Maps Explaining Why Americans Know Less About the World

in Current Affairs | May 28th, 2008

Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, Alisa Miller (CEO of Pub­lic Radio Inter­na­tion­al) explains why Amer­i­cans know less and less about the rest of the world. Along the way, she uses some eye-pop­ping graphs to put things in per­spec­tive. Watch the video below or find it on our YouTube playlist …

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!

India’s Answer to M.I.T. Presents Free Courses on YouTube (in English)

in YouTube | May 27th, 2008

Lots of newsprint has been ded­i­cat­ed to MIT’s Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive. And, of course, it’s under­stand­able. MIT’s project offers free access to mate­ri­als from 1800 MIT cours­es, many on the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­o­gy and engi­neer­ing. It is all great. But sud­den­ly MIT is not the only tech pow­er­house get­ting into the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing free edu­ca­tion­al resources.

In India, there are sev­en insti­tutes ded­i­cat­ed to train­ing some of the world’s top sci­en­tists and engi­neers and mak­ing the coun­try an up and com­ing world pow­er. They are col­lec­tive­ly known as the IITs, or the Indi­an Insti­tutes of Tech­nol­o­gy. And now some of the IIT cours­es are being made avail­able in Eng­lish on YouTube for free. (The main page is here; the cours­es are actu­al­ly here.) Some of the titles fea­tured here include: Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Graph­ics, Core Sci­ence Math­e­mat­ics, Com­put­er Net­works, Intro­duc­tion To Prob­lem Solv­ing & Pro­gram­ming, Flu­id Mechan­ics, and Envi­ron­men­tal Air Pol­lu­tion.

You can access the full list of IIT cours­es here. And note that we have inte­grat­ed many of these cours­es into our col­lec­tion: Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties, which now fea­tures more than 225 free cours­es.

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1001 Books to Read Before You Die

in Books | May 26th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle on The New York Times offers a few reflec­tions on Peter Box­al­l’s book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The Times piece makes a cou­ple of log­i­cal points: First, there’s no time to waste if you hope to read every book on the list. Read­ing a book per month, you’ll get through 1000 books in a mere 83 years. So you had bet­ter get start­ed now. Sec­ond, this “best of” list is bound to be con­tro­ver­sial. (Do you real­ly need to read Anne Rice’s “Inter­view With the Vam­pire” before it’s lights out?) The 1001 books on Box­al­l’s list can be pre­viewed here. The book itself, which runs 960 pages, is obvi­ous­ly more than a raw list. Each entry is accom­pa­nied by an “author­i­ta­tive yet opin­ion­at­ed crit­i­cal essay describ­ing the impor­tance and influ­ence of the work in ques­tion.” And also there’s appar­ent­ly some nice illus­tra­tions. If you’re a bib­lio­phile, it’s worth a look.

For more great books, see the col­lec­tion of Life Chang­ing Books cre­at­ed by our read­ers.

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HBO Revisits 2000 Election with “Recount”

in Television | May 26th, 2008

On Sun­day night, HBO aired its new film “Recount,” which delved back into the con­tro­ver­sial Flori­da recount that deter­mined the out­come of Amer­i­ca’s 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Days before the film (watch the trail­er here) hit the air­waves, Char­lie Rose con­duct­ed an inter­view with Kevin Spacey (actor in the film), Jef­frey Toobin (Senior Legal Ana­lyst at CNN) and David Boies (who argued Bush v. Gore on behalf of Al Gore). In watch­ing the film and inter­view, my first reac­tion was to think: yes, it’s been eight long years, but it’s per­haps not been long enough. Per­haps anoth­er eight years is what it takes before polit­i­cal trau­ma can be trans­formed into pure enter­tain­ment. Or maybe it will nev­er quite get there. But that says noth­ing about the mer­its of the film or the inter­view below. If you missed “Recount,” it re-airs tonight on HBO.

Harvard Law Faculty Votes to Put Articles Online

in Harvard | May 22nd, 2008

The open access move­ment keeps rolling along. See here.

Jacques Brel Sings “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

in Uncategorized | May 21st, 2008

Ne Me Quitte Pas — It’s Jacques Brel’s clas­sic from 1959. It’s a fix­ture in the French cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. And it’s been cov­ered left and right, by such singers as Nina Simone (here) and Frank Sina­tra (lis­ten). Now, Jacques, take it away. (PS You can find Brel’s video on our YouTube playlist.) 

Stanford Online Writing Courses

in Stanford | May 20th, 2008

A quick fyi: Yes­ter­day, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its sum­mer line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

Reg­is­tra­tion opened yes­ter­day, and some of the class­es are almost full. Class­es will start dur­ing the last week of June. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

Sum­mer Cours­es:

• Intro­duc­tion to Cre­ative Writ­ing
• Nov­el Writ­ing: Mak­ing a Great Debut
• Short Sto­ry Writ­ing
• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion: Begin­ning Your Book
• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion for Mag­a­zines
• Fic­tion Writ­ing: The Short Sto­ry Cycle
• Poet­ry: Writ­ing the Moment

By the way, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area and want to keep the mind engaged, give some thought to Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. Our full sum­mer cat­a­logue is here.

Learn to Play Instruments (and Also Some Music Theory) Online

in Music | May 19th, 2008

The always handy Life­hack­er has pulled togeth­er resources that will teach you to play gui­tar, drums and piano. Some of these lessons are taught via video, oth­ers with pod­casts. And if you’re look­ing to teach your­self music the­o­ry, then head over to Musictheory.net. They’ve got you cov­ered.

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Smart Culture on BlogTalkRadio

in Media | May 18th, 2008

Here’s a lit­tle some­thing for con­sumers and pro­duc­ers of good cul­tur­al media.

BlogTalkRa­dio gives any­one with a com­put­er and tele­phone the abil­i­ty to cre­ate their own live radio show, and then lat­er turn the broad­cast into a pod­cast. So far, about 82,000 shows have aired on this free ser­vice, and about 2.4 mil­lion lis­ten­ers tune in each month. Among the broad­casts, you’ll find inter­views with Bri­an DePal­ma, Yoko Ono, Chris Ander­son (author of The Long Tail), Jodi Picoult (author of 14 nov­els), Jim­my Wales (founder of Wikipedia), Frank Rich (New York Times colum­nist), Phil Don­ahue (direc­tor of the new film “Body of War”), and David Mamet (famous screen­writer and play­wright). Some note­wor­thy shows host­ed by BlogTalkRa­dio include: the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel, Mr. Media, Movie Geeks Unit­ed, ZNE’s Cir­ca Arte, BC Radio Live, The Poor Chef, and 3 Chicks on Lit.

Last­ly, let me under­score some­thing that’s prob­a­bly already clear. This ser­vice seems par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for any­one who wants to cre­ate a broadcast/podcast but does­n’t want to grap­ple with the tech­ni­cal side of things. For exam­ple, me. Now if I could only find the time to pull one togeth­er. Get more info on BlogTalkRa­dio here, and check out their “Best of” sec­tion here.

Earliest Recording of the Human Voice

in Music | May 17th, 2008

FirstSounds.org has gath­ered some of the ear­li­est sound record­ings. This clip, dat­ing back to 1860, fea­tures some­one singing the French folk­song “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860, and it “is the ear­li­est audi­bly rec­og­niz­able record of the human voice yet recov­ered.”