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.

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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.)

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Learning Arabic (and Other Languages) with YouTube

in Language Lessons | July 29th, 2008

YouTube’s Trendspot­ting Tues­day focused this past week on the grow­ing num­ber of videos that can teach you a for­eign lan­guage (for free, of course). Among the 12 video col­lec­tions fea­tured here, you’ll find ones that offer lessons in French, Span­ish, Mod­ern Greek, Latin, Japan­ese and Swahili, among oth­ers. They also high­light clips that demon­strate how to write Ara­bic. (Find the first clip below.) Straight­away, you’ll notice that these videos have a home brewed feel to them, and they’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly as sub­stan­tive as what you can get for free via pod­cast. (See our large For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion). But, at least when it comes to demon­strat­ing some­thing visu­al (such as how to write Ara­bic) they have their pur­pose.

(P.S. With the video below, I have no idea how much the “instruc­tor” actu­al­ly knows about Ara­bic. The point isn’t to pass this off as a defin­i­tive source of knowl­edge, but more to show how the video plat­form is being used.)

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The Randy Pausch Video You (Probably) Haven’t Seen

in Uncategorized | July 29th, 2008

By now, most every­one knows that Randy Pausch sad­ly died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer last week. And, if you have an inter­net pulse, you’re already acquaint­ed with his lec­ture that caught the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion last year: Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams. What you may not have seen is the short, six-minute speech Pausch made at Carnegie Mel­lon’s grad­u­a­tion in late May — a short two months ago. The phi­los­o­phy here remains the same. The pitch is just short­er and to the point. It’s added to our YouTube playlist. Here it goes:

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A Year in Antarctica Boiled Down to Six Minutes

in Random | July 27th, 2008

1200 peo­ple live in Antarc­ti­ca dur­ing the sum­mer, and about 200 in win­ter. Assum­ing that you’re not among them, we’ve post­ed this time lapse video to show you what you’re miss­ing:

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What Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales, Thinks about Knol, the New Google Competitor

in Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Wikipedia | July 27th, 2008

Here is Jim­my Wales, Wikipedi­a’s founder, being inter­viewed after Google debuted Knol. Inter­est­ing that his first thought is that users should copy Knol con­tent and bring it to Wikipedia … :

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“Last Lecture” Professor Randy Pausch Dies

in Life | July 25th, 2008

Randy Pausch, the com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty whose “Last Lec­ture” caught the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, has died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Thanks part­ly to a Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle writ­ten last Sep­tem­ber, the pub­lic dis­cov­ered the remark­ably upbeat and uplift­ing lec­ture Pausch gave soon after get­ting diag­nosed. Titled “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams” (see video below, or down­load on iTunes here), the lec­ture became a media sen­sa­tion and went viral across the web. And it served as the basis for Pausch’s bestelling book, The Last Lec­ture. If you haven’t seen the video, give it your time. It will teach you some­thing more valu­able than any­thing else we serve up here.

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Google’s Answer to Wikipedia Now Live

in Google, Wikipedia | July 24th, 2008

Last Decem­ber, Google announced that it was test­ing a new con­tent ini­tia­tive — dubbed “Knol” — intend­ed to rival Wikipedia. The fruits of their labor are now live (in beta), avail­able for all to see.

As we men­tioned in our ini­tial piece, Knol caters to the indi­vid­ual author/expert, not to the wis­dom of crowds (à la Wikipedia). Each ency­clo­pe­dia entry is gen­er­al­ly writ­ten, edit­ed, and revised by one indi­vid­ual. The author reigns supreme here. But that does­n’t mean that Wikipedi­a’s col­lab­o­ra­tive approach is being entire­ly aban­doned.

Google’s mod­el leaves ample room for col­lab­o­ra­tive writ­ing. It keeps open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mul­ti­ple authors will write an ency­clo­pe­dia entry. And, they allow for “mod­er­at­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion” — mean­ing that “any read­er can make sug­gest­ed edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or mod­i­fy before these con­tri­bu­tions become vis­i­ble to the pub­lic.” Col­lab­o­ra­tion is built into Google’s mod­el. It’s just not tak­en to an extreme con­clu­sion. (Get more info on the posi­tion­ing of Knol here.)

Knol is not the only con­tent plat­form try­ing to strike a bal­ance between the author and mass col­lab­o­ra­tion. In June, Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca launched a beta of a new online ency­clo­pe­dia that takes “a col­lab­o­ra­tive-but-not-demo­c­ra­t­ic approach” to pro­duc­ing knowl­edge. Users can make con­tri­bu­tions to a grow­ing store­house of knowl­edge. But whether these con­tri­bu­tions get accept­ed remains up to the experts and edi­tors. (“At the new Bri­tan­ni­ca site, we will wel­come and facil­i­tate the increased par­tic­i­pa­tion of our con­trib­u­tors, schol­ars, and reg­u­lar users, but we will con­tin­ue to accept all respon­si­bil­i­ty of what we write under our name. We are not abdi­cat­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ty as pub­lish­ers or bury­ing it under the now-fash­ion­able “wis­dom of the crowds.”)

I have lit­tle doubt that the Google and Bri­tan­ni­ca mod­els will gen­er­ate some sol­id ency­clo­pe­dia entries. That’s a safe bet. But whether these ency­clo­pe­dias will ever become as com­pre­hen­sive as Wikipedia, or as wide­ly used, is anoth­er ques­tion. And the same holds true for whether the con­tent will gen­er­al­ly be qual­i­ta­tive­ly bet­ter than what Wikipedia has to offer. When Google first announced Knol last Decem­ber, I voiced my doubts. Now that the rub­ber is final­ly hit­ting the road, we can see whether my skep­ti­cism is war­rant­ed (or not).

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The Great Dictator: A Classic Chaplin Moment

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | July 23rd, 2008

It’s 1940. The film is The Great Dic­ta­tor, Char­lie Chap­lin’s famous satire of Nazi Ger­many. In this cel­e­brat­ed scene, Chap­lin dances with a large globe with Richard Wag­n­er’s Lohen­grin Over­ture play­ing in the back­ground.

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Understanding Modern Physics: Download Leonard Susskind Video Lectures

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | July 20th, 2008

What’s the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics? Here’s your chance to find out. Below, you will find three cours­es (the first of even­tu­al­ly six) pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his new book on that sub­ject here). Freely avail­able on iTunes and YouTube (see below), these video lec­tures trace the begin­nings of mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, tak­ing you from Isaac New­ton (or New­ton­ian Mechan­ics) to Albert Ein­stein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Notably, these cours­es were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that the con­tent was pitched to an audi­ence much like you — that is, smart peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an exten­sive knowl­edge of physics. Watch the video below — the first lec­ture that kicks off the series of cours­es — and you will see what I mean.

Final­ly, in case you’re won­der­ing, the next three cours­es (cov­er­ing quan­tum mechan­ics, elec­tro­mag­net­ism, cos­mol­o­gy, black holes, and more) will be pre­sent­ed this com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and, once taped, we will give you a heads up. Sign up for our RSS Feed and you will be sure to get an update. Also see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es for many more cours­es along these lines.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

• Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics (Fall 2007) iTunes YouTube
• Quan­tum Mechan­ics (Win­ter 2008)  iTunes YouTube
• Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Spring 2008) iTunes YouTube
• Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Fall 2009) iTunes YouTube
• Cos­mol­o­gy iTunes — YouTube
• Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics iTunes YouTube

Bonus Mate­r­i­al

In 2006–2007, Susskind taped a sep­a­rate series of lec­tures on Quan­tum Mechan­ics. You can down­load them as free video lec­tures as well:

• Fall 2006 iTunes YouTube
• Spring 2007 iTunes YouTube

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