Are Social Impact Bonds a good way to invest in public services? "Imagine a contract where private investors are paid by the government if there's a decrease in homelessness or convicts re-offending. It's a an idea that's taking shape in the UK and some US states. And now the Canadian government is considering piloting social impact bonds. Critics say it's a way of governments shirking their responsibilities." CBC's "The Current" reports.
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posted by flex
on Nov 20, 2012 -
29 comments
You can accurately judge a person just by looking at their shoes, psychologists say. "Researchers at the University of Kansas found that people were able to correctly judge a stranger's age, gender, income, political affiliation, emotional and other important personality traits just by looking at the person's shoes."
Virginia Postrel responded: "The study made a solid contribution to research on first impressions, but it was hardly earthshaking. By getting so much attention, however, it demonstrated a sociological truth: People love to talk about shoes. Even those who dismissed the research as silly often felt compelled to call radio stations or comment on websites, providing details about their own choices. Why this fascination with footwear? "
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posted by flex
on Oct 15, 2012 -
159 comments
Hop in the
Video Time Machine and scroll to any year: from
1860 (the first recorded sound) to the
present day to experience video and audio from that time period: most of it iconic, some forgotten, and others entirely random. Results can be filtered for music, sports, movies, current events and more.
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posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jul 5, 2011 -
8 comments
Adachi Tomomi,
Alex Baker,
Ian Baxter,
Ithai Benjamin,
Lesley Flanigan,
Lorin Edwin Parker,
Peter Blasser,
Phil Archer,
Todd Bailey,
Tommy Stephenson & Patrick McCarthy,
Tuomao Tammenpaa, and
Vasco Alvo are all featured in Nicolas Collins' extraordinarily good book
Handmade Electronic Music.
posted by mhjb
on Jan 21, 2011 -
14 comments
Nearly three decades ago, folklorist
Alvin Schwartz published
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the first of three horror anthologies that would go on to become
the single most challenged book series of the 1990s. But most of the
backlash was against not the stories themselves (which were fairly tame), but rather the illustrations of artist
Stephen Gammell. His bizarre, grotesque, nightmarish black-and-white inkscapes suffused every page with an eerie, unsettling menace. Sadly, the series has since been
re-issued with
new illustrations by Brett Helquist, of
A Series of Unfortunate Events fame. Luckily for fans of Gammell's dark vision, copies of the old artwork abound online, including in these three image galleries:
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Interested in revisiting the stories themselves? Then don't miss
the virtual re-enactments of YouTube user MoonRaven09, or
the dramatic readings of fellow YouTuber daMeatHook.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 29, 2010 -
48 comments
"He sits at a table and spins his yarn, his only requisites being a small stick, the so-called 'wakening-rod' xingmu (in Yangzhou storytelling called 'talking stopper' zhiyu), a handkerchief and a fan."
A comprehensive guide to the art and tradition of
Chinese Storytelling — with photographs, text, audio and video clips illustrating elements of performance.
posted by unliteral
on Sep 21, 2010 -
3 comments
The
recent passing of Studs Terkel sparked a renewed interest in his interview projects, like
Working,
Race, and
Hard Times. But Studs was not just a broadcaster who liked people; he was a practitioner of
oral history, a method of gathering information about the past through preserving individual recollections. It's a
subfield of history, with its own
ethics,
techniques,
professional literature,
uses, and
limitations.
Learn how to
collect and share oral histories yourself, from
interviewing to
recording and getting
clearances to
preserving and disseminating. Oral histories have been preserved as
text transcripts for decades; now digital media is
reinvigorating the form, bringing new ease to recording and
wider opportunities for the public to
see and hear the content. Explore oral history projects on the web with stories of
veterans,
suffragists,
Tibetans,
jazz cats,
Nevada nuclear test site witnesses,
Basque Americans,
rodeo cowboys and cowgirls,
musicians,
Katrina survivors,
ACT UP activists,
Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge,
Native Americans,
women whose lives were affected by the Pill,
survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,
women in World War II,
Hawai'ians,
workers in Paterson, NJ....
posted by Miko
on Dec 11, 2008 -
20 comments
When it comes to home theaters, I thought I'd seen it all. But nothing's come close to this. First, I'm going to try to describe the sheer magnitude of Jeremy Kipnis' theater. His Stewart Snowmatte laboratory-grade screen is the biggest I've ever seen in a home, and in the back of the theater, there's a Sony ultra-high-resolution (4,096-by-2,160) SRX-S110 digital projector. I'm looking everywhere, jotting down questions, and Kipnis sounds almost giddy talking about his theater's capabilities. He refers to his baby, the Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS), as "The Greatest Show on Earth." And from the looks of it, he may be right.
