China’s Open Courses & Other Tech Dispatches from Asia

in Education | September 14th, 2010

Back in 2003, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment launched its answer to MIT’s Open­Course­Ware project. The “Nation­al Qual­i­ty Course Plan” scoured Chi­na’s vast uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem and select­ed 3,000 best-of-breed cours­es in var­i­ous sub­ject areas. Then, mil­lions of dol­lars were ear­marked to put lec­tures and relat­ed course mate­ri­als online, with the hope that oth­er pro­fes­sors could draw inspi­ra­tion from these resources. But, things did­n’t go so well. Appar­ent­ly rough­ly 50% of these mate­ri­als nev­er made their way online. And the mate­ri­als that did were rarely updat­ed. (More on that here.) Will the project get renewed? Jeff Young, a reporter for The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, went to Chi­na to find out. His report (read it here) is part of a month long series of dis­patch­es that takes you inside Asi­a’s wired class­rooms and high-tech research labs. You can read Jef­f’s dai­ly posts from Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na, South Korea, and India through­out this entire month.

Update: One of our read­ers wrote a the­sis on Chi­na’s open­course­ware ini­tia­tive and offers much more detail on what went right, and what went wrong. You can down­load Stian Håk­lev’s the­sis (for free) here, and be sure to check out Stian’s oth­er brain­child, Peer2Peer Uni­ver­si­ty, oth­er­wise known more sim­ply as P2PU.

Gustavo Dudamel with the Vienna Philharmonic: A Free Live Webcast

in Music | September 13th, 2010

Mark this on your cal­en­dar. This com­ing Sat­ur­day, at 7:30 a.m. Cal­i­for­nia time, Gus­ta­vo Dudamel (soon to open the 2010-11 sea­son of the Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic) will con­duct a con­cert with the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic at the Lucerne Fes­ti­val in Switzer­land. As the LA Times reports, the con­cert will be web­cast live for free at www.medici.tv. It will also be avail­able for 90 days on demand. Pieces will include Rossini’s over­ture to “La gaz­za ladra,” Orbón’s “Tres ver­siones sin­fóni­cas,” Bern­stein’s “Diver­ti­men­to for Orches­tra” and Rav­el’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte” and “Boléro.”

via Cul­ture Mon­ster

William S. Burroughs Reviews a Led Zeppelin Concert for Crawdaddy! Magazine (1975)

in Literature, Music | September 13th, 2010

Craw­dad­dy! It was the first US mag­a­zine of rock music crit­i­cism, pre­ced­ing both Rolling Stone and Creem. Paul Williams, then a stu­dent at Swarth­more Col­lege, first launched the mag­a­zine in 1966. And by the 1970s, Craw­dad­dy! hit its stride, pub­lish­ing exclu­sive con­tri­bu­tions by John Lennon, Joseph Heller, and Studs Terkel, to name a few. On one occa­sion, the self-described “first mag­a­zine to take rock and roll seri­ous­ly” sent William S. Bur­roughs, the great beat writer, to a Led Zep­pelin con­cert. He came back in June 1975 with a rather off­beat con­cert review. There’s a strange inno­cence, even naivete, to the whole piece (though we know bet­ter than to con­fuse Bur­roughs him­self with inno­cence). We give you an excerpt right below, and the rest here.

So there we sat, I decline earplugs; I am used to loud drum and horn music from Moroc­co, and it always has, if skill­ful­ly per­formed, an exhil­a­rat­ing and ener­giz­ing effect on me. As the per­for­mance got under­way I expe­ri­enced this musi­cal exhil­a­ra­tion, which was all the more pleas­ant for being eas­i­ly con­trolled, and I knew then that noth­ing bad was going to hap­pen. This was a safe and friend­ly area–but at the same time high­ly charged. There was a pal­pa­ble inter­change of ener­gy between the per­form­ers and the audi­ence which was nev­er fran­tic or jagged. The spe­cial effects were han­dled well and not over­done.

A few spe­cial effects are much bet­ter than too many. I can see the laser beams cut­ting dry ice smoke, which drew an appre­cia­tive cheer from the audi­ence. Jim­my Page’s num­ber with the bro­ken gui­tar strings came across with a real impact, as did John Bonham’s drum solo and the lyrics deliv­ered with unfail­ing vital­i­ty by Robert Plant. The per­form­ers were doing their best, and it was very good. The last num­ber, “Stair­way to Heav­en”, where the audi­ence lit match­es and there was a scat­ter­ing of sparklers here and there, found the audi­ence well-behaved and joy­ous, cre­at­ing the atmos­phere of a high school Christ­mas play. All in all a good show; nei­ther low nor insipid. Leav­ing the con­cert hall was like get­ting off a jet plane.

The Bur­roughs piece con­tin­ues here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.

in Education, Most Popular | September 13th, 2010

Matthew Might, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. stu­dents what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pic­tures.” Here it goes. Mat­t’s Illus­trat­ed Guide:

Imag­ine a cir­cle that con­tains all of human knowl­edge:

By the time you fin­ish ele­men­tary school, you know a lit­tle:

By the time you fin­ish high school, you know a bit more:

With a bach­e­lor’s degree, you gain a spe­cial­ty:

A mas­ter’s degree deep­ens that spe­cial­ty:

Read­ing research papers takes you to the edge of human knowl­edge:

Once you’re at the bound­ary, you focus:

You push at the bound­ary for a few years:

Until one day, the bound­ary gives way:

And, that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:

Of course, the world looks dif­fer­ent to you now:

So, don’t for­get the big­ger pic­ture:

Keep push­ing.

You can find Mat­t’s Illus­trat­ed Guide host­ed on his web site. This guide/reality check is pub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons License. You can also buy a print ver­sion for $6.50. (The mon­ey goes to char­i­ty.) Matt offers more insights for Ph.D. stu­dents here.

