Life: Creeper Plants Climb Trees

in Science | April 23rd, 2010

Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel’s Life series has been receiv­ing a lot of rave reviews for its stun­ning footage of plants and ani­mals.  This excerpt show­ing creep­er plants climb­ing trees lives up to the hype. Leave it to a lit­tle time-lapse video–not to men­tion a voice-over by Oprah Winfrey–to blur the line between plant and ani­mal.

UPDATE: A read­er in Europe informed me that this video is appar­ent­ly being blocked out­side of the US. It’s extreme­ly rare that this hap­pens with YouTube videos (I’ve only seen it hap­pen with full movies), but for some rea­son, it hap­pened here. My apolo­gies. [Dan]

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

Hitler Reacts to Takedown of Hitler Parodies

in Comedy, Film | April 23rd, 2010

Note: strong lan­guage in this video.

You have prob­a­bly all seen them — the count­less par­o­dies of the now famous scene from the 2004 Ger­man film, Down­fall, which records the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich. Ear­li­er this week, the fun start­ed com­ing to an end when Con­stan­tin Film, hold­er of the movie’s copy­right, asked YouTube to remove the clips for rea­sons enu­mer­at­ed here. But almost as quick­ly as YouTube took them down, new ones start­ed to pop up. Above, we have one par­o­dy show­ing Hitler respond­ing vio­lent­ly to the take­down request. And, then, tak­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent stance, we see him being the mas­ter­mind behind the con­tro­ver­sial purg­ing of videos. The meme lives on … for now. Thanks to @wesalwan for the tip here.

For 100+ free movies, includ­ing many great clas­sics, see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

David Remnick on Obama

in Current Affairs, History | April 20th, 2010

David Rem­nick won a Pulitzer in 1994 for Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Sovi­et Empire. Then, in 1998, he began his suc­cess­ful run as edi­tor-in-chief of the New York­er mag­a­zine. Now, he gives you a long biog­ra­phy (672 pages) of Barack Oba­ma, the first African-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Oba­ma’s per­son­al sto­ry is well known, thanks in part to Oba­ma’s own auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account. But, Rem­nick­’s work (which debuted as the #3 best­seller on The New York Times non-fic­tion list) nonethe­less has some­thing new to say. It is exhaus­tive­ly researched and dense­ly detailed, and adds col­or in areas miss­ing from oth­er accounts. It also places Oba­ma a bit more square­ly with­in the con­text of Amer­i­ca’s black free­dom strug­gle.

To get a glimpse inside this new work, you’ll want to lis­ten to this inter­view with David Rem­nick. It was con­duct­ed by Michael Kras­ny in San Fran­cis­co last week. Down­load the mp3 or grab the iTunes ver­sion here. Or sim­ply stream it below. The book, by the way, is avail­able in audio for­mat via Audible.com, and if you try out their 14 day free tri­al, you can even down­load the audio­book for free. More info on that here.

City Poems: A New Literary iPhone App

in Apple, iPhone, Literature, Poetry | April 20th, 2010

Writ­ing in The Guardian, Vic­tor Kee­gan, a long­time jour­nal­ist and poet, talks about his new iPhone app, City Poems. The new­ly released app will run you $2.99 on iTunes, which makes it less than open, I know. (Have you seen our free app, by the way?) But it’s admit­ted­ly a pret­ty nice con­cept for the cul­tur­al crowd, enough to jus­ti­fy giv­ing it a quick men­tion here. About City Poems, Kee­gan says:

City Poems – pub­lished today – … uses satel­lite nav­i­ga­tion to guide cul­ture vul­tures and tourists alike through the streets of cen­tral Lon­don poem by poem. After weeks of research­ing poems about the city, I realised that you can learn more about the past life of a city from poems than from most guide books and his­to­ries. Wher­ev­er you are stand­ing in Lon­don (or New York for that mat­ter) with an iPhone (or iPod Touch or iPad) in your hand it will tell you how many metres you are away from places and events that poems have been writ­ten about.

They include the exe­cu­tion of the crim­i­nal Jonathan Wild (one of the inspi­ra­tions for John Gay’s The Beg­gar’s Opera), pub­lic burn­ings in Smith­field (“His guts filled a bar­rel”) or the curi­ous sto­ries behind the stat­ues in Trafal­gar Square, which I had passed by in igno­rance for many decades…

Like I said, an intrigu­ing con­cept, and it seems as though Kee­gan has plans to bring this mate­r­i­al to oth­er mobile plat­forms. You can grab the app on iTunes here.

