Harry Partch’s Kooky Orchestra of DIY Musical Instruments

in History, Music, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | August 9th, 2011

Com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor Har­ry Partch (1901–1974) is one of the pio­neers of 20th-cen­tu­ry exper­i­men­tal instru­men­ta­tion, known for writ­ing and play­ing music on incred­i­ble cus­tom-made instru­ments like the Boo II and the Quad­ran­gu­laris Rever­sum, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for many of today’s most cre­ative exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ments.

In this Uni­ver­sal News­reel footage from the 1950s, Partch con­ducts a stu­dent music per­for­mance on his instru­ments, built with insights from atom­ic research and Partch’s 30-year obses­sion with find­ing the elu­sive tones that exist between the tones of a reg­u­lar piano. The set­ting is Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, CA. The unortho­dox orches­tra per­forms music tuned to the 43-tone scale Partch invent­ed, rather than the usu­al 12-tone, even though indi­vid­ual instru­ments can only play sub­sets of the scale.

For more on Partch’s genius and sem­i­nal inno­va­tion, see his excel­lent 1949 med­i­ta­tion, Gen­e­sis of a Music: An Account of a Cre­ative Work, its Roots, and its Ful­fill­ments.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

Dave Eggers: The Teacher Who Encouraged Me to Write

in Books, Education, Literature, Writing | August 4th, 2011

Image by Rhodo­den­drites, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Thou­sands of pub­lic school teach­ers won’t be return­ing to the class­room this fall, thanks to bud­get cuts nation­wide. And that means more than a few Jay Criche’s won’t get the chance to tap the hid­den tal­ents of young stu­dents. Jay Criche, in case you’re won­der­ing, taught Eng­lish at Lake For­est High School and count­ed Dave Eggers (A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius and What Is the What) as one of his stu­dents. Criche passed away recent­ly, and, writ­ing in Salon, Eggers remem­bers his teacher’s deep influ­ence:

He was kind to me, but I had no sense that he took par­tic­u­lar notice of me. There were oth­er, smarter kids in the class, and soon I fell back into my usu­al posi­tion — of think­ing I was just a lit­tle over aver­age in most things. But near the end of the semes­ter, we read “Mac­beth.” Believe me, this is not an easy play to con­nect to the lives of sub­ur­ban high school­ers, but some­how he made the play seem elec­tric, dan­ger­ous, rel­e­vant. After pro­cras­ti­nat­ing till the night before it was due, I wrote a paper about the play — the first paper I typed on a type­writer — and turned it in the next day.

I got a good grade on it, and below the grade Mr. Criche wrote, “Sure hope you become a writer.” That was it. Just those six words, writ­ten in his sig­na­ture hand­writ­ing — a bit shaky, but with a very steady base­line. It was the first time he or any­one had indi­cat­ed in any way that writ­ing was a career option for me. We’d nev­er had any writ­ers in our fam­i­ly line, and we did­n’t know any writ­ers per­son­al­ly, even dis­tant­ly, so writ­ing for a liv­ing did­n’t seem some­thing avail­able to me. But then, just like that, it was as if he’d ripped off the ceil­ing and shown me the sky.

Over the next 10 years, I thought often about Mr. Criche’s six words. When­ev­er I felt dis­cour­aged, and this was often, it was those six words that came back to me and gave me strength. When a few instruc­tors in col­lege gen­tly and not-so-gen­tly tried to tell me I had no tal­ent, I held Mr. Criche’s words before me like a shield. I did­n’t care what any­one else thought. Mr. Criche, head of the whole damned Eng­lish depart­ment at Lake For­est High, said I could be a writer. So I put my head down and trudged for­ward.

You can read Egger’s remem­brance in full here.

Download The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Credential (Free eBook)

in e-books, Education | August 2nd, 2011

It’s hot off the dig­i­tal press. Anya Kamenetz, a senior writer at Fast Com­pa­ny Mag­a­zine and author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupre­neurs, and the Com­ing Trans­for­ma­tion of High­er Edu­ca­tion, has teamed up with the Gates Foun­da­tion to release a free ebook, The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial.

The new ebook offers a “com­pre­hen­sive guide to learn­ing online and chart­ing a per­son­al­ized path to an afford­able cre­den­tial,” and it comes com­plete with some handy-sound­ing tuto­ri­als: how to write a per­son­al learn­ing plan, how to teach your­self online, how to build your per­son­al learn­ing net­work, 7 ways to get col­lege cred­it with­out tak­ing a col­lege course, etc.

