Download George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Literature | August 19th, 2010

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Writ­ing in The Guardian in years past, Christo­pher Hitchens revis­it­ed Ani­mal Farm, George Orwell’s “dystopi­an alle­gor­i­cal novel­la” that took aim at the cor­rup­tion of the Sovi­et Union and its total­i­tar­i­an rule. Pub­lished in 1945, the short book appears on the Mod­ern Library’s list of the 100 Best Nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and Time Mag­a­zine’s own hon­ors list. But, as Hitchens reminds us, Ani­mal Farm was almost nev­er pub­lished. The man­u­script bare­ly sur­vived the Nazi bomb­ing of Lon­don dur­ing World War II, and then ini­tial­ly TS Eliot (an impor­tant edi­tor at Faber & Faber) and oth­er pub­lish­ers reject­ed the book. It even­tu­al­ly came to see the light of day, but, 65 years lat­er, Ani­mal Farm still can’t be legal­ly read in Chi­na, Bur­ma and North Korea, or across large parts of the Islam­ic world. But, no mat­ter where you come from, you can lis­ten to Ani­mal Farm for free. That’s right, I said it – free. The Inter­net Archive offers free access to audio ver­sions of Ani­mal Farm and Orwell’s oth­er major clas­sic, 1984. Both texts appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, and you can down­load them direct­ly from the Inter­net Archive here (Ani­mal Farm) and here (1984), or stream them below:

Ani­mal Farm

1984

The text ver­sions of these clas­sics also appear in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Final­ly, if you’re inter­est­ed in down­load­ing a free audio book from Audible.com (pret­ty much any book you want), you can get more details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Lit2Go’s 200 Free (and Teacher-Friend­ly) Audio Books: Ready for Down­loads

500 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Bill Gates: Solving the World’s Problems Through Technology

in Economics, Education, Technology | August 19th, 2010

Last week, we showed you a clip of Bill Gates speak­ing at the recent Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe. Our com­ments con­cen­trat­ed on a short­er seg­ment where Gates talks about the com­ing trans­for­ma­tion of edu­ca­tion – about how the inter­net will start dis­plac­ing the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty with­in five years. That clip fig­ures into a larg­er talk, now ful­ly avail­able online, called “Rein­vent­ing Cap­i­tal­ism: How to Jump­start What the Mar­ket­place Can’t” (48 min­utes). And it puts Gates’ views on edu­ca­tion (not to men­tion his over­all phil­an­thropic work) into a larg­er con­text. What’s gen­er­al­ly on dis­play here is his lim­it­less faith that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy can solve the world’s prob­lems. It’s an approach that makes per­fect sense for rid­ding the world of malar­ia. But it’s poten­tial­ly a dou­ble-edge sword for edu­ca­tion. You can watch the full talk above, or view it here. (His full com­ments on edu­ca­tion & tech­nol­o­gy come around the 21 minute mark, and again lat­er on.) You can also learn more about what Gates is read­ing, watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to on his web­site.

Get 250 Free Cours­es Online or Learn 37 Lan­guages for Free!

Why the World Needs WikiLeaks (According to Julian Assange)

in Media | August 17th, 2010

After yes­ter­day’s post, I’ll nev­er get a sniff of a TED con­fer­ence. But even so, we’ll keep fea­tur­ing Ted Talks from time to time, and so why not today? Above, we have TED’s Chris Ander­son inter­view­ing Julian Assange, founder of Wik­iLeaks, the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site that made head­lines last month when it released the Afghan War Diaries, all 92,000 pages worth. Dur­ing the 19 minute inter­view, Assange talks a lit­tle more about the phi­los­o­phy behind Wik­iLeaks, how the orga­ni­za­tion decides when to release infor­ma­tion (or not), how the site has changed world events, and what some more ordi­nary leaks look like. No mat­ter what stance you take on Wik­iLeaks, the inter­view is worth a watch. You’ll only hear more about them down the line.

Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin (Listen Online This Sunday)

in Music | August 12th, 2010

Bri­an Wil­son was the dri­ving force behind The Beach Boys, the band who gave us Pet Sounds (1966), the LP ranked 2nd on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Great­est Albums of All Time.” Now, almost 50 years after form­ing the band, Wil­son will release a new solo album next Tues­day. Bri­an Wil­son Reimag­ines Gersh­win fea­tures cov­ers – imag­i­na­tive re-inter­pre­ta­tions, if you will – of clas­sic songs writ­ten by the icon­ic Gersh­win Broth­ers. The video above spells out the back­sto­ry behind the album. But if you want a real taste of the project, then get this. This Sun­day, the album will be streamed live on Bri­an Wilson’s web site at 12:00 noon Pacif­ic Time. And there­after Wil­son him­self will take ques­tions on his Face­book page for one hour (12:45pm — 1:45pm). Get the details here. And also check out this good find: Gersh­win plays Gersh­win: Rhap­sody in Blue.

Bill Gates: The Internet Will Displace the Traditional University in 5 Years

in Education, Online Courses | August 11th, 2010

Speak­ing at the Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe last week, Bill Gates argued that the cost of col­lege needs to come down, and the only way to accom­plish this is through tech­nol­o­gy and less­en­ing the impor­tance of “place-based” col­leges. That’s how you keep col­lege edu­ca­tion open to all. Dur­ing the talk, he went fur­ther and assert­ed, “Five years from now, on the Web for free, you’ll be able to find the best lec­tures in the world. It will be bet­ter than any sin­gle uni­ver­si­ty.”

To be sure, I don’t dis­pute this par­tic­u­lar point. You can already find hun­dreds of free cours­es online, and that’s part of our rea­son for being. But, as I have fre­quent­ly remind­ed peo­ple, lis­ten­ing to lec­tures does­n’t mean you’re get­ting a round­ed edu­ca­tion. Lec­tures inform you. They’re great in that way. But you get an edu­ca­tion when you cou­ple lec­tures with read­ings, when you chew over ideas in a dis­cus­sion sec­tion, when you ana­lyze the lec­tures and read­ings in crit­i­cal papers, when you take exams that force you to syn­the­size every­thing you’ve learned dur­ing the entire semes­ter, etc. Right now, it is very hard to accom­plish this online. On a rel­a­tive basis, e‑learning tools have evolved strik­ing­ly slow­ly dur­ing the past decade. The wide­ly deployed tools are often still klunky and rudi­men­ta­ry. And it still takes con­sid­er­able time, mon­ey and labor to pro­duce a tru­ly excel­lent online course. (At least that’s what I have found dur­ing my ten years in the space.) Will we make progress here? Yes. Would I wel­come it? Of course. But will we offer a sub­stan­tive and high­ly scal­able online alter­na­tive in five years? Very doubt­ful, unless a cat­a­lyst comes along who can dra­mat­i­cal­ly sweep away the exist­ing major play­ers (who just bog things down) and intro­duce some seri­ous inno­va­tion. Mr. Gates, are you that cat­a­lyst?

via Wired Cam­pus

Michael Sandel on Justice, Aristotle & Gay Marriage

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | August 11th, 2010

We have men­tioned him here many times before. Michael Sandel teach­es phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard, includ­ing the ever-pop­u­lar course, “Jus­tice,” tak­en by some 14,000 stu­dents dur­ing the past two decades. (The leg­endary course is now freely avail­able online.) Speak­ing at the Aspen Insti­tute not too long ago, Sandel gave a very abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the course. Call it “Jus­tice in Under an Hour.” (My title, not his.) And, by the time he wrapped things up, he got down to a time­ly ques­tion in Amer­i­ca. Is it just for the state to with­hold the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage from same sex cou­ples? What would Aris­to­tle (who laid the foun­da­tion for west­ern think­ing about jus­tice) have to say about this ques­tion? And how do Sandel’s Har­vard stu­dents grap­ple with it? The full pre­sen­ta­tion is avail­able above; the par­tic­u­lar sec­tion on gay mar­riage is here.

Look­ing for free phi­los­o­phy cours­es? Have a look through the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Visit 890 UNESCO World Heritage Sites with Free iPhone/iPad App

in History, iPad, iPhone | August 10th, 2010

The new Foto­pe­dia Her­itage app for the iPhone and iPad lets the world come to you. (Down­load here.) Draw­ing on 20,000 curat­ed pho­tos tak­en by thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers from the Foto­pe­dia com­mu­ni­ty, this FREE app lets you vis­it (at least vir­tu­al­ly) 890 UNESCO World Her­itage sites. In a mat­ter of min­utes, you can move from Notre Dame in Paris, to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to Machu Pic­chu in Peru, to the Great Pyra­mid of Giza in Egypt. You get the pic­ture. And speak­ing of pic­tures, it’s worth not­ing that all pho­tos are released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. A very nice touch. Let me final­ly men­tion that the app has some smart mashup fea­tures, includ­ing maps show­ing the loca­tion of each site, plus Wikipedia entries offer­ing back­ground infor­ma­tion on each loca­tion. You can start down­load­ing the app right here. (Many thanks to Jane for call­ing this out.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Science Under a Microscope

in Science | August 9th, 2010

What hap­pens when you study sci­ence in a sci­en­tif­ic way? When you apply sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods to sci­ence itself? When you put sci­ence under its own micro­scope and ask, “What is sci­ence real­ly all about?” These are some of the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions that the CBC pro­gram Ideas tack­les when it spends 24 hours inter­view­ing his­to­ri­ans, soci­ol­o­gists, philoso­phers and sci­en­tists who have thought long and hard about the nature of sci­ence. You can access the first five episodes below, or go straight to the full col­lec­tion here.

Episode 1 — Steven Shapin and Simon Schaf­fer
Episode 2 — Lor­raine Das­ton
Episode 3 — Mar­garet Lock
Episode 4 — Ian Hack­ing and Andrew Pick­er­ing
Episode 5 — Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour

Many thanks to Paul for the tip here.

Journey to the Center of a Triangle

in Math | August 6th, 2010

In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy.

Harvard Presents Free Courses with the Open Learning Initiative

in Harvard, Online Courses | August 5th, 2010

Always good to see anoth­er major uni­ver­si­ty mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the open course move­ment. The Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive under­tak­en by the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Exten­sion School now offers eight free cours­es. This clus­ter of cours­es – the first Har­vard has put for­ward – cov­ers a nice range of top­ics. They fea­ture some heavy-hit­ting mem­bers of the Har­vard fac­ul­ty. And they’re freely avail­able in audio and video. The full list appears below as well as in our big list of 500 Free Online Cours­es:

• Chi­na: Tra­di­tions and Trans­for­ma­tions (Peter K. Bol, PhD, Charles H. Car­swell Pro­fes­sor of East Asian Lan­guages and Civ­i­liza­tions, and William C. Kir­by, PhD, T. M. Chang Pro­fes­sor of Chi­na Stud­ies)
• Shake­speare After All: The Lat­er Plays (Mar­jorie Gar­ber, PhD, William R. Kenan Jr. Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish)
• The Hero­ic and the Anti-Hero­ic in Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (Gre­go­ry Nagy, PhD, Fran­cis Jones Pro­fes­sor of Clas­si­cal Greek Lit­er­a­ture)
• World War and Soci­ety in the 20th Cen­tu­ry: World War II (Charles S. Maier, PhD, Lev­erett Salton­stall Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry)
• Bits (Har­ry R. Lewis, PhD, Gor­don McK­ay Pro­fes­sor of Com­put­er Sci­ence)
• Inten­sive Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence Using C, PHP, and JavaScript (David J. Malan, PhD, Lec­tur­er on Com­put­er Sci­ence)
• Abstract Alge­bra (Bene­dict Gross, PhD, George Vas­mer Lev­erett Pro­fes­sor of Math­e­mat­ics)
• Sets, Count­ing, and Prob­a­bil­i­ty (Paul G. Bam­berg, DPhil, Senior Lec­tur­er on Math­e­mat­ics)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online