Udacity to Launch 5 New Courses, from Statistics to Physics. Shooting for Largest Online Class Ever.

in Math, Online Courses | June 18th, 2012

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

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The Art of Making the Hofner Beatles Bass Guitar

in Music | June 12th, 2012

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.

The Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Expe­ri­enced in 3 Min­utes

Mak­ing Fend­er Gui­tars, Then (1959) and Now (2012)

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Ray Bradbury Reads Moving Poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been,” on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mission

in Astronomy, Sci Fi, Video - Science | June 7th, 2012

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.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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All Eyes on Ai Weiwei: Life Under Surveillance … and on Twitter … After His Arrest

in Art, Current Affairs | June 1st, 2012

As the one-year anniver­sary of Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei’s release from jail draws near, the whole world seems to be watch­ing his every move. The whole world, that is, except for the Chi­nese peo­ple.

Ai is cut off from most of the pop­u­la­tion of his own coun­try after the gov­ern­ment shut down his blog and stopped him from using Chi­nese social media. When he was released from jail on June 22 of last year, after 81 days of deten­tion, Ai found that the gov­ern­ment had installed sur­veil­lance cam­eras all around his Bei­jing home and stu­dio. He count­ed 15 with­in a 100-meter area. In response, he set up four of of his own cam­eras inside his home ear­li­er this spring and began stream­ing a 24-hour live webfeed, called “Wei­wei Cam.” The regime quick­ly shut that site down, too.

But the Chi­nese author­i­ties have not com­plete­ly cut off Ai’s access to the world out­side of Chi­na. More than 147,000 peo­ple fol­low him on Twit­ter, one of the many West­ern sites blocked in Chi­na, and a steady stream of for­eign jour­nal­ists have been mak­ing their way to his Bei­jing com­pound for inter­views. Last week The New York Times pub­lished a har­row­ing account of the day in April, 2011, when police pulled a hood over Ai’s head and drove him to an undis­closed deten­tion cen­ter. And this week Slate pub­lished an arti­cle, “Some­one’s Always Watch­ing Me,” along with videos (above and below) of an inter­view with Ai con­duct­ed by Slate Group Edi­tor-in-Chief Jacob Weis­berg on May 14. “I feel that what makes them most fright­ened,” Ai told Weis­berg, refer­ring to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, “is my inter­na­tion­al pro­file, my inter­views with West­ern media.”

Ai is restrict­ed to Bei­jing until June 22. When­ev­er he leaves his house he must tell the police where he is going and who he will meet. “I basi­cal­ly obey their orders,” he told Evan Osnos of The New York­er in Jan­u­ary, “because it does­n’t mean any­thing. I also want to tell them I’m not afraid. I’m not secre­tive.” Every week he has to meet with the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau for a chat. Like the for­eign jour­nal­ists, the Chi­nese police are eager to learn what Ai plans to do when restric­tions on his move­ment are lift­ed lat­er this month. “They asked me what I would do next when I met them last week­end,” Ai told a reporter for The Tele­graph this week. “They tried to make it very casu­al. After a chat, they said, ‘What comes next?’ I said: ‘It is an inter­est­ing ques­tion. What does this nation do next?’ ”

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The Art of Making a Flamenco Guitar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Experienced in 3 Minutes

in Music | May 31st, 2012

The Fla­men­co gui­tar grew up in Andalu­sia, the major province in south­ern Spain, where it became inte­gral to the cul­ture dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. The mod­ern fla­men­co gui­tar (a first cousin of the mod­ern clas­si­cal gui­tar) is typ­i­cal­ly made with two of three woods — spruce on the top, and cypress or sycamore on the back and sides. When put in the hands of the right luthi­er, the gui­tar can become a thing of beau­ty. Case in point: This art­ful video by Greek film­mak­er Dim­itris Ladopou­los brings you inside the work­shop of Vasilis Lazarides, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing high qual­i­ty fla­men­co gui­tars by hand. (Vis­it his gui­tars online here.) 299 hours of blood, sweat, tears and love go into mak­ing each fine gui­tar. But you can watch it all hap­pen in a mat­ter of three min­utes, with the music of Edsart Udo de Haes pro­vid­ing the sound­track.

If elec­tric gui­tars hap­pen to be your thing, you can also watch Fend­ers being made in 1959 and 2012.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirm­ing, Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary About a Fla­men­co Dance Class

Hear Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Cov­ered in Unex­pect­ed Styles: Gre­go­ri­an Choir, Cel­lo Ensem­ble, Finnish Blue­grass, Jazz Vocal & More

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Charles Bukowski: Depression and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Creative Juices (NSFW)

in Life, Poetry, Psychology | May 22nd, 2012

Pico Iyer once called Charles Bukows­ki the “lau­re­ate of Amer­i­can lowlife,” and that’s because he wrote poems for and about ordi­nary Amer­i­cans — peo­ple who expe­ri­enced pover­ty, the tedi­um and grind of work, and some­times frayed rela­tion­ships, bouts of alco­holism, drug addic­tion and the rest. Bukows­ki could write so elo­quent­ly about this because he came from this world. He grew up in a poor immi­grant house­hold with an abu­sive father, took to the bot­tle at an ear­ly age, worked at a Los Ange­les post office for a decade plus, and had a long and tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship with Jane Cooney Bak­er, a wid­ow eleven years his senior, who drank to excess and died at 51, leav­ing Bukows­ki bro­ken.

And then there’s the depres­sion. Bukows­ki expe­ri­enced that too. But he knew how to chan­nel it, how to turn days of dark­ness into sources of per­son­al and cre­ative renew­al. He explains it in some char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly NSFW detail above.

To gain a more in-depth under­stand­ing of depres­sion and its bio­log­i­cal basis, we’d rec­om­mend watch­ing this lec­ture by Stan­ford’s Robert Sapolksy.

Here’s a tran­script of what Bukows­ki has to say:

I have peri­ods where, you know, when I feel a lit­tle weak or depressed. Fuck it! The Wheaties aren’t going down right. I just go to bed for three days and four nights, pull down all the shades and just go to bed. Get up. Shit. Piss. Drink a beer down and go back to bed. I come out of that com­plete­ly re-enlight­ened for 2 or 3 months. I get pow­er from that.

I think someday…they’ll say this psy­chot­ic guy knew some­thing that…you know in days ahead and med­i­cine, and how they fig­ure these things out. Every­body should go to bed now and then, when they’re down low and give it up for three or four days. Then they’ll come back good for a while.

But we’re so obsessed with, we have to get up and do it and go back to sleep. In fact there’s a woman I’m liv­ing with now, get’s around 12:30, 1pm, I say: “I’m sleepy. I want to go to sleep.” She says: “What? You want to go to sleep, it’s only 1pm!” We’re not even drink­ing, you know. Hell, there’s noth­ing else to do but sleep.

Peo­ple are nailed to the process­es. Up. Down. Do some­thing. Get up, do some­thing, go to sleep. Get up. They can’t get out of that cir­cle. You’ll see, some­day they’ll say: “Bukows­ki knew.” Lay down for 3 or 4 days till you get your juices back, then get up, look around and do it. But who the hell can do it cause you need a dol­lar. That’s all. That’s a long speech, isn’t it? But it means some­thing.

via Bib­liok­lept

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Bukows­ki:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

The Last Faxed Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

Read More...

1377 TED Talks Listed in a Neat Spreadsheet — And More Stellar Culture Links on the Web

in TED Talks | May 11th, 2012

A quick fyi for TED heads. In ear­ly 2011 we men­tioned that some­one put togeth­er a handy online spread­sheet that lists 1377 TED Talks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. It’s worth men­tion­ing the spread­sheet again because this evolv­ing Google doc has now grown beyond 1200 talks. That works out to more than 340 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page gets updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

Now time for more good cul­ture links, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our hap­penin’ Twit­ter stream.

Archae­ol­o­gists Unearth Ancient Maya Cal­en­dar Writ­ing

Vir­ginia Woolf. Play­ing Crick­et

Delta Dawn: How Sears, Roe­buck & Co. Mid­wifed the Birth of the Blues

Mau­rice Sendak’s Last Video Appear­ance with Stephen Col­bert

‘Madame Bovary’ in Pie Chart Form. (Did Some­one Say Pie?)

