US Justice Department Looks to Restructure Google Books Settlement

in e-books, Google | September 18th, 2009

The US Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial­ly weighed in today on the Google Books set­tle­ment with pub­lish­ers and authors. On the plus side for Google, the gov­ern­ment wants to see the project con­tin­ue because it has clear social ben­e­fits. On the down­side, the DOJ has con­cerns about antitrust and copy­right issues, and it’s look­ing for the deal to get restruc­tured. You can get more details in The Wall Street Jour­nal. It’s late. I’m out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Google Book Down­loader

Google Book Search: A Dis­as­ter for Schol­ars?

Uranium Wars: A Free Audio Chapter

in Audio Books, Science | September 17th, 2009

Just a quick fyi: Audible.com is giv­ing away a free chap­ter (in audio) from a new book, Ura­ni­um Wars: The Sci­en­tif­ic Rival­ry that Cre­at­ed the Nuclear Age (pre­view it on Ama­zon here). Writ­ten by Amir Aczel, a skilled pop­u­lar sci­ence writer, the book takes a close look at the sci­en­tists who dis­cov­ered the destruc­tive poten­tial of ura­ni­um and launched the begin­ning of the nuclear age. Since the book has been get­ting good reviews, I thought that I’d flag this free give­away. Also, as men­tioned here before, Audi­ble runs a reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that will let you down­load a free audio­book of your choice (for exam­ple, Ura­ni­um Wars) if you start a 14 day free tri­al. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is yours. You can ini­ti­ate that process here.

Universities Launch “Futurity” to Bring Science to the Web

in Science | September 16th, 2009

A lit­tle break­ing news… 35 lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a sim­ple goal — edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about new sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs. In the old days, uni­ver­si­ties depend­ed on the tra­di­tion­al press to spread the word about new sci­en­tif­ic advances. Now, with jour­nal­ism in cri­sis and news­pa­pers fold­ing, the schools can no longer bank on that. And so we get Futu­ri­ty, which is essen­tial­ly a non­prof­it wire ser­vice that will dis­trib­ute news through major news sup­pli­ers on the web (Yahoo News & Google News) and also through social media chan­nels (Twit­ter, Face­book and MySpace). On the list of par­tic­i­pat­ing uni­ver­si­ties, you will find UC Berke­ley, Stan­ford, Johns Hop­kins, Carnegie Mel­lon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Duke, Prince­ton, Yale and many oth­ers. You can get a full list here, and read more about the ven­ture here.

Thanks Denise for the tip on this one. Have some­thing you want to share with your fel­low read­ers? Send your tips to ma**@*********re.com

The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats

in Literature, Poetry | September 15th, 2009

Por­trait of William But­ler Yeats by John Singer Sar­gent, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s a hap­py trend. Increas­ing­ly, we’re see­ing muse­ums launch­ing dynam­ic online exhi­bi­tions to accom­pa­ny their exhi­bi­tions on the ground. In the past, we high­light­ed the Tate Mod­ern’s panoram­ic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William But­ler Yeats, an online exhi­bi­tion cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Library of Ire­land. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 arti­facts & man­u­scripts and “attend” three in-depth tuto­ri­als explor­ing the evo­lu­tion of three major poems (‘Sail­ing to Byzan­tium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nine­teen Hun­dred and Nine­teen’). You can also lis­ten to Yeats, one of Ire­land’s tow­er­ing poets, recit­ing his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free.’ To lis­ten, click “Areas” on the bot­tom nav­i­ga­tion, then click “Verse and Vision” on the cen­ter menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Final­ly, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book col­lec­tion.

Watch Birds Sitting on Electrical Wires Become Sheet Music & Make a Melody

in Music | September 15th, 2009

What’s the sto­ry behind this video? Here it is, straight from the pro­duc­er, Jar­bas Agnel­li from Brazil: “Read­ing a news­pa­per, I saw a pic­ture of birds on the elec­tric wires. I cut out the pho­to and decid­ed to make a song, using the exact loca­tion of the birds as notes (no Pho­to­shop edit). I knew it was­n’t the most orig­i­nal idea in the uni­verse. I was just curi­ous to hear what melody the birds were cre­at­ing.” You can get more details here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

in Physics, Stanford | September 14th, 2009

For the past two years, Stan­ford has been rolling out a series of cours­es (col­lec­tive­ly called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum) that gives you a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac New­ton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, to black holes and string the­o­ry, comes out of Stanford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (my day job). And the cours­es are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an impor­tant physi­cist who has engaged in a long run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing. The final course, Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the cours­es can be accessed imme­di­ate­ly below. Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of con­tent. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

• Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics (Fall 2007) iTunes YouTube
• Quan­tum Mechan­ics (Win­ter 2008) iTunes YouTube
• Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Spring 2008) iTunes YouTube
• Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Fall 2009) iTunes YouTube
• Cos­mol­o­gy (Win­ter 2009) iTunes YouTube
• Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics (Spring 2009) iTunes YouTube

PS If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you should con­sid­er check­ing out Prof. Susskind’s new course. It will take a year­long look at new rev­o­lu­tions in Par­ti­cle Physics, and how impor­tant the­o­ries will be test­ed by the Large Hadron Col­lid­er in Europe. His course begins next week. Learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Stephen Hawk­ing Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

Learn­ing Physics Through Free Online Cours­es

James Watson on Jesus as Scientist

in Science | September 11th, 2009

Speak­ing Wednes­day night at Har­vard, James Wat­son, the co-dis­cov­er­er of DNA, was asked by NPR’s Robert Krul­wich: “Can a gen­tle per­son do well in sci­ence?” His response: “Jesus would not have suc­ceed­ed.” Sad com­men­tary, and it’s the type of com­ment that you’d expect from Wat­son. But it’s also some­what dis­proved by the career of E.O. Wil­son, who shared the stage with Wat­son that night. You can get more cov­er­age of this con­ver­sa­tion over at the New­Sci­en­tist.

In the mean­time, check out our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, which includes Krul­wich’s pro­gram, Radio Lab. These pod­casts are also avail­able on our free iPhone app.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Cre­ation

Get Smart with Your iPhone

in Apple, iPhone | September 9th, 2009

Dur­ing the lazy days of sum­mer, we qui­et­ly launched a new, free iPhone app. Now sum­mer is fad­ing, peo­ple are get­ting back to work, stu­dents back to school, and it’s time to get the word out. This app takes our intel­li­gent media col­lec­tions and let’s you lis­ten to them on the go. Once you down­load the app, you can lis­ten to free audio books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons, sci­ence pod­casts and oth­er intel­li­gent con­tent on the iPhone.

The app opens all media files in native iPhone soft­ware — iTunes, Safari, the YouTube play­er, etc. You will need WI-FI (Apple says so) to down­load the con­tent. This app, which was very gen­er­ous­ly devel­oped by Fred Hsu, is a work in progress. Don’t hes­i­tate to give us feed­back. And, if you don’t mind, please leave a nice review/rating in the App Store and spread the word.

Last­ly, let me leave you with some praise that we received today. “I love this appli­ca­tion. Been using it a lot for the Biol­o­gy – Human Anato­my Cours­es avail­able. Thank you so much for devel­op­ing this app. Absolute­ly Bril­liant!!!” Does this intrigue you enough to check it out?

Every TED Talk Under the Sun

in TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Science | September 7th, 2009

If you reg­u­lar­ly vis­it Open Cul­ture, then you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with TED Talks — the series of 15 minute “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple” that TED pro­duces and makes free to the world. We’ve includ­ed TED in our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites, and it’s one of the best sources of intel­li­gent video out there. Hav­ing said that, I was pleased to find this Google spread­sheet of every TED Talk ever post­ed online. Although TED hosts many videos on its web site (and on its iTunes and YouTube chan­nels), these plat­forms don’t give you clean access to the entire TED cat­a­logue. Mean­while, this sim­ple and sortable spread­sheet does. So enjoy, and use it well.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

TED to Chi­na: An Inside View

Underwater Astonishments

in Science, TED Talks | September 3rd, 2009

Bril­liant, and we’ve added this one, too, to our YouTube Favorites. Now I’m off for the long week­end. See you Tues­day!