Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Re-Created by Astronomer with 100 Hubble Space Telescope Images

in Art, Harvard, Science, Technology | August 20th, 2013

rsz_starrynight_hst001

Last week, I trav­eled to New York City to gaze into The Star­ry Night. Obvi­ous­ly I’m not talk­ing about the skies above Man­hat­tan, not when my hotel was based in Times Square. No, I’m talk­ing about Vin­cent van Gogh’s post-impres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece that hangs in the MoMA on 53rd Street. Although van Gogh seem­ing­ly felt ambiva­lent about his 1889 paint­ing, many now con­sid­er it one of the most impor­tant works of art pro­duced in the 19th cen­tu­ry. And like any oth­er great paint­ing, it has become a fetishized object, some­times in ways that we can find endear­ing. Take this lit­tle project for exam­ple. Last year, Alex Park­er, a post-doc­tor­al fel­low at the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for Astro­physics, cre­at­ed a mosa­ic of Star­ry Night using 100 Hub­ble pho­tos. He down­loaded the pho­tos from the Euro­pean Space Agency’s web­site, popped them into a free dig­i­tal art soft­ware pack­age called AndreaMo­sa­ic and, voila, pro­duced the image above. You can — and should — view it in a larg­er, high-res for­mat here.

H/T Robin and Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Sec­onds

 

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Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech: Failure is Just Part of Moving Through Life

in Graduation Speech, Harvard, Life | June 1st, 2013

If you watch enough com­mence­ment speech­es, if you gath­er the col­lec­tive wis­dom of peo­ple who “have made it” in life, you start to see a trend. The key to life isn’t being smarter than the rest, though that does­n’t hurt. The key is resilience — your abil­i­ty to deal with inevitable fail­ures, learn from your mis­takes, dust your­self off emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly or finan­cial­ly, and then move for­ward. It’s eas­i­er said than done, but essen­tial. J.K. Rowl­ing, who went from home­less­ness to writ­ing Har­ry Pot­ter, deliv­ered that mes­sage at Har­vard sev­er­al years ago. Now Oprah Win­frey, who emerged from the Jim Crow South to become Amer­i­ca’s most endur­ing TV per­son­al­i­ty, returns to Har­vard to tell stu­dents her ver­sion of that sto­ry:

There is no such thing as fail­ure. Fail­ure is just life try­ing to move us in anoth­er direc­tion. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like fail­ure. … Give your­self time to mourn what you think you may have lost, but then here’s the key: Learn from every mis­take because every expe­ri­ence, encounter and par­tic­u­lar­ly your mis­takes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then fig­ure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to devel­op an inter­nal moral, emo­tion­al GPS that can tell you which way to go.

For more insights into con­struc­tive­ly man­ag­ing fail­ure, you can vis­it these talks below:

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Conan O’Brien’s Har­vard Grad­u­a­tion Speech

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

via Har­vard Gazette

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Listen to Recordings of Allen Ginsberg & Other Poets on Phone-a-Poem, the 1970s Poetry Hotline

in Harvard, Poetry | May 2nd, 2013

phone_a_poemMuch of what we once used the tele­phone for, we now use the inter­net for. Con­verse­ly, some tasks to which the inter­net now seems per­fect­ly suit­ed were once per­formed, imper­fect­ly, through the phone. Take the case of hear­ing poet­ry read aloud. Today, online poet­ry resources are read­i­ly avail­able; you can hear a vari­ety of poets read­ing their work with a few well-direct­ed clicks of the mouse (see our list below). But in 1976, you’d have had to rely on Phone-a-Poem. Oper­at­ed out of Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts by poet Peter Pay­ack, the hot­line offered read­ings by his well-known col­leagues, includ­ing Allen Gins­berg, Denise Lev­er­tov, Don­ald Hall, Charles Bern­stein, For­rest Gan­der, and Anne Wald­man.

Pay­ack mailed these famous poets blank cas­settes to fill with poems and then return; into Pay­ack­’s answer­ing machine the tapes would go for eager dialers to hear auto­mat­i­cal­ly played back. “I gave the aver­age per­son a chance to hear a poem, and if they didn’t like it, they could just hang up,” Pay­ack said to the Har­vard Gazette’s Col­in Man­ning. “Usu­al­ly, if you want­ed to hear the poet’s voice you had to go to poet­ry read­ings, which can be intim­i­dat­ing. But this allowed peo­ple to hear the poet’s voice in their own home, so it wouldn’t be intim­i­dat­ing.” Phone-a-Poem went out of com­mis­sion in 2001, but after a recent exhi­bi­tion of Pay­ack­’s cas­settes at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, you can still hear its poems toll free on, yes, the inter­net, through the playlist embed­ded above.

H/T via @kirstinbutler; image via Har­vard Gazette

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Sylvia Plath Reads “Dad­dy”

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

“PoemTalk” Pod­cast, Where Impre­sario Al Fil­reis Hosts Live­ly Chats on Mod­ern Poet­ry

Bill Mur­ray Reads Wal­lace Stevens Poems — “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Digital Public Library of America Launches Today, Opening Up Knowledge for All

in Art, Books, e-books, Harvard, Photography | April 18th, 2013

dpla

A group of top Amer­i­can libraries and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions launched a new cen­tral­ized research resource today, the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca (DPLA), mak­ing mil­lions of resources (books, images, audio­vi­su­al resources, etc.) avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. First hatched as an idea at Har­vard’s Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety, the DPLA is now real­iz­ing its vision of being “an open, dis­trib­uted net­work of com­pre­hen­sive online resources that draws on the nation’s liv­ing her­itage from libraries, uni­ver­si­ties, archives, and muse­ums in order to edu­cate, inform, and empow­er every­one in the cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions.”

The Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca rolls out today as a beta site with some kinks to work out. Some links to mate­ri­als don’t work at the oth­er end. And right now the offer­ing is built around a mod­est num­ber of online exhi­bi­tions that have been dig­i­tized by cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions through­out the coun­try, accord­ing to Robert Darn­ton, a dri­ving force behind the DPLA. When you vis­it the site, a dynam­ic map and time­line will help you nav­i­gate the col­lec­tions by year, decade or place. It will lead you to exhi­bi­tions, for exam­ple, about the Great Depres­sion and Roo­sevelt’s New Deal, Boston’s sto­ried sports tem­ples, and Pro­hi­bi­tion in the US. Around this core, the DPLA will grow until it tru­ly serves as the dig­i­tal pub­lic library of Amer­i­ca.

You can read more about Robert Darn­ton’s vision for the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

via Har­vard Press

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, .

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

Albert Ein­stein Archive Now Online, Bring­ing 80,000+ Doc­u­ments to the Web

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

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Harvard Thinks Big 4 Offers TED-Style Talks on Stats, Milk, and Traffic-Directing Mimes

in Harvard | April 16th, 2013

Despite hav­ing no expe­ri­ence with schools of its stature beyond what I’ve gleaned from Take Ivy, I do know that Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty cul­ti­vates minds to dis­cuss the next big ideas. That, in fact, has pro­vid­ed the premise for Har­vard Thinks Big, a series that takes a hand­ful of Har­vard edu­ca­tors and the Har­vard-edu­cat­ed and has them talk about what’s next for human­i­ty. The fourth and most recent annu­al iter­a­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big brought sev­en speak­ers on stage, allow­ing each of them twelve min­utes to break down a top­ic of great impor­tance. Seem­ing­ly with an eye toward the widest intel­lec­tu­al vari­ety, Har­vard Thinks Big 4 fea­tures infor­ma­tion-dense mini-lec­tures from experts on sta­tis­tics, lit­er­a­ture, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, law, clas­sics, Chi­nese his­to­ry, and jack­fruit. (That last one comes from Annemarie Ryu, cur­rent Har­vard junior and founder of Glob­al Vil­lage Fruits.) You can watch a col­lec­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big talks on Youtube or on iTunes. At either loca­tion, you’ll also find talks from past years includ­ing Jill Lep­ore on the mean­ing of life and, just below, Edward Glaeser on the ever-increas­ing impor­tance of cities.

There you can watch select­ed talks from Har­vard Thinks Big 4, to which the Crim­son offers a “tl;dr guide” here. “Accord­ing to Kant, art can com­mu­ni­cate that which does­n’t have a name yet,” writes the paper’s Lynn Miao, describ­ing pro­fes­sor Dor­ris Som­mer’s lec­ture, view­able at the top of this post. “That some­how involves the may­or of Bogo­ta replac­ing cops with pan­tomimes to direct traf­fic, which actu­al­ly cor­re­lat­ed with a decline in traf­fic acci­dents and homi­cide rates. Appar­ent­ly, the shock val­ue of clowns, and pub­lic art, reach­es across nations.” Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to hear why milk “can pre­vent obe­si­ty, save up to 1.5 mil­lion deaths from diar­rhea by con­tribut­ing healthy gut bac­te­ria, save pre­ma­ture babies — essen­tial­ly every­thing short of cur­dling when in con­tact with lemon,” for which check out pro­fes­sor Kather­ine J. Hin­de’s pre­sen­ta­tion below. It’s called “Why Mam­mals Suck.” We think of Har­vard as one of the most seri­ous places in Amer­i­ca, but clear­ly, at events like Har­vard Thinks Big, they know how to have a good time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2012: 8 All-Star Pro­fes­sors. 8 Big Ideas

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Michael Sandel’s Famous Harvard Course on Justice Launches as a MOOC on Tuesday

in Harvard, Law, MOOCs, Philosophy | March 10th, 2013

Back in 2009, Har­vard polit­i­cal philoso­pher Michael Sandel made his course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, avail­able on the web for free (YouTube — iTunes — Web). Sud­den­ly life­long learn­ers around the world had access to a pop­u­lar course enjoyed by more than 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents over 30 years. Start­ing this Tues­day, Sandel plans to offer Jus­tice as a free course through edX, the provider of MOOCs (or Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) cre­at­ed by Har­vard and MIT. And here’s one thing you can guar­an­tee: In a sin­gle offer­ing, Sandel will bring his course to more stu­dents world­wide than he did through his decades teach­ing at Har­vard. You can enroll and reserve your free seat here. Stu­dents who receive a pass­ing grade in the course can earn a cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery, which will bear the name Har­vardX.

Jus­tice has been added to our every grow­ing list of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Lewin, the Orig­i­nal Star of Open Edu­ca­tion, Returns with a Brand New Physics MOOC

Get Ready for MIT’s “Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life” on edX

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

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Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Computer Science Course And Other Free Tech Classes

in Harvard, MOOCs, Online Courses, Technology | February 26th, 2013

I’ll con­fess, when it comes to com­put­ers, I’m pret­ty much strict­ly a user. And these days, with the poten­tial free­dom and cre­ative­ly afford­ed by open access soft­ware, the end­less hacks for vir­tu­al­ly every­thing, and the avail­abil­i­ty of free online com­put­er class­es, that seems like kind of a lame admis­sion. So I’m tempt­ed to rec­ti­fy my pro­gram­ming igno­rance by push­ing through what promis­es to be a rig­or­ous intro to com­put­er sci­ence, CS50, Harvard’s intro­duc­to­ry course for both majors and non-majors alike. The course offers a broad knowl­edge base to build on, as you can see from the descrip­tion below:

Top­ics include abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML. Prob­lem sets inspired by real-world domains of biol­o­gy, cryp­tog­ra­phy, finance, foren­sics, and gam­ing. Designed for con­cen­tra­tors and non-con­cen­tra­tors alike, with or with­out pri­or pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence.

Har­vard has made this course avail­able free to anyone—via YouTube, iTunes, and the course page—with a series of lec­tures filmed dur­ing the Fall 2011 semes­ter. The class is led by David J. Malan, an enthu­si­as­tic young pro­fes­sor and Senior Lec­tur­er on Com­put­er Sci­ence at Har­vard, and him­self a prod­uct of Harvard’s Com­put­er Sci­ence pro­gram. Pro­fes­sor Malan has also offered Harvard’s CS50 as a MOOC through edX. In the intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture to CS50 (above), Malan promis­es that “this is one of those rare cours­es that actu­al­ly squeezes your brain so much and your sched­ule so much that by the end of the semes­ter you actu­al­ly feel smarter.”

Pro­fes­sor Malan has become some­thing of a hot shot at Har­vard. His mission—to make com­put­er sci­ence more acces­si­ble and far less daunt­ing. He’s done this in part by gen­er­ous­ly mak­ing sev­er­al of his cours­es avail­able free online to non-Har­vard stu­dents. In addi­tion to CS50, Malan offers the fol­low­ing cours­es for those who want to pur­sue pro­gram­ming or web design fur­ther:

And if you still need some sell­ing on the val­ues and virtues of com­put­er sci­ence, watch Malan below deliv­er an inspir­ing talk called “And the Geek Shall Inher­it the Earth” at Har­vard Thinks Big 2010 (Harvard’s ver­sion of TED Talks).

We’ve added Har­vard’s CS50 to the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es and our list of 150 Free Busi­ness Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Cod­ing Togeth­er

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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How to Operate Your Brain: A User Manual by Timothy Leary (1993)

in Harvard, Philosophy, Psychology | November 16th, 2012

Speak­ing at the Human Be-In in Jan­u­ary 1967, Tim­o­thy Leary uttered the famous phrase bor­rowed from Mar­shall McLuhan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was short­hand for say­ing exper­i­ment with psy­che­delics and achieve new lev­els of con­scious­ness.

Almost 30 years lat­er, Leary had­n’t lost his mis­sion­ary zeal. In 1993 (and only a few years before his death), the for­mer Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor record­ed “a pub­lic ser­vice video” called How to Oper­ate Your Brain. Here, Leary nar­rates an almost epilep­tic seizure-induc­ing video, pro­vid­ing what some con­sid­er “a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion” of sorts. I’d pre­fer to call it an unortho­dox “user man­u­al” that tries to impart Leary’s unique sense of enlight­en­ment:

The aim of human life is to know thy­self. Think for your­self. Ques­tion author­i­ty. Think with your friends. Cre­ate, cre­ate new real­i­ties. Phi­los­o­phy is a team sport. Phi­los­o­phy is the ulti­mate, the ulti­mate aphro­disi­ac plea­sure. Learn­ing how to oper­ate your brain, learn­ing how to oper­ate your mind, learn­ing how to redesign chaos.

As you get deep­er into the med­i­ta­tion, you’ll real­ize one thing. Three decades may have passed since Leary pop­u­lar­ized the catch­phrase of the coun­ter­cul­ture. But he’s still get­ting his ideas from McLuhan. If you fol­low the video (or tran­script) to the end, you’ll dis­cov­er that ones and zeros have basi­cal­ly tak­en the place of LSD. Leary says:

Now we have dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can cre­ate our fan­tasies. We can cre­ate our rhythms, design on screen.… Any­one in any cul­ture watch­ing this screen will get the gen­er­al pic­ture. It’s one glob­al vil­lage. It’s one glob­al human spir­it, one glob­al human race. As we link up through screens, linked by elec­trons and pho­tons, we will cre­ate for the first time a glob­al human­i­ty, not sep­a­rat­ed by words or minds or nation­al­i­ties or reli­gious bias­es.

You can find McLuhan med­i­tat­ing on the con­cept of an Elec­tron­ic Glob­al Vil­lage in anoth­er vin­tage clip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

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