The Lunch Date

in Film | September 7th, 2010

In 1989, Adam David­son, while still a stu­dent at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, direct­ed a short film called The Lunch Date. Although the film has a vin­tage look to it, the com­men­tary is entire­ly con­tem­po­rary – a prod­uct of 1980s debates on race in Amer­i­ca. The Lunch Date picked up the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and then an Acad­e­my Award for the best Live Action Short Film in 1991. Not too shab­by for a stu­dent film that hap­pens to run a quick 9:10.

The Lunch Date now appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online along with many oth­er award win­ning movies. Many thanks to Patrick for send­ing this short our way.

Hitchcock on the Art of Suspense

in Film | September 6th, 2010

In 1939, Alfred Hitch­cock gave a lec­ture at Radio City Music Hall orga­nized by The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. The talk (read the full tran­script here) takes you inside the cre­ative evo­lu­tion of Hitchcock’s film­mak­ing. First comes the bare bones plot, then a fuller treat­ment, com­plete with the dia­logue and a sus­pense­ful sto­ry that dri­ves the movie along for two hours. Hitch­cock was the mas­ter of cre­at­ing sus­pense – of giv­ing the audi­ence the “dope,” as he oth­er­wise calls it – that strings view­ers along. And, just what was in that “dope”? He describes it below:

That is the one thing that dis­turbs me a lit­tle. You see mod­ern nov­els, psy­cho­log­i­cal nov­els, with frank char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and very good psy­chol­o­gy, but there has been a ten­den­cy, with the nov­el and with a lot of stage plays, to aban­don sto­ry. They don’t tell enough sto­ry or plot. For a motion pic­ture, we do need quite an amount of sto­ry.

Now the rea­son we need a lot of sto­ry is this: a film takes an hour and twen­ty min­utes to play, and an audi­ence can stand about an hour. After an hour, it starts to get tired, so it needs the injec­tion of some dope. One might also say there should be a slo­gan, “Keep them awake at the movies!”

That dope, as one might call it, is action, move­ment, and excite­ment; but more than that, keep­ing the audi­ence occu­pied men­tal­ly. Peo­ple think, for exam­ple, that pace is fast action, quick cut­ting, peo­ple run­ning around, or what­ev­er you will, and it is not real­ly that at all. I think that pace in a film is made entire­ly by keep­ing the mind of the spec­ta­tor occu­pied. You don’t need to have quick cut­ting, you don’t need to have quick play­ing, but you do need a very full sto­ry and the chang­ing of one sit­u­a­tion to anoth­er. You need the chang­ing of one inci­dent to anoth­er, so that all the time the audience’s mind is occu­pied.

Now so long as you can sus­tain that and not let up, then you have pace. That is why sus­pense is such a valu­able thing, because it keeps the mind of the audi­ence going. Lat­er on I will tell you how I think the audi­ence should par­tic­i­pate in those things.

The rest of the lec­ture con­tin­ues here. And be sure to find many Hitch­cock films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Sundown in Southwestern France

in Random | September 5th, 2010

Two weeks in South­west­ern France. All footage was shot by Jon Bryant sim­ply using a Canon 7D. You can also watch the video direct­ly on Vimeo here.

Via @brainpicker.

NASA Lauches Photo Archive on Flickr

in Astronomy, History, Science | September 3rd, 2010

This week, NASA rolled a big archive of his­tor­i­cal images into Flickr Com­mons, giv­ing users access to more than a half cen­tu­ry of NASA’s pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry. The images are divid­ed into three neat sets – “Launch and Take­off,” “Build­ing NASA” and “Cen­ter Name­sakes” – and they’re all copy­right-free, mean­ing that you can share and use these images how­ev­er you like. You can jump into the archive here and watch it grow over time. Thanks for the heads up @eugenephoto! They’re always appre­ci­at­ed…

What Makes Us Human?

in Life, Science | September 1st, 2010

Some of the most basic ques­tions about human exis­tence (how did we devel­op lan­guage? why do we love music and art but kill in war? how did we devel­op cer­tain eat­ing habits? etc.) come back to a more sin­gu­lar ques­tion: how are we dif­fer­ent from chim­panzees? This ques­tion is slow­ly get­ting answered by some of today’s lead­ing pri­ma­tol­o­gists and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gists, includ­ing Robert Sapol­sky, Daniel Lieber­man, Richard Wrang­ham, Jane Goodall, Steven Pinker, all fea­tured above.

Syllabus & Book List for Sci-Fi Newbies

in Literature, Sci Fi | September 1st, 2010

Always want­ed to read sci­ence fic­tion? But nev­er knew where to start? io9, a blog ded­i­cat­ed to futur­ism and sci-fi, has you cov­ered. Today, they pub­lished a handy sci-fi syllabus/reading list “intend­ed to intro­duce the novice stu­dent … to the major themes in the genre, as well as books and authors who are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of dif­fer­ent eras in SF lit (includ­ing the present day).” The io9 read­ing list breaks down a vast body of sci-fi lit­er­a­ture into six use­ful cat­e­gories – 1) Foun­da­tion­al Works/Classics, 2) Utopias and Dystopias, 3) Robots, 4) Aliens, 5) Space Trav­el, and 6)  Sci­ence Fic­tion as Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy. Wells, Love­craft, Hux­ley, Orwell, Dick, Asi­mov, Gib­son, Hein­lein, LeGuin – they’re all on the list.

Relat­ed FYIs: you can find many of HP Love­craft’s writ­ings online here. Thanks Julie for the recent heads up.

Also, you can down­load an audio ver­sion of Hux­ley nar­rat­ing A Brave New World here.