The book also smart­ly fea­tures a long list of open edu­ca­tion­al resources, where the author was nice enough to give us a small men­tion.

You can read The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial on Scribd, or alter­na­tive­ly you can down­load it in mul­ti­ple for­mats (PDF, Kin­dle, ePub, RTF, etc.) at the bot­tom of this page.

Movie Tearjerkers: What’s the Saddest Scene in Cinema?

in Film, Psychology | July 28th, 2011

Accord­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing piece in The Smith­son­ian, Fran­co Zef­firelli’s 1979 weep­fest The Champ is the most con­sis­tent­ly effec­tive tear­jerk­er in the his­to­ry of film. It’s also the tear­jerk­er most often used in sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of grief and sad­ness:

The Champ has been used in exper­i­ments to see if depressed peo­ple are more like­ly to cry than non-depressed peo­ple (they aren’t). It has helped deter­mine whether peo­ple are more like­ly to spend mon­ey when they are sad (they are) and whether old­er peo­ple are more sen­si­tive to grief than younger peo­ple (old­er peo­ple did report more sad­ness when they watched the scene). Dutch sci­en­tists used the scene when they stud­ied the effect of sad­ness on peo­ple with binge eat­ing dis­or­ders (sad­ness didn’t increase eat­ing).

We would have gone with either the last scene of West Side Sto­ry or that dev­as­tat­ing 1989 Negro Col­lege Fund com­mer­cial with the pen­nies. Feel free to post your own can­di­dates in the com­ments.

via Neatora­ma

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

125 Science Videos: Our Greatest Hits

in Science, Video - Science | July 13th, 2011

We reached deep into our archives and pulled out a list of our great­est hits — our favorite sci­ence videos from the past five years. 125 videos in total, and the list will grow from here. Right now, it cov­ers every­thing from Astron­o­my and Space Trav­el, to Physics and Biol­o­gy, and then Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science. Our rec­om­men­da­tion? Just jump right in here. But if you want a lit­tle pre­view, then let’s start you off with ten slam-dunk videos from the col­lec­tion:

(Note: In the future, you can access this col­lec­tion by click­ing the “Great Sci­ence Videos” link under “Essen­tials.” Top of the cen­ter col­umn.)

• Earth­rise in HD – Video — In Novem­ber 2007, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon and cap­tured the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set.”
• Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD) – Video — Give NASA 7 min­utes, and they’ll show you the Earth’s most impres­sive land­scapes — as seen from space.
• “First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight - Video — 99-minute doc­u­men­tary recre­ates the Sovi­et cos­mo­naut’s his­toric launch into space on April 12, 1961.
• Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty – Video – The futur­ist brings us inside Mandelbrot’s world of frac­tal geom­e­try.
• Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics – Video – Fas­ci­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark Peter­son, physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege.
• Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star- Video – The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist talks about his work at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos.
• What It Feels Like To Have a Stroke - Video — Har­vard neu­roanatomist Jill Bolte Tay­lor recounts her expe­ri­ence hav­ing a stroke. One of the most pop­u­lar TED Talks of all time.
• Nature by Num­bers - Video — Well-known geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las (The Fibonac­ci Series and Spi­ral, The Gold­en and Angle Ratios, The Delauney Tri­an­gu­la­tion and Voronoi Tes­sel­la­tions) present them­selves in nature.
  
• Tsuna­mi Rip­ples Across Globe: Ani­mat­ed Video — Video — The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion shows Japan­ese tsuna­mi rip­pling across the Pacif­ic.
• Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us - Video — Research reveals what real­ly, tru­ly moti­vates us. And it’s all shown with ani­ma­tion.

Find the full list of Sci­ence Videos here…

125 Great Science Videos: From Astronomy to Physics & Psychology

in | July 12th, 2011

Astron­o­my & Space Trav­el

• A Brief, Won­drous Tour of Earth (From Out­er Space) - Video — Record­ed from August to Octo­ber, 2011 at the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, this HD footage offers a bril­liant tour of our plan­et and stun­ning views of the auro­ra bore­alis.
  
