Kinda Neat

[shipperx]

Audible has picked up The Modern Scholar lecture series which is kind of neat. They're recorded lecture series on a variety of topics, and if you're geeky enough, they're rather interesting.

I've listened to Archeology and the Illiad: The Trojan War in Homer and History and I thought it was pretty darn good. It went from questions regarding whether Homer was an individual or a title and the problems involved with oral histories turned into printed ones. It also covered the archaeological excavations of "Troy" in Hisarlik, the debate over which layer of the excavation could plausibly be "Troy" of Homeric legend, and whether Homer had telescoped history. It also covered the anecdotes of the archaeologists who have done the work (a few of which were quite colorful). If you're a history geek, it's worth the listen (and though the lecture series is listed as about $70 on the Audbible site, if you're an audible member, it's just one monthly credit and monthly membership is only $15 dollars (a little less than $8 for the first three months of membership).

Am currently listening to A Way With Words, Part II: Approaches to Literature. The professor seems quite enthusiastic (and clearly loves his genre fiction... particularly Tolkien as he's using LOTR for a lot of his examples. And I laughed as his discussion of Elizabeth Bennet turned into her being attacked by trolls, isn't there some zombified Austen-thing coming out? I think I read that recently). Many of the discussions of interpretation of text and authorship falls right into some of the more interesting fandom debates (which I don't think would bother this professor as he seems like the type who would wade into those discussions himself). It's been interesting so far, and I'm thinking that I might download his next lecture series Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature where he covers the likes of Tolkien, Rowling, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Brooks.

On a different note, I saw this story today which... you know, even the picture accompanying the article provokes some questions for me. What does a Creationist teacher say to his students when standing next to a dinosaur skeleton? Pay no attention to the huge thing looming over me?

Actually, I do have a good idea of what they say. I saw it on some Showtime special where the teacher sang some ditty "explaining" that a dinosaur was actually a Leviathan. So basically they're saying a fossilized skeleton is actually a totally fictional creature! You want to know who else created fictional explanations for fossilized bones? Ancient Greeks. How do you think they came up with the concept of Cyclopses, anyway? Oh, and if the explanation is that dinosaur/leviathans died out in the "great flood"... well, wasn't Noah supposed to save two of each animal? Did God have some secret pronouncement "Except the volociraptors and T-Rexes? Oh, and don't worry about the Mammoths or Dire Wolves either. You won't need those." And what about the creatures that inhabited water? Did they "drown" too? After all, the Leviathan itself is a mythical sea monster so it seems a bit off for it to die out in the great flood.

And I'm still scratching my head over how to explain the Grand Canyon as being only 6,000 years old. Is radiometric dating fictional too? And when visiting the hall of fossils, what exactly is the explanation for the separations indicating five mass extinctions? Is God such a jokester that he decided to go to the trouble to sort and file different extinct creatures in specific strata of rock just to screw with scientists minds? Enquiring minds want to know...

Comments

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

That is what we call extreme denial. How deep it goes...

[tnmisery.livejournal.com]

Dinos are Satan's whoopie cushions and fake dog poo.

"Ohhh, Devil, you really got those guys with those! Haha, so realistic!" We're all falling for it but those wacky creationists think it's hysterical.

[sp23.livejournal.com]

When you're listening to those audio files, what device are you using? Can you stop and then start up again where you left off?

I dearly love to listen to books/whatever when I'm walking (which I want to start doing again), but I loathe CDs, and books-on-tape have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur, Creationist teacher or not.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I tend to listen on my computer with ear phones simply because it's convenient when I'm sitting and drawing, and what I like about Audible is that they are quite user friendly.

It functions through its own freeware that's downloadable from their site. It's its own listening device [i]or[/i] a burner (in association with a bound freeware version of... Nero, I think.) Their listening program keeps a log of your entire library (more on that in a moment) and works as a download manager and a media player with two separate "reverse" and FF functions. One reverse/FF takes the track back or forward in 10 second increments the other takes it back (or forward) one entire track (about the length of a music track). For download speed (which is usually pretty good) especially large books/downloads are broken into multiple downloads (so if you're downloading War and Peace you may be downloading it in parts I, II, and III. A "part" is roughly 6 to 8 hours of info). The player also keeps track of where you were in a story when you close out the device so that the next time you open the player, it picks up in the exact spot where you left off, even if you've rebooted the computer.

The Audible freeware also offers two kinds of burning. You can choose to burn your book onto CDs and it will transfer the story to CDs or you can choose your MP3 player (they have an extensive compatibility list) and it will burn it to your MP3 player (the audible tracks themselves are in audible format so it does require burning to switch them over to the appropriate format for CDs or MP3s. The original file is not in MP3 format, but the burning will convert it for you if you want it on a MP3 device).

You can buy a book without membership in Audible, but it's at list price. They also have two forms of membership. One is a nominal fee for the entire year and this maintains your library on Audible and gives you discounts on all Audible books. They also run periodic sales for like $2.95 for selected books, and they frequently have a few freebies (usually short stories, magazine articles, or radio play excerpts, but occasionally promotional efforts for a more obscure book series). The second form of membership is a monthly fee of $15 which maintains your library and also gives you one credit per month and most books are only 1 credit so you can essentially get $70 files for $15 dollars (Some books are 2 credits. But most are only 1). If you don't use your monthly credit, it rolls over and accumulates (currently I have 3 credits accrued).

The final thing I like is that as far as they're concerned, if you bought the file, you bought the darn file. You can sign onto your account any time on any computer and download or redownload that file (even if you bought it years ago) without paying for it again. It also allows you to burn the files to CDs or mp3s as many times as you want. So, it isn't tied to a single download or IP and if you don't want to use all your memory holding the file after you've listened to it, you can delete it secure in the knowledge that you can download the file again whenever you wish without paying for it a second time.

All in all, if you like audiobooks, I've found the Audible site to be pretty nifty and quite fair with an extensive library (it is loosely associated with Amazon.com).

[sp23.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for all the info! Sounds like a great site. I'll bookmark it for future reference. :-)

[thedabara-cds.livejournal.com]

I think that idiot creationist Sarah Palin explained it - "God put all those old dinosaur bones in the ground to fool the unbelievers!"

[cy-girl.livejournal.com]

I have been told, in all seriousness, by a die-hard creationist "Dinosaurs were the Devi's attempt at creation."

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

LOL! So what were wooly mammoths? Hair challenged elephants?