Color Photos From 1909

in Art | September 3rd, 2008

“Col­or film was non-exis­tent in 1909 Rus­sia, yet in that year a pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii embarked on a pho­to­graph­ic sur­vey of his home­land and cap­tured hun­dreds of pho­tos in full, vivid col­or. His pho­to­graph­ic plates were black and white, but he had devel­oped an inge­nious pho­to­graph­ic tech­nique which allowed him to use them to pro­duce accu­rate col­or images.”

To view the pho­tos click here, and learn how he accom­plished this, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn the Art of Pho­tog­ra­phy: The Nikon Way
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America Needs More Palin … Michael Palin, That Is

in Comedy, Video - Arts & Culture | September 3rd, 2008

Below, some vin­tage Mon­ty Python footage… (And see our relat­ed piece: 150 Mon­ty Python Sketch­es.

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500 KM Asteroid Hits Earth

in Science, Video - Science | September 3rd, 2008

The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel has pro­duced a rather impres­sive (though cer­tain­ly bleak) sim­u­la­tion of what would hap­pen:

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Stanford Online Writing Courses (Fall)

in Stanford | September 2nd, 2008

A quick fyi: Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its fall line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

Class­es will start dur­ing the lat­er this month. Unfor­tu­nate­ly some of the class­es are full. And a few only have a few spots left. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

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The Comic Book Introduces Google’s New Web Browser

in Google | September 2nd, 2008

Here’s a heads up from Altaf, one of our read­ers…

The tech world is buzzing today about Google Chrome, the new web brows­er com­ing out of Moun­tain View. If you’re won­der­ing what it’s all about, you can read a com­ic book (pro­duced by Google) that intro­duces the new ini­tia­tive. (Win­dows users can down­load the brows­er here; Mac users, includ­ing yours tru­ly, seem to be out of luck for now.) The experts, who have looked under the hood, are enthu­si­as­tic so far. Walt Moss­berg, the tech review­er for the Wall Street Jour­nal, ren­ders his ver­dict: “Chrome is a smart, inno­v­a­tive brows­er that, in many com­mon sce­nar­ios, will make using the Web faster, eas­i­er and less frus­trat­ing. But this first version—which is just a beta, or test, release—is rough around the edges and lacks some com­mon brows­er fea­tures Google plans to add lat­er. These omis­sions include a way to man­age book­marks, a com­mand for email­ing links and pages direct­ly from the brows­er, and even a progress bar to show how much of a Web page has loaded.” You can read the full review here. Now, let the brows­er wars begin again.

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The 50 Greatest Arts Videos on YouTube

in Art, Literature, Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | September 1st, 2008

One of our British read­ers turned us on to this post by the Guardian, not­ing that they took a page from our gen­er­al play­book. The post fea­tures 50 of the best YouTube clips from across the arts, some of which we’ve fea­tured here in the past. Among the videos, you’ll find vin­tage per­for­mances by John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­i­day, read­ings by Jack Ker­ouac, an inter­view with Eugène Ionesco, clips of Nir­vana rehears­ing in a garage, Vladimir Nabokov talk­ing about Loli­ta, Jack­son Pol­lock drip­ping paint out­side his home, and Mar­lon Bran­do doing a screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause. We have post­ed the Bran­do clip below. There are some def­i­nite gems here. Now dive in. And don’t for­get to work through our YouTube playlist and our piece 70 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube, where you’ll find enrich­ing video col­lec­tions.

Thanks Stephen for the tip. And read­ers, keep the good rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing!

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iPods in Iraq

in Apple, Language Lessons | September 1st, 2008

There’s a curi­ous lit­tle piece over at TUAW.com. Appar­ent­ly Amer­i­can sol­diers in Iraq and Afghanistan are being sup­plied (on a lim­it­ed basis) with iPods equipped with spe­cial soft­ware that will help them com­mu­ni­cate in Iraqi Ara­bic, Kur­dish, Dari and Push­to. The soft­ware will hand­i­ly “dis­play a pho­net­ic trans­la­tion, speak a phrase through an attached speak­er, dis­play the phrase in local writ­ing, or demon­strate hand ges­tures that are com­mon in Ara­bic.” Sure­ly this is a can­di­date for our once pop­u­lar piece: 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPhone.

If you want to learn a good 40 lan­guages with your iPod, see our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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What a Hurricane Looks Like From Outer Space

in Uncategorized | August 31st, 2008

In antic­i­pa­tion of Gus­tav.… Here’s what Hur­ri­cane Dean looked like for the crew fly­ing in a NASA space shut­tle last August. You can check out more NASA videos on YouTube here. It’s also added to our YouTube playlist. Thanks to Bill for point­ing this out. (Read­ers: If you see good pieces of cul­tur­al media, feel free to send them our way.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Genius Looks Like at Zero Grav­i­ty

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On the Lighter Side: Re-Thinking Classic Films

in Film | August 29th, 2008

End­ing the week on a lighter note …

A backer of indie film fes­ti­vals, Volk­swa­gen presents “See Film Dif­fer­ent­ly” — a series of videos that fea­ture amus­ing re-inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sic movies. Here, you’ll find new takes on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Die Hard, and Mary Pop­pins. Below, we’ve fea­tured anoth­er (some­what racy) bit and added it to our YouTube Playlist.

via Slash­film

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Knock $100 Off Amazon’s Kindle

in Uncategorized | August 28th, 2008

Nice find by Kottke.org. If you’re will­ing to sign up for an Ama­zon cred­it card (with no annu­al fee), you can get a $100 rebate on the Kin­dle, Ama­zon’s fast-sell­ing e‑book read­er. This brings the price down to $259. And, as Kot­tke warns, you should always read the fine print. You can get more info here, and buy the Kin­dle here.

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Teach Your Children Mandarin … They’re Going to Need It

in Language Lessons | August 27th, 2008

Thomas Fried­man’s lat­est opin­ion piece in the New York Times starts like this:

After attend­ing the spec­tac­u­lar clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Bei­jing Olympics and feel­ing the vibra­tions from hun­dreds of Chi­nese drum­mers pul­sat­ing in my own chest, I was tempt­ed to con­clude two things: “Holy mack­er­el, the ener­gy com­ing out of this coun­try is unri­valed.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teach­ing your kids Man­darin.”

There’s prob­a­bly a good deal of truth to his last point. So to keep your kids (or your­self) com­pet­i­tive in the glob­al mar­ket­place, we’re high­light­ing a series of free Man­darin pod­casts, all of which can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. And, as a quick aside, I should note that Roset­ta Stone is cur­rent­ly run­ning a sale (through the end of August) that will let you get 10% off their audio prod­ucts, which includes instruc­tion in Man­darin and many oth­er lan­guages. (Click here for more info)

  • Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users..
  • Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
  • Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
  • Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
  • iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
  • Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
    • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
  • Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
    • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the PDF that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
  • World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

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