Nokta .

in Film | April 19th, 2010

“Nok­ta” — this short ani­mat­ed film is all about the cre­ation, move­ment, and har­mo­ny of shapes co-exist­ing in space.  Film­mak­er Onur Sen­turk describes Nok­ta, which means “dot” in Turk­ish, as an abstract film project that explores the impro­vi­sa­tion of organ­ic pieces with­in the themes of pow­er, chance, and luck.  The sound design in Nok­ta, craft­ed by ECHOLAB’s Gavin Lit­tle, is a piece of work in itself; it is in per­fect uni­ty with the move­ment and the trans­for­ma­tion of the shapes.  What is great about this ani­ma­tion is that it’s open to end­less inter­pre­ta­tions.  Sen­turk says he used Realflow, 3ds Max, Mud­box, and After Effects to make the film.  For those of you who are curi­ous to learn more about how this film was made, don’t miss the “mak­ing of” video avail­able here.

Eren Gul­fi­dan is a writer, inter­view­er, film pro­gram­mer and dis­trib­u­tor at Film Annex, an online film plat­form and Web TV Net­work that hosts and finances films.  She stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing and film at Franklin & Mar­shall Col­lege and spe­cial­ized in film pro­duc­tion at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  She dis­cov­ers new con­tent and brings it onto the web to be seen by a wide audi­ence. To con­tact her, vis­it https://www.filmannex.com/erengulfidan

What Leonardo da Vinci Really Looked Like

in Art | April 19th, 2010

Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1452 – 1519) paint­ed arguably the world’s most famous por­trait – the Mona Lisa. But rather iron­i­cal­ly, we have nev­er seen a por­trait of the artist him­self. Per­haps until now… Speak­ing at TED, Siegfried Wold­hek shows what he believes is the true face of da Vin­ci. It’s all pret­ty spec­u­la­tive, but it may be right.

via @brainpicker

Why Volcanic Ash Wreaks Havoc on Airplane Engines

in Current Affairs, Science | April 18th, 2010

That met­tle­some Ice­landic vol­cano (watch it spew) has ground­ed thou­sands of planes and pas­sen­gers world­wide. But why exact­ly? Here, an aero­space expert explains why vol­ca­noes and air­plane engines aren’t a good mix. In a quick five min­utes, you get it. Bet­ter ground­ed than sor­ry. Gary and Nats, hang in there in Tokyo…

via Mike via Sci­ence­Dump

How to Learn Something for Nothing

in Education | April 17th, 2010

This week­end, The New York Times is ded­i­cat­ing its Educa­tion Life sec­tion to Open Edu­ca­tion. It all starts with a lengthy arti­cle on the state of the “open course” move­ment. Then, a relat­ed arti­cle tells you where you can learn some­thing for noth­ing (always a good thing!), list­ing sev­er­al sites – includ­ing Open Cul­ture – where you’ll find an end­less sup­ply of free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Final­ly, you will learn about the 10 most watched aca­d­e­m­ic videos on YouTube, one of which (#9) comes out of my pro­gram at Stan­ford.

If you’re look­ing for open cours­es, def­i­nite­ly vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. At last count, our col­lec­tion includes 243 free cours­es (about half in video) from 25 uni­ver­si­ties, which amounts to more than 6,000 hours of free lec­tures. You can down­load these cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, and watch them any­time, any­where. Mean­while, if you have an iPhone, you can access these cours­es via our free iPhone app. For more free edu­ca­tion­al media (free audio books, for­eign lan­guage lessons, movies, etc.), sim­ply explore the free resources list­ed in the nav­i­ga­tion bar above. Enjoy!

Photos That Changed the World

in Art | April 14th, 2010

Speak­ing at TED Uni­ver­si­ty, Jonathan Klein, CEO of Get­ty Images, shows some of the most icon­ic images of our times, and talks about what hap­pens when a gen­er­a­tion sees an image so pow­er­ful that it can’t look away — and so pow­er­ful that peo­ple must take action.

The Joy of Math

in Math | April 12th, 2010

If math went over your head in high school or col­lege, here’s a great way to redis­cov­er what you missed. In late Jan­u­ary, Steven Stro­gatz, a pro­fes­sor of Applied Math­e­mat­ics at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, began blog­ging math­e­mat­ics for The New York Times. And his whole goal is to show you, the read­er, the joy of math. Or, as he describes his mis­sion:

I’ll be writ­ing about the ele­ments of math­e­mat­ics, from pre-school to grad school, for any­one out there who’d like to have a sec­ond chance at the sub­ject — but this time from an adult per­spec­tive. It’s not intend­ed to be reme­di­al. The goal is to give you a bet­ter feel­ing for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

Start­ing this week, this blog will be delv­ing into the great ideas at the heart of cal­cu­lus. You can jump on board right here. Thanks to Gregg for the heads up on this one.