Total Noob to Learning Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Courses Hold Your Hand
Those of us interested in exploring the myriad free courses available online will appreciate the work being done at P2PU. It’s perhaps a funny name when you first say it out loud, but P2PU’s approach and original learning content are for real.
You may have guessed what the name stands for: peer to peer university. P2PU’s model is innovative. Their idea is that taking an online course should be more like learning on the job than taking a traditional class. Their approach encourages people to work together on projects—whether learning computing programming or something else—and to assess one another’s work with constructive feedback.
Users can design their own courses with help from P2PU. Course design is broken down into discrete steps and course content is vetted by peer users and P2PU staff.
Courses are hands-on and super varied. One course lets users take a hack at designing their own big game—the kind that gets adults out in the streets defending a fountain or hiding treasures under bus stop benches. Another courses lays out the steps for making a music video. Fifteen other people are already taking the challenge. Two have completed it and four mentors have offered their help.
One of the most popular courses is about writing for the web. The comments sections for each step are lively and filled with links to real blogs. Participants in this course share their writing and opinions about what makes for good web writing.
One of the site’s other well-subscribed courses teaches participants how to program using the Twitter API. P2PU breaks the challenge down into nine steps (the first of which is to introduce yourself to others already taking the course). Participants proceed at their own pace and can reach out for help to other students, mentors and P2PU staff along the way.
Not all of the courses focus on new technologies. Always useful and never out-of-date, this course is a perfect fit for number noobs.
You can find a list of P2Pu’s new courses here. And while you’ve got your thinking cap on, don’t forget our big list of 500 Free Online Courses.
Kate Rix is an Oakland-based freelance writer. See more of her work at .
Read More...Professor Ronald Mallett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Century … and He’s Not Kidding
Time travel. Since Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, we have known that it is theoretically possible, even if popular notions of time travel have deteriorated slightly from the august H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to… well, Hot Tub Time Machine. Which is to say that few people—lay or professional—take the concept very seriously anymore. But University of Connecticut Professor Dr. Ronald Mallett still believes, and he has sought to realize his dream of making time travel possible in this century by infiltrating the scientific profession, becoming a respected theoretical physicist, then braving the ridicule and opprobrium, or at least disagreement, of his colleagues to begin work on a time machine.
In the video above, Dr. Mallett describes his experience of “risking professional suicide,” and physical pain, to work out his ideas. Since coming out, so to speak, as a proponent of time travel, Mallett published a memoir in 2006, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. It’s both a description of his fifty years of scientific work toward his project Space-time Twisting by Light (STL) and a moving personal narrative of growing up under segregation, losing his father at a young age, and becoming one of the first African American theoretical physicists.
Spike Lee has acquired the film rights to his memoir (though the project seems to be stalled), and Mallett has told his story on This American Life, CNN, and in speaking tours around the country. Whether Mallett’s enthusiasm will translate into reality remains to be seen, but his passion for Einstein’s predictions is infectious and illuminating.
The video comes from a new series from THNKR called EPIPHANY, a “daily series inviting impassioned thought leaders across all disciplines to reveal the innovative, the improbable, and the unexpected of their worlds.” Each week is devoted to a new “thought leader.” Visit the EPIPHANY channel to view the rest of Dr. Mallett’s “revelations.”
Another online source for information, the Cassiopeia Project, claims to “make science simple.” In the video below, learn the basics of time travel and special relativity.
via BoingBoing
Read More...Tom Davis, Original Saturday Night Live Writer, “De-animates” at 59
Back in 1975, Tom Davis and Al Franken, two Minnesota-born comedians, joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live, a new late-night comedy show. Together, Franken & Davis sketched out some unforgettable SNL characters — The Coneheads played by Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman. Nick The Lounge Singer, a character inhabited wonderfully by Bill Murray. Julia Child brought to life by Aykroyd again. 37 years later, Saturday Night Live is still going strong.
The Franken & Davis comedy team broke up in 1990. Time passed. And, in 2009, their lives went in very different directions. Al Franken was elected to the U.S. Senate. Tom Davis was diagnosed with throat and neck cancer — the disease that finally took his life yesterday. In recent months, Davis wrote openly about his journey with cancer. In a blog post called The Dark Side of Death, he joked about indulging in medical marijuana (“These days I get my marijuana through airport security by hiding it in the morphine”) and the day he’d “de-animate.” But he also talked movingly about the perspective the disease gave him, writing:
I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too. There are good dead people and bad dead people. Some of my best friends are dead people. Dead people have fought in every war. We’re all going to try it sometime. Fortunately for me, I have always enjoyed mystery and solitude.
Many people in my situation say, “It’s been my worst and best year.” If that sounds like a cliché, you don’t have cancer. On the plus side, I am grateful to have gained real, not just intellectual empathy. I was prepared to go through life without having suffered, and I was doing a good job of it. Now I know what it’s like to starve. And to accept “that over which I have no control,” I had to turn inward. People from all over my life are reconnecting with me, and I’ve tried to take responsibility for my deeds, good and bad. As my friend Timothy Leary said in his book, Death by Design, “Even if you’ve been a complete slob your whole life, if you can end the last act with panache, that’s what they’ll remember.”
I think I’ve finally grown up.
When Davis said that “some of my best friends are dead people,” he was probably thinking of Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia too. Here, you can watch Davis and the Grateful Dead frontman cook a meal together, and above we bring you Franken & Davis conducting a Grateful Dead trivia contest in 1980. Thanks to Tom for the memories and laughs.
via NYTimes
Read More...22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Vonnegut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”
If you read Open Culture, smart money says you’ll also enjoy Letters of Note, a site we occasionally reference. They collect, post, and provide context for “fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos” to and from all manners of luminaries throughout the history of art, politics, music, science, media, and, er, letters. Dig into the archives and you’ll find a missive home from Kurt Vonnegut, a notable letter-writer if ever there was one. Dedicated Vonnegut readers will recognize the tone of the novelist, although here, at the age of 22, he had yet to become one. A Private in the Second World War, he was taken prisoner on December 19, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. Having then done time in an underground section of a Dresden work camp known, yes, as “Slaughterhouse Five,” he survived the subsequent bombing of the city and wound up in a repatriation camp by May 1945. There, he wrote what follows:
Dear people:
I’m told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than “missing in action.” Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do — in precis:
I’ve been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler’s last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges’ First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren’t much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight — so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I’m told, but I’ll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren’t wounded. For that much thank God.
Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations — the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn’t room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year’s Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn’t.
Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: — one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.
On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden — possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.
After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.
When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to (‘the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border’?). There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P‑39’s) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me.
Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We’ve since been flown to Le Havre.
I’m writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I’m being wonderfully well feed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I’ll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I’ll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and — get this — sixty (60) days furlough.
I’ve too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can’t receive mail here so don’t write.
May 29, 1945
Love,
Kurt — Jr.
Related content:
Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story
Kurt Vonnegut: “How To Get A Job Like Mine” (2002)
Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
The Evolution of the Moon: 4.5 Billions Years in 2.6 Minutes (and More Culture From Around the Web)
Here it is. A short history of the Moon. 4.5 billion years covered in a slick 2.6 minutes, all thanks to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The video, moving from the Moon’s hot creation to its pockmarked present, can be downloaded via NASA’s web site.
Now More Culture from Around the Web (all previously aired on our Twitter Stream):
BBC’s Collection of Famous Authors Reading From Their Works
Five Key TED Talks, According to The New Yorker
“Oh my ass burns like fire! ” Mozart Writes a Letter to His Cousin, 1777
Sylvia Plath’s Drawings (Presented at London’s Mayor Gallery)
Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Recreated in 7,000 Dominoes
Drunk Texts from Famous Authors, Courtesy of The Paris Review
An Abridged History of Video Games in Under Three Minutes
Matt Taibbi Looks Back at Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”
How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself
Colum McCann Reads His Story “Transatlantic.” Added to our collection of Free Audio Books
Anne Frank’s Diary Was Almost Never Published. Francine Prose Tells the Story
Darwin & Design (MIT). Added to our List of 500 Free Courses (under Literature)
Famed Harvard Biologist E.O. Wilson Gives Advice to Young Scientists at TEDMed
Author Rohinton Mistry Offers Words of Wisdom to Graduating Class at Ryerson University
Double Indemnity, the Classic Film by Billy Wilder on YouTube
Read More...
The Complete History of the World (and Human Creativity) in 100 Objects
While we’re catching up with historical podcasts, note that BBC Radio 4’s The History of the World in 100 Objects (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) has wrapped up and covered all 100 objects. And not, mind you, just any old objects: these objects come straight from the collection of the British Museum, and thus almost certainly reveal the story of mankind more effectively than most. For that has constituted the program’s project since its inception: to tell, for just under fifteen minutes at a stretch, one chapter of human history as the trained eye can read it in an object like an early writing tablet, a Chinese bronze bell, or an Egyptian clay model of cattle. Don’t let the seeming plainness of these artifacts fool you; the show approaches them with all the most advanced audio production techniques. And after you’ve listened, you’ll realize that, looked at from a suitably historical perspective, there’s not a plain object in this bunch.
Since A History of the World in 100 Objects has finished its journey to the present day, the new listener has no obligation to begin in the ancient world and work their way forward. You might well prefer to begin at the end, as it were, and draw insights from one of our everyday objects like a credit card (albeit, in this broadcast, one that conforms to Shari’a law), or a slightly futuristic object now entering our everyday lives like a solar-powered lamp. From there, you can delve deeper and deeper into our culture and technology’s past: the nifty lamp gives way to the credit card which gives way to a David Hockney painting, which gives way to the HMS Beagle’s chronometer to the mechanical galleon and a Korean roof tile until you’re back at the Mummy of Hornedjitef. If you get back that far and still find yourself longing for more from host Neil MacGregor, be aware that he’s got a new, 20-part historical series going called Shakespeare’s Restless World. The range of source material may have narrowed, but the depth remains.
