out of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty), the show “fea­tures one-on-one dis­cus­sions with an eclec­tic mix of authors, pro­fes­sors, Nobel Lau­re­ates, entre­pre­neurs, lead­ers of char­i­ties and busi­ness­es, and peo­ple on the street.” You can access the show via the fol­low­ing chan­nels: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site.
    • The Base­line Sce­nario: Ded­i­cat­ed to “explain­ing some of the key issues in the glob­al econ­o­my and devel­op­ing con­crete pol­i­cy pro­pos­als,” The Base­line Sce­nario is writ­ten, among oth­ers, by Simon John­son, for­mer chief econ­o­mist of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, who is now a pro­fes­sor at the MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment. Although rel­a­tive­ly young, the blog has received a fair amount of acclaim as the finan­cial cri­sis has unfold­ed. You may want to par­tic­u­lar­ly check out their col­lec­tion of con­tent called Finan­cial Cri­sis for Begin­ners.
    • Real­time Eco­nom­ic Issues Watch:  Here, senior fel­lows of the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics (a think tank based in Wash­ing­ton) “dis­cuss and debate their respons­es to glob­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial devel­op­ments as they occur each day and offer insights that oth­ers might over­look.”  You will find some of the folks from the Peter­son Insti­tute also appear­ing on the pod­casts and blogs men­tioned else­where on this list. Find the RSS feed here.
    • Econ­o­mists’ Forum: Run by the Finan­cial Times (UK), this blog brings togeth­er a large num­ber of econ­o­mists who offer a run­ning com­men­tary on the state of the frag­ile econ­o­my. The Wall Street Jour­nal has its own real time blog here.
    • New­sHour with Jim Lehrer: The PBS night­ly news pro­gram almost always includes an infor­ma­tive seg­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the finan­cial news of the day. The cov­er­age, which typ­i­cal­ly includes inter­views with experts, is excel­lent. You can down­load the pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site
    • The Beck­er-Pos­ner Blog: While not updat­ed as fre­quent­ly as Krugman’s blog, The Beck­er-Pos­ner blog is a great place to read the thoughts of two Nobel prize win­ning econ­o­mists (Gary Deck­er and Richard Pos­ner) dis­cuss the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Thanks Bryce for the tip.
    • This Amer­i­can Life: One of NPR’s beloved pro­grams has offered some excel­lent cov­er­age of the finan­cial cri­sis. It start­ed with a show called The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and it has since includ­ed a pro­gram called Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). Now there is a new one called Bad Bank, which explains what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing in the train­wrecks that are banks. These pro­grams were put togeth­er part­ly by mem­bers of the Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast men­tioned above.

    Are we miss­ing some­thing good? Please let us know in the com­ments below…

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