That’s one estimate of the size of our universe, and this video (added to our YouTube Playlist), using pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, tries to put it in perspective. For more amazing photos from the Hubble, see this collection.
Harvard Opens Scholarship, Freeing Up Knowledge and Budgets
Yesterday, Harvard University passed a motion (see proposal here) that will require its faculty members to publish their scholarly articles online. On the face of things, this marks a big victory for the open access movement, which is all about making information free and accessible to all. In reality, however, the real winner may eventually be Harvard’s library budget (and the future of scholarship itself).
One of the figures behind the opening of Harvard’s scholarship is Robert Darnton, an eminent historian who now oversees Harvard’s libraries. And, in a piece called The Case for Open Access, Darnton underscores how digital publishing can relieve some important financial pressures on the academy. Under the current publishing model, academics write articles for scholarly journals and then the journals get sold back to the university libraries at exorbitant prices, with some costing more than $20,000 per year. And here the real problem begins: “in order to purchase the journals, libraries have had to reduce their acquisitions of monographs; the reduced demand among libraries for monographs has forced university presses to cut back on the publication of them; and the near impossibility of publishing their dissertations has jeopardized the careers of a whole generation of scholars in many fields.” Digital publishing solves this spiraling problem in a straightforward way. The cost of publishing directly to the web is negligible. There’s no pulp to buy, no publisher’s overhead to pay; no corporation (e.g., Reed Elsevier, the owner of many scholarly journals) looking to pad its profits and get thanked by Wall Street. The cost savings are everywhere.
The traditional publishers will be quick to point out a flaw in the digital publishing model — namely, that it generally means working outside of a peer-review system that ensures the overall integrity of research. But my sense is that there’s no reason that digital publishing and peer review can’t go together. It’s not hard to imagine ways in which conventional forms of peer review could be preserved. But digital publishing also makes possible new forms of peer review that didn’t exist before. Publishing to the web will almost necessarily increase the overall readership of articles, which will encourage more fact checking and critical commentary in turn. And, because we’re publishing on the web, these scholarly articles can become living documents that get better over time. It’s a new way of doing things. It may take a generation to get all the kinks worked out and habits changed. But we will get there.
As a final aside, if you’re interested in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, then you’ll want to check this new site sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation. It aggregates blogs that regularly focus on all things OER, offering you a great starting point for reading in this area.
The Vegetable Orchestra
It’s right up there with the Ukulele Orchestra performing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ Both are added to our YouTube Playlist, which now has 130 subscribers, which is not bad for a fledgling collection.
James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Audiobook
Note: We posted this find back in 2008. But, since then, we’ve found a better audio version of the text. Please find it here.
This is a book that needs no introduction, but we will give it a short one anyway. Published in serial format between 1918 and 1920, James Joyce’s Ulysses was initially reviled by many and banned in the US and UK until the 1930s. Today, it’s widely considered a classic in modernist literature, and The Modern Library went so far as to call it the most important English-language novel published during the 20th century. Although chronicling one ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in 1904 Dublin, Ulysses is no small work. It sprawls over 750 pages, using over 250,000 words, and takes over 32 hours to read aloud. Or, at least that’s how long it took the folks over at Librivox. In the Bloomsday tradition, a cast of readers participated in the project, offering creative readings with “pub-like background noise.” The audio files can be downloaded as many individual mp3 files here, or as one big zip file here. You can also stream an excellent alternative version at Archive.org.
This is not the only Joycean audio that you can download for free. Also at Librivox, you can find several key stories from Dubliners — including, The Sisters (mp3), Araby (mp3), Eveline (mp3), and The Dead (mp3 in zip file).
For more free classics on audio, see our collection of Free Audio Books.
The Secret History of Silicon Valley
What set the stage for Silicon Valley to change the entire landscape of technology? What made companies like Google, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard possible? According to this talk presented at Google by Steve Blank, it all goes back to the aftermath of World War II. It starts when Stanford University and its engineering/electronics department began to focus heavily on military R&D. And it continues during the Korean War, when the University starts developing new technologies that contribute to military intelligence (or what Blank calls “spook work”) and various weapons systems. The next thing you know you’ve got a brain trust in the Bay Area that starts spinning out companies lik Fairchild Semiconductor, the father of all semiconductor companies, and, with that, Silicon Valley becomes Silicon Valley.
Psychedelics Revisited
On Friday, we mentioned the BBC production called “What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity.” Below is another video by the same producers called “Psychedelic Science,” which surveys the past and present of psychedelic drugs, and the new era of scientists exploring ways to use these drugs again for therapeutic purposes (i.e., the treatment of schizophrenia and addiction).
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
Speaking of psychedelics, we’ve posted a documentary below (yet another BBC production) that takes a not entirely flattering look at the life of Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychology professor who went counterculture in 1960s and advocated the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. I remember seeing him years later when I was in college. My memory of the man: Spunky and about as nonlinear as you could get.
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Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
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