Who Killed JFK? Two New Studies

in Books, History, Politics | May 21st, 2007

Jfkimage_2
Whether you think John F. Kennedy was a great pres­i­dent or just a guy
who enjoyed sul­try birth­day
ser­e­nades (see clip below), you have to admit
his hold on America’s cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion is still pow­er­ful four
decades after his assas­si­na­tion. Two major new works of his­to­ry tack­le
the ques­tion and, pre­dictably, come down on oppo­site sides of it. David
Talbot’s Broth­ers: The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kennedy Years offers new evi­dence fur­ther­ing the great con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, while Vin­cent Bugliosi’s Reclaim­ing His­to­ry: The Assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy agrees with offi­cial his­to­ry and the War­ren Com­mis­sion.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing thing about these lat­est prod­ucts of the
Kennedy indus­try is the fact that both books are tak­ing advan­tage of
new media for­mats to com­bat the tra­di­tion­al prob­lem with Big His­to­ry
texts–weight. Bugliosi’s tome comes in at a back-wrench­ing 1,612
pages, so be thank­ful that his pub­lish­ers includ­ed the many end­notes on
an accom­pa­ny­ing CD. (You would be well-advised to save a few months and
read the New York Times review here.) Talbot’s Broth­ers is only a third as long, but that’s still almost 500 pages–so why not enjoy it as an eBook instead, or just check out the excerpt on Salon? Or take in its New York Times review here. If your eyes are tired already, rest assured that both authors also appeared on the Leonard Lopate show (Bugliosi mp3; Tal­bot mp3 ). And if you hap­pen to live in the Bay area, you can go see Tal­bot will be in San Fran­cis­co pro­mot­ing the book tomor­row, May 22.

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U2 Plays @ The Cannes Film Festival

in Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 20th, 2007


The 60th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val is in full swing. It’s all film for ten plus days. But last night, music – or real­ly U2 – took cen­ter stage. Before the mid­night screen­ing of their new rock­u­men­tary, U23D, the Irish band played a two song set (Ver­ti­go and Where the Streets Have No Name) on the red car­pet. It was short and sweet. You can watch it below. Cheers.

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Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

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The Book World Goes Sensibly Digital

in Audio Books, Books | May 18th, 2007

There are some ear­ly signs that pub­lish­ers and book­sellers may be see­ing the light.

Until recent­ly, the book world applied an irra­tional log­ic to down­load­able audio­books and pod­casts. As we not­ed back in Feb­ru­ary, the paper ver­sion of the best­selling busi­ness book, The Long Tail, ran con­sumers $16.47 on Ama­zon. And yet the cheap­er-to-pro­duce audio ver­sion implau­si­bly amount­ed to $31.95 on iTunes and $27.99 on Audi­ble. Did it make sense? Hard­ly.

Since Feb­ru­ary, a lit­tle bit of rea­son has been inject­ed into the mar­ket. As the The New York Times recent­ly not­ed, the pub­lish­er Hen­ry Holt made a smart move. They took the pop­u­lar pod­cast, The Gram­mar Girl (iTunes Feed Web Site), and with­in days spun off an hour­long audio­book priced at a sane $4.95. The next thing you know, it became the best­selling audio­book on iTunes. Here, the audio­book for­mat let pub­lish­ers respond to a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty — and far more quick­ly than they ever could have with a tra­di­tion­al book. (A tra­di­tion­al Gram­mar Girl book won’t come out until next year.)

Ratio­nal act #2: Some pub­lish­ers are now releas­ing audio ver­sions of new books before issu­ing the actu­al hard copies. Why? Because, they’ve found that dig­i­tal copies can gen­er­ate buzz and greater sales for paper copies. And yes, in these sit­u­a­tions, the dig­i­tal and paper ver­sions are com­pa­ra­bly priced.

Final­ly, book­sellers are now using audio to inform con­sumers and moti­vate them to click “Add to Shop­ping Cart” a lit­tle more often. Take for exam­ple the new line of pod­casts from Ama­zon. Cre­at­ed by in-house edi­tors, Ama­zon Wire (iTunes — Feed ) offers inter­views and exclu­sives with authors of new books. Ama­zon Book­Clips (iTunes — Feed ) puts a spot­light on up-and-com­ing and best­selling authors. And with Sig­nif­i­cant Sev­en (iTunes — Feed), Ama­zon points you to new must-read titles. How well inte­grat­ed into Ama­zon’s sales efforts, and how effec­tive these pod­casts will be at gen­er­at­ing sales, all remains to be seen. But it at least points to a more sen­si­ble way of bring­ing the dig­i­tal and paper worlds togeth­er.

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A Little Lifehacker Love

in Uncategorized | May 17th, 2007

Our for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts got a lit­tle love yes­ter­day from the great Life­hack­er site. Many thanks to them. For any vis­i­tors who aren’t famil­iar with our oth­er pod­cast col­lec­tions, here’s a list that you’ll want to peruse.

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Uni­ver­si­ty (Law School) — Pod­cast Primer

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The Skinny on Second Life

in Media, Technology, Web/Tech | May 16th, 2007

Secondlife_1_2

Ever won­dered what Sec­ond Life is and if you should care about it? Imag­ine a 3‑D immer­sive game where you con­trol an avatar and trav­el through con­struct­ed environments–and now take away the game part. What’s left is a fair­ly wide-open cre­ative space where users can cre­ate and sell in-game stuff–houses, objects, cloth­ing, etc–or engage in group activ­i­ties rang­ing from con­certs to polit­i­cal activism to pros­ti­tu­tion. It’s free to join but to own land (and receive a larg­er stipend of in-game cash) you have to sign up for a month­ly sub­scrip­tion.

The online com­mu­ni­ty has been grow­ing fair­ly rapid­ly over the past year or two, now boast­ing over one mil­lion users who logged in dur­ing the past month. Big busi­ness has tak­en notice of the trend, and com­pa­nies from Toy­ota, Microsoft and Sony BMG have all launched vir­tu­al pres­ences in SL.

The ser­vice has been receiv­ing some of its most enthu­si­as­tic press from edu­ca­tors who hope to take advan­tage of the free-for-all 3D spaces as tools for ped­a­gogy. You can find a lot of engi­neer­ing schools, med­ical insti­tu­tions and, of course, the Star Trek Muse­um of Sci­ence on this list of sci­ence places in SL. The world’s cre­ators active­ly encour­age edu­ca­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion and teach­ers from many uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing Har­vard, Colum­bia and more) have tried run­ning cours­es or train­ing ses­sions in the sim­u­la­tion. There is at least one skep­tic out there, though: Clark Aldrich, a con­sul­tant for an e‑learning com­pa­ny, offers up ten things he sees miss­ing from SL as an edu­ca­tion­al tool.

Whether or not Sec­ond Life becomes a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the Inter­net land­scape, it’s cer­tain­ly cap­tured a lot of peo­ples’ atten­tion. To learn more about it check out the pletho­ra of pod­casts avail­able on iTunes. At the very least this world does offer some zany oppor­tu­ni­ties for mul­ti­ple lay­ers of sim­u­la­tion. Check out this video of a U2 “vir­tu­al trib­ute band” per­form­ing a con­cert with lov­ing­ly ren­dered trib­ute avatars:

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Climate Crisis, the Happiness Conundrum & the Evolution of Religions: TED Talks on YouTube

in Psychology, TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture | May 15th, 2007

Once upon a time we told you about TED Talks, the annu­al con­fer­ence that brings togeth­er the world’s “thought-lead­ers, movers and shak­ers.” These talks have been avail­able on iTunes in both audio (iTunes — Feed) and video (iTunes — Feed). And now you can appar­ent­ly find some on YouTube. Below we high­light a few.

First up, Dan Gilbert, a Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who recent­ly wrote Stum­bling On Hap­pi­ness, a book that uses psy­chol­o­gy, cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science, phi­los­o­phy and behav­ioral eco­nom­ics to show how our imag­i­na­tion — our unique abil­i­ty to pre­dict the future — usu­al­ly inter­feres with our basic abil­i­ty to be hap­py. Here you get some ker­nels of thought from the best­selling book, and some insights into why a para­plegic is often as hap­py as a lot­tery win­ner. Good stuff here.

