The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
In late November, NASA’s Curiosity, the world’s biggest extraterrestrial rover, began rocketing toward Mars (see photos of the launch here) in search of any hint that the red planet might have provided a home for microscopic life. The Curiosity will eventually reach Mars in August after covering 345 million miles. Earlier this year, an artist released a rather dramatic animation depicting key moments [...]
≡ Category: Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
The construction began in the year 2000, and over the years, Miniatur Wunderland, located in Hamburg, Germany, has staked its claim as the largest model railway in the world. Watch as you take a ride across the seven sections: Harz, the fictitious city of Knuffingen, the Alps and Austria, Hamburg, America, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. As the video attests, [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
This fall, the world’s population reached seven billion. A sobering thought. How did we get to this point? Producer Adam Cole and photographer Maggie Starbard of National Public Radio have put the world’s accelerating population growth in perspective in a two-and-a-half minute video, above. In those two and a half minutes, 638 babies will be [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Life, Psychology | ≅ 2 Comments
During the 1960s, George Carlin had something of an epiphany. Confronted by the counterculture, the young comedian realized that he wasn’t staying true to himself — that he was trying to be Danny Kaye, a very mainstream star, when he was really an outlaw and a rebel at heart. (Watch him on The Tonight Show [...]
≡ Category: Psychology, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you attended the recent Society for Neuroscience conference, you had the chance to see some unprecedented 3D imaging of the brain — images that showed the exact order in which women’s brain regions (80 in total) are activated in the sequence leading to an orgasm. For Barry Komisaruk (professor of psychology at Rutgers University), this [...]
≡ Category: Art, Current Affairs, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
In early October of 2009, Malcolm McLaren was nearing death but didn’t know it yet. He showed up at the 2009 Handheld Learning conference feeling fatigued, but managed to deliver a provocative and heartfelt speech titled, “Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Txt Pistols,” in which he reflects on his life growing up in post-World [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
For a brief time in the 1950s, Chet Baker seemed to have everything going for him. With the chiseled good looks of a James Dean, he was one of the key figures in the West Coast jazz scene that emerged in the wake of Miles Davis’s 1949-1950 Birth of Cool recordings. Baker first came to prominence in [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
The great French New Wave director, Jean-Luc Godard, turns 81 years old today. And Woody Allen, the legendary comedic filmmaker, turned 76 just two days ago. So what could be more perfect than to serve up Godard’s 1986 short film Meetin’ WA? What you get is Godard, one of the driving forces behind La Nouvelle [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, Comedy, Physics, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
With a fast-moving mixture of comedy and seriousness, an interview on The Colbert Report is something of an improvisational flying trapeze act. “Stephen Colbert is an amazingly good interviewer,” writes physicist Sean Carroll, “managing to mix topical jokes and his usual schtick with some really good questions, and more than a bit of real background knowledge.” Beneath [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 4 Comments
In late 1964, the John Coltrane Quartet (featuring McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison and Trane himself) recorded A Love Supreme in one session. Often considered Coltrane’s masterpiece, the album has influenced jazz musicians far and wide. It has been deemed an American national treasure by the Smithsonian. And no jazz collection should go without [...]
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