A Free Oxford Course on Deep Learning: Cutting Edge Lessons in Artificial Intelligence

in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Online Courses | March 22nd, 2018

Nan­do de Fre­itas is a “machine learn­ing pro­fes­sor at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, a lead research sci­en­tist at Google Deep­Mind, and a Fel­low of the Cana­di­an Insti­tute For Advanced Research (CIFAR) in the Neur­al Com­pu­ta­tion and Adap­tive Per­cep­tion pro­gram.”

Above, you can watch him teach an Oxford course on Deep Learn­ing, a hot sub­field of machine learn­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence which cre­ates neur­al networks–essentially com­plex algo­rithms mod­eled loose­ly after the human brain–that can rec­og­nize pat­terns and learn to per­form tasks.

To com­ple­ment the 16 lec­tures you can also find lec­ture slides, prac­ti­cals, and prob­lems sets on this Oxford web site. If you’d like to learn about Deep Learn­ing in a MOOC for­mat, be sure to check out the new series of cours­es cre­at­ed by Andrew Ng on Cours­era.

Oxford’s Deep Learn­ing course will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, part of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course

Watch a Marathon Streaming of All 856 Episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and the Moving Trailer for the New Documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

in Film, Television | March 22nd, 2018

The bom­bast, arro­gance and bloviation–maybe you need a break from it all. You may need exact­ly the opposite–a lit­tle Fred Rogers. If so, we’ve got two things for you. First, head over to Twitch.TV where they’re cur­rent­ly livestream­ing all 856 episodes of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood (for a lim­it­ed time). It’s a grand way of cel­e­brat­ing what would have been Fred’s 90th birth­day this week. And then, above, watch the brand new trail­er for Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?, the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary by Oscar-win­ning direc­tor Mor­gan Neville (20 Feet from Star­dom). Due out in June, the film “takes us beyond the zip-up cardi­gans and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a cre­ative genius who inspired gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren with com­pas­sion and lim­it­less imag­i­na­tion.” As you watch the trail­er, you’ll be remind­ed that Rogers worked his mag­ic dur­ing oth­er peri­ods of chaos and dis­con­tent, and how sore­ly his calm­ing pres­ence is miss­ing today.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Watch Mr. Rogers Per­suade Con­gress to Stop Cut­ting PBS Bud­get in 1969 : Would It Stop Trump from Defund­ing PBS & NEA Today?

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Infographics Show How the Different Fields of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics & Computer Science Fit Together

in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Math, Physics | March 22nd, 2018

Ask any­one who’s pur­sued a career in the sci­ences what first piqued their inter­est in what would become their field, and they’ll almost cer­tain­ly have a sto­ry. Gaz­ing at the stars on a camp­ing trip, rais­ing a pet frog, fool­ing around with com­put­ers and their com­po­nents: an expe­ri­ence sparks a desire for knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, and the pur­suit of that desire even­tu­al­ly deliv­ers one to their spe­cif­ic area of spe­cial­iza­tion.

Or, as they say in sci­ence, at least it works that way in the­o­ry; the real­i­ty usu­al­ly unrolls less smooth­ly. On such a jour­ney, just like any oth­er, it might help to have a map.

Enter the work of sci­ence writer and physi­cist Dominic Wal­li­man, whose ani­mat­ed work on the Youtube chan­nel Domain of Sci­ence we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. (See the “Relat­ed Con­tent” sec­tion below for the links.)

Wal­li­man’s videos astute­ly explain how the sub­fields of biol­o­gy, chem­istry, math­e­mat­ics, physics, and com­put­er sci­ence relate to each oth­er, but now he’s turned that same mate­r­i­al into info­graph­ics read­able at a glance: maps, essen­tial­ly, of the intel­lec­tu­al ter­ri­to­ry. He’s made these maps, of biol­o­gy, chem­istry, math­e­mat­ics, physics, and com­put­er sci­ence, freely avail­able on his Flickr account: you can view them all on a sin­gle page here along with a few more of his info­graph­ics..

As much use as Wal­li­man’s maps might be to sci­ence-mind­ed young­sters look­ing for the best way to direct their fas­ci­na­tions into a prop­er course of study, they also offer a help­ful reminder to those far­ther down the path — espe­cial­ly those who’ve strug­gled with the blind­ers of hyper­spe­cial­iza­tion — of where their work fits in the grand scheme of things. No mat­ter one’s field, sci­en­tif­ic or oth­er­wise, one always labors under the threat of los­ing sight of the for­est for the trees. Or the realm of life for the bioin­for­mat­ics, bio­physics, and bio­math­e­mat­ics; the whole of math­e­mat­ics for the num­ber the­o­ry, the dif­fer­en­tial geom­e­try, and the dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions; the work­ings of com­put­ers for the sched­ul­ing, the opti­miza­tion, and the boolean sat­is­fi­a­bil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Biol­o­gy: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Biol­o­gy Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Com­put­er Sci­ence: New Ani­ma­tion Presents a Sur­vey of Com­put­er Sci­ence, from Alan Tur­ing to “Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty”

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Physics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Physics Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Chem­istry: New Ani­ma­tion Sum­ma­rizes the Entire Field of Chem­istry in 12 Min­utes

The Art of Data Visu­al­iza­tion: How to Tell Com­plex Sto­ries Through Smart Design

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to People Living 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish”

in Life, Philosophy | March 21st, 2018

In these times of high anx­i­ety, bat­tles over “free speech”—on col­lege cam­pus­es, in cor­po­rate offices, on air­waves and the internet—can seem extreme­ly myopic from a cer­tain per­spec­tive. The per­spec­tive I mean is one in which a dis­turb­ing num­ber of mes­sages broad­cast per­pet­u­al­ly to mil­lions of peo­ple bear lit­tle rela­tion­ship to sci­en­tif­ic, his­tor­i­cal, or social facts, so that it becomes increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for many peo­ple to tell fact from fic­tion. Debat­ing whether or not such speech is “free” out­side of any con­sid­er­a­tion for what pur­pose it serves, who it harms, and why it should drown out oth­er speech because it appeals to wide­spread prej­u­dices or pow­er­ful, monied inter­ests seems gross­ly irre­spon­si­ble at best.

Most philoso­phers who have con­sid­ered these mat­ters have stressed the impor­tant rela­tion­ship between rea­son and ethics. In the clas­si­cal for­mu­la, per­sua­sive speech was con­sid­ered to have three dimen­sions: logos—the use of facts and log­i­cal argu­ments; ethos—the appeal to com­mon stan­dards of val­ue; and pathos—a con­sid­er­a­tion for the emo­tion­al res­o­nance of lan­guage. While the force­ful dialec­ti­cal rea­son­ing of Pla­to and his con­tem­po­raries val­ued par­rhe­sia—which Michel Fou­cault trans­lates as “free speech,” but which can also means “bold” or “can­did” speech—classical thinkers also val­ued social har­mo­ny and did not intend that philo­soph­i­cal debate be a scorched-earth war with the inten­tion to win at all costs.

Bertrand Rus­sell, the bril­liant math­e­mati­cian, philoso­pher, and anti-war activist, invoked this tra­di­tion often (as in his let­ter declin­ing a debate with British fas­cist Oswald Mosley). In the video above he answers the ques­tion, “what would you think it’s worth telling future gen­er­a­tions about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned from it.” His answer may not val­i­date the prej­u­dices of cer­tain par­ti­sans, but nei­ther does it evince any kind of spe­cial par­ti­san­ship itself. Rus­sell breaks his advice into two, inter­de­pen­dent cat­e­gories, “intel­lec­tu­al and moral.”

When you are study­ing any mat­ter or con­sid­er­ing any phi­los­o­phy, ask your­self only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Nev­er let your­self be divert­ed either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have benef­i­cent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and sole­ly, at what are the facts.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very sim­ple. I should say love is wise, hatred is fool­ish. In this world, which is get­ting more and more inter­con­nect­ed, we have to learn to tol­er­ate each oth­er, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some peo­ple say things that we don’t like. We can only live togeth­er in that way. And if we are to live togeth­er and not die togeth­er, we should learn the kind of tol­er­ance which is absolute­ly vital to the con­tin­u­a­tion of human life on this plan­et.

The gist: our speech should con­form to the facts of the mat­ter; rather than wish­ful think­ing, we should accept that peo­ple will say things we don’t like, but if we can­not love but only hate each oth­er, we’ll prob­a­bly end up destroy­ing our­selves.

