Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format from the University of South Florida. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF.
All the books are available for free download or listen to online. Over 200 selections include everything from adventure to tragedy, Jules Verne to Sherlock Holmes. You will find the readers of the content to be excellent compared to other similar sites of classic literature.
Also available is a link for the books to open in iTunes. Here is a sample of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne
With ample doses of talent, spirit, and charisma, Flatt and Scruggs rose to the popular peak of the bluegrass heap during their 17-year association with Columbia. With Lester Flatt's casual vocal style and Earl Scruggs's groundbreaking banjo technique, the Foggy Mountain Boys brought bluegrass into the country mainstream more so than either Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers.
Earl Scruggs is the great innovator and master of the 5-string banjo; but many do not know that he was also excellent on the guitar. This song, Jimmy Brown the Newsboy, features Earl on lead guitar.
Earl said that he learned a lot about guitar from his friend and neighbor, Mama Maybelle Carter. His style is very similar, except for finger movement.
It is a sad fact of life that the Golden Age of Hollywood was not a Golden Age for African Americans. Particularly in the Thirties, African American characters were often outright stereotypes. It was the era of Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best, actors whose speciality was playing characters who were stereotypically lazy, dim witted, and illiterate. Even in an era when offensive stereotypes permeated everything from big budget feature films to Warner Brothers cartoons, however, there were African American actors whose work would change the image of blacks on film for the positive. Among these actors was comedian Eddie Anderson, best known for playing Jack Benny's valet Rochester on the long running Jack Benny Programme.
Possessing an immediately recognisable, gravelly voice that was something like a foghorn, there can be no denying that Eddie "Rochester" Anderson was one of the most popular radio and television stars of the 20th Century regardless of race. In the course of his career he became the highest paid African American actor for a time and one of the highest paid stars in radio. And while Eddie Anderson is best known as Rochester, he also had a highly successful career as a character actor in motion pictures. Indeed, Paramount considered Eddie Anderson such a box office draw that they once wanted him for one of their Bob Hope movies. Jack Benny, who had Mr. Anderson under contract, turned Paramount down with the words, ""It's bad enough having him steal my pictures." Jack Benny may have had little success in motion pictures, but his comedy partner Eddie Anderson was a bona fide movie star, one who could have easily stolen a.......... (read full article)
Storage ... Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, in the company warehouse in California. Photo: The New York Times
Inspired by a pillar of antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, Brewster Kahle has a grand vision for the Internet Archive, the giant aggregator and digitiser of data, which he founded and leads.
"We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans," Kahle said.
"We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans."
Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive
As of Tuesday, the archive's online collection will include every morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs devoted to news.
Archived ... Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.
The latest ambitious effort by the archive, which has already digitized millions of books and tried to collect everything published on every web page for....... read more
While in college, Holmes visits a friend and strikes a tender spot when talking to his friend’s father. This leads him into his investigation of a mystery involving blackmail.
Two of Musgrave’s domestic servants disappear after he catches the butler looking at the Musgrave ritual. He asks for Holmes’s assistance in finding them.
Holmes becomes involved with a case that involves a robbery of an invaluable assortment of things and then the murder of a coachman of a nearby estate.
Holmes calls Watson to witness his last move in a case about the murder of a colonel. His wife is the prime suspect because they were having an argument when he died.
Dr. Watson receives a letter from an old friend that tells about a treaty that was stolen from his office. Watson refers the letter to Holmes to investigate.
A conitnuation of part 1 in which Dr. Watson receives a letter from an old friend that tells about a treaty that was stolen from his office. Watson refers the letter to Holmes to investigate.
Holmes arrives at Watson’s home after escaping three murder attempts and a threat from his nemesis Moriarty. Holmes is determined to bring Moriarty to terms in order to uphold justice and make his career.
Do you remember all those warnings about home taping? Did you ignore them and furtively record some of your favourite radio shows anyway? Do you have an attic or a garage or even an old cardboard box under the spare bed full of tapes or cassettes of Pick of the Pops, Saturday Club, Easy Beat,Top Gear or Housewives’ Choice?
Well the good news is you got away with it!
Not only that, but the BBC would love to recover some of the great shows it broadcast and didn’t archive. And as part of the Corporation’s brilliant 90th anniversary celebrations, it’s declaring a radio amnesty, and asking you to help.
That’s me above with my first tape recorder. My Dad bought it for me as a present for passing the 11 Plus (it was like Year 6 SATs kids!) and it set me on the road to a lifetime in radio including spells as head of music at Radio 1 and chief exec of the Radio Academy.
These days I work as an independent producer and it was while my colleague Heather Davies and I were working on our mammoth 50-part series, Sounds of the 20th Century for Radio 2, that we realised the need for a project like this.
The BBC’s sound archive is a terrific resource for(more...)
Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album Tempest reveals that he has lost none of his fire.
What should we expect from Bob Dylan in 2012? After 50 years on the road, it is surely remarkable that rock’s greatest and most revered lyricist is still going at all, let alone fiercely engaged with music, still performing hundreds of gigs a year, still writing and recording. Tempest, released by Columbia Records next week, will be Dylan’s 35th studio album. What is even more remarkable is that it is among his best ever.
If there has been a criticism of Dylan’s later work, it is that the lyricism only rarely touches the poetic heights of his classic Sixties and Seventies songs. He has had a tendency to write in simple, bluesy rhyming couplets with phrases liberally borrowed from traditional songs. There is a sense of patchwork in which tension often derives from collision and contrast, the friction of ideas, characters and images rubbing up against each other in places where you are not quite sure they really belong. While Tempest maintains some of this jackdaw sensibility, Dylan sounds genuinely fired up by the possibilities of language. The whole album resounds with snappy jokes and dark ruminations, vivid sketches and philosophical asides. (The TELEGRAPH)read more...
