Introducing 200 Free Educational Resources for K‑12 Students: Spread the Word & Tell Us Your Favorites

in Education, K-12 | November 26th, 2012

We got busy dur­ing the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day and put togeth­er a long-planned col­lec­tion of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for K‑12 stu­dents and their par­ents and teach­ers. We’re just get­ting start­ed with the list, and we’re hop­ing you could help make it bet­ter with your own sug­ges­tions. Right now the col­lec­tion fea­tures 200 help­ful resources, includ­ing free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audio­books, ebooks and text­books; qual­i­ty YouTube chan­nels; free for­eign lan­guage lessons; test prep mate­ri­als; and free web resources in aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects such as lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, sci­ence and com­put­ing. We hope you make good use of it with your fam­i­lies. We hope you tell a friend. And, right now, we hope you’ll tell us what great resources we’re miss­ing. We’d real­ly appre­ci­ate it if you would send us your thoughts.

You can start brows­ing here: 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Web Sites, Apps & More.

You can find this list in the future by click­ing on K‑12 Resources in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.

Watch The Mind of a Chef, the Unconventional Travel-Cooking Show Online (for a Limited Time)

in Television | November 26th, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, PBS pre­miered The Mind of a Chef, a 16-episode series that fea­tures nar­ra­tor Antho­ny Bour­dain tak­ing view­ers inside the mind of the award-win­ning Kore­an-Amer­i­can chef David Chang. In the series pre­miere above, David “dis­sects the roots of his pas­sion for ramen dish­es and tsuke­men on a trip to Japan,” giv­ing you an overview of the famous noo­dle and tak­ing you right to a ramen fac­to­ry. If the first episode, um, whets your appetite, then you’ll want to spend time with nine oth­er episodes from the series. They’re now post­ed online for a lim­it­ed time, cour­tesy of PBS, and they each run about 20 min­utes. But don’t dil­ly dal­ly, some will go offline on Novem­ber 30.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

The Coen Brothers Make a TV Commercial — Ridiculing “Clean Coal”

in Comedy, Film, Technology, Television | November 26th, 2012

When famous movie direc­tors shoot tele­vi­sion spots, they usu­al­ly focus on the mer­its of a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct: Wim Wen­ders and Stel­la Artois, Wes Ander­son and the Hyundai Azera, Jean-Luc Godard and Schick after­shave. Above, you’ll see one by Joel and Ethan Coen meant not to endorse but to oppose. Premised on the notion that the name “clean coal” masks a not-espe­cial­ly-clean tech­nol­o­gy, “Clean Coal Clean” dish­es it out against the coal indus­try — “the most trust­ed name in coal” — with a satir­i­cal pas­tiche of house­hold clean­ing spray com­mer­cials. I’ll say this: if any pair of film­mak­ers can get me to watch a video about the pol­i­tics of coal, the guys behind Rais­ing Ari­zona, Bar­ton Fink, and A Seri­ous Man can. The clip just below offers a look into the pro­duc­tion of anoth­er “Clean Coal Clean” par­o­dy com­mer­cial, and a rare chance to see the Coen broth­ers at work.

Mar­la Dick­er­son in the Los Ange­les Times pro­vides back­ground on this “lat­est sal­vo in the media bat­tle between the coal indus­try and envi­ron­men­tal­ists over the role that car­bon fuels should play in the Unit­ed States’ ener­gy future.” Dick­er­son quotes a coal spokesman on how the “the indus­try spent more than $50 bil­lion since the 1970s installing pol­lu­tion-con­trol equip­ment and design­ing plants that are more effi­cient.” She also lays out the envi­ron­men­tal­ists’ argu­ment: “the coal indus­try’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign has left Amer­i­cans with the impres­sion that such ‘clean coal” tech­nol­o­gy already exists. Such a break­through has yet to be devel­oped,” she quotes the Sier­ra Cub’s coal cam­paign direc­tor as say­ing, “and may nev­er be at a cost that makes eco­nom­ic sense.” Of course, not even a genius auteur — not even two of them — can make up your mind on this issue. But with these spots, the Coen broth­ers and the Alliance for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion reit­er­ate an invalu­able point: whether about house­hold clean­ers or ener­gy sources, nev­er believe the hype.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Khan Academy Releases New App for iPhone & iPod Touch, Giving You Mobile Access to 3600 Videos

in Education, iPhone, K-12 | November 26th, 2012

Non-prof­it Khan Acad­e­my, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to “pro­vid­ing a free world-class edu­ca­tion for any­one any­where,” does so pri­mar­i­ly through online video cours­es and lec­tures. The over 3600 videos are free and access is open to any­one (any­where), allow­ing K‑12 stu­dents to study math, sci­ence, com­put­er sci­ence, finance & eco­nom­ics, human­i­ties, and test prep. The orga­ni­za­tion was found­ed in 2006 by MIT and Har­vard grad Salman Khan, who began by tutor­ing rel­a­tives and friends in Bangladesh while he worked as a hedge fund ana­lyst in the States. His videos became so in-demand that he decid­ed to quit his job and dis­trib­ute them full-time, fund­ed by dona­tions from indi­vid­u­als and major donors like the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion.

While there is a healthy amount of skep­ti­cism about the effi­ca­cy of Khan’s meth­ods, there’s no short­age of demand for the kind of instruc­tion he offers to stu­dents all over the world. To fur­ther meet that demand, Khan Acad­e­my has just released an app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unlike the app released this past March for the iPad, the iPhone ver­sion does not allow inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Users can view videos but can­not, as with the iPad app, down­load playlists, read sub­ti­tles, and log progress, mak­ing this ver­sion “more for con­sump­tion rather than full inter­ac­tion.” Nev­er­the­less, and whether crit­ics like it or not, this rep­re­sents a fur­ther step for dis­tance learn­ing, as edu­ca­tion increas­ing­ly moves out of the class­room and into the hand­held devices of net­works of stu­dents no longer restrict­ed by geog­ra­phy or phys­i­cal mobil­i­ty.

The app has been added to our brand-spank­ing new col­lec­tion: 200 Free K‑12 Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Web Sites, Apps & More

Via Makeuse­of

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites & More

in | November 25th, 2012

This col­lec­tion pro­vides a list of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for K‑12 stu­dents (kinder­garten through high school stu­dents) and their par­ents and teach­ers. Please tell us if we’re miss­ing some­thing valu­able.

Below you will find free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audio­books, ebooks and text­books; qual­i­ty YouTube chan­nels; free for­eign lan­guage lessons; test prep mate­ri­als; and free web resources in aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects like lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, sci­ence and com­put­ing. 

