Has Stephen Hawking Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

in Physics, Video - Science | March 16th, 2007

With his cut­ting-edge research on black holes in the 1970s, Stephen Hawk­ing emerged as a major play­er in the physics world. Then, with the 1988 pub­li­ca­tion of the best­seller, A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Hawk­ing achieved inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty sta­tus.

As this BBC pre­sen­ta­tion shows, Hawk­ing’s fame might rest on weak­er foun­da­tions than most could have imag­ined. Sev­er­al impor­tant physi­cists, includ­ing Leonard Susskind here at Stan­ford (see our pre­vi­ous ref­er­ences to him), zeroed in on Hawk­ing’s major con­tention that, when black holes dis­ap­pear, they take along with them all infor­ma­tion that ever exist­ed inside them, which leads to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion that there are clear lim­its to what sci­en­tists could ever know about black holes. After 20 years of debate, the Susskind camp seems to have won out, leav­ing Hawk­ing’s lega­cy in ques­tion. This BBC web page will give you the back­sto­ry in brief, but you may want to go straight to this 50 minute video.

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My Trip to Al Qaeda: A New Yorker Video

in Current Affairs | March 15th, 2007

You don’t see web video like this too often… On The New York­er web site, you can now catch a video excerpt of a one-man play being staged in NYC by mag­a­zine staff writer, Lawrence Wright.  (Click here to watch.)

The New York­er pref­aces the video with this:

“This week, the New York­er staff writer Lawrence Wright opened his one-man show, “My Trip to Al-Qae­da,” at the Cul­ture Project, in New York City. Since Sep­tem­ber 11th, Wright has cov­ered Al Qae­da for the mag­a­zine; last year, he pub­lished the book “The Loom­ing Tow­er: Al-Qae­da and the Road to 9/11.” In the course of his work on the roots and the rise of Islam­ic ter­ror­ism, Wright has con­duct­ed more than six hun­dred inter­views and trav­elled to Egypt, Pak­istan, Afghanistan, Sau­di Ara­bia, and much of West­ern Europe. The play, which he wrote and per­forms, is a first-per­son account of his expe­ri­ences, and exam­ines, among oth­er themes, the ten­sion between his roles as jour­nal­ist and cit­i­zen.”


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BondCast (AKA a James Bond Podcast)

in Film | March 14th, 2007

Jamesbond_1Casi­no Royale, which gave the James Bond fran­chise a good shot in the arm, is being released this week on

DVD, and so why not men­tion a new James Bond pod­cast.

Cin­e­mat­i­cal has issued its first Bond­cast that’s filled with news, rumors, spec­u­la­tions, sto­ries and gen­er­al minu­ti­ae about all things Bond. They”ll have a new episode every two weeks, and, read­er be warned, the hosts are fair­ly over the top in their idol­iza­tion of Bond. And you may need to be as rev­er­en­tial to enjoy the ride.


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The Problem with GooTube (and Inside Iran)

in Media | March 12th, 2007

With YouTube and Google Video now sit­ting under the same hap­py cor­po­rate umbrel­la, you can rest assured that the world will receive only a stead­ier stream of home-brewed videos of gui­tar riffs, tread­mill dances, dorm room antics, and pet play­times, the very stuff that makes up YouTube’s all-time list of favorites. Lucky us. But some­where with­in these vast troves of videos reside some valu­able cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. And although it will assured­ly lose the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test that deter­mines rel­e­vance with­in the world of Web 2.0, it’s there nonethe­less, and we’re hap­py to point it out, espe­cial­ly since GooTube does­n’t do much to help on that front. Here’s a good exam­ple of what we’re talk­ing about.If you take seri­ous­ly the recent polit­i­cal talk, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion looks to be on a col­li­sion course with Iran. And should things come to a head, you can guar­an­tee that Amer­i­cans will have next to no sense of what Iran is real­ly like as a coun­try, oth­er than what the admin­is­tra­tion has to say about it. The GooTube video below is a good cor­rec­tive to that. This 90-minute live­ly pro­gram pro­duced by the BBC takes an inside look at “one of the most mis­un­der­stood coun­tries in the world, look­ing at the coun­try through the eyes of peo­ple rarely heard — ordi­nary Ira­ni­ans.” And as it goes on to explain things, “it took a year of wran­gling to get per­mis­sion to film inside Iran but the result is an amaz­ing por­tray­al of an ener­getic and vibrant coun­try that is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to the usu­al images seen in the media.” Take a look:

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25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video

in Most Popular, Online Courses, UC Berkeley | March 10th, 2007

Not long ago, we wrote a pop­u­lar piece about UC-Berke­ley’s iTunes ini­tia­tive which, to sum it up,allows any­one, any­where, to down­load com­plete uni­ver­si­ty cours­es to their iPods for free. Amaz­ing. Today, we want to point out that Berke­ley also makes avail­able full-fledged cours­es via video/webcast. You can find the com­plete list of cours­es here, but below we have list­ed below 25 cours­es that fig­ure into a “core” under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts cours­es, which will teach you a lot and, even bet­ter, cost you noth­ing. Each of these cours­es, com­ing straight from the class­room, can be accessed with Real Play­er, and some can also be accessed as MP3s.

