Jay‑Z: The Evolution of My Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Shawn Carter – the MC, entre­pre­neur, and recent best-sell­ing author who is known to every­one but his moth­er as Jay‑Z  – proved with the 2010 pub­li­ca­tion of his mem­oir Decod­ed that he is not only one of hip-hop’s top artists, but also one of its top inter­preters.

In Decod­ed, Jay‑Z offers lit­tle in the way of new per­son­al details. He’s been telling that sto­ry in his raps for twen­ty years now – from his father­less child­hood in the projects, to his years deal­ing crack cocaine, to his star­dom, and final­ly to his cur­rent suc­cess as a busi­ness­man and cul­tur­al icon. And what­ev­er the 41-year-old has­n’t divulged yet, he may well have been advised by a lawyer to keep to him­self. Instead of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Decod­ed pro­vides some­thing much more valu­able, a thought­ful analy­sis of his own lyrics and the his­to­ry of his cho­sen art form. Jay‑Z  helps us under­stand that he and hip-hop are rough­ly the same age, and that their sto­ries are almost inter­change­able: When young Shawn Carter first fell in love with the sound of rhymes over beats in Brook­lyn in 1978, he was dis­cov­er­ing the new music just as the new music was dis­cov­er­ing itself.

Ran­dom House has just released an iPad appli­ca­tion of Decod­ed, adding about thir­ty min­utes of mul­ti-media con­tent, includ­ing the video above. You might also want to check out Jay-Z’s appear­ance on Char­lie Rose (on Youtube in 5 parts) and his recent inter­view on Fresh Air.

The Big Cheat

in Business, Math, Random | November 23rd, 2010

There’s high dra­ma in the class­room at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Flori­da. Richard Quinn, a long­time busi­ness instruc­tor, gives 600 stu­dents their mid-term exam. Then comes the anony­mous tip that cheat­ing is ram­pant. Foren­sic analy­sis bears that out. Ulti­ma­tums are made. Moral lessons drawn. Soon the con­fes­sions – all 200 of them – fol­low. A rough day for all involved.

Post­script: We poked around a bit more and read the stu­dent news­pa­per at UCF. It’s pos­si­ble that the cheat­ing ring may be less devi­ous than it first appears, but it’s still not entire­ly clear.

via Kottke.org

The Milky Way in 360 Degrees

in Science | October 25th, 2010

Stéphane Guis­ard trav­eled to the Paranal obser­va­to­ry, sit­u­at­ed in Chile’s remote Ata­ca­ma desert, in search of the “dark­est sky.” The result? Some amaz­ing zoomable, fish­eye images that reveal the dark­est of dark skies (includ­ing a glimpse of the Gegen­schein). And then also this “byprod­uct”: a 360 degree panoram­ic view of the Milky Way that lies on the dark sky hori­zon. You can view Los Cie­los de Chile here.

Please note that the page can take a lit­tle time to load. But once you’re there, you can tog­gle around the images and con­trol the views.

Big Thinkers: A Look Back

in Media, Technology | September 9th, 2010

Back in 1999, ZDTV launched Big Thinkers, a week­ly cable TV pro­gram that fea­tured half-hour inter­views with thinkers on the bleed­ing edge of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The show did­n’t have the longest run. But it did man­age to shine the spot­light on some impor­tant minds – Michio Kaku (the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist), Sher­ry Turkle (MIT psy­cho­an­a­lyst), Lawrence Lessig (law pro­fes­sor & free cul­ture advo­cate), and Esther Dyson (tech­nol­o­gy investor), to name a few. Big Thinkers was per­fect Open Cul­ture mate­r­i­al before the days of Open Cul­ture. So we’re pay­ing a lit­tle trib­ute to the show. Above, you will find an episode ded­i­cat­ed to Daniel Den­nett, the Amer­i­can philoso­pher and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist who has done exten­sive research on the phi­los­o­phy of mind. Part 1 appears above, and Part 2 and Part 3 here. Final­ly, you can watch oth­er Big Thinkers episodes (includ­ing those men­tioned above) on this YouTube chan­nel.

200 Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection

in | August 13th, 2010

Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of 200 Free Text­books, and check back often for new addi­tions. Also see our online col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Art His­to­ry

• A Text­book of the His­to­ry of Paint­ing by John Charles Van Dyke, Rut­gers

Biol­o­gy

• Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Biol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Bio­chem­istry Free For All 1.3 — Kevin, Indi­ra and Tara­lyn
• Bio­chem­istry Free and Easy — Kevin Ahern and Dr. Indi­ra Rajagopal, Ore­gon State
• Botany Online: The Inter­net Hyper­text­book by mul­ti­ple schol­ars.
• Cells: Mol­e­cules and Mech­a­nisms. Pub­lished by the Axolotl Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­lish­ing Co.
• CK-12 Biol­o­gy I (Grades 9–12) edit­ed by Dou­glas Wilkin, Chair, Dept of Sci­ence, Los Ange­les Uni­fied School Dis­trict
• CK-12 Life Sci­ence (Grades 9–12) edit­ed by Dou­glas Wilkin, Chair, Dept of Sci­ence, Los Ange­les Uni­fied School Dis­trict
• Con­cepts of Biol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Fun­da­men­tals of Cell Biol­o­gy — Lau­ren Dal­ton and Robin Young
• Guide to Get­ting into Med School — Kevin Ahern and Dr. Indi­ra Rajagopal, Ore­gon State
• Life on Earth (iBook) — E.O. Wil­son, Har­vard

Busi­ness and Man­age­ment

• Busi­ness Ethics by Jose A. Cruz-Cruz, William Frey, Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico — Mayaguez
• Busi­ness Fun­da­men­tals by the Glob­al Text Project
• Core Con­cepts of Mar­ket­ing by John Bur­nett
• Cor­po­rate Finance by Ivo Welch, UCLA
• CREATE OR PERISH: The Case for Inven­tions and Patents by Robert Rines, MIT
• Elec­tron­ic Com­merce by Mul­ti­ple authors, Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, Bent­ley Col­lege, and Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty

• Guide­lines for Improv­ing the Effec­tive­ness of Boards of Direc­tors of Non­prof­it Orga­ni­za­tions by Vic Mur­ray and Yvonne Har­ri­son, SUNY, Albany

Chem­istry

• Chem­istry Vir­tu­al Text­books by Stephen Low­er, Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty
• CK-12 Chem­istry (Grades 9–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers high school chem­istry cur­ricu­lum in Cal­i­for­nia.
• Con­cept Devel­op­ment Stud­ies in Chem­istry by John S. Hutchin­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Con­cepts in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry by Peter Atkins, Oxford
• Organ­ic Chem­istry (with a Bio­log­i­cal Empha­sis) by Tim Soder­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, Mor­ris
• Vir­tu­al Text­book of Organ­ic Chem­istry. Pre­sent­ed by Michi­gan State

Clas­sics

• Cicero, On Pompey’s Com­mand (De Impe­rio), 27–49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocab­u­lary, Com­men­tary, and Trans­la­tion, by Ingo Gilden­hard, Louise Hodg­son, et al, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Tac­i­tus, Annals, 15.20­-23, 33­-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocab­u­lary, and Com­men­tary, by Math­ew Owen and Ingo Gilden­hard, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
• Vir­gil, Aeneid, 4.1–299. Latin Text, Study Ques­tions, Com­men­tary and Inter­pre­ta­tive Essays by Ingo Gilden­hard, by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cicero, Against Ver­res, 2.1.53–86. Latin Text with Intro­duc­tion, Study Ques­tions, Com­men­tary and Eng­lish Trans­la­tion, by Ingo Gilden­hard, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Com­put­er Sci­ence & Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems

• A Byte of Python, by Swa­roop C H
• A First Course in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing by Louis Scharf, Col­orado State
• Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Foun­da­tions of Com­pu­ta­tion­al Agents by David Poole and Alan Mack­worth, Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia
• Bits, Sig­nals, and Pack­ets: An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Net­works by Hari Bal­akr­ish­nan, Christo­pher Ter­man, and George Vergh­ese, MIT
• Code Like a Python­ista: Idiomat­ic Python, by David Goodger
• Com­pu­ta­tion­al Geom­e­try by Nicholas M. Patrikalakis, Takashi Maekawa, MIT
• Dive into Python 3, by Mark Pil­grim
• Foun­da­tions of Com­put­er Sci­ence by Al Aho (Colum­bia) and Jeff Ull­man (Stan­ford)
• How to Design Pro­grams: An Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ing and Pro­gram­ming, Mul­ti­ple Authors
• High Per­for­mance Com­put­ing by Charles Sev­er­ance, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: C ++ ( PDF) by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Java by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Python by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Learn­ing with Python 3 by Peter Went­worth, Jef­frey Elkn­er, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Mey­ers.
• Imple­ment­ing a One Address CPU in Logisim by Charles W. Kann III, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and the Net­worked Econ­o­my by Patrick McK­e­own, Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia
• Infor­ma­tion The­o­ry, Infer­ence, and Learn­ing Algo­rithms by David MacK­ay, Cam­bridge
• Intro­duc­tion To MIPS Assem­bly Lan­guage Pro­gram­ming by Charles W. Kann III, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing, by Michael Nielsen, Research Fel­low at the Recurse Cen­ter
• Pat­terns for Begin­ning Pro­gram­mers (with Exam­ples in Java), by David Bern­stein, James Madi­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Phi­los­o­phy of Com­put­er Sci­ence by William J. Rapa­port, Uni­ver­si­ty at Buf­fa­lo, The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York
• Prin­ci­ples of Com­put­er Sys­tem Design: An Intro­duc­tion (Part 1 and Part II) by Jerome Saltzer and M. Frans Kaashoek.
• Prin­ci­ples of Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages by Grad Stu­dents, Johns Hop­kins
• Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Appli­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion by Dr. Shri­ram Krish­na­murthi, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Pro­log and Nat­ur­al-Lan­guage Analy­sis by Fer­nan­do C. N. Pereira and Stu­art M. Shieber, U Penn & Har­vard
• Python for Infor­mat­ics: Explor­ing Infor­ma­tion by Charles Sev­er­ance, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
• Struc­ture and Inter­pre­ta­tion of Com­put­er Pro­grams by Jer­ry Suss­man & Julie Suss­man
• Teach Your­self Word­Per­fect Mac by John Rethorst
• The Prince­ton Bit­coin Text­book by Arvind Narayanan (Prince­ton) and col­leagues

Earth Sci­ence

• CK-12 Earth Sci­ence for Mid­dle School by mul­ti­ple authors.
• Intro­duc­tion to Phys­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy by Dr. Robert Stew­art, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics & Finance

• Prin­ci­ples of Macro­eco­nom­ics by Lib­by Rit­ten­berg and Tim­o­thy Tre­garthen, Col­orado Col­lege

Edu­ca­tion

• Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy by Kevin Seifert and Rose­mary Sut­ton, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba and Cleve­land State

Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing

• Dig­i­tal Cir­cuit Projects: An Overview of Dig­i­tal Cir­cuits Through Imple­ment­ing Inte­grat­ed Cir­cuits by Charles W. Kann, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Elec­tro­mag­net­ics and Appli­ca­tions by David Staelin, MIT
• Electro­mechan­i­cal Dynam­ics by Her­bert H. Wood­son and James R. Melch­er, MIT
• Fun­da­men­tals of Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing I by Don John­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Nano­elec­tron­ics by Marc Bal­do, MIT
• Intro­duc­tion to Phys­i­cal Elec­tron­ics by William Wil­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­t­ics and Dynam­ics by Andy Ruina and Rudra Prat­ap, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty
• Lessons In Elec­tric Cir­cuits by  Tony R. Kuphaldt, Belling­ham Tech­ni­cal Col­lege
• Oper­a­tional Ampli­fiers: The­o­ry and Prac­tice by James K. Roberge, MIT
• Sig­nals, Sys­tems and Infer­ence by MIT
• Sig­nals and Sys­tems, by Alan Oppen­heim and Alan Will­sky, MIT
• Sys­tem Design for Uncer­tain­ty, by Michael S. Tri­antafyl­lou, MIT
• The Art of Insight in Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing: Mas­ter­ing Com­plex­i­ty, by Prof. San­joy Maha­jan

Engi­neer­ing

• Analy­sis of Struc­tur­al Mem­ber Sys­tems by Jerome Con­nor, MIT
• Engi­neer­ing: An Intro­duc­tion for High School (9–12) by mul­ti­ple authors
• Maneu­ver­ing and Con­trol of Sur­face and Under­wa­ter Vehi­cles, by Michael S. Tri­antafyl­lou, MIT
• Mechan­ics of Mate­ri­als by MIT

His­to­ry

• US His­to­ry Learn­er Eng­lish (ESL) by The Learn­er Eng­lish Series
• U.S. His­to­ry since 1877 by James Ross-Naz­zal, Hous­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege

Lan­guages

• Deutsch im Blick by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas
• Ger­man for Read­ing Knowl­edge by Howard Mar­tin, revised and expand­ed as an open online text­book by Alan Ng, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son
• Hin­di: An Active Intro­duc­tion by DN Shar­ma & James Stone, For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute
• Learn­ing Chi­nese: A Foun­da­tion Course in Man­darin by Julian Wheat­ley, MIT
• My Kore­an 1 and 2 by Young‑A Cho, In-Jung Cho, Monash Uni­ver­si­ty (Aus­tralia)
• Español I (free for iPad) by David Nance, ADE Dis­tance Learn­ing Cen­ter
• French: Famil­iar­iza­tion and Short-Term Train­ing by For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute
• Span­ish: Famil­iar­iza­tion and Short Term Train­ing by For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute

Law

• Open Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Case­book by James Boyle and Jen­nifer Jenk­ins, Duke

Lin­guis­tics

• How Lan­guage Works: The Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence of Lin­guis­tics by Mike Gasser, Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty

Math­e­mat­ics

• Abstract Alge­bra: The Basic Grad­u­ate Year by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Abstract Alge­bra: The­o­ry and Appli­ca­tions by Thomas W. Jud­son, Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty
• Advanced Alge­bra II by Ken­ny Felder,  Raleigh Char­ter High School
• Advanced Cal­cu­lus by Stern­berg Shlo­mo and Lynn Loomis, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Alge­bra 1 (Grades 9 & 10) by Andrew and Anne Gloag, High Tech High in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia
• Alge­bra and Analy­sis for Com­put­er Sci­ence by Jean Gal­li­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.
• Applied Prob­a­bil­i­ty by Paul Pfeif­fer, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Basic Analy­sis by Jiří Lebl, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign
• Basic Con­cepts of Math­e­mat­ics by Elias Zakon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics by Bren­da Meery, high school math­e­mat­ics teacher in Glace Bay, Nova Sco­tia
• Book of Proof by Dr. Richard Ham­mack, Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus for Begin­ners and Artists by MIT
• Cal­cu­lus Online Text­book, by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by David Guichard, Whit­man Col­lege.
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus 1 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 2 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 3 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus with Appli­ca­tions, by Daniel Kleit­man, MIT
• CK-12 Geom­e­try (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus (Grades 11–12) by Mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Trigonom­e­try — Sec­ond Edi­tion (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tive Sta­tis­tics by Bar­bara Illowsky, Ph.D and Susan Dean, De Anza Col­lege
• Col­lege Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Com­plex Analy­sis by George Cain, Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy
• Com­plex Vari­ables by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Com­pu­ta­tion­al Geom­e­try by Nicholas M. Patrikalakis, Takashi Maekawa, MIT
• A Com­pu­ta­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Num­ber The­o­ry and Alge­bra by Vic­tor Shoup, NYU
• A Course In Alge­bra­ic Num­ber The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• A Course In Com­mu­ta­tive Alge­bra by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Design of Com­par­a­tive Exper­i­ments by R. A. Bai­ley, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don
• Dif­fer­ence Equa­tions to Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions: An Intro­duc­tion to Cal­cu­lus by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics: An Open Intro­duc­tion by Oscar Levin, Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Col­orado
• Dynam­i­cal Sys­tems by S. Stern­berg, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Elec­tron­ic Sta­tis­tics Text­book by T. Hill & P. Lewic­ki.
• Ele­men­tary Abstract Alge­bra by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­men­tary Cal­cu­lus: An Infin­i­tes­i­mal Approach by H. Jerome Keisler, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Stu­dent Solu­tions Man­u­al for Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions and Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Lin­ear Alge­bra by Kei­th Matthews, Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land
• Ele­men­tary Num­ber The­o­ry by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­ments of Abstract and Lin­ear Alge­bra by Edwin H. Con­nell, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
• First Course in Com­plex Analy­sis by Matthias Beck, Ger­ald March­esi, and Den­nis Pix­ton, SUNY — Bing­ham­ton
• First Course in Lin­ear Alge­bra by Dr. Robert Beez­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound
• Func­tions Defined by Improp­er Inte­grals (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Gen­er­at­ing­Func­tionol­o­gy by Her­bert Wilf, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
• Intro­duc­tion to Matrix Alge­bra by Autar K Kaw, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty (PDF) by Charles Grin­stead & J. Lau­rie Snell, Swarth­more & Dart­mouth Col­leges
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics, and Ran­dom Process­es by Hos­sein Pishro-Nik, UMass Amherst
• Intro­duc­tion to Real Analy­sis (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Social Net­work Meth­ods by Robert A. Han­ne­man and Mark Rid­dle, UC River­side
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Thought by Michael Lavine, UMASS
• Intro­duc­to­ry Sta­tis­tics: Con­cepts, Mod­els, and Appli­ca­tions by David W. Stock­burg­er, Mis­souri State
• Intro­duc­tion to the The­o­ry of Num­bers by Leo Moser, McGill
• Lec­tures on Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics and Econo­met­rics by Mar­co Tabo­ga, Econ­o­mist, Bank of Italy
• Lec­tures on Sta­tis­tics by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Lin­ear Alge­bra (PDF) by Jim Hef­fer­on, Saint Michael’s Col­lege
• Lin­ear Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math Alive by Ingrid Daubechies, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math in Soci­ety by David Lip­mann, Pierce Col­lege
• Math, Numer­ics, and Pro­gram­ming (for Mechan­i­cal Engi­neers) by Masayu­ki Yano, MIT
• Math­e­mat­i­cal Meth­ods of Engi­neer­ing Analy­sis (PDF) by Erhan Çin­lar and Robert J. Van­der­bei, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus by George Cain & James Herod, Geor­gia Tech
• Proofs and Con­cepts: The Fun­da­men­tals of Abstract Math­e­mat­ics by Dave Witte Mor­ris and Joy Mor­ris, Uni­ver­si­ty of Leth­bridge
• Real Vari­ables with Basic Met­ric Space Topol­o­gy by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Sta­tis­tics by Philip B. Stark, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — UC Berke­ley
• A Sum­ma­ry of Cal­cu­lus by Karl Heinz Dover­mann, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii
• The Book “A=B” by Marko Petkovsek, Her­bert Wilf and Doron Zeil­berg­er, Univ. of Penn­syl­va­nia and Rut­gers
• The Method of Lagrange Mul­ti­pli­ers (PDF) by William Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• The Cal­cu­lus of Func­tions of Sev­er­al Vari­ables by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Yet Anoth­er Cal­cu­lus Text by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty

Music

• Beyond Slonim­sky: Melod­ic Pat­terns for Gui­tar — by Rich Cochrane (Find alter­nate ver­sion here)
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 1: Pitch and Major Scales and Keys — by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 3: Minor Scales and Keys — by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 5: Tri­ads, Chords, Intro­duc­tion to Roman Numer­als by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Scale and Arpeg­gio Resources: A Gui­tar Ency­clo­pe­dia by Rich Cochrane (Find alter­nate ver­sion here)
• Sound Rea­son­ing (Intro­duc­to­ry Music course) by Antho­ny Brandt, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Under­stand­ing Basic Music The­o­ry, Edit­ed by Cather­ine Schmidt-Jones

Phi­los­o­phy

• Ani­mals and Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights by Nathan Nobis, More­house Col­lege
• A Mod­ern For­mal Log­ic Primer by Paul Teller, UC Davis
• Argu­ments: Deduc­tive Log­ic Exer­cis­es, by H. Pospe­sel and D. Marans, UC Davis
• forall x: An Intro­duc­tion to For­mal Log­ic by PD Mag­nus, Uni­ver­si­ty at Albany, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York
• foral­lx: Cam­bridge by P.D. Mag­nus; mod­i­fied for Cam­bridge by Tim But­ton
• Metathe­o­ry for truth-func­tion­al log­ic by Tim But­ton, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Physics

• Age of Ein­stein, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Cal­cu­lus-Based Physics by Jef­frey W. Schnick, Saint Anselm Col­lege
• Col­lege Physics (intro­duc­to­ry, alge­bra-based, two-semes­ter col­lege physics book) by Open­Stax
• Con­cep­tu­al Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Con­ser­va­tion Laws by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Essen­tial Physics 1, Frank W.K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Fields by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Intro­duc­tion to Groups, Invari­ants & Par­ti­cles, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­t­ics and Dynam­ics by Andy Ruina and Rudra Prat­ap, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to String Field The­o­ry by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Moun­tain Motion by Dr. Christoph Schiller PhD, trained at Uni­ver­sité Libre de Brux­elles
• Optics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Appli­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion by Dr. Shri­ram Krish­na­murthi, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty
• Sim­ple Nature: An Intro­duc­tion to Physics for Engi­neer­ing and Phys­i­cal Sci­ence Stu­dents by Ben Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Super­space: One Thou­sand and One Lessons in Super­sym­me­try by War­ren Siegel. Jim Gates, Marc Gris­aru, and Mar­tin Rocek, SUNY, McGill, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
• The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics by Richard Feyn­man, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands
• The Light and Mat­ter Series (Six texts) by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Vibra­tions and Waves by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Mod­ern Rev­o­lu­tion in Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Peo­ple’s Physics Book by James H. Dann, UC San­ta Cruz
• 21st Cen­tu­ry Physics Flex­book: A Com­pi­la­tion of Con­tem­po­rary and Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies, by the Sec­re­taries of Edu­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in the state of Vir­ginia

Psy­chol­o­gy

• Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy by Kevin Seifert and Rose­mary Sut­ton, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba and Cleve­land State

Soci­ol­o­gy 

• Amer­i­can Soci­ety: How It Actu­al­ly Works by By Erik Olin Wright & Joel Rogers, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin
• Intro­duc­tion to Soci­ol­o­gy by mul­ti­ple pro­fes­sors

Sys­tem The­o­ry 

• Intro­duc­tion to the Mod­el­ing and Analy­sis of Com­plex Sys­tems by Hiro­ki Saya­ma, Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York.

Find more texts in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

Bill Gates: The Internet Will Displace the Traditional University in 5 Years

in Education, Online Courses | August 11th, 2010

Speak­ing at the Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe last week, Bill Gates argued that the cost of col­lege needs to come down, and the only way to accom­plish this is through tech­nol­o­gy and less­en­ing the impor­tance of “place-based” col­leges. That’s how you keep col­lege edu­ca­tion open to all. Dur­ing the talk, he went fur­ther and assert­ed, “Five years from now, on the Web for free, you’ll be able to find the best lec­tures in the world. It will be bet­ter than any sin­gle uni­ver­si­ty.”

To be sure, I don’t dis­pute this par­tic­u­lar point. You can already find hun­dreds of free cours­es online, and that’s part of our rea­son for being. But, as I have fre­quent­ly remind­ed peo­ple, lis­ten­ing to lec­tures does­n’t mean you’re get­ting a round­ed edu­ca­tion. Lec­tures inform you. They’re great in that way. But you get an edu­ca­tion when you cou­ple lec­tures with read­ings, when you chew over ideas in a dis­cus­sion sec­tion, when you ana­lyze the lec­tures and read­ings in crit­i­cal papers, when you take exams that force you to syn­the­size every­thing you’ve learned dur­ing the entire semes­ter, etc. Right now, it is very hard to accom­plish this online. On a rel­a­tive basis, e‑learning tools have evolved strik­ing­ly slow­ly dur­ing the past decade. The wide­ly deployed tools are often still klunky and rudi­men­ta­ry. And it still takes con­sid­er­able time, mon­ey and labor to pro­duce a tru­ly excel­lent online course. (At least that’s what I have found dur­ing my ten years in the space.) Will we make progress here? Yes. Would I wel­come it? Of course. But will we offer a sub­stan­tive and high­ly scal­able online alter­na­tive in five years? Very doubt­ful, unless a cat­a­lyst comes along who can dra­mat­i­cal­ly sweep away the exist­ing major play­ers (who just bog things down) and intro­duce some seri­ous inno­va­tion. Mr. Gates, are you that cat­a­lyst?

via Wired Cam­pus

What is WikiLeaks?

in Current Affairs | July 26th, 2010

Wik­iLeaks has done it again. This week­end, the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site released 92,000 mil­i­tary doc­u­ments that vivid­ly illus­trate why the US mil­i­tary cam­paign in Afghanistan has achieved so lit­tle suc­cess. Among oth­er things, the release shines a light on Pak­istan’s intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus, which has pro­vid­ed strate­gic sup­port to the Tal­iban, help­ing it coor­di­nate attacks against US troops and assas­si­nate Afghani lead­ers. (Mean­while, Pak­istan offi­cial­ly claims to be an ally of the US.) The founder of Wik­iLeaks, Julian Assange, called this release “the near­est ana­logue to the Pen­ta­gon Papers” pub­lished dur­ing the Viet­nam War. “It pro­vides a whole map, if you like, through time, of what has hap­pened dur­ing this war.”

