≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ 2 Comments
Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the everyman, has passed away at the ripe old age of 96. (Get the NYTimes obit here.) Below, we have a lengthy conversation with Terkel, recorded when he was 91. As you’ll see, being a nonagenarian did little to slow him down.
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≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Stanford | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Geography of US Presidential Elections keeps rolling along. With his well-crafted lectures, Martin Lewis shows you this week how America’s political map and its political parties changed dramatically following the Civil War. In the space of 90 minutes, he takes you through the Reconstruction period, The Gilded Age, the Depression, World War II and The [...]
≡ Category: Music, Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
Classic!
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≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film | ≅ 2 Comments
This week, CNN announced the winners of the iReport Film Festival, the network’s first user-generated short film competition. The festival “challenged filmmakers to document this year’s presidential campaign from their personal vantage point, whether they were volunteering for a campaign or had compelling stories about this election they wanted to document creatively.” And the Grand [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
I’ve spent the past several months working through The Wire on DVD. A simply brilliant show. (Here’s a recap of Season 1 in case you don’t know what you’re missing. And for even more recaps click here.) Now some members of the cast, the good guys and the bad, have rolled out a commercial encouraging [...]
≡ Category: Science, Stanford | ≅ 1 Comment
For weeks, it’s been one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes: Created by the Cassiopeia Project, “Evolution” (iTunesU) offers a series of video podcasts that explains what scientists know about evolution in a visually appealing format. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can always watch the series on your computer by downloading iTunes here.)
This [...]
≡ Category: Random | ≅ 1 Comment
This is half art/half random, or maybe it’s better to say half random/half art. Anyway, it calls to mind one of our popular posts (Elephant Painting) from months to go. So here it is, an animated short by Nicolas Deveaux.
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≡ Category: Literature | ≅ 3 Comments
A rather clever mini, mini-lecture from Charles Bernstein, poet and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wouldn’t you say?
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≡ Category: Psychology | ≅ 1 Comment
Speaking at the TED Conference, famed psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks what’s the source of happiness? And his answer comes down to this: Beyond a certain point (and it’s not very far), money doesn’t affect happiness too much. Rather, as his research shows, we tend to be most happy when we get immersed, almost lost in, being creative [...]
≡ Category: Comedy | ≅ 1 Comment
Here it goes, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist.
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≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ 1 Comment
We have now posted Lecture 2 of our ongoing course, The Geography of US Presidential Elections, presented by Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. You can download it via TunesU here (in high res) or you can watch it embedded below. This week, Professor Martin Lewis takes you through America’s early formative elections, starting with Washington and Jefferson’s electoral [...]
≡ Category: Law, Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
The name Alex Kozinski probably won’t mean much to many of you. But if you’re a lawyer, or a Supreme Court watcher, you’ll know that he’s the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (a really prestigious position). Rather recently, he’s been associated with a highly visible pornography scandal [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up: Borders is offering 25% any one item this week (until 10/26). If you want to take advantage and buy a book, CD or film on the cheap, just click through here and get the coupon code:
≡ Category: Theater, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
and condensed…
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≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
How does the new winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics think the US government should manage the big looming recession? And does the New Deal offer a model for confronting this new jam? Have a listen: iTunes - Rss Feed - MP3.
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Thanks to BoingBoing, you can get free access (for 30 days) to three popular tech manuals:
• JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
• Learning Perl
• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
Get details here
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
We’re less than two weeks away (finally, at long last) from the next US presidential election, and that means that it’s a good time to decipher America’s convoluted electoral system. So here’s a piece from The Common Craft Show, which does it in a fairly creative way:
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≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick fyi: Alltop is a new web service (created by Guy Kawasaki) that aggregates RSS feeds about popular topics. Name a topic and they bring you stories from “the best websites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sample of what I’m talking about, you can take a look at [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Until November 24, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, based in the Netherlands, is offering 10 symphonies as free downloads. You have to register, but once you do, you can download high quality performances of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, and more. Hat tip to Metafilter for pointing this one out.
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
In case you missed them, I wanted to flag some photos that made their way around the blogosphere yesterday, thanks in part to BoingBoing. The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, operated by the Institute for Solar Physics, has captured images that let you see the sun in an entirely new way. Below, you’ll find a detailed view [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
I’m not sure if Muppet versions of ”The Blue Danube Waltz” exactly count as culture, or at least the kind that we usually present. But it’s good for a laugh. In the meantime, I figure it wouldn’t hurt to add some depth to this post by pointing you to our collection of classical music podcasts where [...]
≡ Category: Comedy | ≅ 1 Comment
This one features a guest appearance by Palin herself. Video starts after the brief, but unavoidable commercial. Let ‘er roll:
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≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 3 Comments
Here’s a very good find by Berto (see his blog here)
In 1999, Aleksandr Petrov won the Academy Award for Short Film (among other awards) for a film that follows the plot line of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). As noted here, Petrov’s technique involves painting pastels on glass, and [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s the YouTube video of the first lecture from The Geography of US Presidential Elections. The next installment comes next week.
≡ Category: Yale | ≅ 1 Comment
I wanted to give everyone a heads up that Yale has just released its second round of “open courses.” And I have to say that the lineup looks great. Let me quickly list them for you:
The American Novel Since 1945 (Amy Hungerford)
Introduction to Greek History (Donald Kagan)
Game Theory (Ben Polak)
Financial Markets (Robert Shiller)
Milton (John Rogers)
France [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
As mentioned last week, Stanford is hosting a five week course, The Geography of US Presidential Elections, that you can follow (for free) in real time. The first video lecture is now available on iTunes (download here), and you can find it embedded below.
The first lecture is fast paced, and features intriguing graphics that start [...]
≡ Category: Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
Presented creatively …
≡ Category: History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Is there such a thing as the benign use of international force? It’s a question that Noam Chomsky and William F. Buckley, leading thinkers from the left and right, took up in 1969. And, of course, the whole question of Vietnam loomed in the background. As you’ll see below (and in Part 2 here) the debate is [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs | ≅ Leave a Comment
Paul Krugman is mainly known in the States as an economist who writes frequently for The New York Times. Meanwhile, few really know much about his serious academic work. Now that’s he’s been awarded the Nobel Prize, it’s worth giving you a quick feel for it. Here’s Krugman giving you the gist in his own [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
With the gyrations of the world markets, 1929 was suddenly very present last week. All too present. What really went down in ‘29? Below we present “The Crash of 1929,” a documentary that aired as part of PBS’ The American Experience Series. Part 1 appears below. You can get the remaining parts here: Part 2, [...]
