Download The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Credential (Free eBook)

in e-books, Education | August 2nd, 2011

It’s hot off the dig­i­tal press. Anya Kamenetz, a senior writer at Fast Com­pa­ny Mag­a­zine and author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupre­neurs, and the Com­ing Trans­for­ma­tion of High­er Edu­ca­tion, has teamed up with the Gates Foun­da­tion to release a free ebook, The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial.

The new ebook offers a “com­pre­hen­sive guide to learn­ing online and chart­ing a per­son­al­ized path to an afford­able cre­den­tial,” and it comes com­plete with some handy-sound­ing tuto­ri­als: how to write a per­son­al learn­ing plan, how to teach your­self online, how to build your per­son­al learn­ing net­work, 7 ways to get col­lege cred­it with­out tak­ing a col­lege course, etc.

The book also smart­ly fea­tures a long list of open edu­ca­tion­al resources, where the author was nice enough to give us a small men­tion.

You can read The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Cre­den­tial on Scribd, or alter­na­tive­ly you can down­load it in mul­ti­ple for­mats (PDF, Kin­dle, ePub, RTF, etc.) at the bot­tom of this page.

Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

in Animation, Current Affairs, Religion | August 2nd, 2011

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

The First 10 Videos Played on MTV: Rewind the Videotape to August 1, 1981

in History, Music, Television | August 1st, 2011

On August 1, 1981, MTV took to the U.S. air­waves, for­ev­er chang­ing the land­scape of Amer­i­can music and pop cul­ture. If you were around then, you’ll remem­ber the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing, the astro­naut plant­i­ng the MTV flag on the moon’s sur­face, and then the first apt­ly picked video — the Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Fast for­ward four years, and we were all say­ing, I Want My MTV.

A list of the first ten videos aired on MTV appears below. Click the links to take a walk down mem­o­ry lane.

1. “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Bug­gles
2. “You Bet­ter Run” by Pat Benatar
3. “She Won’t Dance with Me” by Rod Stew­art
4. “You Bet­ter You Bet” by The Who
5. “Lit­tle Suz­i’s on the Up” by Ph.D.
6. “We Don’t Talk Any­more” by Cliff Richard
7. “Brass in Pock­et” by The Pre­tenders
8. “Time Heals” by Todd Rund­gren
9. “Take It on the Run” by REO Speed­wag­on (not orig­i­nal)
10. “Rockin’ the Par­adise” by Styx (dit­to)

Thanks Robin for the reminder…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Time Cap­sule: The Inter­net in 1995

“Jer­sey Shore” in the Style of Oscar Wilde

How the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built: A New Theory in 3D Animation

in History, Science | August 1st, 2011

Jean-Pierre Houdin spent a cou­ple of decades work­ing as an inde­pen­dent archi­tect around Paris. Then, his career took a big turn. Work­ing with his father, Houdin tried to crack an ancient mys­tery — how were the great pyra­mids of Egypt built?

Through­out the cen­turies, var­i­ous the­o­ries have been put forth. Herodotus, who vis­it­ed Egypt around 450 B.C., spec­u­lat­ed that some “machines” were involved. Oth­ers thought that mounds serv­ing as ramps played a cen­tral role in the con­struc­tion. And still oth­ers have guessed that extrater­res­tri­als were the real builders (seri­ous­ly).

Now Houdin enters into the debate with what Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier calls a “rad­i­cal new the­o­ry.” Using state-of-the-art 3‑D soft­ware, Houdin has con­clud­ed that the bot­tom por­tion of the pyra­mids were built with an exter­nal ramp, and the upper por­tions with inter­nal ramps. Brier sum­ma­rizes the the­o­ry rather well in this short arti­cle.

Houd­in’s work has focused par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, oth­er­wise known as the Pyra­mid of Khu­fu, built cir­ca 2500 B.C. (See image here). And he has gone so far as to cre­ate a 3D inter­ac­tive film that visu­al­ly doc­u­ments his hypoth­e­sis. We’ve embed­ded a good clip above. You can also head to Khu­fu Reborn to get the full inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence. (Note: You’ll need a PC, 3D glass­es and some down­load­able plu­g­ins to make it all work.)