• A Uni­verse from Noth­ing - Video — In 53 min­utes, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss answers some big enchi­la­da ques­tions, includ­ing how the uni­verse came from noth­ing.
• A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Min­utes — Video — The Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter has been orbit­ing the moon for over a year. The footage gets com­pressed into 2 slick min­utes.
• A Day on Earth (as Seen From Space) — Video — Astro­naut Don Pet­tit trained his cam­era on plan­et Earth, took a pho­to once every 15 sec­onds, and then cre­at­ed a bril­liant time-lapse film.
• Atlantis’s Final Land­ing at Kennedy Space Cen­ter - Video — After more than 30 years, the space shut­tle era comes to a close. Video runs 30 min­utes. July, 2011.
  
• Cassi­ni Sol­stice Mis­sion: Saturn’s Moons Meet Nine Inch Nails — Video — Incred­i­ble black-and-white images of Sat­urn and its moons, all cap­tured by Cassini’s “cam­era.”
• Death by Black Hole — Video — Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, breaks down what our demise would look like.
• Earth­rise in HD — Video — In Novem­ber 2007, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon and cap­tured the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set.”
• Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras - Video — On board cam­era show liftoff from mul­ti­ple angles.
• First 360 Degree View of the Sun - Video — Cour­tesy of NASA.
• “First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight - Video — 99-minute doc­u­men­tary recre­ates Yuri Gagarin’s his­toric launch into space on April 12, 1961.
• How Large is the Uni­verse? — Video — Fas­ci­nat­ing 20-minute doc­u­men­tary by Thomas Lucas and Dave Brody explor­ing the universe’s immense scale of dis­tance and time.
• Jupiter Slips Behind the Sun — Video — NASA’s STEREO space­craft sees Jupiter move behind the Sun in this 30 hour ani­ma­tion com­pressed into just 11 sec­onds.
• Land­ing on the Moon: July 20, 1969 — Video — Does it ever get old to watch?
• NASA: The Fron­tier is Every­where — Video — An homage to NASA mod­eled after Michael Marantz’s short film, Earth: The Pale Blue Dot.
• NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm - Video — Amaz­ing video cap­tured in high def by NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry.
• NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr — Images — A pho­to archive cov­er­ing a half cen­tu­ry of NASA’s pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry.
• NASA Zooms into Spi­ral Galaxy - Video — A stun­ning view of the spi­ral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 mil­lion light-years away in the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major (The Great Bear)
• Solar Eclipse Seen From Out­er Space - Video — NASA STEREO space­craft sees the disk of the Moon pass in front of the Sun in a view nev­er seen before by human eyes.
• Stars Orbit­ing Black Holes — Video — “One of the coolest movies in all of sci­ence.” Shows stars orbit­ing around a super­mas­sive black hole at the cen­ter of our galaxy over the past 15 earth years.
• Stephen Hawk­ing: Aban­don Earth Or Face Extinc­tion - Video — That makes space – plan­ets beyond our own – the next great fron­tier.
• Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD) — Video — Give NASA 7 min­utes, and they’ll show you the Earth’s most impres­sive land­scapes — as seen from space.
• The Auro­ra Bore­alis Viewed from Orbit (and What Cre­ates Those North­ern Lights?) - Video — Two videos in one. A bril­liant view of the North­ern Lights from space, and an ani­mat­ed video explain­ing the forces behind the Auro­ra Bore­alis.
  
• The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010) - Video — Matt Melis, a NASA engi­neer, has com­piled what he calls the “best of the best, state of the art” video pro­duced by the space shut­tle pro­gram.
• The Life of a Star — Video — 12 bil­lion years in 6 min­utes.
• The Milky Way over Texas — Video — 45 sec­ond time­lapse video of the “Galac­tic Cen­ter of the Milky Way” ris­ing over Texas Star Par­ty (2009).
• The Moon Up Close, in HD - Video — NASA’s Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter shows us the Moon’s sur­face (moun­tains, craters and the rest) in HD.
  