Next, we give you Al Gore doing a lit­tle stand-up com­e­dy (no kid­ding) and speak­ing on glob­al warm­ing, much as he does in An Incon­ve­nient Truth. No oth­er intro­duc­tion is need­ed.

Last­ly, we give you Dan Den­nett, Direc­tor
of the Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Stud­ies at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty and the author
of Break­ing the Spell: Reli­gion as a Nat­ur­al Phe­nom­e­non. With this clip, Den­nett takes on Rick War­ren, author of The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Life, and makes the clever argu­ment that while the the­o­ry of intel­li­gent design may hold no water, reli­gions have them­selves been intel­li­gent­ly designed. More on that here:

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Serving Up 25 Music Blogs

in Music | May 15th, 2007


Next up a series of music blogs, all of which fig­ure into our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Cul­ture Blogs. As always, these lists are a work in progress, and if you feel that we’ve missed some­thing great, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us and let us know.

  • Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: A blog by the music crit­ic of the one and only New York­er mag­a­zine.
  • All About Jazz Bloglist: What you get here is not so much a blog, but, even bet­ter, a meta-list of jazz blogs. This should keep jazz afi­ciona­dos busy for some time.
  • Arjan Writes: A well-reviewed blog that looks at pop-alter­na­tive music. Fea­tures album reviews, inter­views and free down­loads of demo tracks and new releas­es, plus videos from new bands.
  • Arts­Beat: A blog put out by reporters and crit­ics from The New York Times. Includes report­ing from arts events from around the world, includ­ing recent reports from the fes­ti­val at Coachel­la and the New Orleans Jazz and Her­itage Fes­ti­val.
  • Blog­crit­ics Music: A com­mu­ni­ty of writ­ers and read­ers from around the globe mus­ing about music.
  • Brook­lyn Veg­an: An “NYC-cen­tric most­ly-music blog that focus­es on report­ing inter­na­tion­al
    news, live show reviews, pic­tures, tour dates, gos­sip, tips, MP3’s,
    videos, and just about any­thing else a music fan could want.”
  • Chica­go Clas­si­cal Music: A Chica­go-focused blog for clas­si­cal music enthu­si­asts.
  • Coolfer: A blog that “focus­es more on the music
    indus­try than on spe­cif­ic bands.” Want to know about music sto­ries in the news? Then look here.
  • David Gilmour: You know him from Pink Floyd. Check out his per­son­al blog.
  • David’s Jour­nal: Along sim­i­lar lines, this blog is put out by David Byrne, heady head of the Talk­ing Heads.
  • Feast of Music: A jour­ney through the music of New York (and occa­sion­al­ly oth­er places). Empha­sis is on clas­si­cal music.
  • Glo­ri­ous Noise: An online music mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing essays and sto­ries about how rock and roll can change your life.
  • Goril­la vs. Bear: Rec­om­mend­ed by Noth­ing But Green Lights. See below.
  • Guardian Music Blog: An eclec­tic blog put togeth­er by The Guardian in the UK.
  • I Guess I’m Float­ing: Music and music news of the rock ‘n roll vari­ety.
  • Ionarts: A DC-based arts blog with a marked focus on clas­si­cal music.
  • Large­heart­ed Boy: A “music blog fea­tur­ing dai­ly free and legal music down­loads as well as news from the worlds of music, lit­er­a­ture, and pop cul­ture.”
  • Live Music Blog: Noth­ing like a title that pret­ty much sum­ma­rizes it all. Yes, this is a blog about live music.
  • Marathon Packs: Writes about and lets you lis­ten to inter­est­ing songs.
  • Moby’s Jour­nal: Here again anoth­er not-entire­ly-musi­cal blog by a music celeb — Moby.
  • Motel De Moka: A dai­ly blog post­ing eclec­tic playlists, includ­ing indie rock, acoustics and ambi­ent.
  • Music for Robots: An acclaimed mp3 blog that fea­tures diverse music. All music
    is post­ed with the per­mis­sion of the artist and/or label.
  • My Old Ken­tucky Blog: What’s new and hot in indie rock, pop, folk and hip-hop.
  • Noth­ing But Green Lights: A UK-based mp3 blog that keeps track of indie, elec­tro, folk & pop, all from the UK. The site only posts tracks that the inter­net is giv­ing away for free, or ones that have been grant­ed per­mis­sion.
  • NYC Opera Fanat­ic:  A blog for the opera lover (a term, how­ev­er unfor­tu­nate­ly, that does­n’t apply to me).
  • Ryan’s Smash­ing Life: A New Eng­land music blog com­ing out of Boston.
  • Sandow: “Is clas­si­cal music dying? That’s a big top­ic, and a blog seems like a per­fect way to attack it.” That’s how crit­ic, Greg Sandow, describes his blog.
  • Stere­ogum: A pop­u­lar gos­sipy blog about the indie music scene. The site often posts mp3s of new music, plus offers record reviews, announces tour dates, and cov­ers music fes­ti­vals.
  • The Mod­ern Age: A high­ly tout­ed blog about “about music, pop cul­ture, the Strokes, pup­pies, Jack White, and cute boys.” Brought to you by Miss Mod­er­nage.
  • Twangville: Cov­er­ing “twang-infused music with an alter­na­tive slant.” Alt-Coun­try, Amer­i­cana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues.
  • Your Home For Soul: As you can tell, it’s a blog for soul fans.

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America’s Perception Problem in the Middle East

in Current Affairs | May 14th, 2007


Cartoon_2 Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq has had mul­ti­ple costs for the US, with just one being the decline of Amer­i­can moral lead­er­ship on the inter­na­tion­al stage, and par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the Mid­dle East. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, we know that Amer­i­ca’s pres­tige is momen­tar­i­ly shot. But to get a feel for what this means in prac­tice, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view (iTunes — MP3) with Lawrence Pin­tak, who directs the Adham Cen­ter for Elec­tron­ic Jour­nal­ism at The Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo. A long­time observ­er of the Mid­dle East, Pin­tak sees the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­ca’s image going some­thing like this: Before 9/11, the prover­bial Mid­dle East­ern cab dri­ver expressed deep admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca and Amer­i­cans, even while dis­agree­ing with Amer­i­can lead­ers and poli­cies. When the Twin Tow­ers fell, sym­pa­thy for Amer­i­ca was nev­er greater. Now, six years lat­er, it’s all gone awry. The men­tal line that sep­a­rat­ed Amer­i­cans and Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is gone, and the antipa­thy toward Amer­i­ca is fair­ly com­plete.

What part­ly explains this shift is how the war has been refract­ed through the Mid­dle East­ern media. Ever since Al Jazeera start­ed air­ing in 1996 (you can watch it here in Eng­lish), the Mid­dle East has had its own free media and seen events through its own lens. And, in the case of the Iraq war, it has meant see­ing what we don’t see — the unsan­i­tized war, the bod­ies, the lev­eled build­ings, etc. — but also much more mun­dane things that shape over­all impres­sions. It means see­ing, for exam­ple, how tone-deaf US spokes­men in Bagh­dad show up at jour­nal­ist con­fer­ences in Abu Dhabi (a com­plete­ly non-mil­i­tary event out­side of Iraq) in army fatigues, leav­ing essen­tial­ly the impres­sion that the US sees the larg­er Mid­dle East as a mil­i­tary stage.

Pin­tak knows the region well, and he artic­u­lates Amer­i­ca’s per­cep­tion prob­lem in a bal­anced and thought­ful way. Check it out here: (iTunes — MP3) Also, on a relat­ed note, any­one who wants to digg more deeply into Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tives may want to explore Mosa­ic: World News from the Mid­dle East (iTunes  Feed). This Peabody award-win­ning pod­cast pro­vides a dai­ly com­pi­la­tion of tele­vi­sion news reports from across the Mid­dle East. The news comes from inde­pen­dent and state-run news ser­vices, and it is all trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

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The Portable University

in Uncategorized | May 14th, 2007


Over the past six months, we have cre­at­ed a series of resources that let you access uni­ver­si­ty resources for free and on-the-fly. Below, we have cen­tral­ized these mate­ri­als in one place to give you quick access:

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Free Classical Music Podcasts

in Music | May 14th, 2007

Smart music at no cost. Hard to beat.

  • An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Each episode of this pod­cast delves into the his­to­ry of his career, and what led him to record each of the tracks of his cur­rent release Appas­sion­a­to.
  • Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • 60 free min­utes of Bach.
  • Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia Feed Web Site
    • Live per­for­mances of J.S. Bach works per­formed by var­i­ous artists for The Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia.
  • Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry iTunes Feed Web Site
    • This edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast gives you an inside look at the sym­pho­ny. Cur­rent­ly you will find a two sea­son overview and record­ings of Beethoven and Arnold Schoen­berg.
  • Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston.
  • Dan­marks Radio — Mozart Sym­phonies Feed Web Site
    • For the cel­e­bra­tion of Mozart’s 250th anniver­sary, Den­mark radio offered pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Since the web site is in Dan­ish, your best bet is to access these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the feed.
  • Deutsche Welle
    • Beethoven­fest iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Beethoven’s most famous sym­phonies per­formed by excel­lent young orches­tras and new com­po­si­tions by award-win­ning com­posers.
    • Clas­si­cal Mas­ter­pieces iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Six mas­ter com­posers, six sym­phonies, a star con­duc­tor and a lead­ing orches­tra are the main ingre­di­ents of this remark­able musi­cal feast.
  • Gramo­phone Pod­cast Feed Web Site
    • A month­ly win­dow into the world’s most author­i­ta­tive clas­si­cal music mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing an overview of the best releas­es, news, exclu­sive inter­views with lead­ing fig­ures from the music world, and lots of great­mu­sic.
  • NPR Music iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Reviews, musi­cian inter­views, live record­ings from Morn­ing Edi­tion, All Things Con­sid­ered, and oth­er NPR pro­grams.
  • Radio Swe­den: Mozart iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Swedish Radio has launched a Mozart Pod­cast to cel­e­brate Mozart’s 250th birth­day. They’ve been pod­cast­ing their own record­ings from the 1940–1950s of Mozart’s operas.
  • The Con­cert iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and more from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner muse­um in Boston.
  • Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Fea­tures, among oth­er things, per­for­mances from the Bayreuth Fes­ti­val.

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The Death of the Book Review?

in Books, Video - Arts & Culture | May 11th, 2007



Nybookreview_3
Posts are fly­ing around the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere lament­ing the Death of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Now, by my count this par­tic­u­lar demise has been pre­dict­ed at least three times in the past few decades, so why wor­ry now? The short answer is that more books are pub­lished annu­al­ly than ever, and now there are few­er book review­ers. The LA Times recent­ly fold­ed its free­stand­ing book review into the rest of the week­end paper and news­pa­per staffs around the coun­try are trim­ming review posi­tions in favor of syn­di­cat­ed wire ser­vice reviews.

Michael Con­nel­ly, a crime fic­tion writer, pub­lished an op-ed in the LA Times protest­ing the move and he paints a dire pic­ture of our cul­tur­al future:

The truth is that the book and news­pa­per busi­ness­es share the same
dread­ful fear: that peo­ple will stop read­ing. And the fear may be
well-found­ed. Across the coun­try, news­pa­per cir­cu­la­tions are down — and
this is clear­ly part of the rea­son for the cuts to book sec­tions. At
the same time, the book busi­ness increas­ing­ly relies on an aging
cus­tomer base that may not be refu­el­ing itself with enough new read­ers.

Should we blame cash-strapped news­pa­per com­pa­nies or a cul­ture that’s shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media alto­geth­er? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your iPods–to lend rea­soned analy­sis, we now turn to Steven Col­bert, who inter­viewed Salman Rushdie on this sub­ject ear­li­er this week (click below or watch the full show on iTunes):

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