The video above, from the BBC pro­gram Face-to-Face, was record­ed in 1959.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell Writes an Art­ful Let­ter, Stat­ing His Refusal to Debate British Fas­cist Leader Oswald Mosley (1962)

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Bertrand Rus­sell: The Every­day Ben­e­fit of Phi­los­o­phy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncer­tain­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Free Online Course Helps Us Identify Hoaxes, Rumors & Misinformation in the News

in Online Courses | March 21st, 2018

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, we high­light­ed for you A Field Guide to Fake News and Oth­er Infor­ma­tion Dis­or­ders, a free man­u­al pub­lished by First Draft, a non-prof­it based at Har­vard’s Shoren­stein Cen­ter that sup­ports truth and trust in news.

This month, First Draft has fol­lowed up with Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Train­ing, a free online course designed to help “teach­ers, jour­nal­ists and the gen­er­al pub­lic [learn] how to ver­i­fy online media, so that they don’t fall for hoax­es, rumors and mis­in­for­ma­tion.” The handy and time­ly course was devel­oped by Claire War­dle, First Draft’s exec­u­tive direc­tor. You can sign up here.

Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Train­ing will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Field Guide to Fake News and Oth­er Infor­ma­tion Dis­or­ders: A Free Man­u­al to Down­load, Share & Re-Use

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Down­load Theft! A His­to­ry of Music, a New Free Graph­ic Nov­el Explor­ing 2,000 Years of Musi­cal Bor­row­ing

An Artist Visits Stonehenge in 1573 and Paints a Charming Watercolor Painting of the Ancient Ruins

in Art, History | March 21st, 2018

The pur­pose of the mon­u­men­tal druidi­cal struc­ture known as Stone­henge has been lost to us, but many the­o­ries abound, “from the ratio­nal to the irra­tional to the mag­i­cal.” On the mag­i­cal end of the scale, we have the giant stones asso­ci­at­ed with King Arthur and the wiz­ard Mer­lin. On the more ratio­nal side, spec­u­la­tion that the struc­ture func­tioned as a cal­en­dar for reli­gious cer­e­monies or agri­cul­tur­al sea­sons.

While the search for answers may be irre­sistible, we may nev­er know exact­ly what the builders of Stone­henge intend­ed. But we learn much by study­ing how oth­ers have approached the ancient mon­u­ment in the past. Exis­tent stud­ies of Stone­henge with illus­tra­tions date back to the 14th cen­tu­ry. These Medieval rep­re­sen­ta­tions tried to sit­u­ate the stones in a “Chris­t­ian view of world his­to­ry,” as Art His­to­ry pro­fes­sor Sam Smiles writes at the British Library.

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, draw­ings of the stones show more of an inter­est in its archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures. One man­u­script includes “a tiny illus­tra­tion of four trilithons (two ver­ti­cal stones sup­port­ing a lin­tel).” Remark­ably, writes Smiles, “the artist has under­stood how the lin­tels were fixed to the uprights by a mor­tise and tenon joint.” The draw­ing may rep­re­sent “the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Stone­henge based on direct obser­va­tion.”

The prac­tice of draw­ing Stone­henge from life con­tin­ued, and in the water­col­or above by Flem­ish painter Lucas de Heere, dat­ing from cir­ca 1573, we see “a more topo­graph­i­cal approach.” Relat­ed to oth­er sim­i­lar images cre­at­ed around the same time, the paint­ing shows us an ear­ly exam­ple of what came to be called “chorog­ra­phy,” which archae­ol­o­gist Michael Shanks describes as refer­ring to “anti­quar­i­an works that dealt in topog­ra­phy, place, com­mu­ni­ty, his­to­ry, mem­o­ry.”

Rather than con­sid­er­ing it only as a mys­ti­cal or sacred site or an archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel, de Heere’s depic­tion of Stone­henge folds both of these inter­ests into a larg­er con­cern with Eng­lish land­scape and his­to­ry, of the kind exem­pli­fied by William Camden’s 1586 Bri­tan­nia, a choro­graph­i­cal sur­vey of Britain and Ire­land. Works like de Heere’s and Camden’s are part of the “Re-Dis­cov­ery of Eng­land,” as his­to­ri­an R.C. Richard­son argues, that took place under the reign of Eliz­a­beth I, and which pro­duced a new nation­al his­to­ry, “designed to extend the bound­aries of knowl­edge and under­stand­ing.”

As chorog­ra­phy devel­oped as a dis­ci­pline, Stone­henge and oth­er ancient mon­u­ments con­tin­ued to exert a fas­ci­na­tion for their his­tor­i­cal, topo­graph­i­cal, and arche­o­log­i­cal fea­tures. By the “last quar­ter of the 18th cen­tu­ry,” Smiles tells us, “pre­his­toric mon­u­ments began to be reg­u­lar­ly includ­ed in topo­graph­i­cal sur­veys,” such as Thomas Hearne’s 1779 Antiq­ui­ties of Great Britain, which includ­ed the engrav­ing just above as its final plate. Learn more about the devel­op­ment of topog­ra­phy and its inter­est in ancient British mon­u­ments, and see many more of these his­toric images, at the British Library’s site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

1,000-Year-Old Man­u­script of Beowulf Dig­i­tized and Now Online

A Free Yale Course on Medieval His­to­ry: 700 Years in 22 Lec­tures

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bill Murray Reads the Poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Lorine Niedecker, Lucille Clifton & More

in Audio Books, Poetry | March 20th, 2018

Who among us wouldn’t want the inef­fa­bly mel­low, wit­ty, and wise Bill Mur­ray to crash their par­ty, wed­ding, or White House press brief­ing room? Maybe you’re one of the few who could resist his com­ic charms. But could you throw him out if he brought along a cel­list and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Dog”? Not I.

Mur­ray appeared at SXSW on Mon­day and read the poem as part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion ani­ma­tion film Isle of Dogs. And it can seem when we look back at Murray’s many pub­lic appear­ances over the last few years, that the one thing he’s done more than crash oth­er peo­ple’s par­ties and star in Wes Ander­son films has been read poet­ry in pub­lic.

Mur­ray, as Ayun Hal­l­i­day point­ed out in a pre­vi­ous post, is a “doc­u­ment­ed poet­ry nut,” who once wrote poet­ry him­self as a much younger man. He’s been “wise enough,” writes Gavin Edwards at Rolling Stone “not to share it with the world.”  Per­haps we’re miss­ing out.

But we do have many, many clips of Mur­ray read­ing his favorites from oth­er poets he admires, like Fer­linghet­ti, and like Wal­lace Stevens, whose “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts,” he reads above at New York’s Poets House, an insti­tu­tion he has whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed.

Wal­lace Stevens is a famous­ly dif­fi­cult poet, but he is also quite fun­ny, in an oblique­ly droll way, and its no won­der Mur­ray likes his verse. Poets House direc­tor Lee Bric­oc­cetti observes that there is “an align­ment between com­e­dy and poet­ry… a pre­ci­sion in the way you han­dle lan­guage.” Some of my own favorite poets—like Frank O’Hara and the “will­ful­ly ridicu­lous” Ste­vie Smith—are also some of the fun­ni­est writ­ers I’ve ever encoun­tered in any form. Murray’s own poet­ic efforts, were we ever to hear them, may not mea­sure up to the work of his favorites, but he is undoubt­ed­ly “a mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing.”

We also know that he can turn in fine­ly nuanced dra­mat­ic per­for­mances when he wants to, and his mas­tery of the spo­ken word con­tributes just as much to mood­i­er poets like Emi­ly Dick­in­son, whom he reads above in a sur­prise per­for­mance for con­struc­tion work­ers at work on the new Poets House home in 2009. You might agree, how­ev­er, that he real­ly shines with com­ic fare, like Bil­ly Collins “Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” and Lorine Niedecker’s major­ly con­densed “Poet’s Work.”

Any of these read­ings should grant Mur­ray admis­sion into the most uptight of lit­er­ary affairs. If any­one still doubts his skill in the craft of read­ing lit­er­a­ture well in public—which, any writer will you, is no easy thing by far—then hear him read Lucille Clifton’s uplift­ing “What the Mir­ror Said” (above), or Sarah Manguso’s “What We Miss,” Bil­ly Collins’ “For­get­ful­ness,” and Cole Porter’s song “Brush Up on Your Shake­speare.” Hear him read from Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and mum­ble his way through Bob Dylan’s “Shel­ter from the Storm,” in char­ac­ter in the film St. Vin­cent.

Oh, but does the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Bill Mur­ray, “mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing,” sing show tunes? Does he ever….

Find these poet­ry read­ings added to OC’s col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bill Murray’s Favorite Poems Read Aloud by Mur­ray Him­self & Their Authors

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Coursera Now Offering Complete Bachelor’s and Master’s Programs–With Tuition Reduced by 70%

in Online Courses | March 20th, 2018

As we observed last Octo­ber, Cours­era has been under­go­ing an evo­lu­tion of sorts. When the ed tech com­pa­ny start­ed out, it offered an array of indi­vid­ual cours­es to stu­dents world­wide. A lit­tle of this. And a lit­tle of that. Now, they’re increas­ing­ly mov­ing towards cours­es that work togeth­er in sequences. First came “course spe­cial­iza­tions”–col­lec­tions of cours­es that allow stu­dents to gain a mas­tery of spe­cial­ized top­ics like Deep Learn­ing, Data Sci­ence (Johns Hop­kins), Busi­ness Fun­da­men­tals (Whar­ton), Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing (Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois), and Big Data (UC San Diego). Next it was just a log­i­cal jump to offer­ing full-blown Bach­e­lor’s and Mas­ter’s pro­grams at a dis­count­ed price (rough­ly 1/3 the usu­al cost.) As of this month, Cours­era offers one Bach­e­lor’s pro­gram (Com­put­er Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don), one MBA, and eight Mas­ter’s pro­grams. The full list of degree pro­grams appears below:

• Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Com­put­er Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don (New)
• Mas­ter of Com­put­er Sci­ence from Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty (New)
• Glob­al Mas­ter of Pub­lic Health from Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don (New)
• Mas­ter of Com­put­er Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois (New)
• Mas­ter of Applied Data Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan (New)
• Mas­ter of Pub­lic Health from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan (New)
• Mas­ter of Com­put­er Sci­ence in Data Sci­ence from Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Online Mas­ter’s in Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship from HEC Paris
• Mas­ter of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Accoun­tan­cy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois

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!

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cours­era Part­ners with Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Afford­able Price

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many With Cer­tifi­cates)

Watch Stephen Hawking’s Interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Recorded 10 Days Before His Death: A Last Conversation about Black Holes, Time Travel & More

in Physics, Science | March 19th, 2018

Ten days before Stephen Hawking’s death, Neil DeGrasse Tyson sat down with the world-famous physi­cist for an inter­view on Tyson’s StarTalk pod­cast. “I picked his leg­endary brain,” says Tyson in his intro­duc­tion, “on every­thing, from the big bang to the ori­gins of the uni­verse.” He starts off, how­ev­er, with some soft­balls. Hawking’s favorite food? He likes oys­ters. Favorite drink? Pimms.

Your appre­ci­a­tion for Tyson’s earnest­ly awk­ward small talk may vary. He’s prone to mak­ing him­self laugh, which doesn’t elic­it laughs from Hawk­ing, whose com­mu­ni­ca­tion was, of course, extra­or­di­nar­i­ly con­strained. And yet, when it came to mat­ters most of con­se­quence to him, he was elo­quent, wit­ty, pro­found into his final days.

Though we can­not detect any tonal inflec­tion in Hawking’s com­put­er voice, we know him as a sen­si­tive, com­pas­sion­ate per­son as well as a bril­liant mind. It doesn’t sound like he’s brag­ging when—in answer to Tyson’s ques­tion about his favorite equa­tion (at 4:10)—he replies, “the equa­tion I dis­cov­ered relat­ing the entropy of black hole to the area of its hori­zon.” “How many peo­ple,” Tyson replies, chuck­ling, “get to say that their favorite equa­tion is one they came up with? That’s badass.”

Cut­away seg­ments with Tyson, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Jan­na Levin, and come­di­an Matt Kir­shen sur­round the short inter­view, with Levin offer­ing her pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise as a cos­mol­o­gist to explain Hawking’s ideas in lay terms. His favorite equa­tion, she says, demon­strates that black holes actu­al­ly radi­ate ener­gy, return­ing infor­ma­tion, though in a high­ly dis­or­dered form, that was pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost for­ev­er.

