Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”

in Television, Video - Arts & Culture | January 22nd, 2009

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties & VIPs. Above, you can watch Sal­vador Dali in action. You can also rewind the video tape and check out Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg, among oth­ers. For more oldies and good­ies, check out Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio & The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation.

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The Story Behind the Iconic Obama Campaign Poster

in Art, Current Affairs | January 22nd, 2009

The sto­ry behind the art­work that defined the Oba­ma cam­paign is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Shep­ard Fairey’s posters achieved promi­nence much in the same way that Oba­ma did. They rose from the ground up. Every­day peo­ple sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed his imag­i­na­tive posters on the web, until they became some­thing of a pub­lic phe­nom­e­non. And they turned the sta­tus quo — in this case, the tra­di­tion polit­i­cal poster — into some­thing fresh and new. In this inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Stream), Fairey, once a self-pro­claimed “out­law street artist,” talks about how got start­ed with his Oba­ma pieces, and how his most cel­e­brat­ed work end­ed up in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion at the U.S. Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

P.S. As you’ll see, we’re in the midst of launch­ing a new design. Things are going rather smooth­ly. But if you encounter any prob­lems, please be patient and please let us know. We’ll be mak­ing small tweaks here and there. Thanks!

For MLK on His Birthday

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2009

The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al. The Date:  August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in Amer­i­can soci­ety, which even­tu­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly bring us to Tues­day. Take it away Mar­tin:

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Visit the Prado Art Collection with Google Earth

in Art, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | January 14th, 2009

Thank­ful­ly, it’s not all bad news here in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Yes­ter­day, Google and the Pra­do (the major art muse­um in Madrid) announced that you can launch Google Earth from wher­ev­er you live, trav­el vir­tu­al­ly to Spain, and then take a close look at four­teen of the muse­um’s finest paint­ings. And, by “close,” I mean close. Accord­ing to a Google spokesman said: “The paint­ings have been pho­tographed in very high res­o­lu­tion and con­tain as many as 14,000 mil­lion pix­els (14 gigapix­els).” “With this high lev­el res­o­lu­tion you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), del­i­cate tears on the faces of the fig­ures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Wey­den) and com­plex fig­ures in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (by El Bosco).” The four­teen paint­ings include pieces by Fran­cis­co de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Hierony­mus Bosch. You can begin the tour (and get Google Earth soft­ware) from this land­ing page. The video below also offers a nice visu­al illus­tra­tion of what this project is all about. (A quick tip: if you have Google Earth, make sure that you have “3D Build­ings” checked off under “Lay­ers.” Then do a search for “Pra­do” and click on “Museu del Pra­do.” From there, click on the image of the muse­um. Next, you should see a series of paint­ings that you can begin to explore.)

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Learning Ancient History for Free

in History, Online Courses | January 12th, 2009

For life­long learn­ers, cours­es on Ancient Greece and Rome always remain in steady demand. While these cours­es are poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed in under­grad­u­ate pro­grams (at least in the States), they seem be to mak­ing a come­back in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­grams designed for old­er stu­dents. Even­tu­al­ly, it seems, many come to the con­clu­sion that you can’t skip over the foun­da­tions and still make sense of it all. And so they go back to basics.

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny, a com­mer­cial provider of cours­es for life­long learn­ers, has rec­og­nized this demand and built a sur­pris­ing­ly rich col­lec­tion of lec­tures ded­i­cat­ed to the Ancients. (See full cat­a­logue here.) These cours­es are pol­ished and well put togeth­er. But they cost mon­ey. If that’s a con­cern, then you should know about some of the free alter­na­tives. Thanks to the “open course” move­ment, you can now find a series of free cours­es online, includ­ing some from top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties. Let me give you a quick overview of your options:

Last fall, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duced a new round of open cours­es that includ­ed Don­ald Kagan’s Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry (YouTube — iTunes Audio — iTunes Video- Down­load Course). A lead­ing fig­ure in the field, Kagan takes stu­dents from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Spar­ta and Athens, The Pelo­pon­nesian War, and beyond. You’ll cov­er more than a mil­len­ni­um in 24 lec­tures. As I’ve not­ed else­where, Yale’s cours­es are high touch. And what’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice is that the course can be down­loaded in one of five for­mats (text, audio, flash video, low band­width quick­time video, and high band­width quick­time video). Sim­ply choose the for­mat that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve com­plet­ed the arc of Greek his­to­ry, you can move next to the UC Berke­ley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Paf­ford moves from Julius Cae­sar to Con­stan­tine (rough­ly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lec­tures. And the audio comes straight from the class­room, which means that you’ll get sol­id infor­ma­tion but you’ll also have to endure some extra­ne­ous talk about home­work assign­ments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t com­plain.) You can down­load this course in one of three ways: iTunes, streamed audio, or via rss feed. Last­ly, I should note that Paf­ford has taught anoth­er relat­ed course at Berke­ley — The Ancient Mediter­ranean World (iTunes — Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big sur­vey cours­es under your belt, you can switch to some more focused cours­es com­ing out of Stan­ford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Han­ni­bal (iTunes). As I’ve not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this pod­cast­ed course takes you inside the life and adven­tures of Han­ni­bal, the great Carthagin­ian mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian who maneu­vered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cut­ting-edge trends in mod­ern archae­ol­o­gy. Because Han­ni­bal still remains a fig­ure of intense his­tor­i­cal inter­est, it’s not sur­pris­ing that this course has ranked as one of the more pop­u­lar cours­es on iTune­sU.

Anoth­er short course worth your time is Virgil’s Aeneid: Anato­my of a Clas­sic. Pre­sent­ed by Susan­na Braund (a Stan­ford clas­sics pro­fes­sor at the time), the course teas­es apart the epic poem that was an instant when it was writ­ten 29–19 BC), and still endures today. Divid­ed into 5 install­ments, each run­ning about two hours, this pod­cast offers a good intro­duc­tion to one of the cen­tral texts in the Latin tra­di­tion.

Final­ly, let me throw in a quick bonus course. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus, anoth­er Stan­ford course taught by Thomas Shee­han, looks inside the historical/Roman world of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a his­to­ry course, not a reli­gion course, and it uses the best lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to answer the ques­tions: “Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say and do…? What did the man Jesus actu­al­ly think of him­self and of his mis­sion…? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and con­ti­nu­ities — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

UPDATE: Thanks to a read­er, I was remind­ed of anoth­er relat­ed course: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site). These pod­casts cov­er the lega­cy of the Roman Empire that emerged in the East (after it had col­lapsed in the West). You can read more about this course in one of my ear­ly blog posts.

All of these cours­es can be found in the His­to­ry Sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. There you will find 200 high qual­i­ty online cours­es that you can lis­ten to any­time, any­where.

Alex the Parrot and the Hidden World of Animal Intelligence

in Science, Video - Science | January 12th, 2009

Alex the Par­rot spent his days work­ing with ani­mal psy­chol­o­gist Irene Pep­per­berg at Har­vard and Bran­deis. And, along the way, he upend­ed the belief held by many sci­en­tists that birds lack basic intel­li­gence and can only mim­ic words, and not real­ly use them in any mean­ing­ful way. As you’ll see below, Alex (who died in 2007 at the age of 31) could talk and do much more. To learn more about Alex, you can lis­ten to an extend­ed inter­view with Pep­per­berg here, or get her well-reviewed book Alex & Me: How a Sci­en­tist and a Par­rot Uncov­ered a Hid­den World of Ani­mal Intelligence–and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process.

The Whole Earth Catalog Now Online

in Books | January 10th, 2009

Between 1968 and 1972, Stew­art Brand pub­lished The Whole Earth Cat­a­log. For Kevin Kel­ly, the Cat­a­log was essen­tial­ly “a paper-based data­base offer­ing thou­sands of hacks, tips, tools, sug­ges­tions, and pos­si­bil­i­ties for opti­miz­ing your life.” For Steve Jobs, it was a “Bible” of his gen­er­a­tion, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along. (On a side note, I high­ly rec­om­mend the com­mence­ment speech where Jobs made those com­ments.) The very good news is that The Whole Earth Cat­a­log and some relat­ed pub­li­ca­tions are now avail­able online. You can read them for free, or down­load them for a fee. Start delv­ing into things here.

While we’re on this sub­ject, I should also high­light a project that has more recent­ly occu­pied Stew­art Brand’s time.  The Sem­i­nars About Long Term Think­ing is a month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Brand and orga­nized by the Long Now Foun­da­tion, which hopes to pro­vide a coun­ter­point to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and to pro­mote “slower/better” think­ing. You can access the thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nars as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and oth­er­wise find it host­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Have a good week­end.

via Boing Boing

What Will Change Everything? (According to the World’s Leading Scientific Minds)

in Science | January 7th, 2009

At the start of each new year, the Edge.org asks some of the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic thinkers a big enchi­la­da ques­tion. This year, it’s “What Will Change Every­thing? What game-chang­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideas and devel­op­ments do you expect to live to see?” Here you can find the answers giv­en by 151 thinkers. (Col­lec­tive­ly, the full set of replies runs 107,000 words.) Some of the intrigu­ing answers include:

• The detec­tion of extrater­res­tri­al life. And this life may take the form of dig­i­tal organ­isms that can move through the uni­verse at the speed of light (wow!),
• A major upgrade of the human brain through tech­nol­o­gy,
• Our  life span will poten­tial­ly be extend­ed to 150 years through genomics,
• The dis­cov­ery of anoth­er uni­verse with­in our own uni­verse,
• The dis­cov­ery of new time space dimen­sions, and 
• The cre­ation of a uni­ver­sal trans­la­tion machine that will facil­i­tate trans­la­tion across the globe.

For the longer list, vis­it the full col­lec­tion.

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Steven Spielberg Admits Swallowing a Transistor to Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger

in Television | January 3rd, 2009

In 1979, Andy Warhol spent $40,000 on a broad­cast-qual­i­ty cam­era and start­ed dab­bling in cre­at­ing tele­vi­sion pro­grams that he aired on Man­hat­tan pub­lic access cable chan­nels. (Get more on the sto­ry here.) One episode fea­tured Warhol, Bian­ca Jag­ger and Steven Spiel­berg sim­ply hang­ing out on a bed. And here’s how their con­ver­sa­tion went down:

via Boing­Bo­ing

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2008

in Most Popular | January 1st, 2009

Here they go, the most pop­u­lar posts of 2008:

10. Free Stan­ford Com­put­er Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing Cours­es Now Online

9.) The Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed

8.) Teach­ing on YouTube

7.) Turn Your iPod into a Trav­el Guide: 20 Trav­el Pod­casts

7.) Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

6. This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies the Housing/Credit Cri­sis

5.) Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics: Down­load Leonard Susskind Video Lec­tures

4.) Yale Open Cours­es: The New Line­up

3.) George Orwell’s 1984: Down­load Free Audio Book Ver­sion

Also, James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Audio­book

2.) Top Five Col­lec­tions of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es

1.) Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

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