video
Nov. 3, 2009
Walt Whitman for Levi’s
A cool ad for Levi’s jeans features a Walt Whitman poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! (video)
Tags: advertising · video · Walt Whitman
Oct. 28, 2009
Philip Roth on the novel’s “cultic” future
More clips from this interview here.
Tags: ebooks · interviews · Philip Roth · video
Sep. 18, 2009
Biocriminology
“There’s certainly a brain basis to crime … the brains of violent criminals are physically and functionally different from the rest of us.”— Adrian Raine A burgeoning science suggests that crime is caused in part by biological factors, that is, by traits inherited through DNA or by the brain malfunctioning in very specific ways. Adrian [...]
Tags: behavioral genetics · Defending Jacob · law · science · video
Aug. 14, 2009
Lawrence Lessig on the Google book search settlement
Will Google Books, the audacious attempt to digitize every book ever written, have the perverse effect of making books — and ideas — less available, less ubiquitous, less free? Will copyright laws require that most of the books written in the last century be excluded from the new digital online library? Is this progress? This [...]
Tags: copyright · Google · Lawrence Lessig · video
Aug. 10, 2009
Remembering Updike the Father
John Updike’s son writes a eulogy for his father
Tags: featured posts · interviews · John Updike · video · writing life · writing tips
Jul. 20, 2009
Walter Cronkite and “The Strangler”
In the deluge of clips since Walter Cronkite died a few days ago, the same video seems to come up over and over, like a greatest hits collection: Cronkite announces the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations, the moon landing, the call to withdraw from Vietnam. I’d like to call your attention to a more [...]
Tags: The Strangler · video
Jul. 16, 2009
Best Boston Movie Ever: “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”
A forgotten classic from 1973 is the best movie about Boston ever.
Tags: featured posts · George V. Higgins · Robert Mitchum · The Friends of Eddie Coyle · video
Jun. 27, 2009
How Writers Write: Philip Roth
Philip Roth discusses his writing process (video)
Tags: How Writers Write · interviews · Philip Roth · video
Jun. 12, 2009
The Economics of Dealing Crack
At TED in 2004, Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and co-author of Freakonomics, analyzes the economics of the street-corner crack trade. Contrary to popular belief, the “corner boys” make less than minimum wage — for a job with a higher mortality rate than death row. The Freakonomics blog is also worth a visit.
Tags: crack · drugs · Steven Levitt · TED talks · video
Jun. 6, 2009
“The Commitments”
I watched “The Commitments” last night for the first time in years, and it holds up remarkably well. Alan Parker’s 1991 film, based on Roddy Doyle’s debut novel, tells the story of a Dublin hustler named Jimmy Rabbitte who puts together a soul band composed mostly of working-class kids who know nothing about soul or [...]
