Visit the Prado Art Collection with Google Earth

in Art, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | January 14th, 2009

Thank­ful­ly, it’s not all bad news here in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Yes­ter­day, Google and the Pra­do (the major art muse­um in Madrid) announced that you can launch Google Earth from wher­ev­er you live, trav­el vir­tu­al­ly to Spain, and then take a close look at four­teen of the muse­um’s finest paint­ings. And, by “close,” I mean close. Accord­ing to a Google spokesman said: “The paint­ings have been pho­tographed in very high res­o­lu­tion and con­tain as many as 14,000 mil­lion pix­els (14 gigapix­els).” “With this high lev­el res­o­lu­tion you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), del­i­cate tears on the faces of the fig­ures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Wey­den) and com­plex fig­ures in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (by El Bosco).” The four­teen paint­ings include pieces by Fran­cis­co de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Hierony­mus Bosch. You can begin the tour (and get Google Earth soft­ware) from this land­ing page. The video below also offers a nice visu­al illus­tra­tion of what this project is all about. (A quick tip: if you have Google Earth, make sure that you have “3D Build­ings” checked off under “Lay­ers.” Then do a search for “Pra­do” and click on “Museu del Pra­do.” From there, click on the image of the muse­um. Next, you should see a series of paint­ings that you can begin to explore.)

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Learning Ancient History for Free

in History, Online Courses | January 12th, 2009

For life­long learn­ers, cours­es on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these cours­es are poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed in under­grad­u­ate pro­grams (at least in the States), they seem be to mak­ing a come­back in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­grams designed for old­er stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, it seems, many come to the con­clu­sion that you can’t skip over the foun­da­tions and still make sense of it all. And so they go back to basics.

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny, a com­mer­cial provider of cours­es for life­long learn­ers, has rec­og­nized this demand and built a sur­pris­ing­ly rich col­lec­tion of lec­tures ded­i­cat­ed to the Ancients. (See full cat­a­logue here.) These cours­es are pol­ished and well put togeth­er. But they cost mon­ey. If that’s a con­cern, then you should know about some of the free alter­na­tives. Thanks to the “open course” move­ment, you can now find a series of free cours­es online, includ­ing some from top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties. Let me give you a quick overview of your options:

Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a new round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry (YouTube — iTunes Audio — iTunes Video- Down­load Course). A lead­ing fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are high touch. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve com­plet­ed the arc of Greek his­to­ry, you can move next to the UC Berke­ley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Paf­ford moves from Julius Cae­sar to Con­stan­tine (rough­ly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lec­tures. And the audio comes straight from the class­room, which means that you’ll get sol­id infor­ma­tion but you’ll also have to endure some extra­ne­ous talk about home­work assign­ments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t com­plain.) You can down­load this course in one of three ways: iTunes, streamed audio, or via rss feed. Last­ly, I should note that Paf­ford has taught anoth­er relat­ed course at Berke­ley — The Ancient Mediter­ranean World (iTunes — Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big sur­vey cours­es under your belt, you can switch to some more focused cours­es com­ing out of Stan­ford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Han­ni­bal (iTunes). As I’ve not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this pod­cast­ed course takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy. Because Han­ni­bal still remains a fig­ure of intense his­tor­i­cal inter­est, it’s not sur­pris­ing that this course has ranked as one of the more pop­u­lar cours­es on iTune­sU.

Anoth­er short course worth your time is Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic. Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund (a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor at the time), the course teas­es apart the epic poem that was an instant when it was writ­ten 29–19 BC), and still endures today. Divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours, this pod­cast offers a good intro­duc­tion to one of the cen­tral texts in the Latin tra­di­tion.

Final­ly, let me throw in a quick bonus course. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus, anoth­er Stan­ford course taught by Thomas Shee­han, looks inside the historical/Roman world of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a his­to­ry course, not a reli­gion course, and it uses the best lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to answer the ques­tions: “Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do…? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion…? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

UPDATE: Thanks to a read­er, I was remind­ed of anoth­er relat­ed course: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site). These pod­casts cov­er the lega­cy of the Roman Empire that emerged in the East (after it had col­lapsed in the West). You can read more about this course in one of my ear­ly blog posts.

All of these cours­es can be found in the His­to­ry Sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. There you will find 200 high qual­i­ty online cours­es that you can lis­ten to any­time, any­where.

The Whole Earth Catalog Now Online

in Books | January 10th, 2009

Between 1968 and 1972, Stew­art Brand pub­lished The Whole Earth Cat­a­log. For Kevin Kel­ly, the Cat­a­log was essen­tial­ly “a paper-based data­base offer­ing thou­sands of hacks, tips, tools, sug­ges­tions, and pos­si­bil­i­ties for opti­miz­ing your life.” For Steve Jobs, it was a “Bible” of his gen­er­a­tion, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along. (On a side note, I high­ly rec­om­mend the com­mence­ment speech where Jobs made those com­ments.) The very good news is that The Whole Earth Cat­a­log and some relat­ed pub­li­ca­tions are now avail­able online. You can read them for free, or down­load them for a fee. Start delv­ing into things here.

While we’re on this sub­ject, I should also high­light a project that has more recent­ly occu­pied Stew­art Brand’s time.  The Sem­i­nars About Long Term Think­ing is a month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Brand and orga­nized by the Long Now Foun­da­tion, which hopes to pro­vide a coun­ter­point to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and to pro­mote “slower/better” think­ing. You can access the thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nars as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and oth­er­wise find it host­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Have a good week­end.

via Boing Boing

What Will Change Everything? (According to the World’s Leading Scientific Minds)

in Science | January 7th, 2009

At the start of each new year, the Edge.org asks some of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic thinkers a big enchi­la­da ques­tion. This year, it’s “What Will Change Every­thing? What game-chang­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideas and devel­op­ments do you expect to live to see?” Here you can find the answers giv­en by 151 thinkers. (Col­lec­tive­ly, the full set of replies runs 107,000 words.) Some of the intrigu­ing answers include:

• The detec­tion of extrater­res­tri­al life. And this life may take the form of dig­i­tal organ­isms that can move through the uni­verse at the speed of light (wow!),
• A major upgrade of the human brain through tech­nol­o­gy,
• Our  life span will poten­tial­ly be extend­ed to 150 years through genomics,
• The dis­cov­ery of anoth­er uni­verse with­in our own uni­verse,
• The dis­cov­ery of new time space dimen­sions, and 
• The cre­ation of a uni­ver­sal trans­la­tion machine that will facil­i­tate trans­la­tion across the globe.

For the longer list, vis­it the full col­lec­tion.

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Top 10 Blog Posts of 2008

in Most Popular | January 1st, 2009

Here they go, the most pop­u­lar posts of 2008:

10. Free Stan­ford Com­put­er Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Cours­es Now Online

9.) The Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed

8.) Teach­ing on YouTube

7.) Turn Your iPod into a Trav­el Guide: 20 Trav­el Pod­casts

7.) Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

6. This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies the Housing/Credit Cri­sis

5.) Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics: Down­load Leonard Susskind Video Lec­tures

4.) Yale Open Cours­es: The New Line­up

3.) George Orwell’s 1984: Down­load Free Audio Book Ver­sion

Also, James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Audio­book

2.) Top Five Col­lec­tions of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es

1.) Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

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Put Tolstoy, Twain and Others on Your Mobile Phone

in Books | December 31st, 2008

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Des­jardins asks “Need a lit­tle Tol­stoy while you’re wait­ing in line? How about some Mark Twain on the sub­way? Booksin­my­phone puts — sur­prise! — books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to down­load clas­sics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.  

