Waiting for Superman (to Fix America’s Broken School System)

in Education, Film | September 20th, 2010

Davis Guggen­heim, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning direc­tor of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, has issued a new clar­i­on call for our times: Wait­ing for Super­man, a new film that takes a hard look at Amer­i­ca’s fail­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the chil­dren it’s leav­ing behind, and the reform­ers try­ing to turn things around. Above, you can watch the offi­cial trail­er for the movie being released in select US the­aters. And, right now, if you pledge to pur­chase a tick­et, you can also direct a dona­tion to a class­room of your choice.

Some­where down the line (and ide­al­ly soon­er than lat­er), I hope that Guggen­heim and Para­mount Pic­tures will decide to make this film freely avail­able to the pub­lic. It always struck me that the film­mak­ers lim­it­ed the impact of An Incon­ve­nient Truth by keep­ing it behind a pay wall. Hope­ful­ly, this time, they will recoup their mon­ey and give the film the free­dom to spread an impor­tant mes­sage. There’s gen­er­al­ly not a moral imper­a­tive to make films free. But, in this case, it seems a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

Note for edu­ca­tion blog­gers: The Huff­in­g­ton Post will be screen­ing the film nation­al­ly, and they invite you to attend. Get details here.

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Dispatches from Afghanistan

in Current Affairs, Life | September 20th, 2010

If the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, has felt dis­tant, then this video report by Glob­al Post will give it some real col­or, if only for a short while. The ini­tial video spells out what you will see: the after­math – and human costs – of a fire­fight between U.S. and Tal­iban forces in the north­east­ern Kunar Province. Glob­al Post’s blog, Dis­patch­es: Afghanistan, is a live blog that tracks the coun­terin­sur­gency cam­paign and pro­vides vet­er­an report­ing from the field. You can fol­low it here.

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The Unseen Sea: San Francisco Natural Beauty in HD

in Art, Life | September 19th, 2010


The San Fran­cis­co Bay Area hard­ly needs any dress­ing up. Its nat­ur­al beau­ty speaks for itself. But this short HD film by Simon Chris­ten, a pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tor and aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cer­tain­ly gives artis­tic expres­sion to the allur­ing land­scape of this coastal region. Clouds take on the appear­ance of waves, and lights look like lava, as the col­lec­tion of time laps­es roll by. The film (which you can catch in a strik­ing large for­mat here) comes to us via @AndrewHazlett. Nick Cave pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing music — “Mary’s Song” from the sound­track of Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James.

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The Jane Goodall Online Archive

in Science | September 18th, 2010

A quick fyi: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic has pulled togeth­er a handy dig­i­tal archive that fea­tures a slew of arti­cles writ­ten by (or about) Jane Goodall, the pio­neer­ing researcher who con­duct­ed a 45-year study of the social and fam­i­ly inter­ac­tions of wild chim­panzees in Tan­za­nia. The archive spans close to fifty years, mov­ing from 1963 to 2010, and it comes com­plete with a pho­to­graph gallery show­cas­ing Goodal­l’s work with chimps. If you want to strip down the impor­tance of her research to its most basic essen­tials, let me refer you to this video: What Makes Us Human?.

via metafil­ter

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Free Online: The Original Superman Cartoon Series in Technicolor (1941–1943)

in Art, Film, Television | September 16th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, we flagged a dig­i­tal archive of com­ic books from the Gold­en Age. Now we stum­ble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that show­cas­es the com­plete Super­man ani­mat­ed car­toon series from the ear­ly 40’s, all in Tech­ni­col­or. Based on the orig­i­nal DC Comics char­ac­ter, these 17 episodes appeared on Amer­i­can movie screens (before the show­ing of fea­ture films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form. The first episode, com­mon­ly known as “The Mad Sci­en­tist” (watch above), was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you some­how missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Super­man saga. These episodes – all now in the pub­lic domain – can be viewed on Youtube. Wikipedia pro­vides some oth­er options for watching/downloading these vin­tage bits of Amer­i­cana media.

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Reviewing Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” with Wit

in Comedy, Literature | September 16th, 2010

Every­where you turn, there’s a review of Jonathan Franzen’s new nov­el, Free­dom. Most appear in print, and they’re but­toned down. Not this one. It’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The video above fea­tures Ron Charles, The Wash­ing­ton Post’s fic­tion crit­ic, tak­ing his own approach.