Home School­ing Resources

• Free Zoom Artis­tic Back­grounds: If you would like to cus­tomize your Zoom back­ground, you can find free art from Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li (the mak­ers of Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, etc.) You can also get free art from world class muse­ums. Instruc­tions for cus­tomiz­ing the back­ground can be found here.
• Free Online Resources for Schools: A col­lec­tion of resources curat­ed by SchoolChoiceWeek.com. It cov­ers com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form resources, math and sci­ence resources, social stud­ies resources and more.
• School Kit: A New Zealand orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides free activ­i­ties to NZ teach­ers and class­rooms, using basic mate­ri­als.
• Khan Acad­e­my: Khan Acad­e­my has cre­at­ed guides designed to help par­ents and teach­ers nav­i­gate remote learn­ing.
• Google Teach From Home: A cen­tral hub of infor­ma­tion, tips, train­ing and tools from across Google for Edu­ca­tion to help teach­ers keep teach­ing, even when they aren’t in the class­room.
• Google Learn at Home: Google has part­nered with Khan Acad­e­my and oth­er learn­ing cre­ators to bring par­ents & fam­i­lies resources and activ­i­ties to make the com­ing days as edu­ca­tion­al and fun as pos­si­ble. These resources won’t replace any home­work assigned by teach­ers — but they can com­ple­ment that work.
• How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School.
• Net­flix Edu­ca­tion­al Doc­u­men­taries: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, Net­flix made some of its edu­ca­tion­al doc­u­men­taries free to stream online. The list notably includes David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et and Abstract, which looks at the art of design. Many of these doc­u­men­taries are still free today.
• New York Pub­lic Library Resources: Need some good book rec­om­men­da­tions? Read aloud sug­ges­tions? NYPL has your read­ing needs cov­ered for kids of all ages. See sec­tions for Ages 0–5, Kids, Teens, and Adults.
• Scholas­tic Learn at Home: Day-to-day projects to keep kids read­ing, think­ing and learn­ing. Goes from PreK to 9th grade.
• Free Online Draw­ing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illus­tra­tors: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, some well known illus­tra­tors (Mo Willems, Wendy McNaughton, Wendy, etc.) offered free draw­ing lessons for kids. These lessons are still free today.
• The Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter: This orga­ni­za­tion is offer­ing dai­ly live con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions for mid­dle school, high school, and col­lege stu­dents, avail­able through Zoom, and acces­si­ble on home com­put­er, lap­top, or phone.

Free Audio Books, eBooks and Text­books

• Free Audio Books: Our col­lec­tion of 450 free audio books includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics. The Wiz­ard of Oz, Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Mark Twain, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis, The Swiss Fam­i­ly Robin­son, Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, Anne of Green Gables, Aesop’s Fables, The Wiz­ard of Oz series, and much more. You can down­load audio files straight to your com­put­er or mobile device.
• Free eBooks: This col­lec­tion includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics in ebook for­mat. You gen­er­al­ly have the option to down­load these texts to your Kin­dle, iPad, Nook or com­put­er. Video tuto­ri­als are includ­ed on the page. You may also want to vis­it our resource: Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books.
• Bartleby.com: Gives you access to free online clas­sics of ref­er­ence, lit­er­a­ture, and non­fic­tion, includ­ing Strunk & White’s Ele­ments of Style, The World Fact­book, The Oxford Shake­speare, and The King James Bible.
• Cal­i­bre: Down­load free e‑book soft­ware that will man­age your elec­tron­ic library, con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er, and give you online access to free e‑books. We have more on it here.
• CK-12: This non-prof­it pro­vides “open text­books” for K‑12 stu­dents all over the world. It offers free high-qual­i­ty, stan­dards-aligned, open con­tent in the STEM sub­jects (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics).
• His­toric Chil­dren’s Books: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Florida’s Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture has dig­i­tized 6,000 books. They’re free to read online from cov­er to cov­er. You can find oth­er col­lec­tions by The Library of Con­gress and UCLA.
• Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library: Pro­vides free access to high-qual­i­ty chil­dren’s books from around the world in dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing Ara­bic, Afrikaans, Dan­ish, Eng­lish, Far­si and beyond. Start brows­ing the library here.
• Lib­rivox: A favorite of ours, Lib­rivox pro­vides free audio books from the pub­lic domain. You will find 5000+ books in their cat­a­logue.
• OER Com­mons: Free, adapt­able, open­ly licensed text­books and sup­ple­men­tal resources.
• Project Guten­berg: The moth­er of all ebook sites hosts 40000 free ebooks, and makes them acces­si­ble for Kin­dle, Android, iPad, and iPhone.
• The Har­vard Clas­sics: Harvard’s influ­en­tial pres­i­dent, Charles W. Eliot, said that if you spent just 15 min­utes a day read­ing the right books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. He pub­lished a 51-vol­ume series, now known as The Har­vard Clas­sics, and they’re avail­able free online. Ide­al for the old­er stu­dent.
• Free Text­book Col­lec­tion: Our site pro­vides a meta col­lec­tion of free text­books avail­able on the web. It cov­ers every­thing from Art His­to­ry to Biol­o­gy, Math, Physics, and Psy­chol­o­gy.
• Radi­o­Lab for Kids: Kid-friend­ly sto­ries curat­ed by Radi­o­lab. All in one binge­able spot.
• Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More: Sto­ry­line Online streams imag­i­na­tive­ly pro­duced videos fea­tur­ing cel­e­brat­ed actors includ­ing Vio­la Davis, Alli­son Jan­ney, Chris Pine, Wan­da Sykes, Justin Ther­oux, and Bet­ty White read­ing children’s books along­side cre­ative­ly pro­duced illus­tra­tions.