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Klaus Nomi: Watch the Final, Brilliant Performance of a Dying Man

in Music | August 1st, 2011

Klaus Sper­ber was born in Immen­stadt, south­ern Ger­many, in 1944. As a teenag­er, he dis­cov­ered his love for opera and also pop music. In the ear­ly 1970s, he moved to New York and soon found many friends among the East Vil­lage artists there. Around this time, he start­ed using the pseu­do­nym Klaus Nomi, an allu­sion to the Amer­i­can Sci­Fi mag­a­zine Omni and an ana­gram of the Latin word omni(s) (all, every). David Bowie dis­cov­ered Nomi in 1978 and helped him sign with RCA records two years lat­er. But Nomi’s musi­cal career was cut short when he was diag­nosed with AIDS  — an ill­ness vir­tu­al­ly unheard of in those days. He died in New York on August 6th, 1983, at the age of 39 — two years before Rock Hud­son’s death raised pub­lic aware­ness of this new ill­ness. His ash­es were scat­tered over New York City.

Klaus Nomi’s musi­cal style was undoubt­ed­ly unique: he com­bined opera and New Wave pop music and per­formed his music in elab­o­rate stage shows rem­i­nis­cent of retro-futur­is­tic Sci­ence Fic­tion visions of the 1920s: face paint­ed white in Kabu­ki style, black lips, extrav­a­gant clothes and hair­styles inspired by Cubism. One of his most famous live per­for­mances is Total Eclipse from the music film Urgh! A Music War (1981).

The video above shows Klaus Nomi’s last per­for­mance before his death. Towards the end of 1982, he returned to Europe for a small con­cert tour and also per­formed at Eber­hard Schoen­er’s Clas­sic Rock Night in Munich, close to the place where he was born. He chose the Aria of the “Cold Genius” from Hen­ry Pur­cel­l’s 1691 opera “King Arthur or, The British Wor­thy.” In the third scene of Act Three (The Frost Scene), the Cold Genius is awak­ened by Cupid and ordered to cov­er the land­scape with ice and frost. The answer of the Cold Genius is sung by Klaus:

What pow­er art thou, who from below / Hast made me rise unwill­ing­ly and slow / From beds of ever­last­ing snow? / See’est thou not how stiff and won­drous old, / Far unfit to bear the bit­ter cold, / I can scare­cly move or draw my breath? / Let me, let me freeze again to death.

This per­for­mance is cer­tain­ly one of the most mem­o­rable in oper­at­ic his­to­ry — Klaus Nomi con­veys the mes­sage of the text with every fiber of his body (note in par­tic­u­lar the move­ments of his hands and eyes). And as one YouTube com­menter put it, the fact that Klaus knew that “he was dying of AIDS when he gave this per­for­mance (…) gives an added albeit unwant­ed poignan­cy to his per­for­mance.”

There are two oth­er famous per­for­mances of The Cold Song: by Andreas Scholl and Sting. You can decide for your­self how they com­pare to Klaus Nomi’s inter­pre­ta­tion.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: In 2004, the doc­u­men­tary film The Nomi Song took a clos­er look at Klaus’s life and music (view the trail­er here). YouTube also has two inter­views with Klaus Nomi: Klaus Nomi on NYC 10 o’Clock News (c. 1981) and a 1982 inter­view from French TV.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

The Concert for Bangladesh Streaming Free on iTunes

in Music | July 30th, 2011

A quick heads up: You can stream The Con­cert for Bangladesh for free on iTunes this week­end. Exact­ly 40 years ago (August 1, 1971), Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist George Har­ri­son and sitarist Ravi Shankar teamed up to stage two ben­e­fit con­certs at Madi­son Square Gar­den, hop­ing to raise mon­ey for refugees from East Pak­istan (now inde­pen­dent Bangladesh). The con­cert film came out a year lat­er in 1972, and now, to mark its anniver­sary, the good folks at Apple are stream­ing the film for free. Acts include Ravi Shankar, George Har­ri­son (his first since The Bea­t­les’ breakup), Bob Dylan, Eric Clap­ton, Bil­ly Pre­ston and more.

Our friends on Twit­ter (fol­low us here) tell us that the film should be acces­si­ble through­out most of the world, although there are some excep­tions. Apolo­gies in advance if you run into dif­fi­cul­ties. H/T to Ed.

Note: NPR is car­ry­ing a video stream of The New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. Catch it here.

Time Capsule: The Internet in 1995

in History, Technology | July 29th, 2011

On Jan­u­ary 27, 1994, the Today Show ran a hilar­i­ous seg­ment try­ing to unrav­el this crazy new thing called “The Inter­net.” A year lat­er, how­ev­er, it looks like the media had it all fig­ured out. Check out this 1995 MTV trend piece by Kurt Loder: We got a kick out of the clunkiess of the old new media (Com­puserve! Dial-up! Netscape!), but Loder also touch­es on hack­ing, inter­net pornog­ra­phy, pri­va­cy, and free­dom of speech issues that still haven’t been resolved. The biggest shock­er of the clip is not how much things have changed but how much they haven’t.

Oh, and also, Moby had hair?

via The Awl

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Interviews with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

in Philosophy, Video - Science | July 29th, 2011

In 2008, the evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins pre­sent­ed The Genius of Charles Dar­win, a three-part doc­u­men­tary that was lat­er named “Best TV Doc­u­men­tary Series” at the British Broad­cast Awards. Dur­ing the film­ing of the pro­gram, Dawkins inter­viewed var­i­ous experts — biol­o­gists, philoso­phers, cler­gy­man, evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gists, etc. — and wound up with 18 hours of raw footage. Some of the uncut inter­views have now made their way online (as well as DVD), and we’re high­light­ing a few today.

Above, Dawkins spends a good while with Peter Singer, the Prince­ton philoso­pher, oth­er­wise known as the Father of the Ani­mal Rights Move­ment. The wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­u­al­ly comes back to ani­mal rights and veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and why Dar­win­ism lends sup­port to both. The best part comes toward the end, when Singer tells Dawkins (a meat eater), “I have assim­i­lat­ed Dar­win on this issue bet­ter than you have because .… you’re still influ­enced by these ves­tiges of reli­gious belief that sep­a­rate us from the ani­mals.…” Dawkins out-Dawkinsed.

Oth­er uncut inter­views fea­ture con­ver­sa­tions with Steven Pinker, Daniel Den­nett, and Craig Ven­ter.

Relat­ed note: We’d like to thank RichardDawkins.net for re-broad­cast­ing our post ear­li­er this week: 50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

The Persecution of Daniel Lee

in Life, Technology | July 29th, 2011

A sto­ry appear­ing in July’s Stan­ford Mag­a­zine begins with the cap­tion: “An Inter­net smear cam­paign near­ly destroyed the South Kore­an star, but he fought back with the only weapon he had: the truth.” And, from there, you’re launched into one of the more flab­ber­gast­ing sto­ries you’ve read in some time. Give The Per­se­cu­tion of Daniel Lee a read, and you’ll see that we’re not being the least bit hyper­bol­ic.

The inter­net can be a won­der­ful place. We all know that. But, as with any oth­er place humans inhab­it, it has a dark side, and that’s what we encounter here…

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

in Literature, Philosophy | July 28th, 2011

Cyn­i­cism. Ruth­less­ness. Devi­ous­ness. Pow­er pol­i­tics. These words are often asso­ci­at­ed with Nic­colò Machi­avel­li, the author of The Prince (1532). But, it turns out, he was any­thing but. He was a sweet man (though some­thing of a phi­lan­der­er), a pro­found demo­c­rat, good look­ing, a par­ty ani­mal. In short, Machi­avel­li has got­ten a bad rap, says nov­el­ist Salman Rushdie.

To get more insight into this bad­ly mis­un­der­stood fig­ure, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing time with Phi­los­o­phy Bites’ inter­view (MP3 or iTunes) with Quentin Skin­ner, one of Eng­land’s finest intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ri­ans who has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on Machi­avel­li. You can also find The Prince list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. H/T Andrew Sul­li­van

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Alain de Bot­ton Tweets Short Course in Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy