English and its Evolution

in English Language, Stanford | August 9th, 2009

A lit­tle some­thing for the lan­guage buffs among us. The Struc­ture of Eng­lish Words (iTunes) is anoth­er Stan­ford course. To be exact, it comes out of the Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (my day job), and we’re open­ing enroll­ments for our Fall term next Mon­day. (If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, give our offer­ing a look. If you live out­side the Bay Area, then you may want to check out our pop­u­lar series of online writ­ing cours­es.) You can find the course descrip­tion for The Struc­ture of Eng­lish Words, taught by Pro­fes­sor Will Leben, direct­ly below. To find hun­dreds of oth­er free cours­es, then check out our col­lec­tion of Free Online Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es:

Thanks to his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and lin­guis­tic fac­tors, Eng­lish has by far the world’s largest vocabulary—leading many of us to have greater than aver­age dif­fi­cul­ty with words, and some of us to have greater than aver­age curios­i­ty about words.

Our his­tor­i­cal and lin­guis­tic study will cov­er both eru­dite and every­day Eng­lish, with spe­cial atten­tion to word mean­ing and word use, to both rules and excep­tions. Most words orig­i­nat­ed with an image. “Reveal” = “pull back the veil,” “depend” = “hang down from.”

Change is con­stant. “Girl” once meant “a young child of either sex;” an ear­ly syn­onym for “stu­pid” was “nice.” Despite resis­tance to change among some experts and some mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic, new words are enter­ing at an accel­er­at­ing rate, from “Franken­food” to “ungoogleable.” Are there good changes and bad ones? And who gets to decide? Explor­ing the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary rich­ness of Eng­lish will sug­gest some answers.

Try a 30-Day Free Trial to Audible Premium Plus & Get a Free Audiobook

in | August 8th, 2009

Look­ing for a free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio book from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal.

If you start a 30 day free tri­al for an Audi­ble Pre­mi­um Plus Plan (click here), you can down­load a free audio book of your choice. They have over 200,000 books to choose from, which will play on almost any portable device or on your com­put­er itself.

If you remain a sub­scriber to Audi­ble Pre­mi­um Plus after the 30-day free tri­al, you will get 1 new audio­book per month and pay $14.95/month. Plus, you will get unlim­it­ed access to Audi­ble orig­i­nals (audio books pro­duced by Audi­ble that aren’t avail­able any­where else), a library of oth­er audio books, and exclu­sive pod­casts.

When you sign up for the Audi­ble Pre­mi­um Plus plan, the cred­it for the free audio book will appear in your Audi­ble account. (If you have an Amazon.com username/password, the whole signup process takes a mat­ter of sec­onds. Audi­ble is part of Amazon.com)

At the end of your free tri­al, you can opt out of the pro­gram and still keep the free audio book. Or you can stay with this valu­able pro­gram and keep enrich­ing your­self when­ev­er you want. To get start­ed, click right here.

The web site Audiobooks.com (anoth­er provider of audio books) also offers a free tri­al pro­gram that lets you down­load three free audio books. Get details on that here.

Note: We are a mem­ber of Amazon/Audible.com’s affil­i­ate pro­gram, and this page con­tains affil­i­ate links. If you sign up for an Audi­ble plan via our links, we will receive a small fee.

Twilight Series: How to Get Free Audio Books

in | August 8th, 2009

We get a lot of requests for books from the Twi­light series. While these books gen­er­al­ly aren’t avail­able as free mp3 down­loads, there is some­thing of a workaround. If you sign up for a free 30 day tri­al from Audible.com (which has no strings attached), you can down­load two FREE audio books. We have infor­ma­tion on the Free Tri­al pro­gram here. Or if you click on the links below, they will take you to an Amazon.com page (Ama­zon owns Audi­ble). There, you will see in the upper right hand side of the page a “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton. If you click that but­ton, you can start the Free Tri­al and get books from the Twi­light series.

• Twi­light: The Twi­light Saga, Book 1
• New Moon: The Twi­light Saga, Book 2
• Eclipse: The Twi­light Saga, Book 3
• Break­ing Dawn: The Twi­light Saga, Book 4

Enjoy…

Plastics Out, Statistics In

in Film, Life | August 6th, 2009

A mem­o­rable scene from The Grad­u­ate (1967). But, as the New York Times tells us today, plas­tics is out; sta­tis­tics is now in.

John Hughes: Backdrop for an Adolescence

in Film | August 6th, 2009

John Hugh­es films. The Who. Now you’ve got the back­drop for my teenage years. This is for me, and per­haps even for you… (Sor­ry to those who can’t relate. We’ll be back on track soon enough.)

Junot Díaz Reads From “Drown”

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | August 5th, 2009

Image by Christo­pher Peter­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I first heard about Junot Díaz in the ear­ly 90s. He was only in his 20s, already pub­lish­ing in The New York­er, and get­ting a lot of wun­derkind talk. By 1996, he pub­lished, Drown, a best­selling col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that earned high praise. And then, things slowed down. It took a good eleven years for him to pub­lish The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao. But the patience paid off. The nov­el won him a Pulitzer in fact. And it’s an excel­lent read. Real­ly.

