Magnetic Fields Made Visible

in Science | December 3rd, 2009

What do nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fields look like? This extra­or­di­nary footage from NASA’s Space Sci­ences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UC Berke­ley) gives you a glimpse and reveals their “chaot­ic, ever-chang­ing geome­tries.”

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Behavioral Economics and Underwater Mortgages

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | December 3rd, 2009

What if peo­ple behaved like banks? Or, more pre­cise­ly, what if indi­vid­u­als hold­ing “under­wa­ter” mort­gages stopped fol­low­ing the social norms of ‘per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty’ and ‘promise-keep­ing’ and instead act­ed like cap­i­tal­ist play­ers in a free mar­ket? Most would dump their sink­ing mort­gages and walk away. That’s the find­ing of Brent White, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, who has pub­lished a new paper called “Under­wa­ter and Not Walk­ing Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Man­age­ment of the Hous­ing Cri­sis.” (PDF) The bot­tom line is that home­own­ers and banks play by two dif­fer­ent sets of rules. Main Street accepts the “emo­tion­al con­straints … active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, the finan­cial indus­try,” and they hold the bag. Wall Street acts in its own self inter­est and gets a fresh start. The only thing they have in com­mon these days are (you guessed it) guns.

Just for the record: I’m not advo­cat­ing a posi­tion here, and I don’t hold an under­wa­ter mort­gage…

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10 Power Tools for Lifelong Learners

in Most Popular | December 2nd, 2009

Every now and then, we like to remind read­ers of the audio/video resources that Open Cul­ture makes avail­able to life­long learn­ers. These col­lec­tions are all free, and can be down­loaded to your com­put­ers and mp3 play­ers. When you add it all togeth­er, you will find thou­sands of hours of free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent here from qual­i­ty sources. If you have a chance, please
  • Free Audio Books:  This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing many clas­sic works of fic­tion, non-fic­tion, and poet­ry. Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Kaf­ka, Shake­speare, Orwell and much more. You can down­load them all straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, then lis­ten any time. (On a relat­ed note, you might want to see our list of Life-Chang­ing Books, accord­ing to our read­ers.)
  • Free Cours­es from Major Uni­ver­si­ties: This list brings togeth­er over 250 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. The­ses full-fledged cours­es range across the human­i­ties, social sci­ences, and sci­ences, includ­ing com­put­er sci­ence. The page is a gold mine for life­long learn­ers.
  • Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages: Cen­tral­ized in one place are free lessons that will teach you 37 lan­guages. Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Japan­ese, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish and Esperan­to — they’re all free and portable.
  • Free eBooks: Here’s a new col­lec­tion that fea­tures over 100 Free eBooks, most of them clas­sics, that you can access on your PC, smart phone (includ­ing iPhone), and Kin­dle.
  • Ideas & Cul­ture Programs/Podcasts:  In this one col­lec­tion, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pro­grams avail­able via pod­cast. The pro­grams will keep you think­ing and cul­tur­al­ly up-to-date, as will our col­lec­tion of sci­ence pod­casts. All can be down­loaded straight to your mp3 play­er.
  • The Best Intel­li­gent Video Sites: Where can you go to find intel­li­gent video? We have list­ed 46 web sites that fea­ture a steady stream of intel­li­gent con­tent: doc­u­men­taries, lec­tures, edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming and much more.
  • Smart YouTube Col­lec­tions: It’s hard to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube. But we have done it. Here you will find upwards of 100 YouTube chan­nels that reg­u­lar­ly serve up smart video con­tent.
  • Our YouTube Picks: Over the past few years, we have fea­tured sev­er­al hun­dred YouTube videos on Open Cul­ture. And some of the best ones we have brought togeth­er in our own YouTube chan­nel. You can sub­scribe to this col­lec­tion and watch new videos as we add them.
  • Great Clas­sic Movies: Our new movie col­lec­tion fea­tures land­mark films for the stu­dent of cin­e­ma. Here, you’ll find numer­ous Chap­lin films from the silent era, 12 Alfred Hitch­cock films, and many oth­er great works from the 1920s, 30, 40s and 50s. You’ll even find some great con­tem­po­rary films as well. Many of the great Amer­i­can direc­tors are rep­re­sent­ed here.
  • Open Cul­ture iPhone App: A lit­tle some­thing spe­cial for iPhone users. When you down­load our free iPhone app, you can take with you, wher­ev­er you go, many of the items list­ed above. Free Audio Books, Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Music and Sci­ence Pod­casts, etc. Give it a try and tell a friend. Note, that per Apple’s require­ments, you will need access to Wi-Fi.