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John Lennon Returns to Promote “One Laptop Per Child”

in Music | December 31st, 2008

Thanks to some dig­i­tal hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and help­ing pro­mote One Lap­top Per Child, a char­i­ty work­ing to bring cheap com­put­ers and inter­net access to chil­dren in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the com­mer­cial stitch­es togeth­er old record­ings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a cou­ple of new words (did Lennon ever say “lap­top”?). In the end, it all comes out fair­ly seam­less­ly. If you want to give a lap­top (start­ing at $199) and change the world, go here. Oth­er­wise, here’s John:

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via Goings On via Rolling Stone

Unauthorized Beatles Masterpieces

in Music | December 29th, 2008

This week­end’s New York Times ran a piece detail­ing how the record indus­try has dithered and con­tin­u­al­ly failed to release sev­er­al long-await­ed Bea­t­les’ projects. It also men­tioned how fans and col­lec­tors have forged ahead and put togeth­er unau­tho­rized boot­leg projects, some of which the Times calls “cura­to­r­i­al mas­ter­pieces.” In par­tic­u­lar, the arti­cle high­lights the Pur­ple Chick label, which “has assem­bled deluxe edi­tions of each com­mer­cial­ly released [Bea­t­les] album, offer­ing the orig­i­nal discs in their mono and stereo mix­es, along with the sin­gles (also in mono and stereo) released at the time, as well as every known demo, stu­dio out­take and alter­na­tive mix.” Some of Pur­ple Chick­’s include “Bea­t­les Deluxe” (which cov­ers 10 CDs);  “A/B Road” (which gives you 96 hours of the “Let It Be” ses­sions); and a series of BBC radio per­for­mances. 

So how do you get this stuff? It’s a ques­tion that Rolling Stone asked rhetor­i­cal­ly when it recent­ly gave anoth­er pos­i­tive review to Pur­ple Chick record­ings. And it answered the ques­tion with this: “Google is your friend: Try search­ing ‘pur­ple chick and megau­pload’ to get start­ed.”

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The Clash of Civilizations (and the Passing of its Author)

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | December 29th, 2008

When the twin tow­ers were tak­en down in Sep­tem­ber 2001, Amer­i­ca looked to make sense of what hap­pened. And it was­n’t long before many start­ed turn­ing to The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order, a book writ­ten by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, the Har­vard poli sci pro­fes­sor who passed on last week.

The book itself was an elab­o­ra­tion upon a con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle that Hunt­ing­ton pub­lished in For­eign Affairs in 1993. In the open­ing lines, he wrote: “World pol­i­tics is enter­ing a new phase… It is my hypoth­e­sis that the fun­da­men­tal source of con­flict in this new world will not be pri­mar­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal or pri­mar­i­ly eco­nom­ic. The great divi­sions among humankind and the dom­i­nat­ing source of con­flict will be cul­tur­al. Nation states will remain the most pow­er­ful actors in world affairs, but the prin­ci­pal con­flicts of glob­al pol­i­tics will occur between nations and groups of dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tions. The clash of civ­i­liza­tions will be the bat­tle lines of the future.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly he sug­gest­ed, it would be the “West ver­sus the Rest,” and with­in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, he lumped in Islam.

Below, we have post­ed Hunt­ing­ton’s 1997 appear­ance on the Char­lie Rose show, where he expand­ed on his world view. You can also get Edward Said’s gen­er­al retort, The Myth of the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions, here and Noam Chom­sky’s thoughts on the con­cept here.

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Remembering Harold Pinter

in Theatre | December 26th, 2008

Harold Pin­ter, the Nobel Prize-win­ning play­wright, died in Lon­don on Wednes­day. As The New York Times obit men­tions, when Pin­ter won the Nobel in 2005, his declin­ing health pre­vent­ed him from attend­ing the awards cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm. Instead, he gave his accep­tance lec­ture  — “Art, Truth & Pol­i­tics” — via a record­ed video, which we’re post­ing below. (You can also watch it on the Nobel web site here or alter­na­tive­ly read the tran­script.) The speech runs a good 45 min­utes.

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