Electing a US President in Plain English

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 21st, 2008

We’re less than two weeks away (final­ly, at long last) from the next US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and that means that it’s a good time to deci­pher Amer­i­ca’s con­vo­lut­ed elec­toral sys­tem. So here’s a piece from The Com­mon Craft Show, which does it in a fair­ly cre­ative way:

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Your Digital Magazine Rack

in Web/Tech | October 21st, 2008

A quick fyi: All­top is a new web ser­vice (cre­at­ed by Guy Kawasa­ki) that aggre­gates RSS feeds about pop­u­lar top­ics. Name a top­ic and they bring you sto­ries from “the best web­sites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, you can take a look at the area where All­top was kind enough to list Open Cul­ture. We’re in their col­lege sec­tion. But you can also find hun­dreds of oth­er top­ic areas here — art, books, health, writ­ing, cof­fee, human rights, you get the pic­ture.

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The Sun and Its Magnetic Beauty

in Science | October 21st, 2008

In case you missed them, I want­ed to flag some pho­tos that made their way around the blo­gos­phere yes­ter­day, thanks in part to Boing­Bo­ing. The Swedish 1‑m Solar Tele­scope, oper­at­ed by the Insti­tute for Solar Physics, has cap­tured images that let you see the sun in an entire­ly new way. Below, you’ll find a detailed view of the mag­net­ic struc­ture of the Sun’s sur­face. Rather beau­ti­ful. For more pho­tos, def­i­nite­ly have a look here. 

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin — Round #4

in Comedy | October 20th, 2008

This one fea­tures a guest appear­ance by Palin her­self. Video starts after the brief, but unavoid­able com­mer­cial. Let ‘er roll:

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Yale Open Courses: The New Lineup

in Online Courses, Yale | October 16th, 2008

I want­ed to give every­one a heads up that Yale has just released its sec­ond round of “open cours­es.” And I have to say that the line­up looks great. Let me quick­ly list them for you:

• The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 (Amy Hunger­ford)
• Intro­duc­tion to Greek His­to­ry (Don­ald Kagan)
• Game The­o­ry (Ben Polak)
• Finan­cial Mar­kets (Robert Shiller)
• Mil­ton (John Rogers)
• France Since 1871 (John Mer­ri­man)
• The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion Era, 1845–1877 (David Blight)
• Fun­da­men­tals of Physics (Rama­mur­ti Shankar)
• Fron­tiers of Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing (W. Mark Saltz­man)

As always, each course fea­tures a syl­labus, read­ing assign­ments, class notes, and quite pol­ished lec­tures. The lec­tures can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). And quite notably, Yale has designed the cours­es to be plat­form agnos­tic, mean­ing that you should be able to down­load the lec­tures to any com­put­er or mp3 play­er. For more on Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive, please vis­it its offi­cial web­site here. And please note that you can also find these cours­es in our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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The Geography of US Presidential Elections: Week 1

in Current Affairs | October 15th, 2008

As men­tioned last week, Stan­ford is host­ing a five week course, The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions, that you can fol­low (for free) in real time. The first video lec­ture is now avail­able on iTunes (down­load here), and you can find it embed­ded below.

The first lec­ture is fast paced, and fea­tures intrigu­ing graph­ics that start to dis­man­tle the wide­ly held belief that the US can be neat­ly divid­ed into red and blue states. I will keep post­ing the lec­tures as the course unfolds. In the mean­time, I’d rec­om­mend vis­it­ing the course web site, and ask­ing the pro­fes­sor, Mar­tin Lewis, any ques­tions you might have.

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Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize in Economics

in Current Affairs, Economics | October 14th, 2008

Paul Krug­man is main­ly known in the States as an econ­o­mist who writes fre­quent­ly for The New York Times. Mean­while, few real­ly know much about his seri­ous aca­d­e­m­ic work. Now that’s he’s been award­ed the Nobel Prize, it’s worth giv­ing you a quick feel for it. Here’s Krug­man giv­ing you the gist in his own words (iTunes — Rss Feed — Stream).

A Brief History of the 1929 Crash

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 13th, 2008

With the gyra­tions of the world mar­kets, 1929 was sud­den­ly very present last week. All too present. What real­ly went down in ’29? Below we present “The Crash of 1929,” a doc­u­men­tary that aired as part of PBS’ The Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series. Part 1 appears below. You can get the remain­ing parts here: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Free Pres­i­den­tial Biogra­phies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

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Morphing Van Gogh Portraits

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | October 12th, 2008

You’ll get the con­cept of this pret­ty quick­ly. And if you’re a fan, see these oth­er clips (Women in Art & Women in Film). These cre­ative videos by Philip Scott John­son all reside in this larg­er YouTube col­lec­tion, which has now made it on to our our grow­ing list: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions.

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President Tours U.S To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency

in Comedy | October 12th, 2008

Yeah, okay, I am get­ting off track here with this com­ic bit from The Onion, veer­ing from cul­ture to pol­i­tics. Sor­ry for the detour. I will get back on track tomor­row. Real­ly, I will…

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