From Whistler to Warhol, Famous Artists Paint Their Moth­ers

Jose Sara­m­ago’s First Reac­tion after Watch­ing the Movie Blind­ness

All 268 Pages from Leonar­do’s Note­books Pre­sent­ed in High Res iPad App

Mar­garet Atwood Rec­om­mends That Mar­tians Read Moby Dick to Under­stand Amer­i­ca

Biog­ra­ph­er Robert Caro Dis­cuss­es Polit­i­cal Power—How to Get It and Use It

A Record­ing of 24-Year-Old John Ash­bery Read­ing His Poems

John Peel’s Mas­sive Record Col­lec­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Strange Pol­i­tics of Gertrude Stein

David Sedaris Reads “Six to Eight Black Men” from the Album ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

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The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts

in History, Podcasts | May 10th, 2012

What with so many open-end­ed inter­net media projects out there, I admire any that come to a close. Peo­ple start plen­ty of things on the net that wind up peter­ing out, but few dis­play the con­vic­tion to work toward a deci­sive end. Then again, this goes for all forms of human endeav­or; even the builders of the Roman Empire must have oper­at­ed on the assump­tion that it might go on for­ev­er. We now know, of course, that it would­n’t, and this knowl­edge pro­vides for­mal and intel­lec­tu­al premis­es for Mike Dun­can’s pod­cast, The His­to­ry of Rome (iTunes — RSS). The Roman Empire end­ed by the year 476. The his­to­ry of the Roman Empire in pod­cast form end­ed last Sun­day, after almost five years, 179 episodes, and 1654 near-uni­ver­sal­ly lauda­to­ry iTunes reviews.

I reviewed The His­to­ry of Rome myself back in 2009, for the Podthoughts col­umn I write for MaximumFun.org. Pod­think­ing has taught me that his­to­ry as a sub­ject suits this ver­bal, episod­ic, straight-into-your-mind type of medi­um almost ide­al­ly. Though Dun­can choos­es to get straight to the point and tell the Roman Empire’s sto­ry in a clear, asceti­cal­ly unadorned man­ner, dif­fer­ent pod­casts deliv­er their slices of his­to­ry with styles and sen­si­bil­i­ties all their own. If you his­tor­i­cal­ly inclined pod­cast-lis­ten­ers have already been keep­ing up with this show, oth­ers await you: Dan Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry, Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers, A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects, and (my own cur­rent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of choice) Top­ics in Kore­an His­to­ry, to name but a few. But if you haven’t been, sit down and let Mike Dun­can tell you about a cer­tain Romu­lus and Remus, with whom the his­to­ry of Rome myth­i­cal­ly began.

More cours­es on the Ancient world, includ­ing the his­to­ry of Rome, can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1150 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Flash Mob Fun Part II: Copenhagen Philharmonic Plays Grieg’s Peer Gynt in the Subway

in Music | May 8th, 2012

Ah, the Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic strikes again. Last year, they broke out some Ravel’s Bolero at Copenhagen’s Cen­tral Sta­tion. This year, it’s Peer Gynt in the sub­way itself. The Copen­hagen Phil dates back to 1843, mak­ing it one of the old­est pro­fes­sion­al sym­pho­ny orches­tras in Europe. But stodgy and bound by tra­di­tion they’re not. Hope the clip helps start your day. H/T Mefi

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

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Fight For Your Right Revisited: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Commemorates the Beastie Boys’ Legendary Music Video

in Film, Music | May 5th, 2012

By now you’ve heard the news. Beast­ie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch has died at the age of 47. The cause, sali­vary can­cer. The Beast­ie Boys broke onto the nation­al scene in 1986, with the release of Licensed to Ill, which became the best-sell­ing rap album of the 1980s and the first hip hop LP to top the Bill­board chart. Either then or some time since, you’ve like­ly heard their best known song from the album — (You Got­ta) Fight for Your Right (To Par­ty!).

The orig­i­nal music video for the song (below) became some­thing of an MTV main­stay and played on themes from George A. Romero’s zom­bie movie Dawn of the Dead. 25 years lat­er, Adam Yauch pro­duced Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed, a 30 minute sur­re­al film that picks up where the orig­i­nal video left off. It stars Eli­jah Wood, Dan­ny McBride and Seth Rogen. You can watch it above in full. It’s also added to our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Mubi.com

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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