Interview with Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, Robert Hass

in Literature | April 9th, 2008

This week, the Pulitzer Prize for poet­ry went to Robert Hass, a UC Berke­ley pro­fes­sor and for­mer U.S. poet lau­re­ate. To mark the occa­sion, we’re post­ing here Sier­ra Club Radio’s inter­view with Hass. The inter­view, record­ed this past Sat­ur­day (mp3 — iTunes — web site), delves into Hass’ “thoughts on the inter­sec­tion between lan­guage and our envi­ron­ment, how he decid­ed to use his posi­tion as Poet Lau­re­ate for advo­ca­cy, and has him read­ing selec­tions from his new book of poet­ry Time and Mate­ri­als — win­ner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He also gives some insights into the col­lec­tion and sto­ries behind some of the poems.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

101 Ear­ly Wal­lace Stevens Poems on Free Audio

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

The Art of Read­ing a Poem (Accord­ing to Harold Bloom)

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Philosophy Makes a Comeback

in Philosophy | April 7th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle from today’s New York Times is this piece, which talks about the revival of phi­los­o­phy on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es. The rea­sons for this revival are var­ied — Some see phi­los­o­phy offer­ing “good train­ing for look­ing at larg­er soci­etal ques­tions, like glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.” Oth­ers see it build­ing skills val­ued by law schools (argu­men­ta­tion and rea­son­ing). Still oth­ers believe that phi­los­o­phy and exis­ten­tial angst can be good for “good for get­ting girl­friends.” Mean­while, all seem to agree that philo­soph­i­cal think­ing is not sim­ply for “frou-frou” intel­lec­tu­als. The net result: the num­ber of phi­los­o­phy majors is up, with some schools see­ing increas­es of 50–100% over the past 5–6 years.

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Daily Caffeine ‘Protects Brain’

in Uncategorized | April 7th, 2008

Thank good­ness.

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Gehry’s Vision for Architecture

in Architecture | April 6th, 2008

Frank Gehry takes you on a 50 minute tour of his land­mark works. The talk, pre­sent­ed at TED Talks in 1990, is com­plete with slides and gives you a good look at his “messy cre­ative process.” We’ve post­ed the video below, but you can down­load a zipped ver­sion to your desk­top here, or watch it on iTunes here.

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In Search of TV 2.0

in Film, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech | April 3rd, 2008

One of the things they promised us in the hey­day of the 1990s Inter­net boom was the end of tele­vi­sion and a brave new world of high qual­i­ty video online, on demand. Well, we’re still wait­ing. Youtube is great for short clips, but not designed for the tech­ni­cal (or legal) chal­lenge of serv­ing up whole TV shows or movies.

How­ev­er, things are get­ting bet­ter. You can pay for rea­son­ably good enter­tain­ment, and you can even watch some things for free on net­work web­sites (not to men­tion the many uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er groups putting video online). But nobody has come quite as close to the orig­i­nal promise as Hulu.com. This promis­ing new site seems to strike a decent bal­ance between com­mer­cials and con­tent. They have entire sea­sons of sev­er­al decent tele­vi­sion shows and a small library of movies–all avail­able for free. So is Hulu the future of Hol­ly­wood online? Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Thinking Big About John Adams

in History | April 2nd, 2008

I’m watch­ing the new HBO minis­eries “John Adams” and find­ing it fas­ci­nat­ing. The series is based on a book by Pulitzer Prize win­ning his­to­ri­an David McCul­lough (also author of 1776 and Tru­man). And below we have McCul­lough giv­ing us, if you will, the quick ele­va­tor pitch for Adams — that is, two min­utes on what made Adams a par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy found­ing father. (The video, by the way, is pro­duced by Big­Think, a fair­ly new site that posi­tions itself as the “think­ing man’s YouTube.” They’re backed by Har­vard’s ex-pres­i­dent, Lar­ry Sum­mers, and oth­er folks with deep pock­ets. Whether they’ll be able to turn a prof­it on intel­lec­tu­al media, I’m sad­ly doubt­ful. But that’s not meant to take any­thing away from what they’re doing. And if any­one wants to throw a few mil­lion dol­lars our way, we’ll con­sid­er tak­ing it.)

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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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