For­eign Lan­guages 

• Open Cul­ture For­eign Lan­guage Col­lec­tion: This list cre­at­ed by Open Cul­ture offers free lessons in 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. You can gen­er­al­ly down­load the mp3/podcasts to your devices.
• Duolin­go — Learn 30+ lan­guages online with bite-size lessons based on sci­ence.
• Des­ti­nos: An Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish: This video instruc­tion­al series for high school and col­lege class­rooms teach­es Span­ish speak­ing and lis­ten­ing skills. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston.
• Deutsch – warum nicht?:  An exten­sive col­lec­tion of intro­duc­to­ry Ger­man lessons put togeth­er by Deutsche Welle. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
• French in Action: Become flu­ent in French by explor­ing French cul­ture in this well-known video series for high school and col­lege class­rooms. Pro­duced by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and WGBH Boston with Welles­ley Col­lege.
• Ma France: The BBC offers 24 video lessons that will teach you French.
• Real Chi­nese: Pre­sent­ed by the BBC. A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese pre­sent­ed in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chi­nese TV series.
• Talk Ital­ian: A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ital­ian pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has aggre­gat­ed YouTube videos that will teach stu­dents new lan­guages.

Video Lessons/Tutorials

• Free Cours­es: Our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, con­tains count­less video lec­tures from cours­es offered by top uni­ver­si­ties. Some mate­r­i­al can be use­ful for high school stu­dents, or their teach­ers.
• Khan Acad­e­my: The site famous­ly fea­tures K‑12 video tuto­ri­als cre­at­ed by Sal Khan and team. It cur­rent­ly gives stu­dents access to thou­sands of video tuto­ri­als that explain the ins-and-outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. Videos can also be accessed via YouTube, or on the Khan Acad­e­my’s web­site.
• Crash Cours­es: Cre­at­ed by author John Green, this YouTube chan­nel pro­vides crash cours­es in physics, phi­los­o­phy, games, eco­nom­ics, U.S. gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics, astron­o­my, anato­my & phys­i­ol­o­gy, world his­to­ry, com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture, ecol­o­gy, chem­istry, psy­chol­o­gy, U.S. his­to­ry and more.
• Learner.org: Run by The Annen­berg Foun­da­tion, Learner.org hosts mul­ti­me­dia resources for teach­ers, stu­dents and life­long learn­ers. You can browse their gen­er­al col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos here. Select­ed col­lec­tions are cat­a­loged below.
• MIT-K12: Tak­ing a page from Khan, MIT is now pro­duc­ing ”short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos are gen­er­al­ly cre­at­ed by MIT stu­dents. You can sort the videos by top­ic and grade lev­el. Find ver­sions of these videos on iTunes.
• NeoK12: Des­ig­nat­ed a “Great Site for Kids” by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, this site pro­vides edu­ca­tion­al videos, lessons, quizzes and edu­ca­tion­al games for K‑12 stu­dents in var­i­ous sub­ject areas, such as sci­ence, math, health, social stud­ies and Eng­lish.
• The Kid Should See This: This blog aggre­gates inter­est­ing, kid-friend­ly videos focus­ing on sci­ence, art, tech­nol­o­gy, and more. The videos weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly made for kids, but kids can get a lot out of them. That’s the premise of the site.
• TED-Ed: The mak­er of TED Talks now pro­vides care­ful­ly curat­ed edu­ca­tion­al videos or “lessons worth shar­ing.” Top­ics range from Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage, to Math­e­mat­ics, to Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.
• School­house Rock: Ani­mat­ed musi­cal edu­ca­tion­al short films that aired dur­ing the Sat­ur­day morn­ing chil­dren’s pro­gram­ming on the U.S. tele­vi­sion net­work ABC. The top­ics cov­ered includ­ed gram­mar, sci­ence, eco­nom­ics, his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, and civics
• Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has indexed over 33,000 edu­ca­tion­al videos from YouTube and placed them into a direc­to­ry of over 3,000 cat­e­gories. The videos are avail­able with­out reg­is­tra­tion or fees to teach­ers in the class­room and to stu­dents at home 24/7.
• YouTube EDU: A curat­ed col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos from sources rang­ing from Sesame Street to Har­vard. Cre­at­ed by YouTube itself.

