Crisis & Dislocation: A Universal Story

in Film | May 31st, 2010

Buenos Aires has endured a lot – finan­cial crises, social protests, dic­ta­tor­ship and beyond. The award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary: ¿Sería Buenos Aires? (Maybe Buenos Aires?) takes a hard look at how the Argen­tines respond­ed to dis­lo­ca­tions cre­at­ed by forces beyond their con­trol. It’s a uni­ver­sal sto­ry that touch­es on prob­lems we all face today. Greece is just the lat­est unfor­tu­nate reminder of this. You can find this film, and 125 oth­er high qual­i­ty movies, in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Putting the Web Inside the Printed Book

in Books | May 28th, 2010

There’s a lot of talk about “vooks” these days. Usu­al­ly vooks are all about mov­ing tra­di­tion­al books over to dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments (e.g., the iPad) and sur­round­ing them with sup­port­ing web media. But one com­pa­ny, Ubi­mark, is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. They’re keep­ing the print­ed word and putting the web inside the tra­di­tion­al book. Kind of. Using smart phones, read­ers can take pic­tures of “2D codes” embed­ded in print books. And, from there, the smart phone will launch maps, video, and oth­er web media that will col­lec­tive­ly enrich the words on the page. The video above, using Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days as an exam­ple, shows what this all looks like in action.

via Wired Cam­pus

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: 35 Days From Space

in Current Affairs, Life | May 28th, 2010

From Our Uni­verse Visu­al­ized on YouTube:

The MODIS instru­ment, on board NASA’s Ter­ra and Aqua satel­lites, is cap­tur­ing images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. The spill began on April 20, 2010 with the explo­sion of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig. This short video reveals a space-based view of the burn­ing oil rig and, lat­er, the ensu­ing oil spill through May 24, 2010. The oil slick appears gray­ish-beige in the images and changes due to chang­ing weath­er, ocean cur­rents, and the use of oil dis­pers­ing chem­i­cals. Images in the video time series were select­ed that show the spill most clear­ly. The full image archive is avail­able on the MODIS Rapid Response Web site at https://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

via Moth­er­Jones

Space Shuttle Discovery: From Prep to Launch in Three Minutes

in Science | May 27th, 2010

Three min­utes of time lapse video dis­tills six weeks of footage show­ing the Space Shut­tle Dis­cov­ery get­ting ready for launch. It moves you from the Orbiter Pro­cess­ing Facil­i­ty to the launch­ing pad, and every­where in between. Air & Space has more details on the whole she­bang. Props to Joshua for send­ing this video our way.

Clouds, Stars and Meteors Over the Cotopaxi Volcano

in Random | May 26th, 2010

So beau­ti­ful you don’t need sound or com­men­tary. Now added to our YouTube Favorites.

via 3QuarksDaily

HT Mike

Writing the U.S. Constitution (in Tweets)

in History, Twitter | May 25th, 2010

223 years ago today, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion start­ed meet­ing secret­ly in Philadel­phia. Sev­er­al months lat­er, the meet­ings end­ed with the sign­ing of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Start­ing today, the Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter will use Twit­ter to reen­act the events of the Con­ven­tion. You can fol­low @SecretDelegate, a mys­te­ri­ous insid­er, who will show you what hap­pened inside the pri­vate pro­ceed­ings. The “Twit­ter Con­ven­tion” will con­clude on Sep­tem­ber 17, when the Con­sti­tu­tion was signed, and only then will the true iden­ti­ty of @SecretDelegate be revealed. You can be among the first to fol­low these tweets.

Look­ing for more Open Cul­ture? Find us on Twit­ter at @openculture.

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!

in Education, K-12, TED Talks | May 24th, 2010

Some months ago, we asked you to name your favorite TED Talk. And, more than a few of you flagged Sir Ken Robin­son’s pre­sen­ta­tion from 2006, Do Schools Kill Cre­ativ­i­ty? You’re in good com­pa­ny. The talk remains one of TED’s most pop­u­lar videos of all time. Today, TED has released Robin­son’s sequel (of sorts). Record­ed this past Feb­ru­ary, Bring on the Learn­ing Rev­o­lu­tion! “makes the case for a rad­i­cal shift from stan­dard­ized schools to per­son­al­ized learn­ing — cre­at­ing con­di­tions where kids’ nat­ur­al tal­ents can flour­ish.” Give it some time. Per­haps it’s anoth­er talk for the ages.

Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

in Books, Literature | May 24th, 2010

File this under “bet­ter late than nev­er.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writ­ing his mem­oirs, pro­duc­ing some 5,000 unedit­ed pages. How­ev­er, he stip­u­lat­ed that they could­n’t be pub­lished for at least a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing his death. (Apro­pos see this very rare footage record­ed by Thomas Edi­son show­ing Twain in his last year.) Fast for­ward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this Novem­ber, UC Berke­ley will pub­lish the first vol­ume of Twain’s man­u­script. The Inde­pen­dent tells you more about this lit­er­ary event, and sug­gests why Twain want­ed to keep his auto­bi­og­ra­phy under wraps. Get the full arti­cle here.

via @ebertchicago

Bill Gates Holds Office Hours; Talks about Giving Back

in Current Affairs, Technology | May 20th, 2010

The Bill Gates col­lege tour rolled through Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in late April. And Gates brought with him a mes­sage for stu­dents: Phil­an­thropy counts. No mat­ter how young you are, you can start think­ing about giv­ing back.

His vis­it fea­tured a large pub­lic talk where he drove home this point. (Get the full talk in video or audio here.) Then, like any good teacher, he held office hours and answered stu­dent ques­tions posed through Face­book. Watch his respons­es above.

HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders

in Books, Literature | May 20th, 2010

Huff­Po has pulled togeth­er a list of The 12 Great­est Lit­er­ary One-Hit Won­ders. And it’s a strange list indeed. When you think of “one-hit won­ders,” you think of mem­o­rable songs record­ed by very unmem­o­rable artists – artists who got their 15 min­utes of fame and then fell right off the radar. Mean­while, the Huff­Po list includes some of the most endur­ing names in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture  –  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, J.D. Salinger, and Her­man Melville. They gave us their big nov­els – The Great Gats­by, The Catch­er in the Rye, and Moby Dick – then wrote some oth­er last­ing pieces of fic­tion, both short and long. They hard­ly fad­ed into obliv­ion. And, years lat­er, we’re cer­tain­ly not ask­ing, “what ever hap­pened to old what’s his name?”