Hav­ing said this, I want to high­light Díaz read­ing one of his ear­ly New York­er sto­ries that also found its way into Drown. It’s called How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie). The free audio clip, which is list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books (and pro­duced by The New York­er), has some col­or­ful lan­guage, but it’s not gra­tu­itous.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

New Pynchon Book Out Today: Watch the Trailer

in Books | August 4th, 2009

Thomas Pyn­chon’s new book, Inher­ent Vice, is on sale today. Check it out. Below we have, yes, a video trail­er for the new book, and it sounds like Pyn­chon (who has famous­ly stayed out of the pub­lic eye) is actu­al­ly nar­rat­ing the thing.

Become of a Fan of Open Cul­ture on Face­Book here or fol­low us on Twit­ter

Yale Open Courses Now on iTunesU

in Apple, Online Courses, Yale | July 26th, 2009

Over the past two years, Yale has released fif­teen free “open cours­es.” Ini­tial­ly, these cours­es were only avail­able through Yale’s web site and lat­er YouTube. Now, they’re also acces­si­ble through iTune­sU — which means that you can put these cours­es on your iPod with rel­a­tive ease. Just click here and scroll down, and you’ll find well-pro­duced cours­es that cov­er eco­nom­ics, his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, physics, med­i­cine and more. Thanks to this inte­gra­tion with iTunes, we’ll soon be able to include these cours­es in the Open Cul­ture iPhone app. If you haven’t played with it, give it a try. In the mean­time, all Yale cours­es appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es, fea­tur­ing online class­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Never Mind Amazon, Get Your Free Orwell Here

in Audio Books, Books | July 22nd, 2009

The whole mini-con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Ama­zon’s dele­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 and Ani­mal Farm from Kin­dle accounts remind­ed me of some­thing. Over at the Inter­net Archive, you can find 1984 avail­able as a free audio book. And, nice­ly, the record­ing is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done. You can down­load the full zip file here. Or alter­na­tive­ly you can get the indi­vid­ual mp3 files, or stream them, from this page. On a more per­ma­nent basis, you can find Orwell’s 1949 work housed in our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion along with lots of oth­er free texts.

The Ancient History Learning Guide

in History | July 21st, 2009

For life­long learn­ers, cours­es on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these cours­es are poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed in under­grad­u­ate pro­grams (at least in the States), they’re pop­u­lar in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­grams designed for old­er stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, it seems, many stu­dents come to the con­clu­sion that you can’t skip over the foun­da­tions and still make sense of it all. And so they go back to basics.

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny, a com­mer­cial provider of cours­es for life­long learn­ers, has rec­og­nized this demand and built a very rich col­lec­tion of lec­tures ded­i­cat­ed to the Ancients. (NOTE: Our read­ers can get $10 off of their cours­es, by click­ing here and using the code word “CULTURE”. Be sure to check out the cours­es in mp3 for­mat, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ones on sale. They’re very afford­able.) These cours­es are pol­ished and well thought out. I rec­om­mend them high­ly.

Then you should know about some of the free alter­na­tives. Thanks to the “open course” move­ment, you can now find a series of free cours­es online, includ­ing some from top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties. Let me give you a quick overview of your options:

Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a new round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry. A lead­ing fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are high touch. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve com­plet­ed the arc of Greek his­to­ry, you can move next to the UC Berke­ley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Paf­ford moves from Julius Cae­sar to Con­stan­tine (rough­ly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lec­tures. And the audio comes straight from the class­room, which means that you’ll get sol­id infor­ma­tion but you’ll also have to endure some extra­ne­ous talk about home­work assign­ments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t com­plain.) You can down­load this course in one of three ways: iTunes or  streamed audio. Last­ly, I should note that Paf­ford has taught anoth­er relat­ed course at Berke­ley — The Ancient Mediter­ranean World (iTunes — Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big sur­vey cours­es under your belt, you can switch to some more focused cours­es com­ing out of Stan­ford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Han­ni­bal (iTunes). As I’ve not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this pod­cast­ed course takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy. Because Han­ni­bal still remains a fig­ure of intense his­tor­i­cal inter­est, it’s not sur­pris­ing that this course has ranked as one of the more pop­u­lar cours­es on iTune­sU.

Anoth­er short course worth your time is Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic. Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund (a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor at the time), the course teas­es apart the epic poem that was an instant when it was writ­ten 29–19 BC), and still endures today. Divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours, this pod­cast offers a good intro­duc­tion to one of the cen­tral texts in the Latin tra­di­tion.

Final­ly, let me throw in a quick bonus course. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus, anoth­er Stan­ford course taught by Thomas Shee­han, looks inside the historical/Roman world of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a his­to­ry course, not a reli­gion course, and it uses the best lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to answer the ques­tions: “Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do…? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion…? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

UPDATE: Thanks to a read­er, I was remind­ed of anoth­er relat­ed course: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes  — Site). These pod­casts cov­er the lega­cy of the Roman Empire that emerged in the East (after it had col­lapsed in the West). You can read more about this course in one of my ear­ly blog posts.

All of these cours­es can be found in our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will find 200 high qual­i­ty cours­es that you can lis­ten to any­time, any­where.