Hard Words in The New York Times

in Random | June 17th, 2009

When you’re read­ing The New York Times and stum­ble upon a word you don’t know, you can high­light it and the Times will give you the def­i­n­i­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, the Times keeps track of the def­i­n­i­tions it pro­vides. So what are the most com­mon­ly looked up words? You can find the top ten below. (Get a longer list here.) So, smart read­ers, did you know all of them?

1. sui gener­is
2. solip­sis­tic
3. louche
4. lacon­ic
5. sat­ur­nine
6. ante­dilu­vian
7. epis­te­mo­log­i­cal
8. shib­bo­leths
9. penury
10. sump­tu­ary

via @aknopf

Angels & Demons: The Science Revealed

in Physics, Science | June 16th, 2009

Back when I was at the now defunct Alliance for Life­long Learn­ing (an e‑learning ven­ture put togeth­er by Stan­ford, Oxford and Yale), we did a reli­gion course that keyed off of Dan Brown’s Da Vin­ci Code. No one thought high­ly of the book, but the dean of the Yale Divin­i­ty School believed that the book’s pop­u­lar­i­ty (and the ques­tions it raised about reli­gion) cre­at­ed a good teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. And he was right. Fast for­ward sev­er­al years, and we now have Dan Brown’s oth­er book, Angels & Demons, get­ting released as a major film too. So, why not use this as an occa­sion to talk about the sci­ence invoked by the film? UC Berke­ley has done just that. (Watch here). And so has Carnegie Mel­lon. CM pref­aces the video fea­tured above as fol­lows: 

Could you real­ly destroy the Vat­i­can using a small amount of anti­mat­ter made in the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? Thats the ques­tion Carnegie Mel­lons Man­fred Pauli­ni seeks to answer in the lec­ture Angels and Demons: The Sci­ence Revealed. Dr. Pauli­ni, an exper­i­men­tal par­ti­cle physi­cist and mem­ber of the CMS exper­i­ment at CERNs Large Hadron Col­lid­er, dis­cuss­es the sci­ence facts and fic­tion in the movie Angels and Demons, based on Dan Browns best-sell­ing nov­el.

Dr. Pauli­ni talks about the physics at the heart of Angels and Demons, which focus­es on what hap­pens when mat­ter and anti­mat­ter meet. The absence of prac­ti­cal­ly any anti­mat­ter in the uni­verse is cru­cial to our exis­tence, and under­stand­ing that absence is one of the big chal­lenges of par­ti­cle physics.

Watch “Home” Today

in Film | June 14th, 2009

On Fri­day, we brought you Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion at the TED con­fer­ence. Now we bring you his new film, Home, which you can watch until the end of the day on YouTube. The com­plete film in Eng­lish is above. When you’re done, you won’t look at our plan­et in the same way. (You can also find online ver­sions in French, Ger­man and Span­ish.)

Blogging the Iranian Election & Aftermath

in Current Affairs | June 13th, 2009

Check out Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dai­ly Dish. He’s doing a great job of watch­ing things unfold in Tehran. More good blog­ging com­ing from the NYTimes Lede blog. Mean­while CNN has dropped the ball big time, and is tak­ing a beat­ing on Twit­ter. Check out the new web­site, CNNfail.com.

Art on the iPhone

in Art, iPhone | June 11th, 2009

This caught my atten­tion today:

“The Nation­al Gallery is the first ever gallery to make its paint­ings acces­si­ble through a down­load­able iPhone appli­ca­tion, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to take a mini tour of the Gallery any­where in the world.

The Gallery, in part­ner­ship with Anten­na Audio and Apple Inc., has designed a new appli­ca­tion for iPhones and iTouch devices that enables peo­ple to explore a sam­ple of the col­lec­tion while they’re on the move. Designed to appeal to art enthu­si­asts and fans of the Gallery, this appli­ca­tion is the first of its kind to be released by a major gallery.

This Pen­ti­men­to appli­ca­tion, called Love Art (get the free app here), fea­tures 250 paint­ings from the col­lec­tion along with around 200 min­utes of audio and video con­tent, includ­ing inter­views with Nation­al Gallery Direc­tor Dr Nicholas Pen­ny, drama­tist Robin Brooks, artist Mag­gie Ham­bling and Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring author Tra­cy Cheva­lier.

