How Doris Lessing Reacts to Winning the Nobel Prize

in Books | October 11th, 2007

The reac­tion is price­less (and just a tad bit dif­fer­ent than when Halle Berry won her Oscar.)

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The New Stanford Blog Directory: Stem Cells, Philosophy and Beyond

in Uncategorized | October 11th, 2007

Blogs are abound­ing these days, and what’s unfor­tu­nate­ly miss­ing is an effec­tive way to orga­nize this new world of infor­ma­tion and to make it acces­si­ble to oth­ers. Until a good, large-scale solu­tion comes along (I don’t count Tech­no­rati or Google Blog Search as the real answer), some of this will get done the old fash­ioned way, the way Yahoo did it back in 1996 — that is, index­ing by hand.

Last week, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty launched the Stan­ford Blog Direc­to­ry, which hopes to index the col­lec­tive blog­ging wis­dom com­ing out of the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty (fac­ul­ty, staff, alum­ni, etc.). This small list will inevitably grow over time. But it already includes some blogs (in addi­tion to Open Cul­ture) that you may want to peruse. Let’s high­light a few:

Smart Ener­gy Show: 6.6 bil­lion peo­ple live on the earth today. 9.2 bil­lion will be here by 2050. And, as time goes by, ener­gy demand will inevitably push toward a break­ing point. Smart Ener­gy takes a close look at how we can meet “this ris­ing demand with­out inflict­ing per­ma­nent dam­age” on our frag­ile envi­ron­ment. And it explains what sci­ence, gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als can do to meet this chal­lenge. The blog is writ­ten by Mar­got Ger­rit­se­na, pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Ener­gy Resources Engi­neer­ing, and the blog posts are often accom­pa­nied by infor­ma­tive videos.

The Stem Cell Blog: Writ­ten by Christo­pher Thomas Scott, this blog exam­ines the sci­ence, ethics, busi­ness and pol­i­tics of stem cell research. Scott is par­tic­u­lar­ly well posi­tioned to do this. He is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford’s Pro­gram on Stem Cells in Soci­ety and the author of Stem Cell Now: An Intro­duc­tion to the Com­ing Med­ical Rev­o­lu­tion. Plus he has taught a course called Straight Talk About Stem Cells that you can access on iTunes for free.

Phi­los­o­phy Talk: Writ­ten by two Stan­ford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, Ken Tay­lor and John Per­ry, this blog accom­pa­nies a week­ly radio show (also called “Phi­los­o­phy Talk”) that offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s rel­e­vant to every­day life. Along the way, the blog/show explores phi­los­o­phy that touch­es on our beliefs, rela­tion­ships, pas­sions and the world around us.

For more Stan­ford blogs, enter the Blog Direc­to­ry here. For more Stan­ford con­tent on Open Cul­ture, click here.

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New Radiohead and R.E.M. at a Nice Price

in Music | October 10th, 2007

In case you missed it, Radio­head released today its new album In Rain­bows. What makes the album remark­able, in part, is how it’s being dis­trib­uted. Buy­ers can go straight to the Radio­head web site (it’s not avail­able on iTunes) and down­load the album as DRM-free MP3s. And, what is more, they can decide for them­selves how much they’re will­ing to pay for the album. You can pay as much or as lit­tle as you want. That makes the new album pret­ty much qual­i­fy as a piece of “open cul­ture.” (If you get it, please let us know in the com­ments how much you paid out. We’d be curi­ous to know.)

Next up, REM. They’re releas­ing a live album next week (22 tracks record­ed in album), but you can stream the whole album for free on Rhap­sody right now, and the qual­i­ty is nice and high. Source: Rolling Stone.

For more mp3s see our col­lec­tion of MP3 Music Blogs.