Art & Visu­al Cul­ture (Web Resources)

• A Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World Class Muse­ums and 2 Mil­lion Works of Art: The page gives you access to col­lec­tions of dig­i­tized art from 30 world class muse­ums. It fea­tures more than 2 mil­lion works of art.
• Google Art Project: A new tool that gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appear­ing in 17 great muse­ums across the world. Using Google’s Street View tech­nol­o­gy, you can now tour col­lec­tions at 184 muse­ums world wide, includ­ing the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, the Van Gogh Muse­um, and the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam.
• Art­Think: Cre­at­ed by the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, this site offers theme-based activ­i­ties in visu­al arts, lan­guage arts, his­to­ry and social stud­ies. The site lets stu­dents inves­ti­gate artists’ work, lives, and their his­tor­i­cal con­text.
• Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums:World class muse­ums and libraries have made free col­or­ing books avail­able for down­load.
• SmartHis­to­ry: Smarthis­to­ry pro­vides an exten­sive col­lec­tion of audio and video intro­duc­tions to works of art found in stan­dard art his­to­ry sur­vey texts. (See our post “An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry.”) You can find a com­plete col­lec­tion of their videos on YouTube

Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza and Other Misheard Lyrics for Your Listening Pleasure

in Comedy, Music | November 23rd, 2012

As the Ramones so mem­o­rably did­n’t sing, “Twen­ty-twen­ty-twen­ty-four hours to go…I want a piece of bacon.” Sub­sti­tute ham, and you’ve got your­self Col­lec­tive Caden­za’s His­to­ry of Mis­heard Lyrics, Opus No. 13. The clas­si­cal­ly trained per­form­ers are noth­ing if not game. The visu­al aids are ridicu­lous­ly on mes­sage. The goal? A one-take musi­cal com­pendi­um of pop’s most com­mon­ly mis­ap­pre­hend­ed phras­es. (Pri­or projects include sub­ject­ing “What a Won­der­ful World” to six­teen musi­cal gen­res and a love­ly His­to­ry of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics.)

With all the cur­rent debate over the real world wor­thi­ness of expen­sive col­lege edu­ca­tions, it’s reas­sur­ing to see recent Jul­liard grads help­ing them­selves to the crown once sport­ed by Mr. Jaws and Dr. Demen­to.

And now, read­ers, it’s your turn to shake it like a polar bear nin­ja. Was your favorite aur­al fail acknowl­edged above? Or will you be using the space below to demand its inclu­sion in a fol­low up?

The Moon Disaster That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apollo 11 Failed to Return

in Astronomy, History | November 23rd, 2012

Endur­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aside, the 1969 moon land­ing (above) was a rous­ing suc­cess for the gov­ern­ment space pro­gram known as NASA. After a decade-long space race, dur­ing which it seemed to all observers that the Sovi­ets had the edge, the U.S. land­ed Apol­lo 11–carrying Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin–at the Sea of Tran­quil­i­ty on July 20, 1969.  Nixon was pres­i­dent, the Viet­nam War and its oppo­si­tion raged, and Leonid Brezh­nev helmed a stag­nant Sovi­et empire.

