Eagles Hatch, Millions Watch

in Video - Science | April 21st, 2011

The Iowa-based Rap­tor Resource Project works to fos­ter pop­u­la­tion growth among threat­ened bird pop­u­la­tions through­out the mid­west. They man­age 23 nests, edu­cate oth­ers in nest-site man­age­ment, and — best of all for those liv­ing far from the wilder­ness — main­tain sev­er­al web­cams at their sites. You can fol­low sev­er­al fam­i­lies online, includ­ing fal­cons, owls and osprey.

But the most pop­u­lar live stream keeps track of these bald eagles in Dec­o­rah, Iowa. While we were typ­ing up this post, we had the stream up in anoth­er win­dow: Along with about 90,000 oth­er view­ers, we watched one of the eagles shel­ter­ing three eaglets from a strong wind, 80 feet high in the snow-cov­ered nest. The oth­er was pre­sum­ably out hunt­ing. (The RRP’s blog has a nice expla­na­tion of how the par­ents pro­tect their young from cold and snow, both in the moment and through smart nest design.) The video above shows the 24-hour hatch­ing of their first egg, on April 1st and April 2nd, edit­ed down to just 10 min­utes.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Charlie Chaplin Mini Film Festival

in Film | April 21st, 2011

A few things to know about Char­lie Chap­lin. He starred in over 80 films, reel­ing off most dur­ing the silent film era. In 1914 alone, he act­ed in 40 films, then anoth­er 15 in 1915. By the 1920s, Chap­lin had emerged as the first larg­er-than-life movie star, if not the most rec­og­niz­able per­son on the plan­et.

The actor still holds enough cul­tur­al sway that Google gave him a spe­cial doo­dle for his birth­day last week. And now we give you a 4‑in‑1 col­lec­tion of Chap­lin films. Cre­at­ed in 1938, this mini film fes­ti­val, run­ning 46 min­utes, presents The Adven­tur­er, The Cure, Easy Street and The Immi­grant, all filmed in 1917. (Find an alter­nate ver­sion here.) Plus if you head into our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, you will find anoth­er 10 Chap­lin films, all free. Just scroll down to the Silent Film sec­tion, and you’ll be on your way…

via Curios­i­ty Counts

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Diary: The Last Short Film by Tim Hetherington

in Current Affairs, Film, Life | April 20th, 2011

Ear­li­er today, Tim Het­her­ing­ton, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who pro­duced and direct­ed the award-win­ning film Restre­po, was killed in the Libyan city of Mis­ura­ta. Although inter­est­ed in diverse art forms, Het­her­ing­ton spent more than a decade work­ing in war zones. He was a cam­era­man on Liberia: An Unciv­il War (2004) and The Dev­il Came on Horse­back (2007), then direct­ed Restre­po, a film about a pla­toon of sol­diers in Afghanistan. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. And, that same year, Het­her­ing­ton also shot a short film, Diary, which he sum­ma­rized in this fash­ion:

‘Diary’ is a high­ly per­son­al and exper­i­men­tal film that express­es the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of report­ing. It’s a kalei­do­scope of images that link our west­ern real­i­ty to the seem­ing­ly dis­tant worlds we see in the media.”

You can watch Diary above and also vis­it a slideshow of Het­her­ing­ton’s pho­to­graph­ic work here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Symmetry of Life

in Radio, Video - Science | April 20th, 2011

Last year, film­mak­ers Will Hoff­man, Daniel Mer­cadante, and Julius Metoy­er III pro­duced their first con­cep­tu­al video based on a Radi­o­Lab episode called “Words.” Now the trio is back, play­ing on ideas explored in a new Radi­o­Lab episode, Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Sym­me­try, which med­i­tates on how “sym­me­try shapes our very existence–from the ori­gins of the uni­verse, to what we see when we look in the mir­ror.” You can watch their lat­est video above, and stream below the radio episode upon which it is based. And if you’re not famil­iar with Radi­o­Lab, a pro­gram that’s chang­ing the medi­um, then def­i­nite­ly check out this pro­file in The New York Times.

via Brain­Pick­ings

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Paul Simon’s Christmas Gets Animated in April

in Music | April 20th, 2011

So Beau­ti­ful or So What – Paul Simon’s 12th solo album (and his first release since 2006) hit the streets and ether last week. Crit­ics are call­ing it his best album since The Rhythm of the Saints (1990), if not Grace­land (1986). And it all starts out with “Get­ting Ready for Christ­mas Day,” a song that works well out­side the con­ven­tions of your usu­al Christ­mas song. As The Tele­graph reminds us, the song is over­whelm­ing­ly sec­u­lar, even a tad polit­i­cal:

I got a nephew in Iraq
It’s his third time back
But it’s end­ing up the way it began
With the luck of a begin­ner
He’ll be eat­ing turkey din­ner
On some moun­tain top in Pak­istan.

And it’s writ­ten by some­one out­side the Chris­t­ian faith, though that nev­er stopped Neil Dia­mond, Bar­bara Streisand or Car­ole King from knock­ing out a Christ­mas tune. If there is a spir­i­tu­al ele­ment, it per­haps comes down to this: Quite catchi­ly, the song’s cho­rus builds around excerpts from a 1941 ser­mon by the Rev. J.M. Gates, an influ­en­tial preach­er who became the most record­ed Gospel singer before World War II. Get more on Gates and his sam­pled ser­mon here.

Today, we’re offer­ing three videos that accom­pa­ny this song. First, a splen­did ani­ma­tion fea­tured above. Next, the offi­cial­ly released video. And final­ly a live per­for­mance record­ed on The Col­bert Report late last year.

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The Physics of the Bike

in Physics | April 20th, 2011

Please give this video a sec­ond to get going.

We have all seen or expe­ri­enced it. When trav­el­ing at the right speeds, bikes can prac­ti­cal­ly steer them­selves, remain­ing upright and defy­ing the pull of grav­i­ty. Physi­cists thought they fig­ured out this minor mys­tery long ago. But a new paper (read the PDF here) by Andy Ruina (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty) and Jim Papadopou­los (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin — Stout) chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. This video, which comes to us cour­tesy of Sci­ence Fri­day, explains…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics: Free Cours­es

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

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Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold

in Film, Media, TED Talks | April 19th, 2011

Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s newest doc­u­men­tary, The Great­est Movie Ever Sold, expos­es the myr­i­ad ways in which pop­u­lar media is almost whol­ly spon­sored, leased, bought and brand­ed by pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly — and inten­tion­al­ly — Spur­lock made sure his doc­u­men­tary would also be almost whol­ly spon­sored, leased, bought and brand­ed by pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. In his very fun­ny TED talk, Spur­lock (Super Size Me, 30 Days) explains how he fur­thered his exper­i­ment in “pure trans­paren­cy” by encour­ag­ing spon­sor­ships of, you guessed it, his very fun­ny TED talk.

Con­fused? That’s because pure trans­paren­cy is a lot eas­i­er to envi­sion than exe­cute. Find out why start­ing at minute 6:18.

via TED

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Rare Footage: Home Movie of FDR’s 1941 Inauguration

in Film, History, Politics | April 19th, 2011

The vin­tage video above is an excerpt from a 16 mm home movie show­ing Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt on Jan­u­ary 20, 1941, the day of his Third Inau­gu­ra­tion. This silent col­or movie was shot by FDR’s son-in-law (Clarence) John Boet­tiger, who was then work­ing for the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca, and the qual­i­ty of this rare footage is quite out­stand­ing. Watch the full 14-minute ver­sion here.

FDR can first be seen at 2:45, heav­i­ly sup­port­ed by his old­est son James. This is one of the rare moments on film where Roo­sevelt can actu­al­ly be seen walk­ing, and it’s obvi­ous how dif­fi­cult it was for him to walk after polio left him par­a­lyzed from the hips down in 1921. Next, FDR is seen on the pres­i­den­tial plat­form with his wife Eleanor and Chief Jus­tice Charles Evans Hugh­es, tak­ing the Oath of Office and giv­ing his Inau­gur­al Address. The full text of the address can be read cour­tesy of Yale Law School, and a high-res­o­lu­tion scan of the Inau­gu­ra­tion Cer­e­monies Pro­gram has been uploaded by The Library of Con­gress.

FDR was the first Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to suc­cess­ful­ly run for a third term due to the pre­car­i­ous inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion in 1941. (Get the audio file of FDR’s State of the Union from Jan­u­ary 6, 1941 here). After George Wash­ing­ton declined to run for a third term in 1796, it had become an unwrit­ten rule to fol­low his lead. But it was not until the 22nd Amend­ment from 1947/1951 (“No per­son shall be elect­ed to the office of the Pres­i­dent more than twice.”) that this restric­tion was enshrined into law. FDR was, of course, elect­ed for a fourth term in 1945, but died of a mas­sive stroke on April 12, 1945.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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