The full album is streaming for a limited time directly on iTunes by following this link.
Using a smartphone, a computer, and an iPod, you can keep your grandchildren happy, busy, and quiet...and help them learn at the same time. Here are several examples of strategies that use technology in a win-win way. Read More...
The network has made a script deal for the CBS TV Studios-produced Western, which originally aired on CBS from 1957-63.
CBS is looking to reboot Have Gun - Will Travel with two-time Oscar-nominated writer David Mamet at the helm.
The network has made a script deal for the CBS TV Studios-produced Western, which originally aired on CBS from 1957-63. During its six-season run, the drama starring Richard Boone as Paladin not only delivered top-five ratings but also spawned a successful radio show.
If ultimately ordered to series, Have Gun could join Vegas, an upcoming Western starring DennisQuaid and Michael Chiklis, on CBS' schedule. The genre generated heat last year at this time, with many of the broadcast network developing such projects as NBC's The Frontier and Fox's Wyatt Earp effort. More
Here's a look at the opening sequence for the original "Have Gun - Will Travel":
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Music collective Pink Martini has released the last song Phyllis Diller recorded, Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," as a fitting tribute to her memory.
The voice of the late comedian is immediately recognizable on the recording, perhaps a little more wizened, but still strong and full of emotion.
Diller died Monday in Los Angeles at age 95. The song was recorded last February by Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale for the Portland, Ore., collective's next album.
Lauderdale says he may add strings and a clarinet to the simple piano-and-voice recording before the album, "Get Happy," comes out next spring. More
With music festival cruises being all the rage these days, it makes sense that there would be a cruise dedicated to the most popular group of all-time. In March 2013, the Cruise for Beatles Fans will sail from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. on the sea of green for a week-long floating celebration of all things John, Paul, George and Ringo. More
The statue of Sherlock Holmes has today been reinstated in Picardy Place,three years after it was removed to make way for tram works. Councillor Lesley Hinds, Transport Convener, said:
"Commissioned to mark thebirthplace of his creator Arthur Conan Doyle, the magnificent statue of Sherlock Holmes has been ...More
What we have here is a moon — a small one (slightly wider than the state of Arizona) — circling Saturn.
If you look closely, you will see a small splay of light at its top, looking like a circular fountain.
That's because it is a fountain — of sorts. A bunch of volcano-like jets are sending fantastically high geysers of water vapor up into the sky, so high that you can see them in this remarkable print by Michael Benson, back lit by light bouncing off of Saturn.
"Of all the major inventions of the twentieth century, few have had a more profound impact on people's lives than radio and television. By 1933, two-thirds of American homes had at least one radio, twice as many as those with telephones. Forty-five years later, 97 percent of all households had at least one television set. But the numbers cannot convey the contradictory roles that broadcasting has played in American society as it has reshaped the country's politics, economy, and culture.".
Modern.Marvels
"The World of Tomorrow"- it was the theme of the ground-breaking 1939 World's Fair held in New York City. Fittingly, it was there that the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) excitedly revealed the advent of broadcast television.
Television ultimately transformed entertainment and revolutionized the way we see the world. In this intriguing program, THE HISTORY CHANNEL® chronicles the incredible story of television: from the ideas of Philo Farnsworth, a Utah farm boy who developed the first working system in 1925, to the 21st-century technological breakthroughs currently reshaping the medium.
Interviews with media moguls and TV personalities, including legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite, provide an inside look into the industry while broadcast pioneers recall patent battles, competing systems, and the astounding innovation that defined the early years of television.
With the huffdufferapp you can create your own podcast from mp3 files you run across on the web. Play them from your page or add to iTunes. a portable mp3 player by rss, or just download the audio file. Here is a video from ReadWriteWeb showing you how easy it is.
Also visit the Times Past page on huffduffer often to see what is new, and you can also add Times Past to your favorite pod catcher.
Born on June 1, 1926 in Mount Airy, North Carolina, Andrew S. Griffith made it to stardom in the late 1950s acting in film, TV and Broadway productions while also creating albums of comedic monologues. He rose to great popularity as the character Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, which ran from 1960-68. He later returned to TV in the lawyer drama Matlock and recorded several gospel albums.
Here is a biography of Andy that was done sometime before his death.
Eighty years ago, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the iconic comic book character Superman, but it took several years of rejections before they finally sold him to Detective Comics Inc. in 1938. The distinctive superhero made his first appearance in the comics in June 1938 — and since then has appeared in radio dramas, TV shows, video games, newspaper comics and countless films.
How has the Man of Steel evolved over the past eight decades — and what has made him so popular? Those were the questions that intrigued biographer Larry Tye, whose book Superman tells the story of the red-and-blue-clad icon who Tye calls "the longest-lived American hero of the last century."
The Man of Steel has endured in books, movies, radio serials, comic books and cartoons. "Americans embrace Superman partly because he captured so many things that are part of our psyche and part of our sense of ourselves," says biographer Larry Tye. (NPR June 18, 2012) Read More
SYNOPSIS The Hollywood actor Peter Falk, whose name became synonymous with the TV character Columbo played the part for 35 years. In a program first heard in 2007, crime-writer Mark Billingham delves into the mystery that was one of the small screen's greatest detectives.
The raincoat, the cigar, the spluttering convertible car, the villain's deed in the first scene and the final "...just one more thing". The American TV detective series Columbo was a literature inspired, award winning, rule breaking television original.
Billingham tracks down the unusual suspects who made it possible including star Peter Falk, creator William Link, writer Steven Bochco, director Jonathan Demme and guest star villain Robert Vaughn.
