The Beginning and Evolution of Life

in Art, Random | July 8th, 2010

It’s an unsci­en­tif­ic point of view by BLU. Thanks @wesalwan for send­ing our way…

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The Stanford Mini Med School: The Complete Collection

in Science, Stanford | July 8th, 2010

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Through­out the past year, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offered stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. Now you can watch these lec­tures for free. The fall and win­ter lec­tures (20 lec­tures in total) are com­plete­ly avail­able online. And the spring lec­tures are get­ting rolled out start­ing this week. You can access the full lec­tures series in mul­ti­ple for­mats below:

  • Fall 2009, The Dynam­ics of Human Health — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Win­ter 2009, Human Health and the Fron­tiers of Sci­ence — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Spring 2010, Trans­form­ing Our Under­stand­ing of Human Health and Dis­ease — iTunes — Web Site

The entire series also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)

in Music | July 7th, 2010

Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jim­my Page appears on a BBC chil­dren’s tal­ent show to play some skif­fle. Mix­ing togeth­er strands of Amer­i­can blues, jazz, coun­try and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK dur­ing the 1950s. Lon­nie Done­gan got the craze going. And it was­n’t long before John Lennon formed his own skif­fle band – The Quar­ry Men (pho­to here) … lat­er to become The Bea­t­les. Head­ing into the 60s, a matur­ing Jim­my Page took his music in entire­ly new direc­tions, which brings us to our post last week: The Strange Tale of Dazed and Con­fused.

Video via Laugh­ingSquid

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West Bank Story: Parody for Peace

in Current Affairs, Film | July 7th, 2010

With Ben­jamin Netanyahu vis­it­ing Barack Oba­ma this week, we’ll hear some chat­ter about get­ting the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian peace talks back on track. But, let’s be hon­est, no one is expect­ing any real break­throughs here. Peace, love and under­stand­ing – the rad­i­cals and reac­tionar­ies won’t give you that these days. Only movie mak­ers will, which brings us to West Bank Sto­ry, a 21 minute film that par­o­dies the 1950s clas­sic musi­cal, West Side Sto­ry, a pro­duc­tion which is itself adapt­ed from Shake­speare’s Romeo and Juli­et. Direct­ed by US film­mak­er Ari Sandel, West Bank Sto­ry pre­miered at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2005, and then won an Acad­e­my Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2006. In mak­ing the film, Sandel had three main goals: to make peo­ple laugh, to advo­cate peace, and to por­tray the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans in a fun­ny but bal­anced way. You can learn more about the direc­tor’s approach here.

Oth­er than watch­ing the film above, you can view it direct­ly on Google Video or down­load a copy here. Also find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Michael Tilson Thomas: How Mahler Changed My Life

in Music | July 6th, 2010

For Gus­tav Mahler’s birth­day this week, we have Michael Tilson Thomas, direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny … and the YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, revis­it­ing the pro­found impres­sion Mahler’s music made on his own per­son­al devel­op­ment. He recalls being intro­duced to Das Lied Von Der Erde when he was 13, and it marked an epiphanal divid­ing point in his life. There was life before Mahler, and a new life after. In this relat­ed clip, Leonard Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca’s great com­pos­er, offers a per­son­al intro­duc­tion to Das Lied Von Der Erde. You can find more inter­views with renowned orches­tra con­duc­tors here.

A big thanks to Zoran in Greece for send­ing these clips our way.

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The Crisis of Capitalism Animated

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | July 5th, 2010

The economic/financial pic­ture is look­ing ugly once again. Indeed, just yes­ter­day, the most emailed New York Times arti­cle warned that the stock mar­ket might be on the verge of an epic crash, one that will bring the Dow below 1,000. So how did we wind up in this glob­al cred­it mess? We’ve heard var­i­ous expla­na­tions, most assum­ing that our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem did­n’t quite func­tion as it should, and that a few reg­u­la­tions will take care of the prob­lem. But this is not the posi­tion tak­en by David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er (now at CUNY). Draw­ing on Marx­i­an analy­sis (it’s still alive and well some­where), Har­vey sug­gests that the cri­sis is built into cap­i­tal­ism itself. It’s not the result of too few reg­u­la­tions. Rather it’s part of cap­i­tal­is­m’s inter­nal log­ic. (Mark Man­call, an emer­i­tus Stan­ford his­to­ry prof, echoes some of these basic thoughts on “Enti­tled Opin­ions” by the way.) The ani­mat­ed video above is an out­take from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed by Har­vey at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce in the UK. You can watch the video in full here. Mean­while, David Har­vey has also made avail­able online a free, 26 hour course that offers a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal. It appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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The Strange Tale of “Dazed and Confused”

in Music | July 2nd, 2010

The wheels of jus­tice turn slow­ly…

Jim­my Page per­formed “Dazed and Con­fused” with The Yard­birds back in 1968, then immor­tal­ized the song with his next band, Led Zep­pelin, while also giv­ing him­self full writ­ing cred­it. For almost 42 years, this has­n’t sat par­tic­u­lar­ly well with Jake Holmes, an Amer­i­can folk singer, who first wrote and record­ed “Dazed and Con­fused” in 1967. Now he has filed suit (see PDF of com­plaint here) and wants Page to make amends. Some mon­ey and half a writ­ing cred­it. You can watch the vin­tage Led Zep­pelin ver­sion above and lis­ten to Holmes’ orig­i­nal ver­sion below. The Led Zep ver­sion was cer­tain­ly changed in ways, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties are assured­ly there…

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Move Over Oil, Algae is Coming

in Current Affairs, Science | July 1st, 2010

We’ve entered the “Age of Tough Oil.” Hav­ing tapped out the easy oil, we’re now left drilling in geo­log­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly risky places. And, of course, this makes BP-style oil spills more an inevitabil­i­ty than a one-time fluke. Lis­ten to today’s NPR inter­view with Michael Klare for more on this.

Find­ing reli­able sources of renew­able ener­gy is now the order of the day. Hap­pi­ly, researchers at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty have iden­ti­fied an unlike­ly fuel source. Algae. Watch above.

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