Mak­ing use of spe­cial iPhone fea­tures such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrol­lable menus, Love Art offers a play­ful explo­ration of the col­lec­tion, togeth­er with infor­ma­tive com­men­taries. The paint­ings are show­cased to the best advan­tage using high-res­o­lu­tion images on the iPhone’s excel­lent-qual­i­ty screen. Due to a tac­tile inter­face the expe­ri­ence gained through this appli­ca­tion is not only high­ly enjoy­able, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed”

Colbert Goes to Iraq

in Comedy, Current Affairs | June 10th, 2009

In case you missed Col­bert’s trip to the war zone, here’s a fun­ny clip.

You can find the link to this video and more here.

A New Politics of the Common Good

in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | June 9th, 2009

A quick heads up: The BBC is fea­tur­ing a series of lec­tures with Michael Sandel (Har­vard Pro­fes­sor of Gov­ern­ment) that will col­lec­tive­ly talk about “the prospects of a new pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.” Sandel is a very pop­u­lar pro­fes­sor at Har­vard. Some 15,000 stu­dents have tak­en his cours­es over 30 years. In the first lec­ture, Sandel takes a look at the moral­i­ty of the mar­kets (a time­ly top­ic, to be sure) and “con­sid­ers the expan­sion of mar­kets and how we deter­mine their moral lim­its.” You can lis­ten here.

Also, note that you can find anoth­er mini-course by Sandel on the Har­vard web­site.  Jus­tice: A Jour­ney in Moral Rea­son­ing (Video) is one of the very few cours­es that Har­vard has pro­duced and made avail­able to the pub­lic. You can find it oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.

Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

in Life, Psychology | June 9th, 2009

Pico Iyer, the British-born essay­ist, has a nice real­i­ty check in today’s New York Times, and it’s now the most emailed arti­cle of the day. Here are a few key pas­sages:

“I’m not sure how much out­ward details or accom­plish­ments ever real­ly make us hap­py deep down. The mil­lion­aires I know seem des­per­ate to become mul­ti­mil­lion­aires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose moti­va­tions they are no longer sure of). And I remem­ber how, in the cor­po­rate world, I always knew there was some high­er posi­tion I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guar­an­teed nev­er to arrive and always to remain dis­sat­is­fied…”

“…my two-room apart­ment in nowhere Japan seems more abun­dant than the big house that burned down [in San­ta Bar­bara, CA]. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nib­bling at sweet tan­ger­ines in the sun. When a Sig­ur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplen­dent. And then it seems that hap­pi­ness, like peace or pas­sion, comes most freely when it isn’t pur­sued.”

On a relat­ed note, you might want to check out this piece in the The Atlantic, What Makes Us Hap­py?, which takes a look at Har­vard’s long effort to answer that ques­tion.

Apple Will Bring a Million Books to the iPhone

in Amazon Kindle, Apple, iPhone | June 8th, 2009

Apple announced a new line of prod­ucts this morn­ing. Most will focus on the new, speed­i­er iPhone. But what caught my eye is the Ice­berg e‑book read­er that will bring 1,000,000 books to the iPhone. This will include, accord­ing to Engad­get, 500 best­sellers, 50 major mag­a­zines and about 170 dai­ly papers, plus text­books by Houghton Mif­flin, Har­court and McGraw Hill. Sounds awful­ly like what Ama­zon is doing with the new Kin­dle DX. You can learn more about the Ice­berg read­er here.

Ian McKellen Stars in King Lear

in Film, Literature, Theatre | June 7th, 2009

Thanks to PBS, you can watch online Ian McK­ellen star­ring in King Lear, one of Shake­se­peare’s finest tragedies. McK­ellen per­formed the play first in Eng­land (2007), then on a world­wide tour, before film­ing the pro­duc­tion for pub­lic tele­vi­sion. You can watch it all right here, and if you want to fol­low the orig­i­nal text, you can get it from MIT’s Shake­speare web site, which hous­es Shake­speare’s com­plete works online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like?

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

Shake­speare and the Uses of Polit­i­cal Pow­er

via Metafil­ter