File This Under “I Don’t Get It”

in Music | June 14th, 2008

YouTube is high­light­ing today a video that fea­tures a young girl play­ing Mozart around the world. Hence, the video’s title “Where in Heav­en is Mozart?” Now, the idea is nice. But why is Pachel­bel’s Canon the sound­track for the clip? Is Eine kleine Nacht­musik no longer rec­og­niz­able enough? Kind of sug­gests that we’ve offi­cial­ly achieved Pachel­bel Overkill (if it did­n’t hap­pen long, long ago). Per­haps this explains why you can now find com­ic rants against P’s Canon on YouTube as well.

Find free Clas­si­cal Music pod­casts here.

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Harry Potter Prequel Now Online

in Books | June 14th, 2008

The Har­ry Pot­ter pre­quel that JK Rowl­ing wrote for char­i­ty is now avail­able online. To read it, click here, then click “Read our authors’ sto­ries,” and then click JK Rowl­ing.

Relat­ed:

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grad­u­ates What They Need to Know

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?

in Uncategorized | June 13th, 2008

In case you missed it, a new piece in the Atlantic Month­ly — Is Google Mak­ing Us Stu­pid? — rais­es some ques­tions about whether the inter­net is chang­ing the way we think. Or, to para­phrase, is it tin­ker­ing with our brains, remap­ping the neur­al cir­cuit­ry, repro­gram­ming our mem­o­ry, short­en­ing our con­cen­tra­tion, mak­ing it hard­er to read books and long arti­cles, etc. Anec­dotes con­firm­ing this trend abound. But now there’s new sci­en­tif­ic research that seems to back it up. Have a read.

In the mean­time, if you want some inter­net con­tent that will unques­tion­ably make you smarter, check our list of 225 Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

via The Wired Cam­pus

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What’s Wrong With What We Eat?

in Random | June 11th, 2008

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman sums up “what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too lit­tle home cook­ing), and why it’s putting the entire plan­et at risk.” As you may notice, some of Bittman’s com­ments echo the think­ing in Michael Pol­lan’s recent work. (The clip has been added to our YouTube playlist.)

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Classic Photographs Remade Lego Style

in Art | June 10th, 2008

Take some of the most impor­tant pho­tographs of the 20th cen­tu­ry, then remake them with Legos, and here’s what you get. You get Robert Capa’s 1944 pho­to­graph of the D‑Day inva­sion, look­ing some­thing like this: (see below). The famous Lunch Atop a Sky­scraper pho­to sud­den­ly looks like this. The image of Roger Ban­nis­ter break­ing the four-minute mile becomes that. And Buzz Aldrin walk­ing on the Moon takes on this look. The full col­lec­tion is here. Thanks to Chop­per Bob for the laugh on this one.

via WWdN: In Exile

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Viral Video: The New Way to Market Books

in Books, YouTube | June 10th, 2008

Over the week­end, The Wall Street Jour­nal took a look at an emerg­ing trend in the pub­lish­ing world — using viral videos to pro­mote new books. The strat­e­gy, which has­n’t yet gen­er­at­ed much in the way of sales, is being used to mar­ket books by estab­lished authors (take Jodi Picoult’s 19 Min­utes for exam­ple) and new authors as well. One video not men­tioned in WSJ’s piece is the fair­ly slick clip that pro­motes Toby Barlow’s début nov­el Sharp Teeth. Bar­low, when not writ­ing, is the cre­ative direc­tor of a large adver­tis­ing agency. Hence per­haps the will­ing­ness to take this approach:

Sub­scribe to our feed

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Steve Jobs’ iPhone Spiel in 60 Seconds

in Apple, Web/Tech | June 10th, 2008

Things got a lit­tle nerdgas­mic yes­ter­day when Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone at WWDC. Although the pitch last­ed 107 min­utes, the high­lights have been boiled down to a neat 60 sec­onds. In watch­ing the clip, here’s my sim­ple take away: When I bought an iPhone ear­li­er this spring, I appar­ent­ly paid two times too much for some­thing that’s two times too slow. Grazzi Steve.

Relat­ed Con­tent: The Iphone and The 21st Cen­tu­ry Uni­ver­si­ty

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Free Download of Cory Doctorow’s Graphic Novels

in Art, Books, Sci Fi | June 9th, 2008

Quick fyi for Boing­Bo­ing read­ers .… Cory Doc­torow has just released com­ic adap­ta­tions of his award-win­ning sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries — Futur­is­tic Tales of the Here and Now. You can down­load them here for free, or buy the col­lec­tion on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load free copy of Shake Girl

17 Free and Down­load­able Graph­ic Nov­els


by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast