Getting Smart During Your Daily Commute

in Education | March 9th, 2010

The aver­age Amer­i­can spends a good 100 min­utes per day com­mut­ing to and from work. (More on that here.) That amounts to about 433 hours per year! Now imag­ine using that time to learn some­thing new — to read a great book, to take a class from a top uni­ver­si­ty, to learn a new lan­guage. To make a sharp­er you. Below, we high­light our free audio resources that will max­i­mize your dri­ve time. Before get­ting start­ed, make sure you have a big mp3 play­er and a way to lis­ten to your mp3 play­er over your car speak­ers. Unless you com­mute by sub­way or bus, using ear­buds is gen­er­al­ly unsafe, and often ille­gal.

Free Resources:

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your dri­ve time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and many more. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your mp3 play­er, then lis­ten as you dri­ve.

Free Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 275 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines. As you dri­ve, you can immerse your­self in free cours­es in his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy and beyond. All of these cours­es are avail­able in audio.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your per­son­al check list. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 37 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready for your dri­ve. You’ll start speak­ing that new lan­guage in no time.

Ideas & Cul­ture Pro­grams: In this audio col­lec­tion, we have gath­ered some of the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pro­grams, cov­er­ing the worlds of thought, film, music, books, etc. These pro­grams will keep you think­ing and cul­tur­al­ly up-to-date. Most pro­grams fea­ture new dai­ly episodes.

Sci­ence Pod­casts: Maybe you’re already steeped in the lib­er­al arts and want to get more com­fort­able with the world of sci­ence. Here’s a good place to start. This page includes a long list of enter­tain­ing sci­ence pro­grams. Neu­ro­science, astron­o­my, med­i­cine, Ein­stein, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic. They’re all here, wait­ing for you.

Open Cul­ture iPhone App: A lit­tle some­thing spe­cial for iPhone users. When you down­load our free iPhone app, you can take with you, wher­ev­er you go, the items list­ed above. Just con­nect to Wi-Fi (Apple says so), down­load as many audio files as you want, then take them on the road, and you’re good to go.

Paid Resources: We love all things free. You know that. But some­times paid resources deliv­er the goods. Here are two paid resources that I fre­quent­ly end up using dur­ing my trav­els.

Audible.com: If you’re into con­tem­po­rary books, then give Audi­ble a vis­it. They have the widest col­lec­tion of new books on the mar­ket, and they make it easy to down­load books to your mp3 play­er. In fact, they sup­port iPod, iPhone, Black­ber­ry and 500 oth­er devices. Books can be bought a la carte, or through an annu­al sub­scrip­tion. If you start a free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load a free audio book of your choice. At the end of the free tri­al, you can decide whether to stick with the sub­scrip­tion plan or not. Regard­less of your deci­sion, you can keep the free audio book. It’s a no risk way of try­ing out Audi­ble’s ser­vice.

This post was inspired by Life­hack­er’s piece from ear­li­er today: Top 10 Tips and Tools for Com­muters.

Lawrence Lessig: What Conservatives Can Teach Us About Free Culture

in Education | March 8th, 2010

Here’s one of the first videos to emerge from this week­end’s indie TED con­fer­ence in New York City. More videos will even­tu­al­ly be post­ed on the TEDxTalks YouTube Chan­nel, which we’re adding to our Smart YouTube col­lec­tion. In case you’re not famil­iar with him, Lawrence Lessig, a Har­vard law pro­fes­sor, has been a dri­ving force behind the “free cul­ture” move­ment and Cre­ative Com­mons. This talks offers a quick intro­duc­tion to his think­ing … and his dis­tinc­tive (and always engag­ing) man­ner of pre­sen­ta­tion.

Catch TEDxNYED Live on Saturday

in Education, TED Talks | March 5th, 2010

A quick heads up: On Sat­ur­day, an inde­pen­dent TED con­fer­ence will get under­way in New York City. It’s dubbed TEDxNYED, and a top notch line­up of speak­ers (includ­ing Lawrence Lessig, Michael Wesch, Gina Bian­chi­ni, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jay Rosen and oth­ers) will focus on a top­ic near and dear to our read­ers’ hearts: how new media and tech­nol­o­gy will shape the future of edu­ca­tion. And the best part? You can watch a live stream of the con­fer­ence here. Look for the web stream­ing to take place between 10am EST and 6pm EST. Again, this all hap­pens this Sat­ur­day. Please spread the word! Your friends will thank you.

Where Is Technology Taking Us?

in Economics, Web/Tech | March 4th, 2010

A recent Front­line doc­u­men­tary, Dig­i­tal Nation: A Life on the Vir­tu­al Fron­tier, asks just this question–particularly with regard to edu­ca­tion. Sub­jects include atten­tion span, mul­ti-task­ing, and the doubts of one-time tech­nol­o­gy evan­ge­list Dou­glas Rushkoff. But while some see tech­nol­o­gy as an obsta­cle to clear think­ing and human inter­ac­tion, oth­ers see it as essen­tial to con­tem­po­rary edu­ca­tion.

I have to say the whole sub­ject res­onates with my own ambiva­lent technophil­ia. You can watch the doc­u­men­tary above or here (and the trail­er fol­lows), but don’t for­get to check your news feeds, twit­ter, and face­book while it’s on in the back­ground.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

Opera in the Fruit & Veggie Market

in Life, Music | March 3rd, 2010

The place: A pro­duce mar­ket in Valen­cia, Spain. The day: Just a day like any oth­er. But then sud­den­ly Verdi’s La travi­a­ta booms out over the speak­ers, and opera singers, ini­tial­ly mas­querad­ing as shop­keep­ers, take cen­ter stage. Stick with it until the end. The cus­tomer reac­tion is pre­cious. We’ve added this one to our YouTube favorites. Thanks Char­lie for the tip …

Chilean Earthquake Waves in Animation

in Science | March 3rd, 2010

This ani­mat­ed footage gives you a more glob­al view of the Chilean earth­quake in action. Seen from this van­tage point, there’s a cer­tain beau­ty to Moth­er Nature in action. Waves rip­pling across the Pacif­ic, as if a stone were thrown into a calm pond. But, obvi­ous­ly, for those expe­ri­enc­ing the earth­quake on the ground, it’s a very dif­fer­ent and trag­ic sto­ry.

Join the Facebook Committee to Support Liao Yiwu

in Life, Literature | March 2nd, 2010

For the 13th time, Chi­nese author­i­ties arrest­ed the well-known Chi­nese writer Liao Yiwu (The Corpse Walk­er) as he board­ed a plane to attend a lit­er­ary fes­ti­val in Cologne, Ger­many. He has now been placed under house arrest. You can learn more about it here. (Also read Philip Goure­vitch’s blog post for The New York­er.) Please join this new­ly cre­at­ed Face­book Group ded­i­cat­ed to pub­li­ciz­ing this sto­ry and win­ning his release. Be among the first to join. Make a dif­fer­ence here.

John Battelle Doesn’t Like the iPad Because…

in Apple | March 2nd, 2010

In short, it’s hard­ly open …

World War II Relived through Sand Painting

in Art, History | March 1st, 2010

How did the artist Kseniya Simono­va win the Ukrain­ian ver­sion of Britain’s Got Tal­ent? By using the art of sand paint­ing to recount the sto­ry of Ger­many’s inva­sion of Ukraine in 1941. Life was some­what ordi­nary, then it all fell apart. And, by the war’s end, an esti­mat­ed 10 mil­lion Ukraini­ans were left dead. It’s a dif­fi­cult sto­ry to tell. And I’m refer­ring not just to the sto­ry’s con­tent, but to the actu­al medi­um too. Thanks Steve for the heads up on this one.

For more sand paint­ing, check out the work of Ilana Yahav.

Chilean Quake Shortens the Day

in Science | March 1st, 2010

An inter­est­ing fac­toid relat­ing to the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in Chile this week­end. A NASA sci­en­tist sur­mis­es that the quake prob­a­bly shift­ed the Earth’s axis and short­ened the day. As this piece in Busi­ness Week goes on to explain:

Earth­quakes can involve shift­ing hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters of rock by sev­er­al meters, chang­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass on the plan­et. This affects the Earth’s rota­tion, said Richard Gross, a geo­physi­cist at NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pasade­na, Cal­i­for­nia, who uses a com­put­er mod­el to cal­cu­late the effects.

“The length of the day should have got­ten short­er by 1.26 microsec­onds (mil­lionths of a sec­ond)… The axis about which the Earth’s mass is bal­anced should have moved by 2.7 mil­liarc­sec­onds (about 8 cen­time­ters or 3 inch­es).”

For more, read the com­plete Busi­ness Week arti­cle. And, con­sid­er donat­ing to a Chile relief fund. Mash­able tells you how…

via @slate