• The Sound­track of the Uni­verse — Video — Jan­na Levin (Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty) on how we can math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mod­el sounds made by black holes.
• The Wis­dom of Carl Sagan Ani­mat­ed - Video — The Pale Blue Dot put into ani­ma­tion by ani­ma­tion stu­dent Adam Win­nik.
• What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space - Video — Hur­ri­cane Dean cap­tured by a NASA crew in 2007.
• What Does 47 Bil­lion Light Years (in Radius) Look Like? — Video — The size of our uni­verse visu­al­ized using pic­tures from the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope
• What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth - Video — James Drake, a pro­fes­sor of Physics at U. Mary­land, down­loaded 600 images from The Gate­way to Astro­naut Pho­tog­ra­phy of Earth, stitched them togeth­er and pro­duced an amaz­ing view of our plan­et.
• When Galax­ies Col­lide - Video — A pre­view of what will hap­pen 3 to 5 bil­lion years from now, when our galaxy will like­ly merge with the Androm­e­da galaxy.
• William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary - Video — 80 minute doc­u­men­tary com­mem­o­rates the 30 year Space Shut­tle pro­gram.

Physics

• A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy - Video — Ani­mat­ed film pro­duced by Gen­er­al Elec­tric in 1952 with hope of sway­ing pub­lic opin­ion in favor of nuclear ener­gy after WWII.
• Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty — Video — The futur­ist brings us inside Man­del­brot’s world of frac­tal geom­e­try.
• Astro­physics Goes Extreme — Video — Anil Anan­thaswamy talks at TED about physi­cists who jour­ney to inhos­pitable parts of the world to per­form impor­tant exper­i­ments.
• Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawk­ing Remixed — Video — A musi­cal trib­ute to two great men of sci­ence. “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn — Cos­mos Remixed.”
• Do Physi­cists Believe in God? — Video — Physi­cists at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham School of Physics answer big ques­tions on YouTube.
• E=mc²: Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la — Audio — Orig­i­nal audio.
• Ein­stein and the Mind of God — Audio — Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media pro­gram sorts out Einstein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing.
• Ein­stein for the Mass­es - Video — Yale prof Rama­mur­ti Shankar breaks down Einstein’s the­o­ries and for­mu­las for a lay audi­ence.
• Ein­stein in 60 Sec­onds - Video — Dr. Michio Kaku sums up Einstein’s lega­cy in a nut­shell.
• Fun to Imag­ine with Richard Feyn­man — Video – The Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist hosts the BBC pro­gram, which uses physics to explain how the every­day world works. (1983)
• How Large is the Uni­verse - Video — Fas­ci­nat­ing 20-minute doc­u­men­tary by Thomas Lucas & Dave Brody explores the universe’s immense scale of dis­tance and time.
• How Long is a Piece of String - Video — Alan Davies explores the riddle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry.
• Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics — Video — Fas­ci­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark Peter­son, physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege.
• Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star - Video — The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist talks about his work at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos.
• Mag­net­ic Fields Made Vis­i­ble — Video — What do nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fields look like? Footage from NASA’s Space Sci­ences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UC Berke­ley) gives you a glimpse.
• Pen­du­lum Waves as Kinet­ic Art — Video — Har­vard-pro­duced viral video shows pen­du­lum balls swirling, mov­ing almost impos­si­bly from pat­tern to pat­tern. Includes expla­na­tion.
• Richard Feyn­man Lec­tures – Video – The Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist gives lec­tures at Cor­nell in 1964. A great physics intro­duc­tion. Post­ed online by Bill Gates.
• Stars Orbit­ing Black Holes — Video — “One of the coolest movies in all of sci­ence.” Shows stars orbit­ing around a super­mas­sive black hole at the cen­ter of our galaxy over the past 15 earth years.
• The Bohr-Ein­stein Debates, With Dog Pup­pets — Video — Pret­ty much what the titles says.
• The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out — Video — Pro­duced in 1981 by the BBC and PBS, the show fea­tures Richard Feyn­man, the Nobel prize-win­ning physi­cist talk­ing in a very per­son­al way about the joys of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.
• The Physics of a Quar­ter­back­’s Pass — Video — Fun clip gives you the basic physics of Drew Brees’ pass­ing game.
• The Physics of the Bike - Video — A new the­o­ry about why bikes stay upright almost by them­selves.
• The Search For Hid­den Dimen­sions - Video — The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Brain Greene hosts a short video that takes us into the spec­u­la­tive world of “hid­den dimen­sions.”
• Water Drop Filmed in 10,000 Frames Per Sec­ond - Video — Cour­tesy of MIT.
  
