The Story of Stuff in 20 Animated Minutes

in Current Affairs, Film, Video - Politics/Society | August 25th, 2008

Here’s anoth­er good sub­mis­sion (many thanks) that came out of last week’s book give­away…

It’s an ani­mat­ed film called The Sto­ry of Stuff, which offers “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the under­side of our pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion pat­terns. The Sto­ry of Stuff expos­es the con­nec­tions between a huge num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal and social issues, and calls us togeth­er to cre­ate a more sus­tain­able and just world. It’ll teach you some­thing .… and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life for­ev­er.”

The film, nar­rat­ed by Annie Leonard, an expert in inter­na­tion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal health issues, can be viewed on The Sto­ry of Stuff web site, or it can be down­loaded here for free. Below, we have post­ed a quick teas­er that will give you a feel for what this film is all about.

Photography in Motion: 360-Degree View of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium

in Art | August 24th, 2008

Finnish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kari Kuuk­ka has post­ed a panoram­ic view of Bei­jing’s Olympics Sta­di­um, cap­tur­ing the mood about 30 min­utes before the men’s 100m final, when Usain Bolt blew away the field. Give the page a few sec­onds to load and the pic­ture will go in motion. Hat tip to Metafil­ter, and adieu to Bei­jing.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The World Without Us: Get A Free Copy of the NY Times Bestseller

in Books, Current Affairs, Science | August 20th, 2008

What if we dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth tomor­row? All of us, just like that? What would hap­pen? How would the remain­ing world sur­vive or thrive with­out us? That’s the sce­nario that gets exam­ined by sci­ence writer Alan Weis­man (who we inter­viewed last year) in his non-fic­tion eco-thriller, The World With­out Us.

Now out in paper­back, the book, which spent 26 weeks on The New York Times best­seller list, sees things play­ing out like this:

With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s sub­way tun­nels would fill with water in two days. With­in 20 years, Lex­ing­ton Avenue would be a riv­er. Fire- and wind-rav­aged sky­scrap­ers would even­tu­al­ly fall like giant trees. With­in weeks of our dis­ap­pear­ance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioac­tive blobs, while our petro­chem­i­cal plants, ‘tick­ing time bombs’ even on a nor­mal day, would become flam­ing gey­sers spew­ing tox­ins for decades to come… After about 100,000 years, car­bon diox­ide would return to pre­hu­man lev­els. Domes­ti­cat­ed species from cat­tle to car­rots would revert back to their wild ances­tors. And on every dehabi­tat­ed con­ti­nent, forests and grass­lands would reclaim our farms and park­ing lots as ani­mals began a slow parade back to Eden.

The World With­out Us is a great read. And now some of our read­ers can get their hands on a free copy. We have 10 copies to give away, and here’s how we pro­pose doing it. We’ll give a copy to the first 10 read­ers (liv­ing in North Amer­i­ca) who add a qual­i­ty piece of “open cul­ture” in the com­ments sec­tion of this post. That is, you will need to post a link to an enrich­ing video, pod­cast or mp3 that fel­low read­ers will enjoy, and tell us a lit­tle about why. When we get ten qual­i­ty clips, we will then pack­age them in a post and share them with the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. In short, think of it as you get as you give. How nice. Very Kum­baya. (Watch Joan Baez sing it). Now let’s see what you’ve got.

NOTE: We can only ship to read­ers in North Amer­i­ca. And, yes, that includes Cana­da this time, and Mex­i­co too. To our many inter­na­tion­al read­ers, I apol­o­gize for the geo­graph­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion. And we’ll try to make things up to you down the line. We do appre­ci­ate you.

Also please note that if you’re select­ed, I will also even­tu­al­ly need your name and mail­ing address.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Watch Quality Films on Hulu for Free

in Film | August 19th, 2008

Fimocu­lous has nice­ly high­light­ed a series of good films that Hulu has made freely avail­able. The one obvi­ous down­side is that, unless some­thing has changed at Hulu, the flicks will only be avail­able to view­ers in the US. (Hulu needs to do bet­ter than this!) Nonethe­less, here they are, and thanks to Kotkke.org for help­ing flag these. (Update: For many excel­lent films, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.)

Lost in Trans­la­tion

Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind

Requiem for a Dream

Met­ro­pol­i­tan

The Fifth Ele­ment

28 Days Lat­er

Koy­aanisqat­si

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Stephen Hawking Asks Big Questions About The Universe

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | August 19th, 2008

Speak­ing at the 2008 TED con­fer­ence, physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing asks some Big Ques­tions about our uni­verse: How did the uni­verse begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? And, dur­ing his ten minute talk, he offers some thoughts on how we might go about answer­ing these big enchi­la­da ques­tions. (We’ve added the clip to our YouTube playlist.)

How to Pronounce Beijing Once and For All

in Language Lessons | August 18th, 2008

Is it Bay-jing? Or Bay-zhing, as some Amer­i­can broad­cast­ers are inclined to say it? Below, you’ll find the answer accord­ing to Two Chi­nese Char­ac­ters, a video team com­posed of Carsey Yee from Chi­na, and John B. Wein­stein who teach­es Chi­nese at an Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty. Give a watch. It’s inten­tion­al­ly campy and amus­ing. And for more from Yee and Wein­stein, check out their piece on the oth­er Chi­nese cities help­ing host the 2008 games.

PS: If you’re look­ing to learn Chi­nese for free, check out our many Man­darin and Can­tonese lessons in our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | August 15th, 2008

Filmed in 1986, Meetin’ WA is a short (26 minute) film that not many have seen. What you get is Godard, one of the dri­ving forces behind La Nou­velle Vague, in con­ver­sa­tion with Woody Allen. The trade­mark Godard approach to film, the expect­ed dose of Woody Allen neu­roses — they’re all there. Hat tip to Metafil­ter for bring­ing this one to light.

Replaceable You (and Other Free Stem Cells Courses)

in Science, Uncategorized | August 13th, 2008

Here’s anoth­er free, down­load­able course com­ing out Stan­ford, which will tell you how regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine can keep your body parts almost new. You can access it here on iTune­sU, and below we have post­ed the course descrip­tion. If stem cells hap­pen to pique your inter­est, then you may want to explore these two oth­er relat­ed Stan­ford cours­es: Straight Talk about Stem Cells and Stem Cells: Pol­i­cy and Ethics. Also remem­ber that you can down­load at least 200 free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es here.

Replace­able You: Stem Cells and Tis­sue Engi­neer­ing in this Age of Enlight­en­ment

“The good part about get­ting old­er is that we gain some wis­dom and patience. The bad part is that our bod­ies (knees, hips, organs, and more) start to wear out. But what if our bod­ies could be “repro­grammed” to grow new parts? The new field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine is try­ing to do just that, and it takes advan­tage of the process of regen­er­a­tion, which is nature’s solu­tion for repair­ing dam­aged tis­sues.

Although humans can­not re-grow their limbs like sala­man­ders and newts can, the capac­i­ty to regen­er­ate injured or dis­eased tis­sues exists in humans and oth­er ani­mals, and the mol­e­c­u­lar machin­ery for regen­er­a­tion seems to be an ele­men­tal part of our genet­ic make­up. The pre­vail­ing opin­ion is that the genes respon­si­ble for regen­er­a­tion have for some rea­son fall­en into dis­use, and they may be “jump start­ed” by the selec­tive acti­va­tion of key mol­e­cules. Using this knowl­edge, sci­en­tists are devel­op­ing new strate­gies to repair and, in some cas­es, regen­er­ate dam­aged or dis­eased tis­sues in both young and old patients. In this course, we will explore the excit­ing field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine and learn a lit­tle about what makes stem cells so spe­cial. We will also dis­cuss some of the recent dis­cov­er­ies that can poten­tial­ly allow us to be fit and healthy well into old age. Here, you will learn what is mere­ly sci­ence fic­tion and what, remark­ably, has become sci­ence fact in our new med­ical age.”

Jill Helms
Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Plas­tic and Recon­struc­tive Surgery
Jill Helms joined the Stan­ford fac­ul­ty after eight years at UC San Fran­cis­co, where she was the Direc­tor of the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cel­lu­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the Depart­ment of Ortho­pe­dic Surgery. Her research focus­es on the par­al­lels between fetal tis­sue devel­op­ment and adult tis­sue regen­er­a­tion. She received a PhD in devel­op­men­tal neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy and a clin­i­cal degree and spends the major­i­ty of her time in clin­i­cal­ly relat­ed research.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Other Goodies From Our Readers

in Uncategorized | August 12th, 2008

Over the past week, we’ve dis­cov­ered a num­ber of good items being put togeth­er by some of our read­ers.

The first is a new pop­u­lar pod­cast called “Robots” (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site). Assem­bled by a group of grad stu­dents asso­ci­at­ed with the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Lau­sanne (EPFL), each episode focus­es on a spe­cif­ic top­ic (e.g., robot soc­cer) and fea­tures inter­views with high pro­file guests in robot­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Also, each episode high­lights news and views from peo­ple build­ing and pro­gram­ming robots inside and out­side uni­ver­si­ties.

Next, you may want to swing over to Nigel Beale’s site and lis­ten to his radio program/podcast called The Bib­lio File. The site hous­es about 100 audio inter­views with var­i­ous authors. Per­fect for the bib­lio­phile.

Last­ly, two quick men­tions: Tom Han­son, over at the “Open Edu­ca­tion” blog, rec­om­mends Zaid Alsagof­f’s free e‑book called “69 Learn­ing Adven­tures in 6 Galax­ies,” which essen­tial­ly offers a “resource for teach­ers seek­ing to be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant.” And then, along sim­i­lar lines, you can find at SmartTeaching.org a help­ful post called “100 Awe­some Class­room Videos to Learn New Teach­ing Tech­niques.”

Keep them com­ing.…

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and American?) Empire: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books | August 10th, 2008

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­umes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are.  (Click on each link to down­load the full zip files, which include many hours of audio. And please note that the remain­ing vol­umes are forth­com­ing.)

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - See our com­plete col­lec­tion of audio­books