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Goethe (and Shakespeare) on Google

in Books, Google | October 10th, 2007

Mark­ing the start of the Frank­furt Book Fair, Google Book Search has launched a “microsite” ded­i­cat­ed to Ger­many’s most cel­e­brat­ed writer — Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. There, you can learn about his life and trav­els and, even bet­ter, get access to free dig­i­tal ver­sions of his writ­ings. That’s right, you get to read Faust online for free. The poten­tial rub is that you’ll need to speak Ger­man to gen­er­al­ly avail your­self of this site, although there are some mate­ri­als in Eng­lish. To get more infor­ma­tion on the new Goethe site, check out the Google Book Search blog.

Also be sure to see Google’s oth­er microsite ded­i­cat­ed to Shake­speare.

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The Complete Beatles in One Hour (and The Sopranos in Seven Minutes)

in Music, Television | October 10th, 2007

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has no short­age of good mp3s for music fans. This one is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: Here, in a clip called Run For Your Life, all of The Bea­t­les’ UK albums are com­pressed at 800% into a one-hour MP3. It’s rather unlis­ten­able, but nonethe­less con­cep­tu­al­ly inter­est­ing. As for speed sum­maries, the one I like most is the video called The Sev­en Minute Sopra­nos. It gives you the first six sea­sons of the HBO series in sev­en snap­py min­utes. Watch below.

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A Photographer’s Chronicle of the War in Iraq

in Books, Current Affairs | October 10th, 2007

Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ash­ley Gilbert­son doc­u­ment­ed for The New York Times the US inva­sion of Iraq, cap­tur­ing the light­ning fast over­throw of Sad­dam’s regime and then the slow lapse into civ­il war. His new book, Whiskey Tan­go Fox­trot: A Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Chron­i­cle of the Iraq War, col­lects some of his best work. Com­bined, the print­ed pho­tographs offer what he calls a visu­al “tes­ta­ment to what war actu­al­ly is.” They let you see how deci­sions made by the Pen­ta­gon have real human costs on the ground in Iraq; or, put a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, the pho­tos illus­trate in stark detail “what for­eign pol­i­cy looks like from the ground up.” Below, you can watch a video that fea­tures an intel­li­gent inter­view with Gilbert­son and offers a good glimpse into his pho­to­graph­ic work. Def­i­nite­ly give it some of your time.

Spe­cial Note: Sup­port an Inde­pen­dent Press

We all know that an inde­pen­dent press is absolute­ly essen­tial to pre­serv­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic and open cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, more than 80 per­cent of peo­ple live in coun­tries with­out a free press. That means more than 5 bil­lion peo­ple can’t trust what they read in the news­pa­per, hear on the radio or see on TV. Here is a very tan­gi­ble way to empow­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. Con­tribut­ing $100 to the Media Devel­op­ment Loan Fund will pro­vide inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists with print­ing press­es and broad­cast­ing equip­ment, tools that are essen­tial to over­com­ing cen­sor­ship and giv­ing a voice to the unheard. Click here to get more infor­ma­tion.

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Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

in Audio Books | October 10th, 2007

Here’s a quick old time radio treat: Way back when, some­where in the gold­en days, the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater aired a dra­mat­ic radio broad­cast of three Edgar Allan Poe sto­ries, includ­ing the “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” and “Nosol­o­gy.” Have a lis­ten. (Source)
If vin­tage radio is your thing, then also see these relat­ed Open Cul­ture posts:

Watch the lat­est videos on YouTube.com

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“One of The Supreme Creations of Documentary Filmmaking” Airs Tonight

in Film | October 9th, 2007

A.O. Scott (The New York Times) calls it “One of the most remark­able exper­i­ments in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma.” Roger Ebert says it “is on my list of the ten great­est films of all time.” The film is 49 UP, and it airs tonight on PBS.

The film is the sev­enth film in a long-run­ning series of doc­u­men­taries that has traced the lives of 14 Brits, start­ing when they were 7 years old in 1964. The direc­tor, Michael Apt­ed, has revis­it­ed these chil­dren every sev­en years (they are now 49 years old), watch­ing how their lives have changed over the years. Talk about ambi­tious. You can watch a trail­er for the film here, and lis­ten to an inter­view with the direc­tor here.

P.S. The quote in the title comes from Salon.

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David Foster Wallace: Deciderization 2007 Online

in Books | October 9th, 2007

Read­ing David Fos­ter Wal­lace (author of Infi­nite Jest and A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again) is always a plea­sure. And per­haps even more plea­sur­able is read­ing him for free.

Tomor­row, The Best Amer­i­can Essays 2007 hits the streets. Wal­lace edit­ed the col­lec­tion and kicked it off with a fiery essay of his own. Houghton Mif­flin was good enough (or, rather, mar­ket­ing-savvy enough) to post the essay, The Decider­iza­tion 2007‑A Spe­cial Report, online for free. And some unknown char­ac­ter did us all a favor by cre­at­ing a PDF ver­sion that’s con­sid­er­ably more leg­i­ble and print­er friend­ly. Read away.

For good mea­sure, we’re also throw­ing your way some more dig­i­tal David Fos­ter Wal­lace. Here we have him read­ing his essay “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” (the text of which you can also read here), plus the author appear­ing on The Char­lie Rose Show here and here. (In both cas­es, his appear­ances come lat­er in the show.) Ciao.

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Coffee Break French (and Nine Other Ways to Parler Français)

in Language Lessons | October 8th, 2007

Although fac­ing no short­age of com­pe­ti­tion, Cof­fee Break Span­ish (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has remained the most pop­u­lar for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­cast, bar none. The pop­u­lar­i­ty rank­ings on iTunes have con­tin­u­al­ly attest­ed to that.

From this posi­tion of strength, the pro­duc­ers of Cof­fee Break Span­ish have smart­ly moved into new Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries, rolling out ear­li­er this year MyDai­lyPhrase Ital­ian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and MyDai­lyPhrase Ger­man (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Now they will be fac­ing a stiffer chal­lenge – try­ing to pen­e­trate the already-crowd­ed French lan­guage les­son mar­ket.

Cof­fee Break French (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) was launched on Sep­tem­ber 26, and how it fares against the com­pe­ti­tion (see our list below) depends main­ly on whether the pod­cast deliv­ers French lessons bet­ter than the oth­ers, and whether it can cap­i­tal­ize on the estab­lished “Cof­fee Break” brand. Stay tuned. All of this remains TBD. Let’s sit back and watch how things unfold.

See our com­plete list How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, which includes audio lessons that will teach you 40 lan­guages.

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Satirizing Ahmadinejad: The New Yorker Picks Up Where SNL Left Off

in Current Affairs, Media | October 8th, 2007

The satirists are get­ting a lot mileage out of Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s dec­la­ra­tion that Iran is gay-free. Last week, Sat­ur­day Night Live spoofed Ahmadine­jad, as we not­ed. Then, The New York­er par­o­died Ahmadine­jad on the mag­a­zine’s cov­er with one of its famed car­toons. (The image includ­ed a not-so-oblique ref­er­ence to Lar­ry Craig, the con­ser­v­a­tive US Sen­a­tor who recent­ly got caught up in some mens’ room high jinks. Unfa­mil­iar read­ers can get the scoop on Craig here.) Of all the inane com­ments Ahmadine­jad has made, and there are many, it’s inter­est­ing that the satirists have cho­sen to focus on this one. Deny­ing the exis­tence of gays in Iran is no more empir­i­cal­ly absurd than deny­ing the Holo­caust. So why the empha­sis on the sex­u­al­i­ty com­ment? Because Ahmadine­jad has been play­ing the anti-semi­tism card for some time, but the homo­pho­bia card is rel­a­tive­ly new, hence mak­ing it wor­thy of atten­tion? Or is it because sex­u­al­i­ty offers an always con­ve­nient way to take a polit­i­cal ene­my down a peg? Or since there’s no good way to sat­i­rize a geno­cide, per­haps sex­u­al­i­ty becomes a good default. Ok, I’m stumped. Note to self: think twice next time before over-ana­lyz­ing jokes. Speak­ing of jokes, make you check out the footage we post­ed of Woody Allen doing standup in 1965.

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