• What Genius Looks Like at Zero Grav­i­ty - Video — Stephen Hawk­ing enters a state of weight­less­ness on the “Vom­it Comet.”

Biol­o­gy & Chem­istry

• Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion - Video — Cana­di­an “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman pays homage to Charles Dar­win with the “The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion.”
• Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick — Video — Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky on human behav­ior.
• Dar­win’s Lega­cy on YouTube — Video —  Free Stan­ford course com­mem­o­rat­ing the 200th anniver­sary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Ori­gin of Species.
• Dar­win’s Dan­ger­ous Idea — Video — Daniel Den­nett explains why Darwin’s con­cept of nat­ur­al selec­tion was so sub­ver­sive from the begin­ning.
• Dopamine Jack­pot! — Video — Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Robert Sapol­sky on the Sci­ence of Plea­sure.
• E. chro­mi: Design­er Bac­te­ria — Video — Short film about a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between design­ers and biol­o­gists. Won the best doc­u­men­tary award at Bio:Fiction.
• Evo­lu­tion Made Us All - Video — Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful.”
• How a Flu Invades Our Body - Video — NPR’s Robert Krul­wich and med­ical ani­ma­tor David Bolin­sky take an ani­mat­ed look at what hap­pens when virus­es invade your body and trick a sin­gle cell into mak­ing a mil­lion more virus­es.
• How Ants Know What to Do — Video — Biol­o­gist Deb­o­rah Gor­don talks about the won­ders of ants at TED.
• Nature by Num­bers — Video — Well-known geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las (The Fibonac­ci Series and Spi­ral, The Gold­en and Angle Ratios, The Delauney Tri­an­gu­la­tion and Voronoi Tes­sel­la­tions) present them­selves in nature.
• Sapol­sky Breaks Down Depres­sion - Video — The pro­fes­sor explains why depres­sion is deeply bio­log­i­cal; why it is root­ed in biol­o­gy, just like dia­betes.
• The Bil­lion-Bug High­way You Can’t See - Video — Fun, ani­mat­ed NPR video vis­its the insects inhab­it­ing the upper lev­els of the tro­pos­phere.
  
• The Future of Human Health - Video — A series of TED-style talks pre­sent­ed at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.
• The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos — Video — An ambi­tious chem­istry project out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham.
• What It Feels Like To Have a Stroke - Video — Har­vard neu­roanatomist Jill Bolte Tay­lor recounts her expe­ri­ence hav­ing a stroke. One of the most pop­u­lar TED Talks of all time.
• World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair - Video — World’s small­est peri­od­ic table etched onto a strand of hair belong­ing to chem­istry Pro­fes­sor Mar­tyn Poli­akoff.

Envi­ron­ment, Geol­o­gy and & Ecol­o­gy

• Chilean Earth­quake Waves in Ani­ma­tion - Video — A glob­al view of the Chilean earth­quake in action that gripped the nation in 2010.
• Fire Ants Cre­ate Life Raft in 100 Sec­onds Flat - Video — Pro­duced by researchers at the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.
• Floor of Kilauea Vol­cano Crater Col­laps­es Before Your Eyes — Video — Record­ed by the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey when it detect­ed unusu­al activ­i­ty at the Kilauea vol­cano.
• Japan’s Earth­quake & Tsuna­mi: How They Hap­pened - Video — NOVA’s 47 minute doc­u­men­tary explains the sci­ence behind these twin geo­log­ic cat­a­stro­phes.
• My Water’s On Fire Tonight: The Frack­ing Song - Video — NYU jour­nal­ism stu­dents and ProP­ub­li­ca raise aware­ness of frack­ing with a light-heart­ed video.
• The Birth of a Tor­na­do - Video — Amaz­ing footage with some back­ground infor­ma­tion on how tor­na­does take form.
• The Cli­mate Sci­en­tist Rap — Video — A very Not-Safe-For-Work rap pro­duced by the Aus­tralian tele­vi­sion show Hun­gry Beast.
• The Pres­i­den­t’s Guide to Sci­ence - Video — BBC pro­duc­tion asks famous sci­en­tists to offer impor­tant words of advice to the next Amer­i­can pres­i­dent. Envi­ron­ment is front and cen­ter.
• The Wild King­dom on YouTube - Video — Revis­it the influ­en­tial show host­ed by Mar­lin Perkins and Jim Fowler from 1963 through 1988. Watch full episodes.
• Tsuna­mi Rip­ples Across Globe: Ani­mat­ed Video — Video — The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion shows Japan­ese tsuna­mi rip­pling across the Pacif­ic.
• What Earth Will Look Like 100 Mil­lion Years From Now — Video — 700 mil­lion years of geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry cov­ered in an effi­cient three min­utes.

Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science

• A Video Illu­sion: Can You Spot the Change? - Video — Intrigu­ing research on per­cep­tion by Kevin O’Regan and his team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris Descartes.
• Alex the Par­rot and the Hid­den World of Ani­mal Intel­li­gence - Video — Ani­mal psy­chol­o­gist Irene Pep­per­berg at Har­vard and Bran­deis talks about her days work­ing with Alex the Par­rot.
• Cre­ativ­i­ty, Flow and the Source of Hap­pi­ness - Video — Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, famed psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi explains the source of hap­pi­ness.
• Dan Ariely on the Irra­tional­i­ty of Bonus­es - Video — Ariely, pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy and behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke, dis­tills his think­ing in his new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty: The Unex­pect­ed Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Log­ic at Work and at Home.
• Daniel Lev­itin Shows How Musi­cians Com­mu­ni­cate Emo­tion — Video — Lev­itin is James McGill Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al.
• Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us - Video — Research reveals what real­ly, tru­ly moti­vates us.
• Neu­ro­science and Free Will - Video — Mar­cus Du Sautoy (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) par­tic­i­pates in intrigu­ing brain imag­ing exper­i­ment con­duct­ed by John-Dylan Haynes, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist based in Berlin.
• Oliv­er Sacks Talks Music with Jon Stew­art — Video — A short primer on the rela­tion­ship between music and neu­ro­science.
  
• Sam Har­ris: Sci­ence Can Answer Moral Ques­tions - Video — Sam Har­ris argues at TED that sci­ence (par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­science) can address all moral ques­tions.
• Smile or Die: The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy — Video — Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, author of the best­selling book Nick­el and Dimed, out­lines the per­ils of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy.
• Steven Pinker: How Innu­en­do Makes Things Work - Video — Steven Pinker, the famed Har­vard lin­guist and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist, makes sense of innu­en­do.
• The Dalai Lama on the Neu­ro­science of Com­pas­sion — Video — Tibet’s spir­i­tu­al leader goes to Stan­ford to attend con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion.
• The Famous Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment on YouTube — Video — Con­duct­ed by Philip Zim­bar­do, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, in 1971, the exper­i­ment shows how good peo­ple can go bad.
• The MIT “Check­er Shad­ow Illu­sion” Brought to Life — Video — A real­time demon­stra­tion of an opti­cal illu­sion cre­at­ed by Edward Adel­son (MIT) in 1995.
• The Secret Pow­ers of Times - Video — Philip Zim­bar­do dis­cuss­es how our atti­tudes toward time, often uncon­scious ones, can strong­ly shape our per­son­al­i­ties and the kind of lives we lead.
• Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out — Video — BBC revis­its Tim­o­thy Leary, the famous coun­ter­cul­ture fig­ure, who advo­cat­ed the ther­a­peu­tic and spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of LSD.
• When the Dalai Lama Meets the Neu­ro­sci­en­tists - Video — Daniel Gole­man, best­selling sci­ence jour­nal­ist, talks about the Dalai Lama’s work at the nexus of med­i­ta­tion and neu­ro­science.

Sci­ence & Reli­gion

• 50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God - Video — A mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. The list includes includes 16 Nobel prize win­ners.
  
• Anoth­er 50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God — Video — A con­tin­u­a­tion of the series imme­di­ate­ly above.
  
• Do Physi­cists Believe in God? — Video — Physi­cists at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham School of Physics answer big ques­tions on YouTube.
• Ein­stein and the Mind of God — Audio — Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media pro­gram sorts out Einstein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing.
• Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism - Video — Two Oxford profs – athe­ist biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and Chris­t­ian math­e­mati­cian John Lennox – debat­ing God and sci­ence in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma.
  
• Stephen Hawk­ing on Reli­gion: ‘Sci­ence Will Win Because it Works’ — Video — It’s all in the video.

