Philosophy Makes a Comeback

in Philosophy | April 7th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle from today’s New York Times is this piece, which talks about the revival of phi­los­o­phy on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es. The rea­sons for this revival are var­ied — Some see phi­los­o­phy offer­ing “good train­ing for look­ing at larg­er soci­etal ques­tions, like glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.” Oth­ers see it build­ing skills val­ued by law schools (argu­men­ta­tion and rea­son­ing). Still oth­ers believe that phi­los­o­phy and exis­ten­tial angst can be good for “good for get­ting girl­friends.” Mean­while, all seem to agree that philo­soph­i­cal think­ing is not sim­ply for “frou-frou” intel­lec­tu­als. The net result: the num­ber of phi­los­o­phy majors is up, with some schools see­ing increas­es of 50–100% over the past 5–6 years.

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Thinking Big About John Adams

in History | April 2nd, 2008

I’m watch­ing the new HBO minis­eries “John Adams” and find­ing it fas­ci­nat­ing. The series is based on a book by Pulitzer Prize win­ning his­to­ri­an David McCul­lough (also author of 1776 and Tru­man). And below we have McCul­lough giv­ing us, if you will, the quick ele­va­tor pitch for Adams — that is, two min­utes on what made Adams a par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy found­ing father. (The video, by the way, is pro­duced by Big­Think, a fair­ly new site that posi­tions itself as the “think­ing man’s YouTube.” They’re backed by Har­vard’s ex-pres­i­dent, Lar­ry Sum­mers, and oth­er folks with deep pock­ets. Whether they’ll be able to turn a prof­it on intel­lec­tu­al media, I’m sad­ly doubt­ful. But that’s not meant to take any­thing away from what they’re doing. And if any­one wants to throw a few mil­lion dol­lars our way, we’ll con­sid­er tak­ing it.)

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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• How Ein­stein Became Ein­stein

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Elephant Painting

in Art | March 30th, 2008

The video above is fair­ly mind-blow­ing. And here you can watch the ele­phant from anoth­er angle. The ele­phant appar­ent­ly resides in a safe haven in Thai­land, after hav­ing been abused in Bur­ma. For more info, see The Ele­phant Art & Con­ser­va­tion Project. (Video has been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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Dith Pran on Genocide

in History | March 30th, 2008

Dith Pran, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal activist who sur­vived The Killing Fields in Cam­bo­dia, and whose expe­ri­ence was nar­rat­ed in the 1984 film by the same name, has died at 65. You can revis­it his pho­to­graph­ic work here, and watch a talk he gave in 2006. Here, Pran recounts what hap­pened in Cam­bo­dia — how The Viet­nam War spread to Cam­bo­dia, empow­er­ing the mur­der­ous Khmer Rouge — and ques­tions whether we’re gen­er­al­ly get­ting clos­er to mak­ing geno­cide a thing of the past.

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Nosferatu: The Silent Adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

in Film | March 28th, 2008

Released in 1922, the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist film, Nos­fer­atu: A Sym­pho­ny of Hor­ror, offers a chill­ing adap­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la (get free audio­book of Stok­er’s work here). The film was made by F. W. Mur­nau and stars Max Schreck. Watch it below, or find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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80+ Free Courses from UCSD

in Podcasts | March 27th, 2008

Here’s a quick note for any­one look­ing for free online cours­es: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — San Diego now gives you free access to more than 80 cours­es. (Access the full list here.) The cours­es, most­ly root­ed in the sci­ences, can be accessed via iTunes or rss feed. We’ve inte­grat­ed some of these cours­es into our own meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. It now includes about 215 cours­es, and we’d encour­age you to book­mark the page and use it often.

Bush’s War

in Current Affairs | March 27th, 2008

To mark the fifth anniver­sary of the Iraq inva­sion, PBS’s Front­line is air­ing “Bush’s War,” which offers “the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary analy­sis of one of the most chal­leng­ing peri­ods in the nation’s his­to­ry.” Draw­ing on an exten­sive archive, the pro­gram lays out the “entire nar­ra­tive,” show­ing how “the war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the gov­ern­ment.” If you can’t catch it on TV, you can watch it online. Click here and then click “Watch Online.”

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The Real Cost of the Iraq War

in Current Affairs | March 27th, 2008

Dur­ing the run up to the Iraq war, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion esti­mat­ed that the mil­i­tary mis­sion would run around $50 bil­lion, even though experts doubt­ed those num­bers at the time. (In 2002, Yale’s William Nord­haus guessed that the costs could reach $500 bil­lion with­in five years.) Now, here we are in 2008, and new tal­lies sug­gest that the real costs could rise to some­where between $1 tril­lion and $3 tril­lion. This award-win­ning piece — MP3 — iTunes — Feed — delin­eates the mount­ing costs and intro­duces you to some of think­ing in Joseph Stiglitz and Lin­da Bilmes’ new book: The Three Tril­lion Dol­lar War.

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Grateful Dead Free Concert Archive

in Music | March 25th, 2008

A nice lit­tle find for Dead Heads: The Inter­net Archive hosts a large col­lec­tion of the Grate­ful Dead­’s live music. Some con­certs (usu­al­ly record­ed by mem­bers of the audi­ence) can be down­loaded. Oth­er audio (usu­al­ly tak­en from the sound­board) can be streamed. You can access the over­all col­lec­tion here.

A few items worth sam­pling include: Live at the Boston Gar­den (May 7, 1977); Live at the Dane Coun­ty Col­i­se­um (Feb­ru­ary 15, 1973); or Live at Madi­son Square Gar­den (Sep­tem­ber 4, 1979).

Enjoy.

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