Related content:
The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Podcast Still Going Strong
Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps — Peter Adamson’s Podcast Still Going Strong
Last August, we featured Peter Adamson’s podcast The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), a chronologically uninterrupted “look at the ideas and lives of the major philosophers (eventually covering in detail such giants as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition.” Continuing at the rate of one episode a week, Adamson and his guest philosophical experts have since covered names like Lucretius, Seneca, and Plutarch. They’ve most recently reached Alexander of Aphrodisias, an especially astute ancient commentator on Aristotle and opponent of Stoic attitudes toward fate; Quintilian, Lucian, Themistius, and the interplay between rhetoric and philosophy in the Roman Empire; and the emergence of astronomy, ushered in by Ptolemy during a time when observers still had much to say about astrology.
Don’t miss the episodes where Adamson brings in specialists on the particular philosopher, philosophical subfield, or quirk in philosophical history to which his podcasting journey brings him. Since our last post on the show, we’ve heard Richard Sorabji talk about time and eternity in Aristotle, James Warren on Epicureanism, and Raphael Wolf on Cicero, to name but a few. Such is Adamson’s attention to detail — and dedication to the Zeno’s Paradox-reminiscent cause of pure continuity — that, after putting out 85 episodes, he remains in the ancient world. Imagine the bounty of discussion when he reaches, say, the eighteenth century, let alone the twentieth. To prepare yourself for that, you’d better start listening now; a show expressly created without gaps must, it seems only natural, be experienced without them.
Related content:
The Partially Examined Life: A Philosophy Podcast
Philosophy Bites: Podcasting Ideas From Plato to Singularity Since 2007
55 Free Philosophy Courses
Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Read More...Udacity to Launch 5 New Courses, from Statistics to Physics. Shooting for Largest Online Class Ever.
This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a gushing little profile on Sebastian Thrun. By now, you probably know his bio. Thrun helped invent the self-driving car at Google and taught artificial intelligence at Stanford, before ditching his tenured teaching position and launching Udacity, a new venture that offers MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) to students everywhere.
Also this weekend, Thrun kicked off an effort to “break the student record for the largest online class ever taught” with his new class, Introduction to Statistics: Making Decisions Based on Data. It starts June 25, and above you can watch Thrun give a short (Hans Rosling-like) introduction to the class. The course is entirely free and open to students everywhere. Students will receive dynamic feedback along the way, and diligent students will get a certificate of completion at the end. So what’s stopping you? Certainly not money or geography. Other courses starting on June 25 include:
Intro to Physics: Landmarks in Physics
Algorithms: Crunching Social Networks
Logic & Discrete Mathematics: Foundations of Computing
Software Testing: How to Make Software Fail
Related Content:
Coursera Adds Humanities Courses, Raises $16 Million, Strikes Deal with 3 Universities
Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Free Online Courses Worldwide
Why the University System, as We Know It, Won’t Last …. and What’s Coming Next
Free Online Certificate Courses from Great Universities: A Complete List
Read More...The Art of Making the Hofner Beatles Bass Guitar
Karl Höfner began making stringed instruments in 1887, in the little town of Schönbach. His company flourished into the 20th century and really took off one fortuitous day in 1961, when Paul McCartney ambled into a Steinway shop in Hamburg, Germany and saw a Hofner bass, otherwise known as the “violin bass.” McCartney later recalled:
Fenders even then seemed to be around £100. All I could afford really was about £30. Always teetering on the edge of not having much — so I didn’t really want to spend that much. So… I found this Hofner violin bass. And to me it seemed like, because I was left-handed, it looked less daft because it was symmetrical. So I got into that. That became my main bass.
As The Beatles Online notes, “The Hofner 500/1 bass became McCartney’s signature instrument,” and was eventually rechristened “the Hofner Beatle Bass.” 50 years later, they’re still making the iconic guitar, and you can watch the whole process unfold in just 16 minutes. It’s not a very styled video, a far cry from other guitar-making videos we’ve featured here before, but it’s worth the watch.
Making Fender Guitars, Then (1959) and Now (2012)
Read More...Ray Bradbury Reads Moving Poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been,” on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mission
Powerful. Simply powerful. In November, 1971, the Mariner 9 space orbiter was about to make history. It was rapidly approaching Mars, making it the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. There, it would produce a global mapping of the Martian surface and capture “the first detailed views of the martian volcanoes, Valles Marineris, the polar caps, and the satellites Phobos and Deimos.” This marked a major milestone in the great era of space exploration. The excitement leading up to the moment was palpable.
Just days before the Mariner 9 reached Mars, two of our greatest sci-fi writers, the dearly departed Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, shared the stage with two eminent scientists, Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, at a symposium held at Caltech. At one point, Bradbury captivated the audience when he read his poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been,” and gave an almost spiritual inflection to the Mariner 9 mission, reminding us of something that Neil deGrasse Tyson once said: the line separating religious epiphany and feelings created by space exploration is awfully, awfully thin.
The video, which comes to us via BoingBoing, was put online by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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