Speak­ing of Franzen and book reviews: Franzen appeared on San Fran­cis­co radio ear­li­er this week. And the con­ver­sa­tion was mov­ing along quite smooth­ly until Franzen was asked about Michiko Kaku­tani, The New York Times book crit­ic. That’s when the knives came out. You can catch the com­ments below at the 33:20 mark…

[gplay­er href=“https://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2010/09/2010–09-13b-forum.mp3” ] Jonathan Franzen Inter­viewed on KQED Forum. Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010 [/gplayer]

Thanks Male­na for the tip!

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Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Online

in Literature | September 15th, 2010

Togeth­er, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and King’s Col­lege Lon­don are lead­ing a three year effort to unite in one dig­i­tal archive the sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts of Jane Austen’s fic­tion. Since 1845, these texts have been dis­persed among libraries and pri­vate col­lec­tions. Now, they’re get­ting back togeth­er, at least vir­tu­al­ly. When fin­ished, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion will include every man­u­script Austen pro­duced, start­ing dur­ing her youth (around 11 years old) and end­ing with her death at age 41. You can start review­ing some of the first man­u­scripts brought online here, and get more back­ground on the project here. Good find by Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Dominic West (aka Jim­my McNul­ty) Reads Jane Austen

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Paradise Lost

in Film | September 15th, 2010

It’s one part Bam­bi, nine parts Looney Tunes, and runs just under three min­utes. Dil­la, as the film is called, was cre­at­ed by four stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. It was appar­ent­ly their senior project com­plet­ed ear­li­er this year. Nice work Mike, Stan­ley, Dominic and Mikey …

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Everything is a Remix

in Art, Media, Music | September 15th, 2010


“Remix­ing” has fig­ured cen­tral­ly in the Web 2.0 vocab­u­lary. But, remix­ing isn’t new. It has a long his­to­ry, going back as long as we’ve been mak­ing art. Artists have always been col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al, com­bin­ing it, and trans­form­ing it into some­thing new. Kir­by Fer­gu­son’s new video, Every­thing is a Remix, teas­es this apart as he brings you back to 1960s Paris and Lon­don – to the cut-up lit­er­a­ture of William S. Bur­roughs and the songs writ­ten by Led Zep­pelin with a lib­er­al amount of bor­row­ing. This video, the first in a series of four, appears on Fer­gu­son’s web site in a nice large for­mat. Have a look and con­sid­er donat­ing to his Every­thing is a Remix project.

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How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb

in Art, History | September 14th, 2010

Now show­ing on the New York Times web site, a haunt­ing video slideshow called “Cap­tur­ing the Atom Bomb on Film.” It fea­tures 23 arrest­ing images of atom­ic bomb tests con­duct­ed by the US mil­i­tary between 1945 and 1962. The images (all orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the 2007 book How to Pho­to­graph an Atom­ic Bomb) are accom­pa­nied by an audio record­ing of George Yoshi­take. Now 82, he’s one of the few sur­viv­ing cam­era­men to cap­ture these destruc­tive weapons in action.

via @palafo

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China’s Open Courses & Other Tech Dispatches from Asia

in Education | September 14th, 2010

Back in 2003, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment launched its answer to MIT’s Open­Course­Ware project. The “Nation­al Qual­i­ty Course Plan” scoured Chi­na’s vast uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem and select­ed 3,000 best-of-breed cours­es in var­i­ous sub­ject areas. Then, mil­lions of dol­lars were ear­marked to put lec­tures and relat­ed course mate­ri­als online, with the hope that oth­er pro­fes­sors could draw inspi­ra­tion from these resources. But, things did­n’t go so well. Appar­ent­ly rough­ly 50% of these mate­ri­als nev­er made their way online. And the mate­ri­als that did were rarely updat­ed. (More on that here.) Will the project get renewed? Jeff Young, a reporter for The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, went to Chi­na to find out. His report (read it here) is part of a month long series of dis­patch­es that takes you inside Asi­a’s wired class­rooms and high-tech research labs. You can read Jef­f’s dai­ly posts from Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na, South Korea, and India through­out this entire month.

Update: One of our read­ers wrote a the­sis on Chi­na’s open­course­ware ini­tia­tive and offers much more detail on what went right, and what went wrong. You can down­load Stian Håk­lev’s the­sis (for free) here, and be sure to check out Stian’s oth­er brain­child, Peer2Peer Uni­ver­si­ty, oth­er­wise known more sim­ply as P2PU.

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