I should hope so, it cost six million dollars.
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar
on Feb 14, 2008 -
120 comments
Jean Shepherd was one of the greatest storytellers ever to be heard on radio.
The Jean Shepherd Project collects recordings of these historic broadcasts, converts them to mp3 files and makes them available to be revisited by his longtime fans and by those who wish to discover what great American storytelling is all about.
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posted by carsonb
on Dec 11, 2007 -
26 comments
Freethought Multimedia contains dozens of interviews, conversations and lectures on a variety of topics with/by several contemporary skeptics and freethinkers, including Michael Shermer, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins.
(There's a great links section at the bottom of the page, as well. Particularly good are the University Lectures section and the Lectures Archive.)
posted by cog_nate
on Nov 16, 2007 -
21 comments
A video broadcast of György Ligeti's
Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes (AVI, French), with
helpful background on the controversial piece located here. For those who know French, you may also be interested in 1993's
György Ligeti: Portrait, A Documentary by Michel Follin, showing Ligeti as "the displaced cosmopolitan", through the metaphor of train ride through the European countryside. These and many other avant-garde films can be found at
Ubuweb, including features with
William Burroughs, a recent "
performance" of Cage's 4'33", and Varése and Le Corbusier's 1958 World Fair collaboration
Poême électronique, a 400-speaker soundspace installation predating
later, more experimental feedback pieces.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Jul 2, 2006 -
14 comments
Culture by the people, for the people. We all know that there are a gazillion blogs out there, with people talking about anything and everything, frequently to an audience of one. Those same text based blogs are incorporating
video as well. People are beginning to organize
their internet not through search engine algorithims, but by their own
tags. There's also a dedicated cadrey of partisan and non-partisan
"amateur journalism" sites. Then you have
full fledged communities focused to specific subjects, holding an unbelievable depth of knowledge and opinions. With entire
encyclopedias available online, and with smaller topic-centric wiki's available, can the creation and dissemination of audience authored content be far behind? Witness the growth of
Flickr, the probable success of
Vimeo, people programming their own
radio stations and/or
shows, the
increasing awareness and
use of the
Freedom of Information Act (
FOIA) by
plain ol' citizens, the courting of
TiVo by Google and Yahoo (to share homemovies and pictures, perhaps?), open source news sites like
Take Bake the News,
NowPublic (for royalty free images to accompany content),
Downhill Battle,
Our Media ( a place to store your content), and open-source
sounds and
sights. Could there eventually be enough worthwhile content to break us free of a corporate-delivered culture?
posted by rzklkng
on Apr 25, 2005 -
35 comments
Echo Company An emotionally trying account of an ambush in Iraq this past April that took the lives of twelve Americans and who knows how many Iraqis, from two journalists who were there. Included is a timeline, audio & video, photogalleries, and reactions from the friends and family they left behind. You can read a USMC account of the memorial service
here.
via Editor & Publisher [Flash/Real]
posted by trondant
on Sep 2, 2004 -
10 comments
Want to listen to the World Series on the Web?
Pay $9.95. I know, it's a sports post, so (most) everyone will hate it, but I see a disturbing trend of no more free media lunches on the Web. CNN
went subscription months ago, and most other places I've gone for free video/audio are drying up. All I wanted was to listen to the game. But I can't find it anywhere. All the regular stations I listen to that carry the game are silent. And how will the Angels make a valiant comeback if I can't cheer them on? (sigh)
posted by TheManWhoKnowsMostThings
on Oct 26, 2002 -
25 comments
