Ich lerne sehen.
A brood comb has put together a list of philosophy lectures found on google video. Primarily philosophy of the mind. Interviews, lectures, talks etc. by people like Searle, Dennett, Putnam et al.
I'm watching Thomas Metzinger's talk on "the self-model of subjectivity", from his book Being No One.
Public broadcasting in the US is set to take another giant budget hit, if something isn't done soon.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs.
I suppose the Republicans have to do something to shore up the national debt, but this seems to be a drastically silly way to go about it, considering the general popularity of the threatened programs: do they really want to be taking on Big Bird during an election campaign that could put Democrats back into the majority? Didn't they already fail to do it once already? Do we have to keep fighting this fight? <br>
See also: freepress.net, though I'm sure there are a million indy media sites that are up in arms already.
As much as I wanted this blog to be a serious reflection on life, literature and the dolce vita, too much seriousness is definitely a bad thing. In that vein, I present Two Chinese Boy. Make sure you watch it all the way to the end, folks.
And because two is always better than one, especially this one, check out numa numa.
I have to give slate credit for these; the last video is better appreciated with Sam Anderson's analysis.
His performance of "Dragostea Din Tei," a formerly obscure Romanian pop song, is the Sistine Chapel of amateur syncing, where all the potential of the art comes together. Take a moment to revel in its glory. Brolsma compresses into the clip's 97 seconds a volcanic passion, Swiss-watch coordination, and the imagination of a character actor; he fluctuates between beat-propelled shoulder-pumping joy and suave face-rubbing Euro-seduction. He makes the song's catchy falsetto opening ("Maya-HEE! Maya-HOO! Maya-HA! Maya-HA HA!") look like the mating call of a lovably exotic bullfrog.
Our friends in the Institut National d’Audiovisuel (National Audiovisual Institute) have just put online a large part of their archives, which means, more television and radio than most people would ever want to watch or listen to.
And, of course, this site being French, it doesn’t work. I haven’t been able to get on the site yet, but it promises to be pretty cool:
Le site ina.fr propose 100 000 émissions de radio et de télévision à voir, revoir ou écouter, soit dix mille heures d’archives télévisuelles et radiophoniques présentées dans leur contexte historique : feuilletons, séries comme “Les Shadoks”, “Age tendre et tête de bois”, dramatiques, grands entretiens, discours politiques d’importance, trente ans de journaux télévisés, magazines culturels ou d’information comme “Thalassa”, événements sportifs, reportages, concerts, variétés… “Le volume d’archives accessible représente le programme de deux chaînes de télévision pendant un an”, indique le PDG de l’INA, Emmanuel Hoog.
I can imagine it might take some time to get it all up and running, I don’t want to imagine the amount of bandwidth a project like that would take. 150,000 simultaneous downloads of “Apostrophes” must be difficult to handle.
