Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated (Part II)

in Math, Music | August 6th, 2010

Michal Levy takes John Coltrane’s clas­sic, “Giants Steps,” and inter­prets it through flash ani­ma­tion. We have post­ed a YouTube ver­sion above, but you should ide­al­ly watch this bril­liant clip on Levy’s web site here.

This is not the first time that “Giant Steps” has been ani­mat­ed. Last year, we high­light­ed a pop­u­lar video that makes Coltrane’s tune come alive on paper. You can watch it dance here.

Balloon Flight Into Near Space

in Science | August 4th, 2010

In June, a group of San Fran­cis­co-based design­ers and engi­neers launched a bal­loon into near space, cap­tur­ing the flight with two cam­eras that went along for the ride. Two hours into the flight, and at 80,000 feet of alti­tude, the bal­loon gives up the ghost and comes crash­ing back down to Earth. It all hap­pens around the 2:20 mark of the video, and the images are … um … out of this world. Amaz­ing­ly, all of the equip­ment onboard sur­vives the fall – cam­eras and all – thanks to the para­chute.

This was actu­al­ly the sec­ond bal­loon launch under­tak­en by this group. You can see images from their first launch here. Next time, they’re hop­ing to reach above 100,000 feet. And, yes, it’s final­ly worth not­ing that they con­tact­ed the FAA before let­ting these bal­loons take flight.

This clip was sent our way by an anony­mous view­er. If he/she wants to get in touch, we have a copy of Eat, Pray, Love ready to send your way.

Harvard Releases OpenScholar 2.0

in Education, Technology, Web/Tech | August 3rd, 2010

Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty has now released ver­sion 2.0 of Open­Schol­ar, an open source soft­ware pack­age that lets schol­ars build per­son­al and project-ori­ent­ed web sites in a mat­ter of min­utes. It’s a quick, easy, and free solu­tion (minus one mean­ing­ful caveat below) that allows aca­d­e­mics to build an online home for their “CV, bio, pub­li­ca­tions, blogs, announce­ments, links, image gal­leries, class mate­ri­als,” and even sub­mit pub­li­ca­tions to online repos­i­to­ries, such as Google Schol­ar. You can see an exam­ple of Open­Schol­ar in action here.

Now here’s the one impor­tant rub. Before a prof can start using Open­Schol­ar, some­one on his/her IT staff will need to install the soft­ware on their uni­ver­si­ty’s servers. Har­vard does­n’t host the solu­tion. The video above and Wired Cam­pus offer more details …

Pete Seeger, 91, Performs BP Protest Song

in Current Affairs, Music | August 2nd, 2010

Bless the man. Pete Seeger, now 91, is still doing it, putting protests into song. On July 24th, he appeared at a Gulf Coast Oil Spill fundrais­er at The City Win­ery in New York City. There, he per­formed a song he co-wrote with Lorre Wyatt: “God’s Count­ing on Me, God’s Count­ing on You.” All pro­ceeds went to the Gulf Restora­tion Net­work. This one is for you, Bob…

Zooming Into the World

in Random, Science | August 2nd, 2010

Last week, a clas­sic film, Pow­ers of Ten, showed us what it looks like when we zoom out into the uni­verse by fac­tors of ten. Hele­na sent us that video. Now, Robert directs our atten­tion to videos that move in the extreme oppo­site direc­tion. They zoom inward, tak­ing us down to the atom­ic lev­el of things that sur­round us – a tooth (above), the human eye and the eye of a fly, an every­day piece of plas­tic, and more. The videos come from John Size­more’s “Weird Weird Sci­ence” col­lec­tion on Dai­ly Motion. Robert gets the copy of The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma (kind­ly donat­ed by Pen­guin) for send­ing these along.

The 50% off sale on great films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion ends today (August 2)! Vis­it sale here.

Venezia

in Life | July 29th, 2010

Venice, the “Queen of the Adri­at­ic,” in HD and sat­u­rat­ed col­or. A lit­tle thing of beau­ty. You can watch a big­ger ver­sion of “Around Venezia,” filmed by “Icam,” on Vimeo here. It’s well worth it.

The New Science of Morality (in Video)

in Psychology, Science | July 29th, 2010

Ear­li­er this year, Sam Har­ris argued at TED that we’re on the verge of a sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion. We’ll see the day when sci­ence (par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­science) can rig­or­ous­ly address moral ques­tions, pro­vid­ing definitive/universal answers to ques­tions of right and wrong. The pur­suit of a “moral sci­ence” is noth­ing new. Enlight­en­ment thinkers began this project long ago. But Har­ris has dust­ed it off, mod­ern­ized it a bit, and cre­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy along the way. Just last week, he took part in a con­fer­ence pre­sent­ed by Edge.org: The New Sci­ence of Moral­i­ty. Over the next month, Edge will be mak­ing avail­able 10 hours of video from the two-day con­fer­ence, rolling it out in a seri­al­ized fash­ion. It all kicks off with a talk by Jonathan Haidt, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, known for his book The Hap­pi­ness Hypoth­e­sis: Find­ing Mod­ern Truth in Ancient Wis­dom. You can start watch­ing here…

The Math of Rock Climbing

in Math | July 29th, 2010

Heights, I hate them. But Skip Garibal­di, a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, does­n’t mind them much, and here he describes how math fig­ures into his pas­sion for rock climb­ing – how it makes the dif­fer­ence between a safe climb and a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous one. Includes a quick trip to El Cap­i­tan, a 3000 foot ver­ti­cal climb in Yosemite Nation­al Park…

“The Best Magazine Articles Ever”

in Literature, Media | July 28th, 2010

“The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever” – Sure the list is sub­jec­tive. It’s all in Eng­lish, and heav­i­ly slant­ed toward male writ­ers. But you can’t quib­ble with this. This curat­ed col­lec­tion fea­tures pieces by some of the finest Amer­i­can writ­ers of the past gen­er­a­tion. We’ve high­light­ed 10 nota­bles ones from a much longer list avail­able here.

1 ) John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 22, 1960.

2) Nor­man Mail­er, “Super­man Comes to the Super­mar­ket.” Esquire, Novem­ber 1960.

3) Tom Wolfe, “The Last Amer­i­can Hero is Junior John­son. Yes!” Esquire, March 1965.

4) Hunter Thomp­son, “The Ken­tucky Der­by is Deca­dent and Depraved.” Scan­lan’s Month­ly, June 1970.

5) Stew­art Brand, “Space War: Fanat­ic Life and Sym­bol­ic Dearth Among Com­put­er Bums. Rolling Stone, Decem­ber 7, 1972.

6) David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “The String The­o­ry.” Esquire, July 1996.

7) Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air.” Out­side Mag­a­zine, Sep­tem­ber 1996.

8) Susan Orlean, “Orchid Fever.” The New York­er, Jan­u­ary 23, 1995.

9) Mal­colm Glad­well, “The Pitch­man.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 30, 2000. (Yup, he’s Cana­di­an, I know.)

10) Katie Hafn­er, “The Epic Saga of The Well.” Wired, May 1997.

via @caitlinroper

Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Politics, Television, Video - Politics/Society | July 28th, 2010

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.