Touring Mars with Google Earth

in Google, Science | September 2nd, 2009

Google Earth has some­what out­grown its name. These days, Google’s satel­lite pro­gram (down­load it here) gives you more than a unique view of our plan­et Earth. It also offers a nice tour of Mars (and the Moon). The Mars tour is guid­ed by a famil­iar voice — the voice of Ira Fla­tow, who hosts the well known NPR pro­gram, Talk Of The Nation: Sci­ence Fri­day. The video below will show you how to access the tour in a quick two min­utes. In the mean­time, you should also note that Google Earth hosts oth­er edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. In the past, we’ve men­tioned how the pro­gram will let you tour the Pra­do Art col­lec­tion in Spain, and also see Ancient Rome in 3D. But that’s not where the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent ends. For more, please vis­it this sum­ma­ry page assem­bled by Google.

Launch the pro­gram, and then tog­gle on the Uranus icon on the top nav bar. Then

“September 1, 1939” by W.H. Auden

in Literature, Poetry | September 1st, 2009

The poem was W.H. Auden’s. The date marked the moment when Ger­many invad­ed Poland, ini­ti­at­ing the start of World War II. “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939” was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in The New Repub­lic on Octo­ber 18, 1939. You can find the text of the poem here. Plus, you can also read George Orwell’s account of what hap­pened that his­toric day in Poland. I found it, and just had to throw that in.

The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It

in Books, e-books, Technology | August 31st, 2009

Lawrence Lessig calls Jonathan Zit­train’s book “Absolute­ly required read­ing.” Cass Sun­stein says it’s “Absolute­ly essen­tial read­ing.” And Lawrence Tribe declares that it is “The most com­pelling book ever writ­ten on why a trans­for­ma­tive tech­nol­o­gy’s tra­jec­to­ry threat­ens to sti­fle that tech­nol­o­gy’s great­est promise for soci­ety.”

The book is The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It.  You can buy it on Ama­zon for $11.56, or, even bet­ter, you can down­load it for free from Zit­train’s web site. Vis­it the web site, and find the PDF here. Thanks for this tip goes to Tony Yet, who guest blogged TED to Chi­na: An Inside View ear­li­er this sum­mer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Audio­book of Chris Anderson’s “Free”

The Future of the Inter­net: A Free Stan­ford Course

Lawrence Lessig’s Free Cul­ture: Avail­able in Text or Audio (For Free)

Socrates Flubs His Academic Interview

in Philosophy, Random | August 31st, 2009

What hap­pens when Socrates tries to land a job at a uni­ver­si­ty? It does­n’t go so well. Below, we have the com­ments returned by the inter­view com­mit­tee, as imag­ined by THE (Times High­er Edu­ca­tion). In this piece, you’ll also find Tol­stoy, Kaf­ka, Jane Austen and oth­er genius­es com­ing up short with the search com­mit­tees. Now to Socrates…

“At first the can­di­date’s own list of ques­tions felt refresh­ing, but soon became counter-pro­duc­tive to the inter­view process. His spir­it of inquiry masked an indif­fer­ence to time con­straints and a pas­sive-aggres­sive need to dom­i­nate the con­ver­sa­tion. As anoth­er can­di­date cooled his heels, the request for him to con­clude his thoughts on the ide­al soci­ety scarce­ly reg­is­tered as we won­dered if, then began to wish that, some­one would spike his drink.”

Watch Malcolm X Debate at Oxford, Quoting Lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1964)

in History | August 30th, 2009

I enjoy replay­ing this vin­tage gem every now and then  — Mal­colm X debat­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964. In this clas­sic video, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage, not to men­tion the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s trade­mark claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it, and that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” will achieve lib­er­ty far more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies. (He’s clear­ly allud­ing to Mar­tin Luther King.) You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But I’d also encour­age you to watch the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide, where X takes lines from Shake­speare’s Ham­let and uses them to jus­ti­fy his “by what­ev­er means nec­es­sary” posi­tion. You’d prob­a­bly nev­er expect to see Ham­let get­ting invoked that way, let alone Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford. A won­der­ful set of con­trasts.

“I read once, pass­ing­ly, about a man named Shake­speare. I only read about him pass­ing­ly, but I remem­ber one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Ham­let, I think, it was, who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something—whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous fortune—moderation—or to take up arms against a sea of trou­bles and by oppos­ing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in pow­er to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be wait­ing a long time. And in my opin­ion, the young gen­er­a­tion of whites, blacks, browns, what­ev­er else there is, you’re liv­ing at a time of extrem­ism, a time of rev­o­lu­tion, a time when there’s got to be a change. Peo­ple in pow­er have mis­used it, and now there has to be a change and a bet­ter world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built—is with extreme meth­ods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what col­or you are—as long as you want to change this mis­er­able con­di­tion that exists on this earth.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tem­pest (1980)

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Albert Ein­stein Called Racism “A Dis­ease of White Peo­ple” in His Lit­tle-Known Fight for Civ­il Rights

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

in Philosophy, Science | August 27th, 2009

Why did so many find Charles Dar­win’s con­cept of nat­ur­al selec­tion so sub­ver­sive and dis­con­cert­ing straight from the begin­ning? Amer­i­can philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett explains. To get to the meat of things, you might want to skip to 1:16.

Dominick Dunne Looks at the Dark Side

in Law, Literature | August 27th, 2009

Crime writer Dominick Dunne passed yes­ter­day today at 83, his death over­shad­owed by that of Ted Kennedy. Above, we fea­ture Dunne remem­ber­ing his rather unpleas­ant rela­tion­ship with Frank Sina­tra. It’s a per­verse sto­ry, though told in a some­what humor­ous way.

Ini­tial­ly, I con­sid­ered fea­tur­ing anoth­er video, but it’s entire­ly too sad, espe­cial­ly for any par­ents among us. Back in 1982, Dun­ne’s daugh­ter, an actress, was stran­gled to death by her boyfriend. And, in this clip, Dunne reflects on his rela­tion­ship with his daugh­ter. A heart­break­ing bit.

As a side note, Dunne kept a diary dur­ing the tri­al of his daugh­ter’s mur­der­er. The account was even­tu­al­ly pub­lished in Van­i­ty Fair, and you can find it here, along with many oth­er major pieces that Dunne wrote for VF. Amaz­ing­ly, the mur­der­er was con­vict­ed and served less than 4 years. Mean­while, mil­lions who have ped­dled small amounts of drugs are doing con­sid­er­ably more time across the US.

Will Sony Beat Amazon Where It Counts?

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | August 25th, 2009

If you haven’t heard the news… Sony is releas­ing a new e‑book read­er, its answer to Ama­zon’s Kin­dle. Retail­ing at $399, the Sony read­er will fea­ture a touch screen (some­thing the Kin­dle does­n’t have) and the abil­i­ty to down­load books wire­less­ly (some­thing the Kin­dle does have). It will also pro­vide access to thou­sands of free (pub­lic domain) books & doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by Google Book Search. A nice touch.

But I’m won­der­ing whether the Sony read­er will beat the Kin­dle in the one cat­e­go­ry that real­ly counts? Will it have a tru­ly read­able screen? The Sony and Ama­zon screens each use “e‑ink” tech­nol­o­gy, which does­n’t cut the mus­tard. As Nichol­son Bak­er recent­ly wrote in The New York­er, “The prob­lem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had real­ly been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The prob­lem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a green­ish, sick­ly gray. A post­mortem gray. The resiz­able type­face, Mono­type Cae­cil­ia, appeared as a dark­er gray. Dark gray on paler green­ish gray was the palette of the Ama­zon Kin­dle.”

Hope­ful­ly Sony fig­ures this piece out. If not, Apple may. Accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, Steve Jobs is back at Apple, just months after his liv­er trans­plant, work­ing hard and rais­ing the blood pres­sure of Apple employ­ees, as they pre­pare to roll out a mul­ti­me­dia tablet that’s rumored to include, yes, an e‑book read­er.

Is OpenCourseWare Hitting the Mainstream?

in Education, Online Courses | August 24th, 2009

A quick news break: Time.com has released today a new list, “The 50 Best Web Sites of 2009,” and right along­side some well known brands, you’ll find Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, a new ven­ture that aggre­gates high qual­i­ty uni­ver­si­ty video. Essen­tial­ly, Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth pulls togeth­er videos from top-notch uni­ver­si­ties and lets users watch them with a very user-friend­ly inter­face. And that’s why we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured them in our pop­u­lar col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. Is open course­ware final­ly hit­ting the main­stream? It seems so. Con­grats, Richard!

For more uni­ver­si­ty course­ware, check out our large col­lec­tion, Free Lec­tures & Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Or get this uni­ver­si­ty con­tent via our free iPhone app.

David Sedaris Guest DJ’s

in Comedy, Music | August 24th, 2009

These days, David Sedaris is the think­ing per­son­’s favorite fun­ny man. In the past, we have fea­tured his live read­ings of com­ic mate­r­i­al from When You are Engulfed in Flames. (See “Relat­ed Con­tent” below.) Today, we’re high­light­ing some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. On August 19th, Sedaris appeared as a guest DJ on KCRW, a radio sta­tion in Los Ange­les, and spun his favorite old records. You can lis­ten with the play­er below or here. Mean­while, if you want to hear more of KCR­W’s Guest DJ Project (which has fea­tured David Lynch, Jim­my Wales, and oth­er cul­tur­al icons), you can get the pod­cast here:  iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sedaris Reads “Solu­tion to Saturday’s Puz­zle”

David Sedaris Reads “Of Mice and Men”