Michael Sandel on Justice, Aristotle & Gay Marriage

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | August 11th, 2010

We have men­tioned him here many times before. Michael Sandel teach­es phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard, includ­ing the ever-pop­u­lar course, “Jus­tice,” tak­en by some 14,000 stu­dents dur­ing the past two decades. (The leg­endary course is now freely avail­able online.) Speak­ing at the Aspen Insti­tute not too long ago, Sandel gave a very abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the course. Call it “Jus­tice in Under an Hour.” (My title, not his.) And, by the time he wrapped things up, he got down to a time­ly ques­tion in Amer­i­ca. Is it just for the state to with­hold the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage from same sex cou­ples? What would Aris­to­tle (who laid the foun­da­tion for west­ern think­ing about jus­tice) have to say about this ques­tion? And how do Sandel’s Har­vard stu­dents grap­ple with it? The full pre­sen­ta­tion is avail­able above; the par­tic­u­lar sec­tion on gay mar­riage is here.

Look­ing for free phi­los­o­phy cours­es? Have a look through the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Visit 890 UNESCO World Heritage Sites with Free iPhone/iPad App

in History, iPad, iPhone | August 10th, 2010

The new Foto­pe­dia Her­itage app for the iPhone and iPad lets the world come to you. (Down­load here.) Draw­ing on 20,000 curat­ed pho­tos tak­en by thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers from the Foto­pe­dia com­mu­ni­ty, this FREE app lets you vis­it (at least vir­tu­al­ly) 890 UNESCO World Her­itage sites. In a mat­ter of min­utes, you can move from Notre Dame in Paris, to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to Machu Pic­chu in Peru, to the Great Pyra­mid of Giza in Egypt. You get the pic­ture. And speak­ing of pic­tures, it’s worth not­ing that all pho­tos are released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. A very nice touch. Let me final­ly men­tion that the app has some smart mashup fea­tures, includ­ing maps show­ing the loca­tion of each site, plus Wikipedia entries offer­ing back­ground infor­ma­tion on each loca­tion. You can start down­load­ing the app right here. (Many thanks to Jane for call­ing this out.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

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Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Science & Atheism

in Current Affairs, Religion | August 10th, 2010

No one debates quite as well as an Oxford pro­fes­sor. And so today we fea­ture two Oxford profs – athe­ist biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and Chris­t­ian math­e­mati­cian John Lennox – debat­ing God and sci­ence in … of all places … Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma. The debate turns large­ly on a ques­tion raised in Dawkins’ 2006 best­seller, The God Delu­sion: To what extent can reli­gious belief and seri­ous sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery go hand-in-hand? The debate is live­ly, and the thought seri­ous. A good way to spend 90+ min­utes. And Brazil­ian read­ers, you’re in luck. You get sub­ti­tles. If you would like to pur­chase a copy of the debate, you can buy it through the Fixed Point Foun­da­tion, the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that orga­nized the event. You can also watch a ver­sion of the debate on the Fixed Point web site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God — Part II

 

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Science Under a Microscope

in Science | August 9th, 2010

What hap­pens when you study sci­ence in a sci­en­tif­ic way? When you apply sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods to sci­ence itself? When you put sci­ence under its own micro­scope and ask, “What is sci­ence real­ly all about?” These are some of the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions that the CBC pro­gram Ideas tack­les when it spends 24 hours inter­view­ing his­to­ri­ans, soci­ol­o­gists, philoso­phers and sci­en­tists who have thought long and hard about the nature of sci­ence. You can access the first five episodes below, or go straight to the full col­lec­tion here.

Episode 1 — Steven Shapin and Simon Schaf­fer
Episode 2 — Lor­raine Das­ton
Episode 3 — Mar­garet Lock
Episode 4 — Ian Hack­ing and Andrew Pick­er­ing
Episode 5 — Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour

Many thanks to Paul for the tip here.

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Christopher Hitchens on Cancer, Life and Religion

in Life, Religion | August 9th, 2010

Christo­pher Hitchens has­n’t turned inward since his can­cer diag­no­sis in June. Nor, as some might have antic­i­pat­ed, has he budged from his athe­ist views out­lined in his 2007 best­seller God Is Not Great. And if you hear rumors of an even­tu­al deathbed con­ver­sion, don’t believe them. That’s the mes­sage he pass­es along to Ander­son Coop­er in a new CNN inter­view (above). Also, Hitchens has just pub­lished a new piece in Van­i­ty Fair where he talks about his intro­duc­tion to (esoph­a­gus) can­cer in a way that only Hitchens can. Regard­less of what you think about Hitchens, it’s def­i­nite­ly worth a read…

via Dai­ly Hitchens

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Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated (Part II)

in Math, Music | August 6th, 2010

Michal Levy takes John Coltrane’s clas­sic, “Giants Steps,” and inter­prets it through flash ani­ma­tion. We have post­ed a YouTube ver­sion above, but you should ide­al­ly watch this bril­liant clip on Levy’s web site here.

This is not the first time that “Giant Steps” has been ani­mat­ed. Last year, we high­light­ed a pop­u­lar video that makes Coltrane’s tune come alive on paper. You can watch it dance here.

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Journey to the Center of a Triangle

in Math | August 6th, 2010

In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy.

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Harvard Presents Free Courses with the Open Learning Initiative

in Harvard, Online Courses | August 5th, 2010

Always good to see anoth­er major uni­ver­si­ty mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the open course move­ment. The Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive under­tak­en by the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Exten­sion School now offers eight free cours­es. This clus­ter of cours­es – the first Har­vard has put for­ward – cov­ers a nice range of top­ics. They fea­ture some heavy-hit­ting mem­bers of the Har­vard fac­ul­ty. And they’re freely avail­able in audio and video. The full list appears below as well as in our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

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