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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Vintage Woody Allen (From His Stand Up Days)

in Comedy, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | October 7th, 2007

I’ve heard this joke many times before on audio, but nev­er seen it on video. Here it goes. The Moose Joke appar­ent­ly from 1965.

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Stephen Colbert’s New Book Released Early as Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books | October 5th, 2007

colbert4.jpgHere’s a quick heads up: Stephen Col­bert’s new book — I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!) — will hit the streets on Octo­ber 9. How­ev­er, if you’re real­ly champ­ing at the bit, you can down­load the book ear­ly, start­ing today, in audio­book for­mat. The book is nar­rat­ed by Col­bert him­self, which is a perk, and you can down­load it from Audi­ble here.

To round things out, let us refer you to this video where Col­bert, speak­ing at Book Expo Amer­i­ca, pumps his new book, spars with Khaled Hos­sei­ni (author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns), and trash­es Cor­mac McCarthy. Have fun.



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Animated New Yorker Cartoons: A Funny Twist on Einstein’s Relativity

in Media, Video - Arts & Culture | October 5th, 2007

The New York­er has rolled out a series of ani­mat­ed car­toons, which puts in motion its famous car­toons. They can be watched as video pod­casts or as streamed videos. You should def­i­nite­ly head over to The New York­er web site to view the larg­er col­lec­tion. But, if you want a lit­tle taste, take a look below:

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YouTube Gets Smart: The Launch of New University Channels

in Google, UC Berkeley, Video - Arts & Culture | October 5th, 2007

Updat­ed: See full col­lec­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube.

I heard rumors some­thing like this was com­ing, and now it’s here. YouTube has struck deals with major uni­ver­si­ties, cre­at­ing ded­i­cat­ed chan­nels from which schools can dis­trib­ute their media con­tent. Not sur­pris­ing­ly UC Berke­ley, always at the dig­i­tal fore­front, has tak­en the lead and launched an ambi­tious chan­nel with over 300 hours of video­taped cours­es and events. You can check out their chan­nel here. The oth­er major uni­ver­si­ty to sign on is USC (Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia).

Back in March, we lament­ed the sheer dearth of cul­tur­al con­tent on YouTube. (Lis­ten to our radio inter­view here and also see our relat­ed blog post.) Since its incep­tion, the now Google-owned video ser­vice has been awash with home-brewed videos of gui­tar riffs, dorm­room lip sync ses­sions, and pet tricks. Mean­while, videos of greater cul­tur­al sub­stance have been hard­er to come by (and that’s why we’ve tried to flag the good ones for you. See here, here & here.) YouTube’s new uni­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tive begins to rem­e­dy that prob­lem. It shows a per­haps bur­geon­ing com­mit­ment to high­er-mind­ed media. But let’s not get too car­ried away. When you go to YouTube, it’s not clear how users will find/navigate to these chan­nels. If you look under Cat­e­gories, “edu­ca­tion” is not an option (although I think it used to be). Per­haps YouTube has plans to tweak its nav­i­ga­tion. Or is this just a case of let­ting a tree fall in the woods? Let’s stay opti­mistic and we’ll check back soon.

Please vis­it our col­lec­tion of 250 Free Online Cours­es

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Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost: Free Chapters, Podcasts & More

in Books | October 4th, 2007

Philip Roth fans did­n’t have to wait very long for anoth­er nov­el. A short year and a half after pub­lish­ing Every­man, Roth has just put out Exit Ghost. It’s anoth­er book that takes a hard look at aging, and it also marks the ninth and pos­si­bly last time that the char­ac­ter Nathan Zuck­er­man will inhab­it Roth’s lit­er­ary cre­ations. (For more on the Zuk­er­man series, see Salon’s old­er piece here.) We’ll even­tu­al­ly have more to say about Exit Ghost. But, for now, we want­ed to point you to some good relat­ed resources. For starters, if you can’t wait to get the book, you can read the first chap­ter online for free here. And you can also catch some very recent inter­views with Roth. First, Ama­zon Wired (iTunes — Feed — Tran­script) fea­tures him talk­ing about Exit Ghost and offer­ing a very short read­ing from it. Then there is this inter­view by Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. (iTunes — Feed — Stream). Final­ly, here are the first reviews that have rolled out: New York Mag­a­zine, The New York Sun, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and Times Online (UK).

P.S. Here are a cou­ple of oth­er Philip Roth good­ies.

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