Filmmaker Roman Polanski Arrested After 31Years

in Film | September 27th, 2009

A lit­tle bit of break­ing news com­ing out of Zurich, Switzer­land. More cov­er­age in The New York Times here.

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Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking Remixed

in Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

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 sam­ples and footage are tak­en from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos and Stephen Hawk­ing’s Uni­verse series.” You can down­load the track here. And, mean­while, I’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.

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Michael Sandel’s Free Course on Justice, the Most Popular Course at Harvard, Is Now Online

in Online Courses, Philosophy | September 25th, 2009

Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and WGBH Boston have post­ed online Michael Sandel’s very pop­u­lar course, “Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” How pop­u­lar is it? Over 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents have tak­en this course over the past 30 years. The course takes a close look at our under­stand­ing of jus­tice by explor­ing impor­tant, con­tem­po­rary moral dilem­mas. Is it wrong to tor­ture? Is it always wrong to steal? Is it some­times wrong to tell the truth?  We have post­ed the com­plete playlist of lec­tures above.

You can watch the video lec­tures on YouTube and iTunes and get more infor­ma­tion on this course at this Har­vard Web Site. The lec­tures have also been added to our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, where you can also find more than 200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Teach­es You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course: A Free Online Course

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Math & Science Tutoring on YouTube

in Business, K-12, Math, Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

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. And to give you a feel for them, we’ve post­ed above the first in a long sequence of lec­tures on dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions. (The remain­ing lec­tures can be found here.) This YouTube chan­nel, which now appears on our list, Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions, is one of sev­er­al video sites that pro­vide free online tutor­ing via video. As men­tioned in the past, you can find online good video col­lec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to chem­istry and cal­cu­lus.

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Armstrong’s Case for God

in Religion | September 24th, 2009

In recent years, we have seen a num­ber of books pub­lished that have made the case for athe­ism: Richard Dawk­in’s The God Delu­sion, Christo­pher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, Sam Har­ris’ Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation, and Daniel Den­net­t’s Break­ing the Spell: Reli­gion as a Nat­ur­al Phe­nom­e­non. It was almost as if a dam had bro­ken, and sud­den­ly a voice that had­n’t been heard in some time, at least not in the US, was let loose. The books hit hard, one after anoth­er, and they made their point. And now Karen Arm­strong, who has writ­ten more than 20 books on Islam, Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty, offers a reply. Her new book pub­lished this week, The Case for God: What Reli­gion Real­ly Means, takes a his­tor­i­cal look at God and con­cludes that we mod­erns (athe­ists, evan­gel­i­cals and the rest) are work­ing with a facile con­cep­tion of God. And then she sug­gests an alter­na­tive way of see­ing things. You can get a taste for her think­ing in this NPR inter­view con­duct­ed this week: Lis­ten with the play­er below, or via these links (MP3 — iTunes — Stream):


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Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials

in Television | September 23rd, 2009

adviewsThanks to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now access a dig­i­tal archive of vin­tage tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials dat­ing from the 1950s to the 1980s. Even­tu­al­ly, this col­lec­tion will fea­ture close to 12,000 dig­i­tized com­mer­cials, and it will let you see how Amer­i­ca’s tra­di­tion­al brands (IBM, Maxwell House, Amer­i­can Express, Avis, etc) evolved through the medi­um of main­stream com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion. You can learn more about this col­lec­tion called Adviews with this intro­duc­to­ry video or via the Adviews web­site, and you can watch the vin­tage com­mer­cials through iTunes. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t see a way to access these clips via oth­er means. Sor­ry about that.) Via @LibrarySecrets

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Aus­tralian Screen Archive

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties …

The Free Music Archive

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Sublime Photos of our Solar System

in Science | September 23rd, 2009

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 the page. And note that you can down­load these pho­tos as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space

The Hub­ble Space Telescope’s Great­est Images

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Bob Dylan Christmas Preview

in Music | September 22nd, 2009

Here’s a sneak pre­view of Bob Dylan’s forth­com­ing Christ­mas album. It will hit the streets in Octo­ber, and you can pre-order now. A safe assump­tion: this will be a “love it” or “hate it” album.

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