At 8:05, hear Hawking’s answer to the ques­tion of what he would ask Isaac New­ton if he could go back in time. Whether we under­stand his reply or not, we learn how “badass” it is in the cut­away com­men­tary (which begins to seem a lit­tle ESPN-like, with Levin as the sea­soned play­er on the pan­el). Rather than ask­ing New­ton a ques­tion Hawk­ing him­self didn’t know the answer to, which New­ton like­ly couldn’t answer either, Hawk­ing would ask him to solve a prob­lem at the lim­it of Newton’s own stud­ies, there­by test­ing the Enlight­en­ment giant’s abil­i­ties.

Offered ad-free in Hawking’s mem­o­ry, the pod­cast inter­view also tack­les the ques­tion of whether it might ever be pos­si­ble to actu­al­ly trav­el back in time, at 24:00 (the answer may dis­ap­point you). Michio Kaku joins the pan­el in the stu­dio to clar­i­fy and sticks around for the remain­der of the dis­cus­sion. The pan­el also answers fan-sub­mit­ted ques­tions, and Bill Nye makes an appear­ance at 42:16. Hawking’s inter­view makes up a com­par­a­tive­ly small por­tion of the show.

His answers, by neces­si­ty, were very brief and to the point. His final the­o­ries, by con­trast, are mind-expand­ing­ly vast, open­ing us up to the secrets of black holes and the exis­tence of the mul­ti­verse. While Hawk­ing’s the­o­ret­i­cal work may have been too spec­u­la­tive for the Nobel com­mit­tee, who need hard evi­dence to make a call, his lega­cy as “one of our great­est minds, of our gen­er­a­tion, of the cen­tu­ry, or maybe, ever,” as Tyson says, seems secure.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Huge Scale Model Showing Ancient Rome at Its Architectural Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

in History | March 19th, 2018

The nar­ra­tor of Teju Cole’s Open City, one of the bet­ter nov­els of mem­o­ry and urban space to come along in recent years, at one point flies into New York City and remem­bers going to see a “sprawl­ing scale mod­el” of the metrop­o­lis at the Queens Muse­um of Art. “The mod­el had been built for the World’s Fair in 1964, at great cost, and after­ward had been peri­od­i­cal­ly updat­ed to keep up with the chang­ing topog­ra­phy and built envi­ron­ment of the city. It showed, in impres­sive detail, with almost a mil­lion tiny build­ings, and with bridges, parks, rivers, and archi­tec­tur­al land­marks, the true form of the city.” The mod­el real­ly exists; you can go see it your­self.

But if you get to Rome before you next get to New York, you can see anoth­er city mod­el of equal­ly impres­sive, almost implau­si­ble accom­plish­ment there. At the Muse­um of Roman Cul­ture resides a 1:250 recre­ation of impe­r­i­al Rome, known as the Plas­ti­co di Roma Impe­ri­ale, which trans­ports view­ers not just through space but time as well.

“To com­mem­o­rate the birth of Augus­tus (63 BC) two thou­sand years ear­li­er, Mus­soli­ni com­mis­sioned a mod­el of Rome as it appeared at the time of Con­stan­tine (AD 306–337), when the city had reached its great­est size,” says Ency­clo­pe­dia Romana. Con­struct­ed by Ita­lo Gis­mon­di between 1933 and 1937, then extend­ed and restored in the 1990s, it takes as its basis Rodol­fo Lan­cian­i’s 1901 atlas the For­ma Urbis Romae.

You can see more detailed pic­tures of the Plas­ti­co di Roma Impe­ri­ale at the Muse­um of Roman Cul­ture’s site as well as at Viral Spell, zoom­ing in on such Roman land­marks as the Cam­pus Mar­tius, the Cir­cus Max­imus, the Tiber Island, and the Fla­vian Amphithe­atre, bet­ter know as the Colos­se­um. “The atten­tion to detail was so metic­u­lous that one could not help but think of Borges’s car­tog­ra­phers,” says Open City’s nar­ra­tor, “who, obsessed with accu­ra­cy, had made a map so large and so fine­ly detailed that it matched the empire’s scale on a ratio of one to one, a map in which each thing coin­cid­ed with its spot on the map.” This mem­o­ry comes prompt­ed by the sight of the Big Apple, of course, but it some­how sounds even more fit­ting for the Eter­nal City at the height of its ambi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Map Lets You Take a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney Through the His­toric Mon­u­ments of Rome

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.