Tech­nol­o­gy & Math­e­mat­ics

• Anato­my of a Com­put­er Virus: A 3.5 Minute Primer - Video — A quick reveal­ing look at Stuxnet, the com­put­er virus launched against Iran’s nuclear infra­struc­ture in 2010.
• Arduino Doc­u­men­tary: Open Source Hard­ware is Here — Video — Revis­its a project launched in the Ital­ian town of Ivrea back in 2005.
• Invent­ing the Dig­i­tal Cam­era: A Short Por­trait of Steven Sas­son — Video — A short doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing the inven­tor of the dig­i­tal cam­era.
• Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way - Video — Bet­ter just to watch…
• Nature by Num­bers — Video — Well-known geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las (The Fibonac­ci Series and Spi­ral, The Gold­en and Angle Ratios, The Delauney Tri­an­gu­la­tion and Voronoi Tes­sel­la­tions) present them­selves in nature.
  
• Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age - Video — Nor­man Mail­er and Mar­shall McLuhan debate the rel­a­tive mer­its of our Electronic/Information Age. 1968
• Ray Kurzweil, Futur­ist: 10 Ques­tions About What’s Com­ing Next — Video — Hint: Sin­gu­lar­i­ty.
• Tech­nol­o­gy Is Amaz­ing, Nobody Is Hap­py - Video — A clas­sic com­e­dy bit from Louis C. K.
• The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet - Video — Sci­ence writer Mar­garet Wertheim explains how the art of cro­chet emu­lates sea slugs cre­at­ing coral struc­tures in hyper­bol­ic space. A TED Talk.
• The Math of Rock Climb­ing — Video — Skip Garibal­di, a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, describes how math fig­ures into his pas­sion for rock climb­ing.
• The Secret His­to­ry of Sil­i­con Val­ley — Video — What set the stage for Sil­i­con Val­ley to change the entire land­scape of tech­nol­o­gy? Steve Blank explains at Google.
• The World’s Fastest Solar Car - Video — Watch a world record set by stu­dents from The Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales.
• “They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Directs a Film for IBM - Video — The acclaimed direc­tor directs a film to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of the company’s found­ing.
• Visu­al­iz­ing WiFi Sig­nals with Light — Video — WiFi sig­nals around Oslo, Nor­way revealed.
• What Tech­nol­o­gy Wants: Kevin Kel­ly @ Google - Video — Co-founder of Wired mag­a­zine dis­tills the think­ing in his new book, What Tech­nol­o­gy Wants.

Stay tuned for more to come…

The Best Magazine Articles Ever, Curated by Kevin Kelly

in Literature, Media | June 23rd, 2011

A few days ago, we asked you to send us your favorite non-fic­tion titles. We’ll be post­ing your many excel­lent sug­ges­tions soon, and, in the mean­time, we thought we should offer some­thing in return — more specif­i­cal­ly, yet anoth­er list of excel­lent non-fic­tion com­piled by some­one oth­er than our­selves.

Kevin Kel­ly, web-pio­neer, co-founder of Wired Mag­a­zine, for­mer edi­tor of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log, and one of the best all-around liv­ing argu­ments for ditch­ing col­lege and trav­el­ing the world instead, has put togeth­er a crowd­sourced list of the best mag­a­zine arti­cles from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s, almost all of them avail­able on the web. He’s also gath­ered the top 25 of all time (based on the num­ber of votes received) on one thrilling page.

The list includes pieces like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thomp­son, David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, and Gay Tale­se’s leg­endary 1966 Esquire cov­er sto­ry, Frank Sina­tra Has a Cold. It’s an invalu­able resource, whether you’re an aspir­ing jour­nal­ist or nov­el­ist, a his­to­ry buff, or just a per­son who wants to enjoy the evo­lu­tion of the past 60 years of the Eng­lish lan­guage.

You may already be famil­iar with the sites Instapa­per, Lon­greads, and Long­form. All three can help you find great read­ing mate­r­i­al on the web, orga­nize it, and down­load it to your Kin­dle, iPad, or tablet. Enjoy.

