John Hughes films. The Who. Now you’ve got the backdrop for my teenage years. This is for me, and perhaps even for you… (Sorry to those who can’t relate. We’ll be back on track soon enough.)
Caravaggio and Rembrandt Side by Side
Straight from Metafilter. Seemed worth passing along to our readers:
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam invites you to compare Caravaggio and Rembrandt. For an overview of Rembrandt’s work here are Rembrandt van Rijn: Life and Work and A Web Catalogue of Rembrandt Paintings. For Caravaggio there’s caravaggio.com which makes use of the Italian website Tutta l’opera del Caravaggio.
Junot Díaz Reads From “Drown”
Image by Christopher Peterson, via Wikimedia Commons
I first heard about Junot Díaz in the early 90s. He was only in his 20s, already publishing in The New Yorker, and getting a lot of wunderkind talk. By 1996, he published, Drown, a bestselling collection of short stories that earned high praise. And then, things slowed down. It took a good eleven years for him to publish The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. But the patience paid off. The novel won him a Pulitzer in fact. And it’s an excellent read. Really.
Having said this, I want to highlight Díaz reading one of his early New Yorker stories that also found its way into Drown. It’s called How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie). The free audio clip, which is listed in our collection of Free Audio Books (and produced by The New Yorker), has some colorful language, but it’s not gratuitous.
Looking for free, professionally-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free trial with Audible.com, you can download two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.
Martin Sheen’s Senior Moment
On the lighter side. Thanks Rachel for sending this along…
Find the link to the original video here.
Chris Anderson @ Google
Chris Anderson, the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price (download a free audio file of the book here) is making the rounds, promoting his new book. Of course, it was only natural that Anderson (also the author of The Long Tail and editor-in-chief of Wired) should pay a visit to Google, a company that generates billions of dollars by serving free content and services. With the talk above, you get an introduction to Anderson’s take on “free” and some good Q&A. The presentation runs about 53 minutes in total.
New Pynchon Book Out Today: Watch the Trailer
Thomas Pynchon’s new book, Inherent Vice, is on sale today. Check it out. Below we have, yes, a video trailer for the new book, and it sounds like Pynchon (who has famously stayed out of the public eye) is actually narrating the thing.
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Math Magic
Arthur Benjamin is a self-proclaimed “mathemagician.” He’s also a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. No need to say more. Watch him go. We’re adding this one to our list of YouTube favorites.
via The Teaching Company’s Facebook Page.
Big Ideas
A new addition to our popular and still growing collection: Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites … (The list now has close to 50 intelligent video sites.)
Big Ideas, a program that comes out of Canada, features a “variety of thought-provoking topics which range across politics, culture, economics, art history, science…. The program has introduced Ontario viewers to the impressive brainpower of people like Niall Ferguson on American empire, Daniel Libeskind on architecture, George Steiner on the demise of literacy, Camille Paglia on aesthetic education, and Noam Chomsky on U.S. politics.” You will also find talks here by Umberto Eco, Margaret Atwood, Richard Florida, Steven Pinker, Lewis Lapham. See the full list of videos here.
via Metafilter
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