Straight Talk about Stem Cells: Another Stanford Course via Podcast

stem5.jpgLast week, we men­tioned The Future of the Inter­net. This week it’s anoth­er course avail­able as a free pod­cast : Straight Talk About Stem Cells (iTunes).

The course was taught by Christo­pher Scott, 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. Orig­i­nal­ly taught with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, the course was designed with the gen­er­al pub­lic in mind. So it should be quite acces­si­ble. You can now down­load three of the total five lec­tures. Two more will be com­ing soon. (Get it on iTunes here.) Here is the orig­i­nal course descrip­tion for the course.

Biol­o­gy’s Brave New World: Straight Talk about Stem Cells

No area of sci­ence holds such promise for treat­ing dis­ease and improv­ing human lives as stem cell research. But no area of sci­ence caus­es such fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal con­cern and such fero­cious polit­i­cal con­flict. In this short course, stu­dents will learn the fun­da­men­tals of stem cell biol­o­gy, and study how these pow­er­ful cells could be used to make func­tion­al organs, treat dia­betes or repair spinal cord injuries. With the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy firm­ly in hand, we will jour­ney into the deep reach­es of the con­tro­ver­sy and exam­ine the inter­na­tion­al explo­sion of stem cell research and how law and pol­i­cy are affect­ing long-held Amer­i­can dom­i­nance in cell biol­o­gy. New sci­ence often pro­vokes a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of eth­i­cal stan­dards. Stem cells have reignit­ed the debate about the embryo, abor­tion, and sci­ence run amok. We will leave the shrill rhetoric behind, dis­cussing the ques­tion at the heart of the debate: How, as a soci­ety, do we bal­ance our respon­si­bil­i­ties to the unborn and the sick?

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex .…

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Filling the Idea Void in Iraq

fiasco.jpgWe have hit bot­tom in Iraq. And you know it because the debates over Iraq (whether the war was just, whether we planned it ade­quate­ly, whether we have a mean­ing­ful exist strat­e­gy, etc.) have ground to a halt. The big defend­ers of the war effort have most­ly gone silent, or they’re no longer tak­en seri­ous­ly, and what we’re left with is a deficit of ideas all around. There are those who talk about stay­ing in Iraq, but can’t artic­u­late a cred­i­ble strat­e­gy for mov­ing for­ward. And those who talk about leav­ing, but can’t out­line how we’ll leave Iraq in a moral­ly defen­si­ble posi­tion. We hear a lot in the way of plat­i­tudes, lit­tle in the way of sub­stance.

This Fresh Air inter­view (stream it here) with Thomas Ricks, author of the best­seller Fias­co: The Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Adven­ture in Iraq, helps fill the idea void a bit. (His book, by the way, comes out in paper­back lat­er this week.) Hav­ing recent­ly returned from Iraq, Ricks talks about the real options now avail­able to the US, and what steps the Bush admin­is­tra­tion will like­ly take dur­ing its last 18 months. Also, he dis­cuss­es how the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has changed its m.o. in Iraq. Gone are the days when pol­i­tics dic­tat­ed a sun­ny out­look and no real plans. Now, adults are run­ning the show, and they’re get­ting a good deal more real­is­tic and prag­mat­ic. But even they rec­og­nize that this new­found wis­dom is com­ing per­haps too late.

Relat­ed Note: George Pack­er, the main jour­nal­ist who cov­ered the war effort for The New York­er, has recent­ly rolled out a blog for the mag­a­zine. It’s called “Inter­est­ing Times” and it’s sure to help fill the idea void as well. Give it a look here.

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Stephen Colbert on Books

For a lit­tle week­end laugh, here is Stephen Col­bert speak­ing at Book Expo Amer­i­ca, pump­ing his new book, I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!), spar­ring with Khaled Hos­sei­ni (author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns), trash­ing Cor­mac McCarthy, and gen­er­al­ly liken­ing books to cig­a­rettes. The clip gets bet­ter as it moves along and ends with Col­bert hit­ting his stride.

PS You can also watch Part 2 of the video here.

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The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part III: The iPhone

(Con­tin­ued from Part II)

iphoneThe most recent major for­ay into the world of cul­ture­box­es comes in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent size and mar­ket niche: the Apple iPhone. It may look dif­fer­ent, but it has all the hall­marks of a cul­ture­box. The iPhone wants to deliv­er video, audio and the best of the Web; it hopes to rev­o­lu­tion­ize its mar­ket; it requires month­ly ser­vice fees and a hefty price-tag to use ful­ly.

Just like Microsoft and Tivo, Apple has had some strug­gles in get­ting their new device to live up to its promis­es. The bat­ter­ies on many of the iPhones are not liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions and some stan­dard phone fea­tures seem to be miss­ing. The new phone pur­ports to com­bine the roles of iPod and cell phone more ele­gant­ly than any oth­er device.

Music. Video. Con­nec­tion. The Tivo, Xbox and iPhone all want to sell us cul­tur­al ser­vices through an inte­grat­ed sys­tem of dig­i­tal con­trol. Record or pur­chase con­tent from the autho­rized dig­i­tal store and watch it on the autho­rized device. All three com­pa­nies know that the suc­cess of their prod­uct depends on main­tain­ing a del­i­cate bal­ance between defend­ing the walls of their dig­i­tal king­doms and allow­ing in enough out­side con­tent to remain flex­i­ble in uncer­tain mar­kets. All three box­es can be hacked and manip­u­lat­ed, of course, but their man­u­fac­tur­ers are count­ing on the vast major­i­ty of cus­tomers to play along and pay along.

Just as the box-mak­ers strug­gle to cut deals with con­tent pro­duc­ers to make their dig­i­tal offer­ings appeal­ing to con­sumers, the “tra­di­tion­al” cul­ture indus­tries are des­per­ate­ly strug­gling to embrace new forms. The New York Times reviews videogames as well as plays, and just about every major media insti­tu­tion has launched some kind of blog, web video ser­vice or pod­cast so you can con­nect with the crit­ics on what­ev­er cul­ture­box you pre­fer.

Cul­ture served up on box­es is very dif­fer­ent from pub­lic per­for­mance or ephemer­al newsprint. We can save up hours and hours of it; we can car­ry it around or dupli­cate it. When we build up a library of music and videos, we own cul­tur­al objects in a way that was nev­er real­ly pos­si­ble before, when the best we could do was own per­ish­able phys­i­cal media. We can replay, refor­mat, share and col­late favorites, and we can use our rank­ings and rat­ings to find new works. A lot of the most excit­ing tech­ni­cal advances have had to do with con­nect­ing cul­ture­box­es, but that so far that con­nec­tiv­i­ty most­ly goes to pro­vid­ing bet­ter cul­ture for solo view­ing. The three devices dis­cussed here all hope to change that.

The reign of cul­ture­box­es is in many ways the per­son­al, dig­i­tal ver­sion of some­thing that hap­pened in the late 18th cen­tu­ry: The birth of the mod­ern muse­um. The idea was to gath­er art, knowl­edge and his­to­ry togeth­er and frame them appropriately—saving up cul­ture for you in vast mar­ble box­es. Today’s per­son­al cul­ture­box­es will nev­er replace the­ater or muse­um-going, but they extend the same promise of cul­tur­al lit­er­a­cy (have you fin­ished The Sopra­nos yet?). These days the promise is affil­i­at­ed with brand name dig­i­tal empo­ria.

Like the Xbox, Tivo, and iPhone, many of the first muse­ums want­ed to be every­thing for every­body, offer­ing vis­i­tors his­tor­i­cal relics, bio­log­i­cal spec­i­mens and strange devices in a mish­mash of art, sci­ence and hokum. No won­der the Xbox­es are on the fritz: they’re try­ing to cap­ture all our total­ly con­flict­ed inter­ests in just one device. Even­tu­al­ly we’ll fig­ure out what dig­i­tal con­tent real­ly belongs in our pock­et on a two-inch screen, what needs to stay in the liv­ing room, and what to keep out of the box entire­ly. I should have some time to think about it while my Xbox gets repaired.

The Rise of the Cultureboxes, Part 2: Tivo

xbox 360The online mag­a­zine Slate runs most of its arts and cul­ture sto­ries in a sec­tion called “Cul­ture­box.” Iron­i­cal­ly, it’s tak­en the con­sumer elec­tron­ics indus­try sev­er­al years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gad­get is mar­ket­ed as a cul­ture­box, from the shiny iPhone to the pio­neer­ing Tivo to the hot-run­ning Xbox 360. Man­u­fac­tur­ers, adver­tis­ers and pro­duc­ers every­where are think­ing about how to sell us sleek­er, bet­ter box­es and the media that go with them.

The trou­ble is, nobody is quite sure what the cul­ture­box should look like or what it should do. We can all agree on video, audio and some kind of stor­age func­tion. But do we want our media pock­et-sized or on a big screen? Is the goal to enter­tain us on the com­mute or to build up a library of cher­ished media objects? More impor­tant­ly, when we say “cul­ture” do we essen­tial­ly mean tele­vi­sion or the whole panoply of forms? Are cul­ture­box­es just TV by oth­er means or are there gen­uine­ly new cul­tur­al forms on the hori­zon?

Last week Microsoft announced that Xbox 360s are fail­ing in unprece­dent­ed num­bers: A dra­mat­ic exam­ple of Cul­ture­box Anx­i­ety Syn­drome. The new gen­er­a­tion of videogame con­soles allow us to do so much more than blast­ing aliens—video on demand, HD and Blu-Ray DVD play­back, online chat­ting and music library man­age­ment are just a few of the roles these par­tic­u­lar cul­ture­box­es want to serve. The com­plex­i­ty is clear­ly an over­load: the New York Times argues that the $1 bil­lion Microsoft is set­ting aside for this prob­lem implies that between a third and half of Xbox 360 con­soles could get the cul­ture­box blues. Now a high-lev­el Xbox exec­u­tive has announced his res­ig­na­tion, though few peo­ple think it’s a pun­ish­ment since the plat­form is gen­er­al­ly sell­ing well.

Per­haps I’m only writ­ing because I use all these gad­gets and my Xbox recent­ly suc­cumbed to “red ring of death” syn­drome. Iron­i­cal­ly, it only freezes up when I use it to load a videogame. But there is a broad­er issue here: the trans­for­ma­tion of cul­ture from some­thing we expe­ri­ence in con­cert halls, movie the­aters and oth­er shared pub­lic spaces into some­thing that we do on the couch or on the go.

Sneak Preview of Nobel Winner’s Next Novel

A quick heads up: You can read an excerpt from J.M. Coet­zee’s upcom­ing nov­el, Diary of a Bad Year, over at The New York Review of Books. The entire nov­el will be pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2008. And, in case you weren’t already aware of it, Coet­zee won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2003. You can get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on the South African author here as well as reviews of his nov­els here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.