Get more clas­sics from our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dartmouth Graduation

in Life | June 13th, 2011

The stars shined upon the Ivy League schools this grad­u­a­tion sea­son. Tom Han­ks at Yale, Amy Poehler at Har­vard, Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at U Penn. These kids have it good, but nowhere near as good as the Dart­mouth grads. This week­end, Conan O’Brien rolled into Hanover, New Hamp­shire and dished out plen­ty of jokes:

Par­ents, if your child majored in fine arts or phi­los­o­phy, you have good rea­son to be wor­ried. The only place where they are now real­ly qual­i­fied to get a job is ancient Greece. Good luck with that degree.

You know, New Hamp­shire is such a spe­cial place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New Eng­land air and thought, “Wow, I’m in the state that’s next to the state where Ben and Jer­ry’s ice cream is made.”

To this day I can­not help but won­der: What if I had gone to Dart­mouth? If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I might have spent at least some of my col­lege years out­side and today I might not be aller­gic to all plant life, as well as most types of rock. If I had gone to Dart­mouth, right now I’d be wear­ing a fleece thong instead of a lace thong… If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I’d have a liv­er the size and con­sis­ten­cy of a bean bag chair. Final­ly, if I had gone to Dart­mouth, today I’d be get­ting an hon­orary degree at Har­vard. Imag­ine how awe­some that would be.

And a lit­tle wis­dom for life, which, hon­est­ly, holds entire­ly true.

For decades, in show busi­ness, the ulti­mate goal of every come­di­an was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many peo­ple I thought that achiev­ing that goal would define me as suc­cess­ful. But that is not true. No spe­cif­ic job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told grad­u­ates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, dis­ap­point­ment will come. The beau­ty is that through dis­ap­point­ment you can gain clar­i­ty, and with clar­i­ty comes con­vic­tion and true orig­i­nal­i­ty.

Many of you here today are get­ting your diplo­ma at this Ivy League school because you have com­mit­ted your­self to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a com­mence­ment address than “fol­low your dream.” Well I am here to tell you that what­ev­er you think your dream is now, it will prob­a­bly change. And that’s okay. Four years ago, many of you had a spe­cif­ic vision of what your col­lege expe­ri­ence was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very dif­fer­ent from what you imag­ined. Your room­mates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion changed. I bet some of you have changed your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion since I began this speech. I know I have. But through the good and espe­cial­ly the bad, the per­son you are now is some­one you could nev­er have con­jured in the fall of 2007.

You can find the com­plete tran­script of the speech here. And don’t miss Conan’s vis­it to Google last sum­mer, which was full of good laughs…

City of Eight Million Soundtracks

in Life, Music | May 30th, 2011

“Soli­tude,” wrote Hen­ry David Thore­au in Walden, “is not mea­sured by the miles of space that inter­vene between a man and his fel­lows. The real­ly dili­gent stu­dent in one of the crowd­ed hives of Cam­bridge Col­lege is as soli­tary as a dervish in the desert.” If you’re search­ing for soli­tude these days, even in Times Square, you won’t need much diligence–just an iPod and a pair of ear­buds. But watch out! Your soli­tude might be shat­tered by Tyler Cullen, a stu­dent film­mak­er at the School of Visu­al Arts, who recent­ly had the audac­i­ty to say to his fel­low New York­ers: Hey You! What Song Are You Lis­ten­ing To?

Via Kottke.org

David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

in Architecture, Music, TED Talks | May 3rd, 2011

Since the break-up of Talk­ing Heads in 1991, David Byrne has made a good career for him­self as a solo artist, work­ing in film and music, and also becom­ing an active sup­port­er of cycling. Overt­ly intel­lec­tu­al, Byrne has giv­en lec­tures on a great vari­ety of top­ics – from Carl Jung to the ways in which venue and con­text shape artis­tic cre­ation.

The TED talk above was giv­en in Feb­ru­ary 2010 in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, and here David Byrne presents his ideas on the inter­re­la­tion­ship between music and archi­tec­ture. A tran­script of this talk can be found on the TED Talks page.

Byrne was not the first to explain the link between music and archi­tec­ture. In 2002, renowned archi­tect Daniel Libe­skind deliv­ered a Proms Lec­ture on that very top­ic (find the audio stream here) and, in 2007, Jonathan Cole pre­sent­ed his own lec­ture, “Music and Archi­tec­ture: Con­fronting the Bound­aries between Space and Sound,” at Gre­sham Col­lege, Lon­don. But it is Byrne’s talk that approach­es the sub­ject from the prac­ti­cal point of view of a musi­cian.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.