The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Astronomy, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Reid Gower writes: “NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings …” but “none of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd.” Strange given that “NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.” Taking matters into his [...]
≡ Category: Physics, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Every year, The New Scientist sponsors an illusion contest, and, above, we have the winner of the 2010 edition: A contraption created by Koukichi Sugihara (Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan) that appears to defy gravity, allowing wooden balls to roll up slopes. But, in actual fact “the orientations of the slopes [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Product placement – it became commonplace during the 1980s, but it has a much longer history, one that goes right back to the beginning of film. Oliver Noble’s video lightly (emphasis on lightly) traces the evolution of conspicuous product placement in film. A little tale of the not-so-good, the bad and the ugly…
≡ Category: e-books | ≅ 6 Comments
Definitely worth a quick mention. The Oxford English Dictionary, otherwise known simply as the OED, can be accessed for free until February 5. This gives you access to 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, over 1000 years of English. In brief, the authority on the English language. To access the dictionary, simply login with trynewoed as both [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Fun with science. The world’s smallest periodic table etched onto a strand of hair belonging to chemistry Professor Martyn Poliakoff (University of Nottingham). This clip comes from the Periodic Videos collection and it comes recommend by the great @OliverSacks.
≡ Category: Film, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
Open Source, it’s not just for software. It’s for hardware too. The new film, Arduino: The Documentary, revisits a project launched in the Italian town of Ivrea back in 2005. The challenge? To develop cheap, easy-to-use electronics components for design students. (You can get into the technical side of things here.) The message? Geek.com summarizes [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature | ≅ 3 Comments
Two Men, a short film directed by Dominic Allen, takes an old philosophical story by Franz Kafka, one set in Europe of course, and adapts it to a contemporary Aboriginal Australian context, using indigenous “non actors.” In reworking Kafka’s tale (read the original text here), Allen hoped to “affirm an element of humanity’s commonality” … [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 7 Comments
Today Joan Baez, one of our great folk singers, amazingly turns 70. When you think the 60s, you think of a very young Baez. The video above brings you way back (we think) to 1958, when Baez was 17, to a concert she played at the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass. While the teenage [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic for the New York Times, has started the year with a playful way of finding out “what makes great music great?” To answer the question, he has invited readers to make a list of the Top 10 composers in history. And that invites answers to a series of secondary [...]
≡ Category: Life, Psychology, TED Talks | ≅ 6 Comments
You have heard the message before – the secrets to living an excellent life. But they bear repeating from time to time. And Neil Pasricha, editor of the 1000 Awesome Things blog, communicates it all in a rather touching and earnestly straightforward way. This talk comes from TEDxToronto, staged in September 2010…. Related Content: Every Ted [...]
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