On the Lighter Side: Re-Thinking Classic Films

in Film | August 29th, 2008

End­ing the week on a lighter note …

A backer of indie film fes­ti­vals, Volk­swa­gen presents “See Film Dif­fer­ent­ly” — a series of videos that fea­ture amus­ing re-inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sic movies. Here, you’ll find new takes on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Die Hard, and Mary Pop­pins. Below, we’ve fea­tured anoth­er (some­what racy) bit and added it to our YouTube Playlist.

via Slash­film

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Teach Your Children Mandarin … They’re Going to Need It

in Language Lessons | August 27th, 2008

Thomas Fried­man’s lat­est opin­ion piece in the New York Times starts like this:

After attend­ing the spec­tac­u­lar clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Bei­jing Olympics and feel­ing the vibra­tions from hun­dreds of Chi­nese drum­mers pul­sat­ing in my own chest, I was tempt­ed to con­clude two things: “Holy mack­er­el, the ener­gy com­ing out of this coun­try is unri­valed.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teach­ing your kids Man­darin.”

There’s prob­a­bly a good deal of truth to his last point. So to keep your kids (or your­self) com­pet­i­tive in the glob­al mar­ket­place, we’re high­light­ing a series of free Man­darin pod­casts, all of which can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. And, as a quick aside, I should note that Roset­ta Stone is cur­rent­ly run­ning a sale (through the end of August) that will let you get 10% off their audio prod­ucts, which includes instruc­tion in Man­darin and many oth­er lan­guages. (Click here for more info)

• Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users..
• Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
• Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
• Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
• iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
  • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
• Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
  • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the PDF that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
• World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Learning Spanish with Free Audio Lessons: The Lay of the Land

in Language Lessons | August 26th, 2008

Today we have the plea­sure of wel­com­ing a guest con­tri­bu­tion by Eleena de Liss­er, who runs Voic­es en Español, a bilin­gual blog and con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish pod­cast (iTunes — RSS Feed). In this post, Eleena draws on her expe­ri­ence and offers an overview of the best free audio lessons that will teach you Span­ish (which hap­pens to be the num­ber one sec­ond lan­guage stud­ied in the Unit­ed States). Oth­er Span­ish lessons can be found in our larg­er col­lec­tion How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages. Many thanks Eleena, and take it away…

Learn­ing Span­ish today is as easy as sit­ting in front of your com­put­er and down­load­ing online audio to your MP3 play­er. If you’re moti­vat­ed, you can learn a great deal of Span­ish at lit­tle to no cost with­out ever leav­ing the com­fort of home. A tremen­dous range of instruc­tion­al Span­ish lan­guage pod­casts, from the begin­ner lev­el to advanced, are wide­ly avail­able on the inter­net and many of them are free. (Some charge for accom­pa­ny­ing tran­scripts and writ­ten prac­tice exer­cis­es.)  So whether you are a raw begin­ner or a sea­soned lan­guage study vet­er­an, there is a pod­cast out there to suit you. Here are the details on a hand­ful of edu­ca­tion­al Span­ish lan­guage pod­casts that are worth a clos­er look:

Cof­fee Break Span­ish (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), whose slo­gan is “lan­guage learn­ing with your lat­te,” is undoubt­ed­ly king of the instruc­tion­al pod­cast hill, with a large and loy­al fan­base. It is ide­al­ly suit­ed for begin­ners and oth­er stu­dents seek­ing a review of basic Span­ish gram­mar and phras­es. Mark Pentle­ton, the pro­duc­er and instruc­tor, and Kara, his stu­dent, are Scot­tish, so while you won’t be hear­ing a native Span­ish speaker’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion in the ini­tial episodes, that seems to add to the charm of the pro­gram for some lis­ten­ers.

Anoth­er pop­u­lar instruc­tion­al series is Notes in Span­ish (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), pro­duced by Ben Cur­tis and Mari­na Diez, a hus­band-and-wife team out of Madrid, Spain. Ben is British and Mari­na is Span­ish, and they too have built quite a large fol­low­ing for their con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish pod­casts (for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ates and advanced stu­dents), which promise to teach lis­ten­ers “real Span­ish” the way it is actu­al­ly spo­ken every day in Spain.

Lin­gusTV (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) is a unique entry into the instruc­tion­al lan­guage pod­casts are­na. It’s an edu­ca­tion­al video pod­cast done in the form of a tele­vi­sion sit-com (sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy), laugh track includ­ed. While the actors speak sole­ly in Span­ish, sub­ti­tles are pro­vid­ed and expla­na­tions of vocab­u­lary and gram­mar points are pro­vid­ed on the web site.

SpanishPod101 (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) dis­tin­guish­es itself from oth­er cur­rent­ly avail­able instruc­tion­al pod­casts by pro­vid­ing lessons that fea­ture dif­fer­ent accents from around the Span­ish-speak­ing world. Dia­logues are repeat­ed mul­ti­ple times and an Eng­lish trans­la­tion is pro­vid­ed, to fur­ther aid learn­ing.

For advanced lan­guage stu­dents seek­ing a change of pace and a break from gram­mar drills, there are my two pod­casts: Voic­es en Español (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which con­tains inter­views and lit­er­a­ture read­ings with native Span­ish speak­ers from all walks of life, and Cody’s Cuen­tos (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a Span­ish-lan­guage pod­cast of clas­sic fairy tales and leg­ends. While Cody’s Cuen­tos isn’t a con­ven­tion­al instruc­tion­al pod­cast, the fact that you prob­a­bly already know the sto­ry in Eng­lish will aid your com­pre­hen­sion of under­stand­ing the tale in Span­ish. Tran­scripts for the sto­ries are avail­able on the Cody’s Cuen­tos blog so that you can read and fol­low along in the text while lis­ten­ing to the audio.

This is just a small sam­ple of the kind of  Span­ish lan­guage pro­gram­ming cur­rent­ly avail­able online. Sev­er­al more Span­ish learn­ing pod­casts are list­ed here in our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Photography in Motion: 360-Degree View of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium

in Art | August 24th, 2008

Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kari Kuuk­ka has post­ed a panoram­ic view of Bei­jing’s Olympics Sta­di­um, cap­tur­ing the mood about 30 min­utes before the men’s 100m final, when Usain Bolt blew away the field. Give the page a few sec­onds to load and the pic­ture will go in motion. Hat tip to Metafil­ter, and adieu to Bei­jing.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Download a Free Copy of Cory Doctorow’s Bestseller, Little Brother

in Books | August 21st, 2008

Here’s a good item that came out of yes­ter­day’s book give­away — Ben­jamin L called our atten­tion to the fact that you can down­load a free copy of Lit­tle Broth­er, the new nov­el by Cory Doc­torow, who writes for the pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog and has con­sis­tent­ly backed the whole idea of “open cul­ture.” Released in late April, the nov­el spent six weeks on the NY Times best­seller list, and, as Ben­jamin notes, the main themes of tech­nol­o­gy and free­dom are very rel­e­vant to the read­ers of our own blog. As you will see, the offi­cial down­loads come in sev­er­al for­mats: Plain text, HTML, and PDF. But, you can also snag copies in oth­er ver­sions that fans have put togeth­er. Take for exam­ple a ver­sion that you can read on an iPhone, or one that you can access via a Sony e‑Reader. You can find all for­mats here, or buy the book in print (which I did) here.

As a last note, I want to thank every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the book give­away. I was real­ly pleased with your con­tri­bu­tions (you have good taste) and wish that I had more books to give away. In the next day, I will con­tact those first ten con­trib­u­tors, and next week I will post all of your pieces of open cul­ture. Many thanks to all. And, any time that you want to rec­om­mend a good piece of media for the ben­e­fit of your fel­low read­ers, don’t hes­i­tate to do so.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The World Without Us: Get A Free Copy of the NY Times Bestseller

in Books, Current Affairs, Science | August 20th, 2008

What if we dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth tomor­row? All of us, just like that? What would hap­pen? How would the remain­ing world sur­vive or thrive with­out us? That’s the sce­nario that gets exam­ined by sci­ence writer Alan Weis­man (who we inter­viewed last year) in his non-fic­tion eco-thriller, The World With­out Us.

Now out in paper­back, the book, which spent 26 weeks on The New York Times best­seller list, sees things play­ing out like this:

With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s sub­way tun­nels would fill with water in two days. With­in 20 years, Lex­ing­ton Avenue would be a riv­er. Fire- and wind-rav­aged sky­scrap­ers would even­tu­al­ly fall like giant trees. With­in weeks of our dis­ap­pear­ance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioac­tive blobs, while our petro­chem­i­cal plants, ‘tick­ing time bombs’ even on a nor­mal day, would become flam­ing gey­sers spew­ing tox­ins for decades to come… After about 100,000 years, car­bon diox­ide would return to pre­hu­man lev­els. Domes­ti­cat­ed species from cat­tle to car­rots would revert back to their wild ances­tors. And on every dehabi­tat­ed con­ti­nent, forests and grass­lands would reclaim our farms and park­ing lots as ani­mals began a slow parade back to Eden.

The World With­out Us is a great read. And now some of our read­ers can get their hands on a free copy. We have 10 copies to give away, and here’s how we pro­pose doing it. We’ll give a copy to the first 10 read­ers (liv­ing in North Amer­i­ca) who add a qual­i­ty piece of “open cul­ture” in the com­ments sec­tion of this post. That is, you will need to post a link to an enrich­ing video, pod­cast or mp3 that fel­low read­ers will enjoy, and tell us a lit­tle about why. When we get ten qual­i­ty clips, we will then pack­age them in a post and share them with the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. In short, think of it as you get as you give. How nice. Very Kum­baya. (Watch Joan Baez sing it). Now let’s see what you’ve got.

NOTE: We can only ship to read­ers in North Amer­i­ca. And, yes, that includes Cana­da this time, and Mex­i­co too. To our many inter­na­tion­al read­ers, I apol­o­gize for the geo­graph­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion. And we’ll try to make things up to you down the line. We do appre­ci­ate you.

Also please note that if you’re select­ed, I will also even­tu­al­ly need your name and mail­ing address.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Watch Quality Films on Hulu for Free

in Film | August 19th, 2008

Fimocu­lous has nice­ly high­light­ed a series of good films that Hulu has made freely avail­able. The one obvi­ous down­side is that, unless some­thing has changed at Hulu, the flicks will only be avail­able to view­ers in the US. (Hulu needs to do bet­ter than this!) Nonethe­less, here they are, and thanks to Kotkke.org for help­ing flag these. (Update: For many excel­lent films, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.)

Lost in Trans­la­tion

Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind

Requiem for a Dream

Met­ro­pol­i­tan

The Fifth Ele­ment

28 Days Lat­er

Koy­aanisqat­si

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

How to Pronounce Beijing Once and For All

in Language Lessons | August 18th, 2008

Is it Bay-jing? Or Bay-zhing, as some Amer­i­can broad­cast­ers are inclined to say it? Below, you’ll find the answer accord­ing to Two Chi­nese Char­ac­ters, a video team com­posed of Carsey Yee from Chi­na, and John B. Wein­stein who teach­es Chi­nese at an Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty. Give a watch. It’s inten­tion­al­ly campy and amus­ing. And for more from Yee and Wein­stein, check out their piece on the oth­er Chi­nese cities help­ing host the 2008 games.

PS: If you’re look­ing to learn Chi­nese for free, check out our many Man­darin and Can­tonese lessons in our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Replaceable You (and Other Free Stem Cells Courses)

in Science, Uncategorized | August 13th, 2008

Here’s anoth­er free, down­load­able course com­ing out Stan­ford, which will tell you how regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine can keep your body parts almost new. You can access it here on iTune­sU, and below we have post­ed the course descrip­tion. If stem cells hap­pen to pique your inter­est, then you may want to explore these two oth­er relat­ed Stan­ford cours­es: Straight Talk about Stem Cells and Stem Cells: Pol­i­cy and Ethics. Also remem­ber that you can down­load at least 200 free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es here.

Replace­able You: Stem Cells and Tis­sue Engi­neer­ing in this Age of Enlight­en­ment

“The good part about get­ting old­er is that we gain some wis­dom and patience. The bad part is that our bod­ies (knees, hips, organs, and more) start to wear out. But what if our bod­ies could be “repro­grammed” to grow new parts? The new field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine is try­ing to do just that, and it takes advan­tage of the process of regen­er­a­tion, which is nature’s solu­tion for repair­ing dam­aged tis­sues.

Although humans can­not re-grow their limbs like sala­man­ders and newts can, the capac­i­ty to regen­er­ate injured or dis­eased tis­sues exists in humans and oth­er ani­mals, and the mol­e­c­u­lar machin­ery for regen­er­a­tion seems to be an ele­men­tal part of our genet­ic make­up. The pre­vail­ing opin­ion is that the genes respon­si­ble for regen­er­a­tion have for some rea­son fall­en into dis­use, and they may be “jump start­ed” by the selec­tive acti­va­tion of key mol­e­cules. Using this knowl­edge, sci­en­tists are devel­op­ing new strate­gies to repair and, in some cas­es, regen­er­ate dam­aged or dis­eased tis­sues in both young and old patients. In this course, we will explore the excit­ing field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine and learn a lit­tle about what makes stem cells so spe­cial. We will also dis­cuss some of the recent dis­cov­er­ies that can poten­tial­ly allow us to be fit and healthy well into old age. Here, you will learn what is mere­ly sci­ence fic­tion and what, remark­ably, has become sci­ence fact in our new med­ical age.”

Jill Helms
Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Plas­tic and Recon­struc­tive Surgery
Jill Helms joined the Stan­ford fac­ul­ty after eight years at UC San Fran­cis­co, where she was the Direc­tor of the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cel­lu­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the Depart­ment of Ortho­pe­dic Surgery. Her research focus­es on the par­al­lels between fetal tis­sue devel­op­ment and adult tis­sue regen­er­a­tion. She received a PhD in devel­op­men­tal neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy and a clin­i­cal degree and spends the major­i­ty of her time in clin­i­cal­ly relat­ed research.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Diving at the ’36 Games

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | August 12th, 2008

Pro­duced at the request of the Inter­na­tion­al Olympics Com­mit­tee (and not at the behest of the Nazi pro­pa­gan­da machine), Leni Riefen­stahl’s 1938 doc­u­men­tary, Olympia, is con­sid­ered one of the more impor­tant sports doc­u­men­taries of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Below, we have post­ed a well known sequence that recalls the div­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the ’36 Berlin Games.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed