Writing the U.S. Constitution (in Tweets)

in History, Twitter | May 25th, 2010

223 years ago today, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion start­ed meet­ing secret­ly in Philadel­phia. Sev­er­al months lat­er, the meet­ings end­ed with the sign­ing of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Start­ing today, the Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter will use Twit­ter to reen­act the events of the Con­ven­tion. You can fol­low @SecretDelegate, a mys­te­ri­ous insid­er, who will show you what hap­pened inside the pri­vate pro­ceed­ings. The “Twit­ter Con­ven­tion” will con­clude on Sep­tem­ber 17, when the Con­sti­tu­tion was signed, and only then will the true iden­ti­ty of @SecretDelegate be revealed. You can be among the first to fol­low these tweets.

Look­ing for more Open Cul­ture? Find us on Twit­ter at @openculture.

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Can Monkeys Talk?

in Science | May 25th, 2010

If we believe that Homo sapi­ens (a.k.a. peo­ple) and mon­keys evolved from a com­mon ances­tor, then it makes sense to ask: Can mon­keys use lan­guage like we do? Do they make mere sounds? Or do they use spe­cif­ic sounds to com­mu­ni­cate a range of dif­fer­ent intend­ed things? Robert Sey­far­th, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, uses the case of the Vervet Mon­keys to answer these ques­tions. You can read more about his work in The New York Times.

via RichardDawkins.net

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Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!

in Education, K-12, TED Talks | May 24th, 2010


Some months ago, we asked you to name your favorite TED Talk. And, more than a few of you flagged Sir Ken Robin­son’s pre­sen­ta­tion from 2006, Do Schools Kill Cre­ativ­i­ty? You’re in good com­pa­ny. The talk remains one of TED’s most pop­u­lar videos of all time. Today, TED has released Robin­son’s sequel (of sorts). Record­ed this past Feb­ru­ary, Bring on the Learn­ing Rev­o­lu­tion! “makes the case for a rad­i­cal shift from stan­dard­ized schools to per­son­al­ized learn­ing — cre­at­ing con­di­tions where kids’ nat­ur­al tal­ents can flour­ish.” Give it some time. Per­haps it’s anoth­er talk for the ages.

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Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

in Books, Literature | May 24th, 2010

File this under “bet­ter late than nev­er.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writ­ing his mem­oirs, pro­duc­ing some 5,000 unedit­ed pages. How­ev­er, he stip­u­lat­ed that they could­n’t be pub­lished for at least a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing his death. (Apro­pos see this very rare footage record­ed by Thomas Edi­son show­ing Twain in his last year.) Fast for­ward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this Novem­ber, UC Berke­ley will pub­lish the first vol­ume of Twain’s man­u­script. The Inde­pen­dent tells you more about this lit­er­ary event, and sug­gests why Twain want­ed to keep his auto­bi­og­ra­phy under wraps. Get the full arti­cle here.

via @ebertchicago

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James Joyce Encoded in Venter’s Artificial Life

in Literature, Science | May 23rd, 2010

You may have heard the news last week: J. Craig Ven­ter and a team of sci­en­tists cre­at­ed the first liv­ing organ­ism – a “syn­thet­ic cell” – by way of a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed genome. We’re now see­ing the begin­nings of arti­fi­cial life. And it’s a big sto­ry, with many far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. But where does James Joyce fit into this pic­ture? Let me add this lit­tle fac­toid to the mix: Accord­ing to The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Ven­ter’s team insert­ed DNA water­mark codes into the genome so that they can dis­tin­guish between nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic bac­te­ria mov­ing for­ward. And when this code is trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, it will “spell out the names of the 46 researchers who helped with the project, quo­ta­tions from James Joyce, physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and J. Robert Oppen­heimer, and a URL that any­one who deci­phers the code can e‑mail.” Lots of smarts packed into the tini­est of pack­ages.

UPDATE: The quotes in water­mark appar­ent­ly read: “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” — James Joyce’s A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man; “SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”-A quote from an Oppen­heimer biog­ra­phy, Amer­i­can Prometheus; “WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” — Richard Feyn­man.

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David Simon Takes New York Down a Peg

in Television | May 21st, 2010

Speak­ing in New York City, David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, was­n’t shy about tak­ing the city to task. “There is no city more vain about its posi­tion in pop­u­lar cul­ture, more indif­fer­ent to oth­er real­i­ties, more self absorbed than oth­er cities.” “Man­hat­tan is [now] one big pile of mon­ey,” which leaves it divorced from the real prob­lems fac­ing oth­er Amer­i­can cities. So why are so many sto­ries and tele­vi­sion shows still cen­tered in New York, and how can they tell the real tale of urban Amer­i­ca in 2010?

This talk took place at The New School for Lib­er­al Arts in NYC.

via The Dai­ly Dish

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Bill Gates Holds Office Hours; Talks about Giving Back

in Current Affairs, Technology | May 20th, 2010

The Bill Gates col­lege tour rolled through Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in late April. And Gates brought with him a mes­sage for stu­dents: Phil­an­thropy counts. No mat­ter how young you are, you can start think­ing about giv­ing back.

His vis­it fea­tured a large pub­lic talk where he drove home this point. (Get the full talk in video or audio here.) Then, like any good teacher, he held office hours and answered stu­dent ques­tions posed through Face­book. Watch his respons­es above.

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HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders

in Books, Literature | May 20th, 2010

Huff­Po has pulled togeth­er a list of The 12 Great­est Lit­er­ary One-Hit Won­ders. And it’s a strange list indeed. When you think of “one-hit won­ders,” you think of mem­o­rable songs record­ed by very unmem­o­rable artists – artists who got their 15 min­utes of fame and then fell right off the radar. Mean­while, the Huff­Po list includes some of the most endur­ing names in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture  –  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, J.D. Salinger, and Her­man Melville. They gave us their big nov­els – The Great Gats­by, The Catch­er in the Rye, and Moby Dick – then wrote some oth­er last­ing pieces of fic­tion, both short and long. They hard­ly fad­ed into obliv­ion. And, years lat­er, we’re cer­tain­ly not ask­ing, “what ever hap­pened to old what’s his name?”

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