On the great list of Cold War what-ifs, the near-miss of the Bay of Pigs is sure­ly num­ber one. But for all the space nerds out there, this one ranks pret­ty high: What if Aldrin and Arm­strong nev­er made it back? This was, of course, a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty, and one that the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion pre­pared for. While we were told dur­ing this last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that Mitt Rom­ney failed to write a con­ces­sion speech, William Safire, speech­writer for Richard Nixon, did write a speech in the event that Apol­lo 11 couldn’t make the return trip. The speech, enti­tled IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER, is a some­thing of a terse and poignant mas­ter­piece. Below is an excerpt of Safire’s brief, hypo­thet­i­cal address:

These two men are lay­ing down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and under­stand­ing.

They will be mourned by their fam­i­lies and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the peo­ple of the world; they will be mourned by a Moth­er Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their explo­ration, they stirred the peo­ple of the world to feel as one; in their sac­ri­fice, they bind more tight­ly the broth­er­hood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the con­stel­la­tions. In mod­ern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Oth­ers will fol­low, and sure­ly find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the fore­most in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some cor­ner of anoth­er world that is for­ev­er mankind.

Would the space pro­gram have con­tin­ued had these two brave pio­neers died on the moon? Cer­tain­ly. But this moment of tri­umph would instead be remembered—like the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter of 1986—as a moment of great loss and a very seri­ous set­back for our for­ays into out­er space.

Read the full speech here at Let­ters of Note.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

First Orbit: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

Watch the World’s Oldest Working Digital Computer — the 1951 Harwell Dekatron — Get Fired Up Again

in Technology | November 23rd, 2012

The next time you feel frus­trat­ed with your aging per­son­al com­put­er, just watch the video above. In these fifty sec­onds, the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing fires up the Har­well Deka­tron, also known as the Wolver­hamp­ton Instru­ment for Teach­ing Com­pu­ta­tion — or, nat­u­ral­ly, the WITCH. Hold­er of the title of the world’s old­est work­ing orig­i­nal dig­i­tal com­put­er, the WITCH, first built in 1951, went into retire­ment from Wolver­hamp­ton’s Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege in 1973. A three-year restora­tion of the com­put­er — all two-and-a-half tons, 828 flash­ing Deka­tron valves, and 480 relays of it — began in 2008. Now, hav­ing just fin­ished return­ing the machine to tip-top shape, they’ve actu­al­ly boot­ed it up, as you can see. “In 1951 the Har­well Deka­tron was one of per­haps a dozen com­put­ers in the world,” The Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing’s press release quotes its trustee Kevin Mur­rell as say­ing, “and since then it has led a charmed life sur­viv­ing intact while its con­tem­po­raries were recy­cled or destroyed.”

The Har­well Atom­ic Ener­gy Research Estab­lish­ment pro­vid­ed the Deka­tron its first tasks, crank­ing out cal­cu­la­tions for­mer­ly done by hand. When it passed into obso­les­cence there in 1957, Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege took the mas­sive com­put­er off Har­well’s hands, and there it became the WITCH, used for teach­ing pur­pos­es over the next six­teen years. When it out­lived even its edu­ca­tion­al use, the WITCH went on dis­play at the Birm­ing­ham Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try, and final­ly to dis­man­tle­ment and stor­age. Now it offers a whirring, clat­ter­ing, flash­ing, retro-tech­no­log­i­cal spec­ta­cle to new gen­er­a­tions of com­put­er enthu­si­asts. Some of them may be shocked to learn that, by virtue of sheer age, it does­n’t adhere to some of the very qual­i­ties of dig­i­tal com­put­ing they take for grant­ed: it does­n’t cal­cu­late in bina­ry code, but dec­i­mal code, hence the name “Deka­tron.” Though its prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions would seem lim­it­ed in the mod­ern world, rest assured that some young hob­by­ist is even now pon­der­ing how to get the thing onto the web.

h/t: Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of Roman­ian Com­put­ing: From 1961 to 1989

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

William S. Burroughs’ “The Thanksgiving Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

in Literature | November 22nd, 2012

“Thanks­giv­ing Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tor­na­do Alley, a chap­book pub­lished by William S. Bur­roughs in 1989. Two years lat­er, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunt­ing, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Milk) shot a mon­tage that brought the poem to film, mak­ing it at least the sec­ond time the direc­tor adapt­ed the beat writer to film.

If you’ve seen Bur­roughs use Shakepseare’s face for tar­get prac­tice, or if you’ve watched The Junky’s Christ­mas, you’ll know that he was­n’t kind to con­ven­tion or tra­di­tion. And there are no pris­on­ers tak­en here, as you’ll see above. Now time for a lit­tle Thanks­giv­ing din­ner.…

h/t Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

11,215 Free Grateful Dead Concert Recordings in the Internet Archive

in Internet Archive, Music | November 22nd, 2012

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Even res­olute non-Dead­heads have been pass­ing around “Dead­head,” Nick Paum­garten’s recent New York­er piece on “the vast record­ed lega­cy of the Grate­ful Dead.” Like much of the most inter­est­ing mag­a­zine jour­nal­ism, the arti­cle digs deep into and pro­vides a primer on a sub­cul­ture that goes deep. Casu­al Dead lis­ten­ers know there exists a large and ded­i­cat­ed body of fer­vent­ly un-casu­al Dead lis­ten­ers, the fans who may have fol­lowed the band around on its tour­ing days but now col­lect every last one of its record­ed per­for­mances, offi­cial, unof­fi­cial, or oth­er­wise. “It was denser, fever­ish, oth­er­world­ly,” Paum­garten describes his first expe­ri­ence hear­ing a Dead boot­leg. “If you took an inter­est, you’d copy a few tapes, lis­ten to those over and over, until they began to make sense, and then copy some more. Before long, you might have a scat­ter­shot col­lec­tion, with a cou­ple of tapes from each year. It was all Grate­ful Dead, but because of the vari­abil­i­ty in son­ic fideli­ty, and because the band had been at it for twen­ty years, there were many dif­fer­ent fla­vors and moods. Even the com­pro­mised sound qual­i­ty became a per­verse part of the appeal. Each tape seemed to have its own par­tic­u­lar note of decay, like the taste of the barn­yard in a wine or a cheese.”

Do you aspire to join those Paum­garten calls “the tape­heads, the geeks, the throngs of worka­day Phil Schaaps, who approach the band’s body of work with the inten­si­ty and the atten­tion to detail that one might bring to bird­ing, base­ball, or the Tal­mud”? If so, the inter­net, and specif­i­cal­ly the Inter­net Archive’s Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion, has cranked the bar­ri­er to entry way down. Its 11,215 free Grate­ful Dead record­ings should keep you busy for some time. “You can browse the record­ings by year, so if you click on, say, 1973 you will see links to two hun­dred and nine­ty-four record­ings, begin­ning with four ver­sions of a Feb­ru­ary 9th con­cert at Stan­ford and end­ing with sev­er­al ver­sions of Decem­ber 19th in Tam­pa,” writes Paum­garten. “Most users mere­ly stream the music; it’s a hun­dred cas­sette trays, in the Cloud.” If you need a break from these con­certs, in all their vari­able-fideli­ty glo­ry, lis­ten to Paum­garten talk mat­ters Dead with music crit­ic Sasha Frere-Jones on the New York­er Out Loud pod­cast (lis­ten here). And if you find the Dead not quite to your taste — gui­tarist Jer­ry Gar­cia famous­ly com­pared their ded­i­cat­ed niche audi­ence to “peo­ple who like licorice” — why not move on to the Fugazi archive?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.