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Elvis Mitchell Talks “Bad Lieutenant” with Werner Herzog

in Film | December 2nd, 2009

Wern­er Her­zog, one of Ger­many’s finest liv­ing direc­tors, has a new film out, The Bad Lieu­tenant (watch trail­ers here), which has a loose rela­tion­ship with Abel Fer­rara’s own Bad Lieu­tenant from 1992. The new film, star­ring Nico­las Cage and Eva Mendes, gets reviewed by A.O. Scott in the New York Times. And now a for­mer Times film crit­ic, Elvis Mitchell, sits down with Her­zog and talks about his “anar­chist” noir film set in New Orleans. The inter­view was aired by KCRW in LA and can be down­loaded in sev­er­al for­mats here, or streamed right below. And, film fans, don’t for­get to check out our new col­lec­tion of free movies online. (It now includes about 120 indi­vid­ual films, and lists 35 sites where you can watch free movies online.)

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The Best of TED: A Stroke of Insight?

in Life, TED Talks | December 1st, 2009

Last week, we wad­ed into the best of TED debate. What’s the best TED Talk out there? It’s hard to say. Pure­ly sub­jec­tive. But we can say one thing. Jill Bolte Taylor’s “Stroke of Insight” talk reach­es the top of many lists. What hap­pens when a neu­roanatomist expe­ri­ences a mas­sive stroke and feels all the brain func­tions she has stud­ied (speech, move­ment, under­stand­ing, etc) sud­den­ly start to slip away? And how do these loss­es fun­da­men­tal­ly change who we are? You’ll find out in a crisp (and at times emo­tion­al) 18 min­utes and 40 sec­onds. You can also read her book that elab­o­rates on her life-alter­ing expe­ri­ence. See My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Sci­en­tist’s Per­son­al Jour­ney.

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When the Day Breaks

in Film | December 1st, 2009

This short ani­mat­ed film, When the Day Breaks, comes to us via The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, which appears on our list of places to watch free movies online. (Scroll to the bot­tom of the page.) In this film direct­ed by Wendy Til­by and Aman­da For­bis, “Ruby the pig seeks affir­ma­tion in the city around her after wit­ness­ing the acci­den­tal death of a stranger… and finds it in sur­pris­ing places. With deft humour and fine­ly ren­dered detail, When the Day Breaks illu­mi­nates the links that con­nect our urban lives, while evok­ing the promise and fragili­ty of a new day.” Thanks Vic­to­ria for this nine min­utes of good­ness!

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The Velvet Revolution Revisited: Havel at Columbia

in History | December 1st, 2009

havel20 years ago, the domi­noes fell in East­ern Europe. Not long after the Wall fell in Berlin, a non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion got under­way in Czecho­slo­va­kia. The Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion took just a mat­ter of six weeks (Novem­ber 17 — Decem­ber 29, 1989) to unfold. It was fast and blood­less, and it put on the world stage Václav Hav­el — the play­wright, turned anti-Sovi­et dis­si­dent, and soon demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia (and lat­er the Czech Repub­lic).

In 2006, Hav­el arrived in New York City, to spend 8 weeks at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. To mark the occa­sion, the uni­ver­si­ty built a web site called Hav­el at Colum­bia that recon­sid­ered Hav­el and the Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion. Along with some intrigu­ing his­tor­i­cal footage, the site fea­tures video inter­views with George H.W. Bush, David Rem­nick (the New York­er edi­tor and author of Lenin’s Tomb), Milos For­man (the great movie direc­tor of Czech her­itage), Edward Albee (the play­wright best known for Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf?), George Soros, and Lou Reed. Col­lec­tive­ly, these con­ver­sa­tions give you a very good feel for the man, the artist, and his his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions. You will also then find a con­ver­sa­tion between Pres­i­dents Bill Clin­ton and Václav Hav­el, and a read­ing of Havel’s play, The Gar­den Par­ty, direct­ed by Israel Horvitz fea­tur­ing Dustin Hoff­man and Robert Klein. Pod­casts of many of these won­der­ful events can be found on iTunes.

Note: The media-packed web­site, Hav­el at Colum­bia, was cre­at­ed by the Colum­bia Cen­ter for New Media for New Media Teach­ing and Learn­ing (CCNMTL) and the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Arts Ini­tia­tive (CUArts). Great work here, and I want to thank John F. for help­ing us put this post togeth­er.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.