Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Other Goodies From Our Readers

in Uncategorized | August 12th, 2008

Over the past week, we’ve dis­cov­ered a num­ber of good items being put togeth­er by some of our read­ers.

The first is a new pop­u­lar pod­cast called “Robots” (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site). Assem­bled by a group of grad stu­dents asso­ci­at­ed with the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Lau­sanne (EPFL), each episode focus­es on a spe­cif­ic top­ic (e.g., robot soc­cer) and fea­tures inter­views with high pro­file guests in robot­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Also, each episode high­lights news and views from peo­ple build­ing and pro­gram­ming robots inside and out­side uni­ver­si­ties.

Next, you may want to swing over to Nigel Beale’s site and lis­ten to his radio program/podcast called The Bib­lio File. The site hous­es about 100 audio inter­views with var­i­ous authors. Per­fect for the bib­lio­phile.

Last­ly, two quick men­tions: Tom Han­son, over at the “Open Edu­ca­tion” blog, rec­om­mends Zaid Alsagof­f’s free e‑book called “69 Learn­ing Adven­tures in 6 Galax­ies,” which essen­tial­ly offers a “resource for teach­ers seek­ing to be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant.” And then, along sim­i­lar lines, you can find at SmartTeaching.org a help­ful post called “100 Awe­some Class­room Videos to Learn New Teach­ing Tech­niques.”

Keep them com­ing.…

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Top Ten Psychology Videos

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | August 11th, 2008

Psy­ch­Cen­tral has post­ed its list of the ten best psy­chol­o­gy videos avail­able on the web. Below, we have post­ed links to the videos them­selves. But if you want a quick descrip­tion of each clip, then def­i­nite­ly read through the orig­i­nal post. Thanks to Kottke.org for bring­ing this to light.

1. An Unqui­et Mind: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on Man­ic-Depres­sive Ill­ness

2. The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment

3. My Stroke of Insight

4. The Para­dox of Choice

5. Trapped: Men­tal Ill­ness in America’s Pris­ons

6. Teen Brain

7. Depres­sion: Out of the Shad­ows

8. Thin

9. I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help: Research on Poor Insight and How We Can Help

10. The Psy­chol­o­gy of Glob­al Warm­ing

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

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

in Audio Books | August 10th, 2008

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­umes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are.  (Click on each link to down­load the full zip files, which include many hours of audio. And please note that the remain­ing vol­umes are forth­com­ing.)

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - See our com­plete col­lec­tion of audio­books

Archaeologists Uncover Shakespeare’s First Theater

in Literature | August 6th, 2008

The BBC reports: “An archae­o­log­i­cal dig has recov­ered what is thought to be the remains of the the­atre where Shake­speare’s plays were first per­formed.” Get the rest of the big sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

in YouTube | August 5th, 2008

Michael Wesch, a pro­fes­sor of cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy, has become some­thing of an inter­net phe­nom­e­non, hav­ing pro­duced two won­der­ful videos that help demys­ti­fy the world of Web 2.0. (Def­i­nite­ly check them out here and here). Now he has a new video get­ting some play. Below you can watch a talk he recent­ly gave at The Library of Con­gress, where he uses video to dis­sect the new medi­as­cape that we’re liv­ing in, and how it’s chang­ing our rela­tion­ships … for bet­ter or for worse.

via John Bat­telle Search­blog

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

It Happened One Night: Frank Capra’s 1934 Classic

in Film | August 4th, 2008

Today we present Frank Capra’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning com­e­dy from 1934, star­ring Clark Gable — It Hap­pened One Night. Grab some pop­corn. Dim the lights (even if you’re at work). And enjoy:

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

John Gielgud’s Hamlet

in Literature | August 4th, 2008

Here we have John Giel­gud’s first record­ing of a scene from Ham­let, “record­ed short­ly after he became the youngest actor to take the lead in the play, in the 1929/30 Old Vic sea­son.” It’s the audio that you will want to focus on here, not the video, even though there’s some­thing a lit­tle amus­ing about the whole idea of watch­ing an old record turn on YouTube. How quaint.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89; David Remnick Reflects

in Harvard, History, Literature | August 3rd, 2008

Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn, who chron­i­cled the abus­es of the Sovi­et regime and gained world­wide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhen­it­syn means to lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of Rus­sia, David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, had this to stay: “It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a writer whose affect on a soci­ety has been greater than Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn’s affect on the fate of Rus­sia  …” In the video post­ed below, Rem­nick elab­o­rates on Solzhen­it­syn’s con­tri­bu­tions, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Rem­nick won a Pulitzer dur­ing the 90s for his best­seller, Lenin’s Tomb.

(Note: you can read the lec­ture Solzhen­it­syn gave upon receiv­ing the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and lis­ten to his 1978 Har­vard grad­u­a­tion speech here.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Ancient Origins of the Olympic Games (Two Free Lectures)

in History | July 31st, 2008

In antic­i­pa­tion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Bei­jing, The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has made avail­able two free lec­tures that sur­vey the ancient Greek ori­gins of the Olympics. Pre­sent­ed by Jere­my McIn­er­ney, a pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, these talks, each run­ning about 30 min­utes, bring you back to 776 BC, to the ancient Greeks, who com­pet­ed in order to demon­strate their alle­giance to the Home­r­ic ideals of hero­ism, hon­or and man­hood. You can lis­ten to Lec­ture 1 here (MP3 — MP4) and Lec­ture 2 here (MP3 — MP4) LINKS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF THE TEACHING COMPANY. And, as a quick fyi, you can down­load a com­plete MP3 course on Ancient Greece by the same pro­fes­sor. (It’s on sale for $35.) I’ve actu­al­ly lis­tened to it, and found it to be quite good.

For more good edi­fy­ing lec­tures, see our big col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Tsunami Surfing

in Random | July 31st, 2008

A lit­tle sum­mer ran­dom­ness. It’s actu­al­ly quite beau­ti­ful …

(And, no, I’m not sure if this is tech­ni­cal­ly a tsuna­mi.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed