14 Years of US Weather in 33 Minutes, Set to Beethoven

in Random | February 9th, 2012

There’s con­den­sa­tion in the air. You can feel it.

This video packs 14 years of Unit­ed States weath­er (1997 — 2011) into 33 min­utes, pre­sent­ing a total of 120,900 indi­vid­ual frames, each spaced one hour apart. And they’re all set to Beethoven’s Piano Con­cer­to No. 5 in E flat Major. If you want to get right to the dra­ma, we rec­om­mend jump­ing to the cli­mac­tic 27th minute. H/T Devour.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Chilean Earth­quake Waves Shown in Ani­ma­tion

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

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The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

in Astronomy, Education, Science, Video - Science | February 9th, 2012

Here’s some­thing you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, pho­tographed by one of NASA’s Grav­i­ty Recov­ery and Inte­ri­or Lab­o­ra­to­ry (GRAIL) space­craft.

The Moon is “tidal­ly locked” in its orbit around the Earth, mean­ing its rota­tion­al and orbital peri­ods are exact­ly syn­chro­nized. As a result, we always see the same view of the Moon no mat­ter when or where (on Earth) we look at it. In this inter­est­ing video, released last week by NASA, we get a rare glimpse of the Moon’s oth­er side, start­ing with the north pole and mov­ing toward the heav­i­ly cratered south.

The video was cap­tured on Jan­u­ary 19 by the “MoonKAM” aboard one of a pair of GRAIL space­craft that were launched last Fall and began orbit­ing the Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The pri­ma­ry mis­sion of GRAIL is to study the Moon’s inte­ri­or struc­ture and to learn more about its ther­mal evo­lu­tion.

GRAIL is also the first plan­e­tary mis­sion by NASA to car­ry instru­ments ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to edu­ca­tion and pub­lic out­reach. The “KAM” in “MoonKAM” stands for Knowl­edge Acquired by Mid­dle school stu­dents. The pro­gram, led by for­mer astro­naut Sal­ly Ride, will engage fifth- to eighth-graders from across the coun­try in select­ing tar­get areas on the lunar sur­face to pho­to­graph and study. Edu­ca­tors inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing can reg­is­ter at the MoonKAM web­site. To learn more about the video and GRAIL, see the NASA news release.

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Disneyland 1957: A Little Stroll Down Memory Lane

in History | February 9th, 2012

It’s more than a theme park. It’s an icon­ic Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion, a sym­bol of an imag­ined Gold­en Age in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and a site of many good child­hood mem­o­ries. We’re talk­ing about Dis­ney­land. Con­struc­tion began in July 1954 in rur­al Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia, and the park opened but a year lat­er in July 1955. And, thanks to this new­ly-cleaned up piece of footage, you can see Walt’s “mag­i­cal park” just a short two years lat­er. The babies in the strollers are like­ly grand­par­ents today. But the park still looks much the same. Dis­ney His­to­ry Insti­tute offers more com­men­tary on the clip here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

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Werner Herzog Has a Beef With Chickens

in Comedy, Film, Random | February 8th, 2012

It’s part of the beau­ty of Wern­er Her­zog. His films engross us, and the direc­tor pro­vides the enter­tain­ment on the side. You have seen him take a bul­let dur­ing an inter­view in LA. You’ve heard him read “Go the F**k to Sleep” in New York City. And, of course, you’ve watched him eat his shoe (lit­er­al­ly!) after loos­ing a bet to fel­low film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris. Well, today we give you the lat­est, great­est Her­zog moment — his 40 sec­ond dis­course on why he has a beef with chick­ens. h/t Coudal.com

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Neil Young on the Travesty of MP3s

in Music, Technology | February 8th, 2012

Neil Young made head­lines last week when he appeared at the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “D: Dive Into Media” con­fer­ence and voiced his dis­ap­proval of the way music is being heard these days. “We live in a dig­i­tal age,” Young said, “and unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s degrad­ing our music, not improv­ing it.”

Young is deeply dis­sat­is­fied with the sound qual­i­ty of com­pressed MP3 dig­i­tal files, which he said car­ry only five per­cent of the data from the orig­i­nal vinyl or mas­ter record­ings. “It’s not that dig­i­tal is bad or infe­ri­or,” he told the Jour­nal’s Walt Moss­berg and Peter Kaf­ka. “It’s that the way it’s being used is not suf­fi­cient to trans­fer the depth of the art.”

The full 32-minute inter­view is now avail­able online, and can be seen above. Through­out the dis­cus­sion, Young’s com­mit­ment to his cause is clear. “My goal,” he said, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

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Solve For X: Google Presents Moonshot Thinking in Short, TED-Style Talks

in Google, Science, Technology | February 8th, 2012

Last week, Google host­ed a gath­er­ing called “Solve for X,” which brought togeth­er entre­pre­neurs, inno­va­tors and sci­en­tists inter­est­ed in find­ing tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to the world’s great­est prob­lems. These solu­tions weren’t small in scope. No, they were all “moon­shots,” ideas that live in the “gray area between auda­cious projects and pure sci­ence fic­tion; they are 10x improve­ment, not 10%.” And these moon­shot ideas were all pre­sent­ed in TED-style talks that now live on the WeSolve­ForX web­site and the WeSolve­forX YouTube Chan­nel.

Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin kicked off the event and framed the project, paving the way for Nicholas Negro­ponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and One Lap­top Per Child, to dream big and ask: Can emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies empow­er chil­dren to learn to read on their own? Imag­ine how that would change the edu­ca­tion­al prob­lems beset­ting the devel­op­ing world? (Watch above.) Or how about this big thought from Adrien Treuille, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Carnegie Mel­lon, who imag­ines a day when knowl­edge cre­ation won’t be dri­ven by uni­ver­si­ties and cor­po­ra­tions, but rather by loose groups of indi­vid­u­als tak­ing advan­tage of the inter­net and big data. That talk appears right below.

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Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Film, Literature | February 7th, 2012

Today is the 200th birth­day of Charles Dick­ens. He was born in Portsmouth, Eng­land on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1812, the sec­ond of eight chil­dren. When he was 12 years old his father was sent to debtors’ prison, along with most of his fam­i­ly, and Charles went to live with a friend of the fam­i­ly, an impov­er­ished old lady. He was forced to quit school and work in a black­ing fac­to­ry, where he past­ed labels on jars of shoe pol­ish.

Dick­ens nev­er for­got those ear­ly trau­mas. He incor­po­rat­ed his expe­ri­ences and obser­va­tions of social injus­tice into his works, includ­ing David Cop­per­field, Oliv­er Twist and A Christ­mas Car­ol. (Find free nov­els below.) He was the most pop­u­lar writer of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, a vir­tu­al rock star in the days before record­ed music and movies. His sto­ries, pub­lished seri­al­ly in mag­a­zines, were eager­ly await­ed by the pub­lic. Most have remained in print ever since.

The Dick­ens bicen­te­nary is being cel­e­brat­ed with spe­cial events around the world, includ­ing a wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny this morn­ing at Poets’ Cor­ner in West­min­ster Abbey, where actor and film­mak­er Ralph Fiennes, author Claire Toma­lin, and two of Dick­en­s’s descen­dants are sched­uled to give read­ings. For a list­ing of events today and through­out the year, go to Dickens2012.org. Also take a look at the short ret­ro­spec­tive of Dick­ens-inspired movies (above) from the British Film Insti­tute.

To help cel­e­brate, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the best Dick­ens mate­r­i­al from across the Web:

Films (see our com­plete list of Free Movies):

  • Oliv­er Twist: Anoth­er clas­sic by David Lean, this 1948 film stars John Howard Davies as Oliv­er and Alec Guin­ness as Fagin. In 1999 it was ranked 46th on the BFI’s list of the top 100 British films of all time.
  • A Tale of Two Cities: The 1958 film by Ralph Thomas, star­ring Dirk Bog­a­rde as Syd­ney Car­ton and Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette. The film was shot in France’s Loire Val­ley, with sev­er­al thou­sand U.S. sol­diers, post­ed in near­by Orleans, cast as extras.
  • A Christ­mas Car­ol: George C. Scott gives an excel­lent per­for­mance as Ebenez­er Scrooge in this crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 1984 film direct­ed by Clive Don­ner. It pre­miered in Amer­i­ca on CBS tele­vi­sion, and was released the­atri­cal­ly in Great Britain.
  • David Cop­per­field: A 2000 U.S.-Irish tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion star­ring Hugh Dan­cy as David Cop­per­field, Michael Richards as Wilkins Micaw­ber and Sal­ly Field as Bet­sey Trot­wood.
  • The Pick­wick Papers: A 1952 film, adapt­ed and direct­ed by Noel Lan­g­ley and star­ring James Hayter as Samuel Pick­wick.

eBooks (see our com­plete list of Free eBooks)

Audio Books (see our com­plete list of Free Audio Books)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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The Art of Living: A Free Stanford Course Explores Timeless Questions

in Stanford | February 7th, 2012

What is a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion? And how can it help you live a more authen­tic and pur­pose­ful life? They are time­ly and time­less ques­tions that get answered by The Art of Liv­ing, a team-taught course pre­sent­ed to Stan­ford fresh­men. The first lec­ture (above) address­es these ques­tions head on. And the remain­der of the course (17 videos) puts the ini­tial think­ing into prac­tice, using great works of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy to explore what it means to live a well-lived life. Socrates, Pla­to, Shake­speare, Kierkegaard, Niet­zsche, and Toni Mor­ri­son all guide the way. Taught by Lanier Ander­son, Ken­neth Tay­lor and Joshua Landy, the Stan­ford course puts you in a posi­tion to address “fun­da­men­tal and endur­ing ques­tions about what it means to be human.” Whether you work in busi­ness, sci­ence or the arts, you will get some­thing big out of the class.

You can find The Art of Liv­ing in its entire­ty here. Or find the course list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy Sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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