≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Not long before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan was interviewed by Charlie Rose and discussed the troubled state of scientific knowledge in America, and how it threatens our democracy. Before Richard Dawkins came along, Sagan was already out there, making the case for scientific thinking, arguing that it let us make progress and keeps [...]
≡ Category: Film, Science | ≅ Comments
Earlier this week, we highlighted Snagfilms.com in our collection “20 Places to Watch Free Movies Online.” When you dig into their collection, you will find some well known, recent films, including Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and Naomi Wolf’s The End of America. And then you can also stumble upon some worthwhile educational documentaries. Above, we [...]
≡ Category: Science, Television | ≅ Comments
Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, courtesy of PBS. (Click to watch complete film.) The film takes you inside our relationship with the plant world, and shows “how four familiar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the potato — evolved to satisfy [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Science | ≅ Comments
The Colbert Report
Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
≡ Category: Music, Science | ≅ Comments
Stanford students head to the Galapagos Islands, then rap about what they’ve learned. Evolutionary rap. What a concept…
Meanwhile, the professor whose voice you hear at the outset, Bill Durham, taught a course in Stanford Continuing Studies (my day job) last year, and we have made it available as a free podcast. It’s called Darwin’s Legacy, and [...]
≡ Category: Media, Science | ≅ Comments
Back when Richard Dawkins (Oxford University) published The God Delusion in 2007, he made a fairly unexpected appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Quite the contrast in characters. Now that he has published his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, it was time for Dawkins to meet up with the bumptious one again. Here it goes. [...]
≡ Category: Art, Science | ≅ Comments
This year, Nikon held a contest and selected the best “photomicrographs,” essentially pictures taken through the microscope. 20 finalists were selected in total, and you can view them on Nikon’s web site, or even more easily on Wired’s web site. Among the finalists, you’ll find the picture above. Nope, it isn’t a Van Gogh. It’s [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
50 years of space exploration condensed into one rather beautiful image. Make sure that you click the items to get the historical details…
Listen to great lectures and university courses on the iPhone. Get our free iPhone app.
via @courosa
≡ Category: Physics, Science | ≅ Comments
It’s rare that a video trending on YouTube actually fits the mission of this blog. But here you have one. As the producer of this video writes, this is a “musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn — Cosmos remixed. Almost all [...]
≡ Category: Business, Math, Physics, Science | ≅ Comments
This comes to us via a tip from Twitter. The Khan Academy has now posted on YouTube over 800 videos (find a complete list here) that will teach students the ins-and-outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more. The clips have been recorded by Salman Khan, a Harvard Business School and MIT grad. [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Smithsonian.com is featuring a series of photos taken by spacecraft that have traveled across our solar system, reaching other planets and approaching the sun. To see these images, you can enter the photo gallery here, and to view more photos, make sure that you click on the small dots located on the right-hand side of [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Science | ≅ Comments
Just a quick fyi: Audible.com is giving away a free chapter (in audio) from a new book, Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry that Created the Nuclear Age (preview it on Amazon here). Written by Amir Aczel, a skilled popular science writer, the book takes a close look at the scientists who discovered the destructive potential [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
A little breaking news… 35 leading universities have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a simple goal — educating the public about new scientific breakthroughs. In the old days, universities depended on the traditional press to spread the word about new scientific advances. Now, with journalism in crisis and newspapers folding, the schools can [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Speaking Wednesday night at Harvard, James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, was asked by NPR’s Robert Krulwich: ”Can a gentle person do well in science?” His response: “Jesus would not have succeeded.” Sad commentary, and it’s the type of comment that you’d expect from Watson. But it’s also somewhat disproved by the career of E.O. Wilson, [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Brilliant, and we’ve added this one, too, to our YouTube Favorites. Now I’m off for the long weekend. See you Tuesday!
≡ Category: Google, Science | ≅ Comments
Google Earth has somewhat outgrown its name. These days, Google’s satellite program (download it here) gives you more than a unique view of our planet Earth. It also offers a nice tour of Mars (and the Moon). The Mars tour is guided by a familiar voice — the voice of Ira Flatow, who hosts the well [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy, Science | ≅ Comments
Why did so many find Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection so subversive and disconcerting straight from the beginning? American philosopher Daniel Dennett explains. To get to the meat of things, you might want to skip to 1:16.
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Making the Web Work for Science – Full
How can the web advance the progress of science? It’s a big question, obviously. And some smart folks have something to say about it. Here we have Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media, one of the leading tech publishers), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Founder), Stephen Friend (founder of Rosetta Inpharmatics [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Rather humorous. You can catch more of Steve Spangler’s scientific work on his YouTube channel and web site. We’ve also added him to our list of Intelligent YouTube Collections.
≡ Category: History, Science | ≅ Comments
Is Wally Wallington onto something?
Thanks Jillian for sending this one along…
≡ Category: Physics, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
From The New York Times:
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates believes that if he had been able to watch physicist Richard Feynman lecture on physics in 1964 his life might have played out differently…
However, Mr. Gates, who is also well known for his sharp and varied intellectual interests and his philanthropic commitment to education, said this week that he [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
The title says it all. Lots of science lectures from leading thinkers. Some scientists (Dawkins, Hawking, etc.) listed here are household names. Others are not. Note that most lectures come from broader video collections that we were mentioned in our popular piece: Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites.
via @acourosa. Also check out [...]
≡ Category: Physics, Science | ≅ Comments
Back when I was at the now defunct Alliance for Lifelong Learning (an e-learning venture put together by Stanford, Oxford and Yale), we did a religion course that keyed off of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. No one thought highly of the book, but the dean of the Yale Divinity School believed that the book’s [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Interviewed over at Edge.org, Jonah Lehrer (Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of the new book How We Decide) begins:
How do you take [the brain], this piece of meat that runs on 10 watts of electricity, and how do you study it in its actual context, which is that it’s not a brain in a [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Science | ≅ Comments
Daniel Goleman has followed up his previous bestsellers, Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, with a new one — Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. Ecological intelligence is a way for us to avert environmental catastrophe, and it depends on our knowing whether products are truly environmentally friendly or [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
What will happen 3 to 5 billion years from now, when our galaxy will likely merge with the Andromeda galaxy? The (soundless) video above will give you a quick preview. This footage from the Hubble Space Telescope offers multiple views of recent galaxy collisions. It’s worth noting that when galaxies “collide,” they don’t literally hit one [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
Just watch, and maybe turn down the sound a little…
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Comments
In April 1990, The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space and has since sent beautiful images back to earth. The Telegraph in the UK has gathered together some of the most spectacular ones. Click here to see some of the best. (And look to the top right for the “Next” button to see more.)
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
“NASA’s STEREO spacecraft sees Jupiter move behind the Sun in this 30 hour animation compressed into just 11 seconds. Meanwhile, you can see Jupiter’s moons orbiting it.” Get more on this cool footage from Discover Magazine and be sure to check out the Bad Astronomer Channel on YouTube, which features more videos along these lines.
≡ Category: Science, Stanford | ≅ Comments
This is Part 1 of a funny but also substantive talk about primate sexuality given by Robert Sapolsky to his Human Behavioral Biology class at Stanford University. As Cory Doctorow noted when featuring this video over at Boing Boing, Sapolsky (author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers) does a great job of lecturing on biology, [...]
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