In 2008, Jamie Farr (Klinger from M*A*S*H) visited Joplin, Missouri for the annual St. John’s Reginal Heath Fair, held on the campus of Missouri Southern State University. He spoke of his life and career and was very entertaining. I attende the event and recoreded the event on my cell phone. I have edited the audio and it is the best I can get it. I apoligize for the low quality, but it is worth th listen. It is about 90 minutes long. Click the link to be directed to the file:
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Reminder: Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” to be Released Tomorrow
Tomorrow marks the release of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. The book is constructed from a set of over 40 interviews conducted with Jobs and over 100 interviews of Jobs’ friends, family and rivals. Reviews have already been published and the book has received good marks. I will review the book sometime this week.
In the meantime, Isaacson appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes tonight and included were several clips from the interviews conducted with Jobs. In the video there is mention of a extras online. You can watch Steve’s Family Album and the 60 Minutes Overtime on CBS’s site. I was able to embed the actual story (in two parts) from 60 Minutes. Here are those videos:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Filed under Steve Jobs, Tech
Course Reviews: Fall 2011
I realized that I never wrote about my courses for this semester, so I will do that now. The semester is now half over and I am counting down until Christmas break! Instead of writing a separate post for each course, I will give a brief description of each course in this post. You can find my book list post, HERE.
HIST 590
Gender in Latin America meets twice a week with a mix of grad students and undergrads. As with all 500 level courses, we have a separate 4th hour meeting with the professor to discuss our addition work/readings. For this course, however, we have a 4th hour, but no additional readings. Our only additional work is a reading review each week. The course has 15 books, but we do are not reading one per week as you might expect. We are reading in chronological and generally read chapters from 3-4 books per week. Overall, it is not a bad course and it fulfills my requirement of an out-of-concentration course. The course is taught by Dr. William C. Van Norman.
HIST 600
The Seminar in Early American history changes from year-to-year depending on who teaches it. This year the course is taught by Dr. David Dillard and focuses on his area, Southern history. The reading list for this course is pretty short, but the course layout is very different. The course is broken up into three blocks of three-week segments. The first week, the whole class reads the same book. The second week we break apart and read different books from the historiography. Finally, the third week we discover how the history of the period is viewed by the public via museum, movies, television, etc. It is a unique course design and I really like it as it allows me to incorporate a little of my Public History training.
HIST 700
My thesis research is going well and I have been working toward my thesis since early this year. Over the summer I did a great deal of secondary reading and gathered all my primary sources. I have moved past the research phase and am now into writing. My first chapter is due October 24, and I have about 12 pages so far. My goal is 20. After writing chapter 1, I will skip to chapter 3 and have it done by Thanksgiving break. Before I leave for Christmas break, I hope to have Chapters 1 and 3 completed and substantial progress on chapter 2. The entire project is due the middle of February.
I meet weekly with my thesis advisor, Dr. Christopher Versen, and we discuss what I have read, what I have written, and where the project is going. The other members of my thesis committee include Dr. Chris Arndt and Dr. John Butt.
Steve Jobs’ Rolling Stone Cover
Following his death, Steve Jobs has been featured on the cover of almost every imaginable magazine…Time, Fortune, Newsweek, even The New Yorker. None of this would have mattered to Steve, however. He had been on the cover of most of those magazines before. This week though, Steve graces the cover of Rolling Stone. The articles written by Jeff Goodell and Chrisann Brennan are well written and Goodell provides insight into the Steve he knew.
The real story is the fact that Steve made the cover of the Rolling Stone! Every musicians dream is to be on the cover, just ask Dr. Hook. But Steve was not a musician. He changed the music industry and loved the publication. Of all the magazines that have placed him on the cover over the past two weeks, the Rolling Stone is one that he would have been most proud of. After all, his idols the Beetles and Bob Dylan have both appeared on the cover, and now they are now immortalized together, bound by the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Filed under Steve Jobs, Tech
The Problem with Apple’s Newsstand
Apple’s iOS 5 is full of great new features (features I will review in full detail in my review of the iPhone 4S) and one of my favorite was supposed to be Newsstand. I say “supposed to be” because there is one major flaw in Newsstand. It is not the fact that it is nearly impossible to put Newsstand into a folder, but it is the price of subscription to some of the publications. The idea of selling media digitally is to cut down on the costs of printing and postage. One would think, therefore, that digital editions of magazines and newspapers would be cheaper than their paper counterparts, and some are. For example, The New York Times can be delivered to your iPad for $20 per month. That is a $10 savings per month over home delivery costs. Autoweek’s digital subscription only costs $4.99 for a year subscription, half off a print subscription. National Geographic charges $19.99 for the Newsstand subscription, the same as print. Charing the same amount is fine, but some magazines have really gotten it backwards. Motor Trend is a great example of a poorly conceived pricing structure. If I subscribed to Motor Trend by mail, I only pay $10. However, if I want to get it digitally on my iPad it is $19.99. WHY??? The iPad edition is more interactive and includes videos, yes, but I can get the same videos from their website for FREE. Why should I pay more for a magazine that it not generating the costs of printing and postage? Motor Trend is not the only magazine doing this, here are a few other examples:
-Popular Mechanics: $12 by mail, $19.99 on iPad
–Esquire: $8 by mail, $19.99 on iPad
–Golf Magazine: $10 by mail, $19.99 on iPad
–Reader’s Digest: $10 by mail, $14.99 on iPad
–Vanity Fair: $19.99 by mail, $19.99 on iPad
–The New Yorker: $59.99 by mail, $59.99 on iPad
Publishers need to realize that in order for a digital distribution system to work, they are going to need an aggressive pricing strategy. Charging twice as much for digital over print is ridiculous. I understand that this is new to many publishers and they are working on pricing, design, etc, but I feel that over time prices will come down. I do not mind paying for content, but I do mind being screwed.
*I have emailed Motor Trend with my concern and will update this post if they reply, but I doubt they will.