Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

in Science, Television | October 31st, 2009

Michael Pol­lan’s best-sell­ing book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, cour­tesy of PBS. (Click to watch com­plete film.) The film takes you inside our rela­tion­ship with the plant world, and shows “how four famil­iar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the pota­to — evolved to sat­is­fy our yearn­ings for sweet­ness, beau­ty, intox­i­ca­tion and con­trol.” Accord­ing to a piece in The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, it took eight years to pull togeth­er the fund­ing for the film, and that’s sim­ply because mar­i­jua­na was in the mix. The film runs close to two hours. The pre­view is above, the full film is here. For more films, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Stephen Colbert on Particle Physics

in Comedy, Science | October 30th, 2009

The Col­bert Report Mon — Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Big Bang The­o­ry
www.colbertnation.com
Col­bert Report Full Episodes Polit­i­cal Humor Reli­gion

Got­ta love com­e­dy that riffs on the Large Hadron Col­lid­er. I’ll have some more seri­ous things to say about the LHC in the com­ing weeks. In the mean­time, enjoy the com­ic bit. Have a good week­end…

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Galapagos Rap: 3.5* ’til infinity…

in Music, Science | October 27th, 2009

Stan­ford stu­dents head to the Gala­pa­gos Islands, then rap about what they’ve learned. Evo­lu­tion­ary rap. What a con­cept…

Mean­while, the pro­fes­sor whose voice you hear at the out­set, Bill Durham, taught a course in Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) last year, and we have made it avail­able as a free pod­cast. It’s called Dar­win’s Lega­cy, and it brought togeth­er some of the world’s lead­ing Dar­win schol­ars for the 200th anniver­sary of Darwin’s birth. You access and learn more about the course here.

via Stan­ford’s Face­book page

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Richard Dawkins v. Bill O’Reilly: Round 2

in Media, Science | October 26th, 2009

Back when Richard Dawkins (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) pub­lished The God Delu­sion in 2007, he made a fair­ly unex­pect­ed appear­ance on Bill O’Reil­ly’s show. Quite the con­trast in char­ac­ters. Now that he has pub­lished his lat­est book, The Great­est Show on Earth, it was time for Dawkins to meet up with the bump­tious one again. Here it goes. Watch above.

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Beauty Through a Microscope

in Art, Science | October 15th, 2009


vangoghish

This year, Nikon held a con­test and select­ed the best “pho­tomi­cro­graphs,” essen­tial­ly pic­tures tak­en through the micro­scope. 20 final­ists were select­ed in total, and you can view them on Nikon’s web site, or even more eas­i­ly on Wired’s web site. Among the final­ists, you’ll find the pic­ture above. Nope, it isn’t a Van Gogh. It’s a “10-year old prepa­ra­tion of bar­bi­tal, fenace­tine, val­i­um and acetic acid” cap­tured under a micro­scope.

via @timoreilly

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50 Years of Space Exploration in One Image

in Science | October 11th, 2009

50 years of space explo­ration con­densed into one rather beau­ti­ful image. Make sure that you click the items to get the his­tor­i­cal details…

Lis­ten to great lec­tures and uni­ver­si­ty cours­es on the iPhone. Get our free iPhone app.

via @courosa

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Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking Remixed

in Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

It’s rare that a video trend­ing on YouTube actu­al­ly fits the mis­sion of this blog. But here you have one. As the pro­duc­er of this video writes, this is a “musi­cal trib­ute to two great men of sci­ence. Carl Sagan and his cos­mol­o­gist com­pan­ion Stephen Hawk­ing present: A Glo­ri­ous Dawn — Cos­mos remixed. Almost all sam­ples and footage are tak­en from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos and Stephen Hawk­ing’s Uni­verse series.” You can down­load the track here. And, mean­while, I’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.

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Math & Science Tutoring on YouTube

in Business, K-12, Math, Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

This comes to us via a tip from Twit­ter. The Khan Acad­e­my has now post­ed on YouTube over 800 videos (find a com­plete list here) that will teach stu­dents the ins-and-outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. The clips have been record­ed by Salman Khan, a Har­vard Busi­ness School and MIT grad. And to give you a feel for them, we’ve post­ed above the first in a long sequence of lec­tures on dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions. (The remain­ing lec­tures can be found here.) This YouTube chan­nel, which now appears on our list, Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions, is one of sev­er­al video sites that pro­vide free online tutor­ing via video. As men­tioned in the past, you can find online good video col­lec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to chem­istry and cal­cu­lus.

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