On a relat­ed note, our Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es will give you access to many more uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures and cours­es, so be sure to give them a look. You may also want to check out our “playlist” of intel­li­gent videos on YouTube as well as our recent piece: 10 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube.

UC Berke­ley Cours­es:

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Bono, Richard Dawkins and Al Gore Speaking at TED

in Uncategorized | March 9th, 2007

Every year, a thou­sand “thought-lead­ers, movers and shak­ers” get togeth­er at a four-day con­fer­ence

called TED (which is short for Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment and Design). In past years, the list of speak­ers has ranged from Sergey Brin and Lar­ry Page to Bill Gates, to Her­bie Han­cock and Peter Gabriel, to Frank Gehry and Bil­ly Gra­ham. This year Bill Clin­ton, Paul Simon, and Lar­ry Lessig are set to speak. It almost goes with­out say­ing that not just any­one can attend such an event. You’ll need an invi­ta­tion for starters, plus $4400 to cov­er admis­sion fees. If you can look past the coun­try club­bish­ness of the event, then you may find it worth spend­ing time with the audio (iTunes — Feed) and video (iTunes — Feed) pod­casts of talks from recent con­fer­ences. Some “vod­casts” you’ll want to check out include: Bono, Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Mal­colm Glad­well, and Al Gore. (We’re not sure what to say about Tony Rob­bins.)

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The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Uncategorized | March 8th, 2007


     

 


Ituneslogo New entries since 2/22 are high­light­ed in red.

#1. Cof­fee Break Span­ish  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#2. Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#3. The French Pod Class  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#4. Legal Lad’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a More Law­ful Life  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#5. MyDai­lyPhrase Ital­ian  iTunes  Web Site

#6. French for Begin­ners  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#7. Learn French with Dai­ly Pod­casts  iTunes  Feed  Web Site 

#8. Final­ly Learn Span­ish — Beyond the Basics iTunes  Feed  Web Site 

#9. TEDTalks (Video)  iTunes  Feed  Web Site 

#10. MyDai­lyPhrase Ger­man  iTunes  Feed  Web Site 

#11. Let’s Speak Ital­ian  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#12. Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide  iTunes  Feed

#13. JapanesePod101.com  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#14. LearnItalianPod.com  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#15. Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion — Times Online iTunes  Web Site

#16. Learn Ger­man with German-Podcast.de  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#17. Learn French by Pod­cast  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#18. Learn Man­darin Chi­nese with Chinesepod.com  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#19. Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire  iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#20. Prince­ton Review Vocab­u­lary Minute  iTunes  Feed  Web Site  

#21. Ins­ta Span­ish Lessons  iTunes  Feed  Web Site  

#22. NPR: Satire from the Unger Report  iTunes  Feed  Web Site 

#23. Man, God and Soci­ety in West­ern Lit­er­a­ture (Course at UC-Berke­ley) iTunes  Feed  Web Site

#24. Yale Uni­ver­si­ty  iTunes  Web Site

#25. Just Vocab­u­lary iTunes  Feed  Web Site

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

 

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

in Psychology, Video - Science | March 8th, 2007

Back in 1971, Philip Zim­bar­do, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, set up an exper­i­ment that quick­ly and now famous­ly went awry. Here, Zim­bar­do had under­grad­u­ates play the role of pris­on­ers and prison guards in a mock prison envi­ron­ment. Meant to last two weeks, the exper­i­ment was cut short after only six days when the guards, as The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment web site puts it, “became sadis­tic and [the] pris­on­ers became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” For Zim­bar­do, the way things played out says a lot about what hap­pens when good peo­ple are put in bad sit­u­a­tions. And it speaks to how tor­ture sce­nar­ios, like those at Abu Ghraib, become pos­si­ble. (For more on the par­al­lels between the prison exper­i­ment and the tor­ture in Iraq, you may want to check out Zim­bar­do’s talk at a recent con­fer­ence called “Think­ing Human­i­ty After Abu Ghraib.”

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.