Ok, so I’m probably the only person who calls him Dick Dawkins and he would probably loathe this contraction of his name. I think it’s wonderfully reminiscent comic book and film noir detective heroes uncovering the truth despite all odds.

Appropriately, Mr. Dawkins’s life has been devoted to uncovering the truth. As an evolutionary biologist, he has contributed greatly to our understanding of human origins and the mechanisms of evolution. He is perhaps most famously the author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. I find his lectures on the origins and probability of life, the massive scale of the universe, and the wonder of nature to be incredibly inspiring. This lecture is probably one of the most conversational and easy to understand (probably because Mr. Dawkins is lecturing to a younger audience). It’s also nice because it includes several demonstrative illustrations. It’s also super 90’s chic! Enjoy:

A commenter on the site, Turino, posted this video in response to a discussion that stemmed from my cartoon “Palin for President” (November 14, 2009). I love Ted talks and this particular presentation is certainly thought-provoking. Jonathan Haidt brings up some intriguing psychological studies that illuminate morality and group behavior.

Mr. Haidt challenges us to escape our own self-righteousness, which he describes as the “natural state” of humans on questions of morality. Easier said than done, but I think it’s something worth reminding oneself on a regular basis.

Thanks again to Turino for the tip!

The esteemed art critic Robert Hughes has covered developments in the art world since the early 1970s. He has been one of the loudest voices protesting the art-for-the-art-market’s-sake that has dominated museums and auction blocks in the last twenty years.

Personally, I find myself in utter agreement with Mr. Hughes:
-What is the message of this generation of artists? I would argue that they are intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt.
-If the ‘artist’ serves only as a conceptual genitor (ordering teams of interns to actually create the art), what is the point of creating it at all? Apparently, so that it can be sold.

The program “The Mona Lisa Curse,” for which I have created a youtube playlist and embedded it below, succinctly outlines the incestuous relationships between ‘artists’ such as Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons and their ignorant, super rich clientele. The real danger, Mr. Hughes shows, is that this fad for art as a collectible is pushing out the meager budgets of museums and leaving them at the whim of rich collectors. These wealthy collectors, now the main buyers of works available at auction, can lend their property to museums to increase its worth, and thus control the narrative of the art world.

As we’ve all learned, this Friday’s episode of the Tonight Show will be Conan O’Brien’s last. In honor of Conan’s last week on the Tonight Show and his unrealized dream of servicing what he called “the greatest TV franchise of all time” for more than a few months, I thought I’d select a couple of videos here that illuminate Conan’s genius.

Conan, I only hope that you’ll continue to patronize the intellectual, younger viewers who have been so loyal. It may not be as large of a group as the baby boomers who prefer Leno’s softball and blue-collar attitude, but you have managed to compromise yourself to a much smaller degree and still attained unimaginable success. I look forward to seeing you back on the air in September!

Conan’s Class Day speech at Harvard:

Also, here’s the intro to the very first Late Night with Conan O’brien in 1993.  Embedding was disabled, so youtube will open in a new window.

After spending a painful long weekend without internet access, I’m back in the nation’s capital.

The buzz in DC is all about the race for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts. No one really knows what the outcome will be this evening, but Ezra Klein and David Weigel took on the issue on bloggingheads today. Their conversation highlights the structural elements of our democracy that make this Senate seat so important (the security of the Democrats’ supermajority), and whether these rules are arcane and backwards:

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam

A great conversation reflecting on our newly bygone decade: the oughts. Maybe not the best decade for the US of A, but there’s hope for the word as a whole and therefore America as well.

I absolutely love bloggingheads.tv and I’ll be sharing some of my favorite episodes on this blog – hopefully folks will enjoy them as much as I do.

It seems only appropriate that the inaugural “Ted’s Bloggingheads Pick” features Robert Wright and Christopher Hitchens.  Wright is a regular on Bloggingheads and is absolutely fantastic at exposing the logical gaps in the arguments of his counterparts.  Hitchens is, of course, Christopher Hitchens.  This December 10, 2009  diavlog was the second of two which the duo taped consecutively, and Wright gets a bit testy with the unflappable Mr. Hitchens.  The pair’s first meeting focused on the Iraq war and this episode centers on the subject of religion and morality.

Without further ado: