U2 to Webcast Sunday’s Rose Bowl Concert

in Music | October 20th, 2009

Accord­ing to the LA Times, U2 will live stream its con­cert this com­ing Sun­day night on YouTube. Some 95,000 peo­ple have tick­ets for the Rose Bowl show in LA. If you’re not one of them, then you can watch the YouTube stream start­ing at 8:30 pm Pacif­ic time. The footage will also be archived for any­one who miss­es it. More details here and here.

Calculus Lifesaver: A Free Online Course

in Math | October 19th, 2009

Updat­ed post: It’s rare that we get to cov­er math here. So here it goes: Adri­an Ban­ner, a lec­tur­er at Prince­ton, has put togeth­er a lec­ture series (in video) that will help stu­dents mas­ter cal­cu­lus, a sub­ject that has tra­di­tion­al­ly frus­trat­ed many stu­dents. The 24 lec­tures (get them on iTunes) were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed as review ses­sions for Prince­ton intro­duc­to­ry cal­cu­lus cours­es offered in 2006, and each runs about two hours. It’s worth not­ing that Ban­ner has used the lec­tures to devel­op a handy book, The Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: All the Tools You Need to Excel at Cal­cu­lus. To find this course (and many oth­ers like it), look in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Here you will also find MIT’s course, Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus, which now appears on YouTube and iTune­sU.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math and Sci­ence Tutor­ing on YouTube

Math Mag­ic

Learn­ing Chem­istry on Youtube

Beauty Through a Microscope

in Art, Science | October 15th, 2009

This year, Nikon held a con­test and select­ed the best “pho­tomi­cro­graphs,” essen­tial­ly pic­tures tak­en through the micro­scope. 20 final­ists were select­ed in total, and you can view them on Nikon’s web site, or even more eas­i­ly on Wired’s web site. Among the final­ists, you’ll find the pic­ture above. Nope, it isn’t a Van Gogh. It’s a “10-year old prepa­ra­tion of bar­bi­tal, fenace­tine, val­i­um and acetic acid” cap­tured under a micro­scope.

via @timoreilly

A Vision of Students Today

in Education | October 15th, 2009

Anoth­er video brought to you by cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gist Michael Wesch, who pre­vi­ous­ly brought you Infor­ma­tion R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us. You may also want to see his talk, An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to YouTube.

Free Beethoven No. 9 Courtesy of Dudamel

in Music | October 10th, 2009

Gus­ta­vo Dudamel, the new music direc­tor of the Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic, kicked off his tenure last Sat­ur­day with a free per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 9 at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. 18,000 peo­ple were in atten­dance. You can lis­ten to the con­cert in its entire­ty here, and read a review of Dudamel’s maid­en voy­age with the LA Phil here.

via @ooble

Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” Now on YouTube

in Film | October 8th, 2009

I had to give this at least a men­tion. Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Taxi Dri­ver (1976) is now free to watch on YouTube. If you live in the US, you can watch the clas­sic film star­ring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Fos­ter, and Har­vey Kei­t­el here. If you live out­side the US, you’re unfor­tu­nate­ly out of luck, at least for now. (There’s some hope that the film will get rolled out to inter­na­tion­al mar­kets soon.) Nor­mal­ly, I would­n’t know­ing­ly high­light a geo-blocked film — it’s not very “open,” I know — but this seemed a lit­tle too good to pass up. This YouTube pro­mo­tion is spon­sored by Crackle.com, a Sony Pic­tures site where you can watch oth­er major films online.

NOTE: You can find many great films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Who is Herta Muller?

in Literature | October 8th, 2009

This morn­ing, the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture was award­ed to the Roman­ian author, Her­ta Muller. There’s a good chance that you’re not famil­iar with her work. So let me steer you to this pro­file in the Tele­graph. You can also read this excerpt­ed inter­view that goes back to 1999. If I come across any media fea­tur­ing Muller (so far, not much is com­ing up), I will post it as the day goes on.

Michael Sandel on Justice: Lecture III

in Harvard, Philosophy | October 6th, 2009

Lec­ture 3 of Michael Sandel’s ever pop­u­lar course on Jus­tice is now online. Here’s the sum­ma­ry of mate­r­i­al cov­ered by the new­ly added lec­ture. It’s pro­vid­ed by Har­vard’s course web site:

Part 1 — FREE TO CHOOSE: With humor­ous ref­er­ences to Bill Gates and Michael Jor­dan, Sandel intro­duces the lib­er­tar­i­an notion that redis­trib­u­tive taxation—taxing the rich to give to the poor—is akin to forced labor.

PART 2 — WHO OWNS ME?: Stu­dents first dis­cuss the argu­ments behind redis­trib­u­tive tax­a­tion. If you live in a soci­ety that has a sys­tem of pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion, aren’t you oblig­at­ed to pay your tax­es? Don’t many rich peo­ple often acquire their wealth through sheer luck or fam­i­ly for­tune? A group of stu­dents dubbed “Team Lib­er­tar­i­an” vol­un­teers to defend the lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy against these objec­tions.

PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

in Education, Media, Television | October 6th, 2009

News from the Wired Cam­pus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now post­ing taped inter­views and videos of lec­tures by aca­d­e­mics, adding to the grow­ing num­ber of free lec­tures online.

Their site, called Forum Net­work, says it makes thou­sands of lec­tures avail­able, includ­ing the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel’s take on cal­cu­lat­ing hap­pi­ness in a lec­ture called “How to Mea­sure Plea­sure,” and a dis­cus­sion by a North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the dif­fi­cul­ties of report­ing in Rus­sia in a lec­ture called “Of Spies and Spokes­men: The Chal­lenge of Jour­nal­ism in Rus­sia.”

The Forum Net­work is now hap­pi­ly added to our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intel­li­gent video sites here.) For more free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, be sure to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es. It now fea­tures 200 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, and you can down­load them all to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er.

YouTube Edu Releases Version 2.0, Goes International

in Education, YouTube | October 1st, 2009

A quick bit of break­ing news. YouTube.EDU has released Ver­sion 2.0 today and has gone inter­na­tion­al. The site, launched six months ago, now fea­tures aca­d­e­m­ic con­tent from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, the Nether­lands, Rus­sia, and Israel. As part of this glob­al effort, the YouTube team has brought 45 new uni­ver­si­ties into the fold, includ­ing Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Open Uni­ver­si­ty, Boc­coni Uni­ver­si­ty, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia, to name a few. In total, YouTube.EDU now works with over 200 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, and serves more than 40,000 videos. When you vis­it, make sure you have some time to spend. For more details on this glob­al effort, you can read this handy blog post.

For more smart con­tent from YouTube, see our big list: Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions.