Still not listening to audiocasts or watching videocasts off the web?
You should be. Here’s why …
As an example, I subscribe to PBS Nature through iTunes. Automatically I get short preview versions of each show delivered to my computer.
Click PLAY or watch NATURE on YouTube.
Brian recommended this book, one I had years ago dropped like a hot potato after learning it was not a funny travel story.
One of my favourite writers, Bill Bryson, had switched to science.
At the library, I got the 6hr abridgment on CD read by the author. Excellent. In fact, an abridgment may even be better for this text. Bryson should have called it A Shorter History of Nearly Everything.
… explores the history of biology, botany, and zoology, and traces life from its first appearance all the way to today’s modern humans, placing much emphasis on the development of the modern Homo sapiens. All along the book, humorous stories about the scientists behind the discovery and their half-crazy behaviour is given. Throughout the book, there are many reports on the way humans change the Earth’s climate and destroy other species, as well how the Earth was and is a very destructive planet itself, briefly touching about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and mass extinctions. His tendency to look for big explosions and awe-inspiring devastation takes him to the most destructive disasters in the history of the world, from Krakatoa to Yellowstone National Park. ….
Brian learned how LITTLE we actually know about “everything”.
I was most struck by how much confusion was caused when scientists started analyzing DNA in human fossils. One group of people living in Australia, for example, were “impossible” by all known science.
I highly recommend it.
Life is a continuum. Each morning you awake assuming it is your last. There is no difference between Dec. 31st and Jan 1st to me.
But a young buddy pressed for some sort of pronouncement to mark the changing of the calendar. (I eschew resolutions so as not to tinker with perfection.)
Spontaneously I predicted that Rick McCharles would listen to even more audiocasts in 2008. Watch even more online video than in 2007. And “read” even more audio books.
I’m off to a good start. Waiting on my digital bookshelf are:
And I’m currently listening to A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. (Not a great book, but a fantastic true story.)
Actually, I finally dropped my monthly subscription to Audible.com as the Calgary Public Library seems to offer more good books on MP3 than I could possibly need.
(I can still buy books one-at-a-time on Audible or iTunes.)
Digital on demand infotainment rocks in 2008.
Girl-next-door-beautiful Amber MacArthur was voted #1 by the top Men’s on-line portal AskMen. Good call. I am a huge fan.
Amber’s everywhere on the internet (including my Facebook friends list), but her best work is the Webnation TV show.
Amber MacArthur’s background within the tech sector — she has worked for Microsoft and Razorfish, among others — has resulted in the kind of credibility many of her contemporaries would kill for, and it’s hard to imagine a more ideal candidate for our hottest women in tech list. …
Amber is from PEI. The #2 on the list is Morgan Webb from Toronto.
The top podcast on iTunes in recent days is This American Life. A repeat of the award winning radio show that you can download to listen to at your convenience.
Almost everyone has heard This American Life, somewhere, sometime. It’s awesome.
This American Life (TAL) is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by Chicago Public Radio. It is distributed by Public Radio International and is also available as a free weekly podcast. TAL, hosted by Ira Glass (cousin of composer Phillip Glass), is primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, although it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage.
A television program sharing the name and basic structure of the radio program airs on the Showtime cable network, and features Ira Glass as the host and executive producer. The first episode aired on March 22, 2007.
Similar, but even better, and far less well known, is WNYC’s Radio Lab. They have far fewer episodes too. Radio Lab is the future of audio entertainment, I think. Very innovative.
To check out these podcasts, listen on their home pages:
Or, far easier, search for them in the iTunes store if you use that software. (Surprisingly, the Zune store just added “podcasts”, as well.)
Listen to an excellent NPR audiocast:
America’s store shelves are filled with products claiming to be good for the environment. Everything from shampoos and cleaning agents to granola bars claim to be “natural” and “earth friendly.” But some environmentalists think you’re being “greenwashed.”
One of them is Scot Case, with the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice.
The firm says it found 1,018 products that made environmental claims, ranging from toothpaste to office paper, on retail shelves of six big-box retailers.
“When we dug a little deeper, we were actually shocked to discover that all but one were committing what we’re now calling one of the Six Sins of Greenwashing,” Case tells Steve Inskeep. …
From reading this blog you might think I am anti-Green. My pockets lined by polluting big business.
Actually, I am anti-BS.
“Green products” are mostly theatre and marketing. Companies taking advantage of consumers gullible enough to pay a mark-up for any green label.
1. The Sin of the Hidden Tradeoff … a product is “green” based on a single environmental attribute … without attention to other important environmental issues
2. The Sin of No Proof.
3. The Sin of Vagueness …
4. The Sin of Irrelevance is committed by making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant and unhelpful …
5. The Sin of Lesser of Two Evils.
6. The Sin of Fibbing is committed by making environmental claims that are simply false.
… At least not on Buy Nothing Day.
But two friends, so far, report that they love their new iPod touch.
It’s “an evolutionary leap for iPod, or a slight downgrade from iPhone.”
Click to check out the Apple 8 GB iPod Touch.
One reviewer:
… all the best stuff from the iPhone made the cut in the touch. It shares the same audio, video, and photo apps as the iPhone, which is a good thing since we still love the new Apple mobile media interface every bit as much as we did when we first reviewed the iPhone. The iTunes WiFi Music Store works exactly as advertised; search is fast, sampling tracks and downloads are easy, and syncing tracks back to your host computer is effortless. Apple really nailed this. To date, most over the air music downloads on a portable media devices have been tedious, if not completely impractical.
Also unchanged are our primary complaints about said media playback, the same complaints we’ve had about the iPod for years: we don’t like managing our media through iTunes, and we don’t like being limited only to those few codecs Apple supports (AAC, MP3, H.264, and MPEG-4). In fact, if Apple gave us greater codec support (or even just the option to add additional codecs ourselves) and mass storage support for drag and drop while adding media, we’d probably be able to overlook the other, smaller things that ail us about iPods.
I don’t need one, myself, as I plan to get the iPhone. And I love my old Nano, in any case. I will be using it for years to come.
The new fatty Nano 4GB iPod nano AAC/MP3 Player Silver (3rd Generation) is selling for $170 right now. The shuffle – 1GB iPod shuffle Silver (3rd Generation) – $90.
I expect many, many players to be delivered by Santa. Even the Zune 2 is worth considering.
Yes, the Russians were worse. The Taliban were worse. It will likely be worse when Coalition forces, including Canada, finally leave.
But ask the 7-year-old survivor of an American bomb strike in Afghanistan (not Iraq) what he thinks of the USA after his entire family was killed. Not by accident. They targeted his family home because intelligence said two bad guys were being sheltered there.
This makes me angry. What would I do when I grew up if I was this young boy?
The TV show 60 Minutes is one of the best of American media. I rarely see the show, but can subscribe to the podcast.
A recent episode blew me away. The President of Afghanistan, an ally, asked George Bush privately to reduce the number of air strikes on his country. When that had no effect, he went public on 60 Minutes.
Turns out the American military has a formula for how many civilian casualties are acceptable when trying to blow up one bad guy with a computer guided 2000lb bomb.
This is not new. My hero Gandhi spent many years weighing how many hundreds of thousands would die when the British left India.
Problem for the US military, however, is that they rarely blow up the bad guy. Air strikes are easy. They only cost money, not American soldier’s lives.
Needless to say, there were no bad guys in the 7-year-old’s house. American troops had searched it just the day before.
You should listen to to the audiocast of that show.
President Hamid Karzai tells Scott Pelley that too many civilians are being killed in U.S. bombing raids on Afghanistan.
You can see some of the (slow streaming) video here.
On the fantastic This American Life audiocast I was reminded of the story of how a local kid, Luis Da Silva, was made a TV superstar by NIKE.
He stole the show on this series of commercials from about 6yrs back featuring basketball professionals.
NIKE products are good — but their advertising has been the secret to making the company #1.
TV commercials like this. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Joel Lovell visits 19-year-old Luis Da Silva, one of the stars of a popular series of Nike commercials featuring professional and amateur basketball players doing dribbling tricks. Luis didn’t even start for his high school basketball team. (17 minutes)
Here’s the solo video featuring only Da Silva.
I was telling Ron, having given up on radio, and music, I now listen almost exclusively to audio instead.
Audio books I buy from Audible.com for about $12 each.
But Audiocasts (podcasts) are almost all free. I subscribe in iTunes to these:
Buzz Out Loud
David Pogue
I, Cringely
iLifeZone
net@nite
The WordPress Podcast
Best of National Geographic
National Geographic News
Nature PBS
Boing Boing Boing
Lonely Planet Travelcasts
PRI: Living on Earth
Pulse of the Planet
The Wildebeat
New York Times Front Page
The Economist
Slate
60 Minutes
FRONTLINE PBS
This American Life
NPR: Movies
On the Media
WNYC’s Radio Lab
Flames Cast (NHL hockey)
The Reporters (TSN Sports)
Onion Radio News
Best of Chris Moyles
CBC Radio: Editor’s Choice
CBC Radio: Best of DNTO
If any of these look interesting, just search in Google for the “podcast” of that name. You can listen to a sample. Even easier, download iTunes software to your computer and subscribe to the podcasts of your choice there.
Like most people, I tend to listen to ALL of a few favourites. But only a few of most of the above.
If you have other favourites, leave a comment below and I will check them out.
Rick McCharles 