This is not the first time that Wik­iLeaks has made news late­ly. In April, the site released footage show­ing US troops launch­ing a seem­ing­ly unjus­ti­fied air strike in Iraq, killing 12 peo­ple, includ­ing 2 Reuters jour­nal­ists. (Click here and scroll to bot­tom for video.) And last year, Wik­iLeaks helped get “Cli­mate­gate” rolling when it pub­lished mem­os from cli­mate sci­en­tists – mem­os that gave con­ser­v­a­tives ammo to argue that glob­al warm­ing is a fic­tion.

So what is Wik­iLeaks all about? On July 14, NPR’s Fresh Air inter­viewed Philip Shenon, an inves­tiga­tive reporter pre­vi­ous­ly at the New York Times, and now con­tribut­ing to The Dai­ly Beast. Dur­ing the 35 minute con­ver­sa­tion, they enter the secret world of Wik­iLeaks and answer your ques­tions. You can stream the inter­view here, grab it on iTunes, or lis­ten below.

[gplay­er href=“https://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2010/07/20100714_fa_01.mp3” ] [/gplayer]

Sources for this post: The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and The Guardian

Michael Tilson Thomas: How Mahler Changed My Life

in Music | July 6th, 2010

For Gus­tav Mahler’s birth­day this week, we have Michael Tilson Thomas, direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny … and the YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, revis­it­ing the pro­found impres­sion Mahler’s music made on his own per­son­al devel­op­ment. He recalls being intro­duced to Das Lied Von Der Erde when he was 13, and it marked an epiphanal divid­ing point in his life. There was life before Mahler, and a new life after. In this relat­ed clip, Leonard Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca’s great com­pos­er, offers a per­son­al intro­duc­tion to Das Lied Von Der Erde. You can find more inter­views with renowned orches­tra con­duc­tors here.

A big thanks to Zoran in Greece for send­ing these clips our way.

The Crisis of Capitalism Animated

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | July 5th, 2010

The economic/financial pic­ture is look­ing ugly once again. Indeed, just yes­ter­day, the most emailed New York Times arti­cle warned that the stock mar­ket might be on the verge of an epic crash, one that will bring the Dow below 1,000. So how did we wind up in this glob­al cred­it mess? We’ve heard var­i­ous expla­na­tions, most assum­ing that our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem did­n’t quite func­tion as it should, and that a few reg­u­la­tions will take care of the prob­lem. But this is not the posi­tion tak­en by David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er (now at CUNY). Draw­ing on Marx­i­an analy­sis (it’s still alive and well some­where), Har­vey sug­gests that the cri­sis is built into cap­i­tal­ism itself. It’s not the result of too few reg­u­la­tions. Rather it’s part of cap­i­tal­is­m’s inter­nal log­ic. (Mark Man­call, an emer­i­tus Stan­ford his­to­ry prof, echoes some of these basic thoughts on “Enti­tled Opin­ions” by the way.) The ani­mat­ed video above is an out­take from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed by Har­vey at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce in the UK. You can watch the video in full here. Mean­while, David Har­vey has also made avail­able online a free, 26 hour course that offers a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal. It appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

“Big Data” Comes to the Humanities

in Education, Technology | June 3rd, 2010

Fast for­ward a gen­er­a­tion, and you might hard­ly rec­og­nize the human­i­ties. Big data is here, and it’s allow­ing tech savvy stu­dents to take a whole new approach to “read­ing” texts. Using Google’s dig­i­tal library and oth­er tools pow­ered by high pow­er com­put­ing, stu­dents can now quan­ti­ta­tive­ly ana­lyze large bod­ies of lit­er­a­ture and draw new con­clu­sions about the evo­lu­tion of ideas, lan­guage, and cul­ture. (More on this here.) Some wor­ry that these “stat-hap­py quants” risk tak­ing “the human out of the human­i­ties.” Oth­ers (myself includ­ed) sus­pect that this approach could enliv­en the human­i­ties, allow­ing schol­ars to focus on new meth­ods and ques­tions. How “big data” is trans­form­ing the human­i­ties (and the sci­ences too) is the sub­ject of six arti­cles appear­ing in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion. Let me high­light them for you:

• Human­i­ties Go Google
• Crowd Sci­ence Reach­es New Heights
• The Spo­ken Word, Search­able for Schol­ar­ship
• Schol­ars Scale Up Music Stud­ies
• A Many-Sourced Map of the Gulf Oil Spill
• A Swarm of Vol­un­teers, a Hon­ey of an Idea