Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Colors of Infinity

in Math | August 3rd, 2010

In 1995, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci­ence fic­tion writer most well known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, pre­sent­ed a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary on the 1980 dis­cov­ery of the Man­del­brot Set (M‑Set). Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty brings us inside the world of frac­tal geom­e­try, and soon enough we’re encoun­ter­ing what has been called “the thumbprint of God.” Clarke nar­rates the film, which has a 54 minute run­time. David Gilmour (gui­tarist, vocal­ist and song­writer for Pink Floyd) cre­at­ed the sound­track. Big hat tip to Greg for send­ing along…

Note: You can pur­chase online the DVD of the doc­u­men­tary, along with the orig­i­nal book on which it was based.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Pete Seeger, 91, Performs BP Protest Song

in Current Affairs, Music | August 2nd, 2010

Bless the man. Pete Seeger, now 91, is still doing it, putting protests into song. On July 24th, he appeared at a Gulf Coast Oil Spill fundrais­er at The City Win­ery in New York City. There, he per­formed a song he co-wrote with Lorre Wyatt: “God’s Count­ing on Me, God’s Count­ing on You.” All pro­ceeds went to the Gulf Restora­tion Net­work. This one is for you, Bob…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Zooming Into the World

in Random, Science | August 2nd, 2010


Last week, a clas­sic film, Pow­ers of Ten, showed us what it looks like when we zoom out into the uni­verse by fac­tors of ten. Hele­na sent us that video. Now, Robert directs our atten­tion to videos that move in the extreme oppo­site direc­tion. They zoom inward, tak­ing us down to the atom­ic lev­el of things that sur­round us – a tooth (above), the human eye and the eye of a fly, an every­day piece of plas­tic, and more. The videos come from John Size­more’s “Weird Weird Sci­ence” col­lec­tion on Dai­ly Motion. Robert gets the copy of The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma (kind­ly donat­ed by Pen­guin) for send­ing these along.

The 50% off sale on great films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion ends today (August 2)! Vis­it sale here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.