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

in History | November 15th, 2011

It all start­ed as a thought exper­i­ment on Reddit.com when a user posed the ques­tion: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus if I trav­eled back in time with a mod­ern U.S. Marine infantry bat­tal­ion or MEU?”

Then the Red­dit user offered a more pre­cise sce­nario:

Let’s say we go back in time with a Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) … could we destroy all 30 of Augus­tus’ legions?

We’d be up against near­ly 330,000 men since each legion was com­prised of 11,000 men. These men are typ­i­cal­ly equipped with limb and tor­so armor made of met­al, and for weapon­ry they car­ry swords, spears, bows and oth­er stab­bing imple­ments. We’d also encounter siege weapons like cat­a­pults and crude incen­di­ary weapons.

We’d be made up of about 2000 mem­bers, of which about half would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in ground attack oper­a­tions. We can use our mech­a­nized vehi­cles (60 Humvees, 16 armored vehi­cles, etc), but we can­not use our attack air sup­port, only our trans­port air­craft.

We also have medics with us, mod­ern med­ical equip­ment and drugs, and engi­neers, but we no longer have a mag­i­cal time-trav­el­ing sup­ply line (we did have but the timelords frowned upon it, sad­ly!) that pro­vides us with all the ammu­ni­tion, equip­ment and sus­te­nance we need to sur­vive. We’ll have to suc­ceed with the stuff we brought with us.

So, will we be vic­to­ri­ous?

The ques­tion touched off a fren­zy of dis­cus­sion. One user, James Erwin, wrote a short sto­ry, Rome Sweet Rome, imag­in­ing how the bat­tles might play out, and Warn­er Bros. came along and bought the movie rights to the sto­ry.

And now pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ri­ans are weigh­ing in. Inter­viewed in Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics, his­to­ri­an Adri­an Goldswor­thy, an expert on the Roman army, offered these thoughts:

Obvi­ous­ly, there is a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in fire­pow­er. Not only would Roman armor be use­less against a rifle round—let alone a grenade launch­er or a .50 cal­iber machine gun—it would prob­a­bly dis­tort the bullet’s shape and make the wound worse.

But here comes the dif­fi­cul­ty:

In the short term and in the open, mod­ern infantry could mas­sacre any ancient sol­diers at lit­tle risk to them­selves. But you could not sup­port mod­ern infantry. So all of these weapons and vehi­cles could make a brief, dra­mat­ic, and even dev­as­tat­ing appear­ance, but would very quick­ly become use­less. Prob­a­bly in a mat­ter of days.… Marines are the best war­riors ever trained. But they can’t fight an end­less wave of sol­diers. No one can.

You can find the rest of Goldswor­thy’s thoughts here, and sev­er­al good Roman his­to­ry cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

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.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Leymah Gbowee Talks @Google

in Books, Google | October 12th, 2011

Last Wednes­day, Liber­ian peace activist Leymah Gbowee paid a vis­it to Google to talk about her mem­oir, Mighty Be Our Pow­ers: How Sis­ter­hood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. Two days lat­er, she was award­ed the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize along with Ellen John­son Sir­leaf and Tawakkol Kar­man. The Googlers pro­vide a quick intro­duc­tion to her activism before the con­ver­sa­tion begins.…

via Google Book Blog

R.E.M.‘s Final Encore (and an Early Concert from Germany)

in Music | September 23rd, 2011

They weren’t quite The Bea­t­les, and they did­n’t go out in the same style. (Catch The Bea­t­les’ rooftop gig here.) But R.E.M. gave us 30 good years (ok, maybe 15), and, after call­ing it quits ear­li­er this week, we thought it worth­while to present their final live moments. So here it goes: R.E.M.‘s final encore played in Mex­i­co City back in Novem­ber, 2008. It’s a 36 minute set that fea­tures “Super­nat­ur­al Super­se­ri­ous,” “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” “I Believe,” “Coun­try Feed­back,” “Life and How to Live It,” and “Man on the Moon.”

Thanks to @opedr for the great find and, for good mea­sure, we’re throw­ing in a vin­tage R.E.M. con­cert record­ed in Ger­many in 1985 from the Fables of the Recon­struc­tion tour. These were good old days.

The Aurora Borealis Viewed from Orbit (and What Creates Those Northern Lights?)

in Astronomy, Physics, Video - Science | September 21st, 2011

Ear­li­er this week, NASA astro­naut Clay­ton Ander­son tweet­ed a 14 sec­ond time-lapse film of the Auro­ra Bore­alis tak­en from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. The short clip called to mind a more exten­sive view of the North­ern Lights shot by Don Pet­tit, also work­ing in the ISS, back in 2008. (Watch above.) And it raised the basic ques­tion: What caus­es the Auro­ra Bore­alis any­way?

The beau­ti­ful nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non starts deep inside the core of the sun, and the rest of the sto­ry gets explained in a five minute ani­mat­ed video cre­at­ed by Nor­we­gian film­mak­er Per Byhring and the Physics Depart­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo.

Both clips now appear in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

via Coudal Part­ners Blend­ed Feed and Brain­Pick­ings

Kenneth Branagh Stars in Radio Dramatization of Epic Soviet Novel, Life and Fate (Free Audio)

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | September 19th, 2011

Le Monde has called Life and Fate “the great­est Russ­ian nov­el of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry,” and Mar­tin Amis once described its author, Vasi­ly Gross­man, as “the Tol­stoy of the USSR.” Now, if you haven’t read the nov­el, you can begin to under­stand the rea­son for all of the high praise.

Start­ing this week, the BBC will air an eight-hour drama­ti­za­tion of the mas­ter­piece that offered a sweep­ing account of the siege of Stal­in­grad, one of the blood­i­est bat­tles of World War II. Although orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1959, the book was offi­cial­ly cen­sored in the Sovi­et Union until 1988 because, in the esti­ma­tion of the appa­ratchiks, it threat­ened to do more harm to the USSR than Paster­nak’s Doc­tor Zhiva­go.

Ken­neth Branagh and David Ten­nant star in the 13-episode series that will be broad­cast from 18 to 25 Sep­tem­ber on Radio 4. You can access the audio files online or via iTues, RSS Feed, and oth­er for­mats here.

For more drama­ti­za­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics, please vis­it:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

50 Clas­sic Russ­ian Films (Includ­ing Tarkovsky’s Finest) Now Online

The Sounds That Made Pop

in Music | September 15th, 2011

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the good folks at The Word assem­bled 40 Nois­es That Built Pop, a col­lec­tion of dis­tinc­tive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eye­brows to raise.” Some were orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in quite cal­cu­lat­ed ways. Oth­ers were hap­py acci­dents. Either way, the­ses sounds are now part of the pop tra­di­tion. We have high­light­ed four sounds that speak to us. But you should real­ly dive into and enjoy The Word’s col­lec­tion that was clear­ly put togeth­er with lov­ing care.

The Pow­er Chord from The Kinks: You Real­ly Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essen­tial build­ing block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at sub­stan­tial vol­ume on gui­tar and dis­tort­ed to taste. It’s also the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of the pok­er face; with just the two notes, it’s nei­ther a sun­ny-sound­ing major chord nor a gloomy minor… With­out the pow­er chord entire gen­res of met­al sim­ply would­n’t exist.”

Vinyl Scratch from Her­bie Han­cock: Rock­it (1983)
“Any DJ cue­ing up a record through one ear of a pair of head­phones will have heard the sound of scratch­ing, but it was­n’t until the ear­ly days of hip hop that it was incor­po­rat­ed into musi­cal per­for­mance… Grand­mas­ter Flash, Afri­ka Bam­baataa and Kool Herc became the pio­neers of “turntab­lism”, while Grand Mix­er DXT’s work on Rock­it pro­pelled the sound into the main­stream and trans­formed the DJ into an unlike­ly front­man.”

Hand­clap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a per­cus­sive sound, [the hand­clap has] been used by every­one from fla­men­co dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true call­ing. Lay­ered on top of the snare drum to empha­sise the sec­ond and fourth beats of the bar, its for­mi­da­ble “crack” can be heard through­out dis­co and funk, and has since been employed by any­one wish­ing to hint at a par­ty atmos­phere…”

Gui­tar Feed­back from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A clas­sic case of rock music tak­ing an unde­sir­able noise and mould­ing it to suit its own pur­pos­es. The rea­son for feed­back is sim­ple: the gui­tar pick­up “hears” itself being blast­ed out of a speak­er cab­i­net, process­es the sound and pass­es it to the speak­er: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more lib­er­ties were tak­en with feed­back; while there’s an unin­ten­tion­al burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Bea­t­les, the out­ro to The Who’s My Gen­er­a­tion uses the sound more cre­ative­ly.”

H/T Metafil­ter

And, on a total­ly unre­lat­ed note: Sun Ra and The Blues Project do Bat­man & Robin songs. Cour­tesy of the WFMU Blog Way­back Machine.

The History of Philosophy … Without Any Gaps

in Philosophy | August 31st, 2011

On Mon­day, we told you where you can down­load Free Cours­es from Top Philoso­phers (Fou­cault, Sear­le, Rus­sell and the rest). As the day went along, our list grew thanks to read­er sug­ges­tions, and we also dis­cov­ered anoth­er promis­ing resource — a pod­cast called “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don:

Begin­ning with the ear­li­est ancient thinkers, the series will look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Avi­cen­na, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.

That’s what Adam­son promis­es, and he does­n’t dis­ap­point. Over the past 34 months, Adam­son has pro­duced 136 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. That’s rough­ly 45 hours of audio, and there’s no telling how many more hours of audio will bring us to the mod­ern peri­od. The more, the bet­ter, we say.

You can access all episodes via these links: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site. Or find oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

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: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Take Stanford Computer Science Courses This Fall: Free Worldwide

in Stanford, Technology | August 16th, 2011

This fall, pro­fes­sors from Stan­ford’s pres­ti­gious School of Engi­neer­ing will offer online three of its most pop­u­lar com­put­er sci­ence cours­es: Machine Learn­ing, Intro­duc­tion to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es. (You can sign up by click­ing on these links.) The cours­es will fea­ture short, inter­ac­tive video clips that stu­dents can watch when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want; short quizzes that pro­vide instant feed­back; and the abil­i­ty to rank ques­tions to be answered by Stan­ford instruc­tors. Accord­ing to the Stan­ford Report, “Already more than 58,000 peo­ple have expressed inter­est in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence course taught by Sebas­t­ian Thrun, a Stan­ford research pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence and a Google Fel­low, and Google Direc­tor of Research Peter Norvig.”

This isn’t the first time Stan­ford has offered free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es to the world. Back in 2008, Stan­ford Engi­neer­ing Every­where pre­sent­ed lec­tures from 10 com­plete online com­put­er sci­ence and elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing cours­es. This includes the three-course “Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence” sequence tak­en by the major­i­ty of Stan­ford under­grad­u­ates. These cours­es are all list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing sec­tions of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. H/T @eugenephoto

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence & Pro­gram­ming: Free Cours­es

Devel­op­ing Apps for iPhone & iPad: A Free Stan­ford Course

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Animated

in Literature | August 5th, 2011

Back in 1959, Ken Kesey, then a grad stu­dent in Stan­ford’s cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram, start­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in gov­ern­ment-spon­sored med­ical research that test­ed a range of hal­lu­cino­gens — LSD, psilo­cy­bin, mesca­line, and the rest. As part of the research project, Kesey spoke into a tapere­corder and recount­ed the ins-and-outs of his hal­lu­ci­na­tions. These tapes were even­tu­al­ly stored away, and Kesey went on to write One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest, a book that now sits on TIME’s list of the 100 Best Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els since 1923.

A half cen­tu­ry lat­er (and ten years after Kesey’s own death), the LSD tapes live again. This week, the film­mak­er Alex Gib­ney will release Mag­ic Trip, a new doc­u­men­tary that revis­its Kesey’s fabled road trip across Amer­i­ca with the Mer­ry Pranksters and their psy­che­del­ic “Fur­ther” bus. (Tom Wolfe, you might recall, famous­ly cov­ered this trip with The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test, pub­lished in 1968.) Tak­en from the new film, the sequence above mix­es the redis­cov­ered tapes with some art­ful ani­ma­tion, and it cap­tures the whole mood of Kesey’s first trip …

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:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

via Wired

Hear Voices from the 19th Century: Tennyson, Gladstone & Tchaikovsky

in History, Media, Technology | August 3rd, 2011

Head over to Sound­Cloud, and you’ll find 10 audio files that span three cen­turies. It’s a fair­ly ran­dom col­lec­tion, we’ll admit. But two record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry imme­di­ate­ly stand out.

First we have Alfred Lord Ten­nyson (1809 – 1892), Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign, read­ing “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on the wax cylin­der in 1890.

And then we get to hear echoes of the voice of William Glad­stone, the four-time Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain (1809 — 1898). Here, Glad­stone’s voice was record­ed by Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph cylin­der (1888), the same device that lets us lis­ten to Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) chat­ting with his friends. Some have doubt­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Glad­stone record­ing, but it still remains gen­er­al­ly accept­ed.

For more on record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with a five-part BBC series called Gramo­phones & Grooves. It takes you into the ear­ly record­ing indus­try and lets you hear count­less oth­er voic­es.

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.