Artists Turn Weather Data into Swirling “Living Portraits” of Continental U.S. Wind Patterns

in Art, Science | February 20th, 2013

Like an invis­i­ble sculp­tor, the wind slow­ly shapes the nat­ur­al world, bend­ing Mon­terey Pines along California’s coast to reach hor­i­zon­tal­ly towards the land, and whip­ping dry beach dunes into peaks.

Artists Fer­nan­da Vié­gas and Mar­tin Wat­ten­berg, work­ing as HintFM, used the aer­i­al view of wind blow­ing around the Unit­ed States as the tem­plate for a dynam­ic art piece, Wind Map. About every hour, Wind Map down­loads wind cir­cu­la­tion data from the Nation­al Dig­i­tal Fore­cast Data­base. The site’s image of the con­ti­nen­tal U.S. refresh­es with new data, show­ing the most cur­rent traces of wind pat­terns, in vary­ing shades of white depend­ing on wind speed.

Like grass on an expanse of hill­side, the wind becomes vis­i­ble against the dark back­ground of the coun­try. It’s pos­si­ble to see, vivid­ly, the wind’s strength as it swoops from the north west and the south, up into a sin­gle cor­ri­dor that blasts up from Mobile Bay in Louisiana to Chica­go and beyond.

HintFM calls the site a “liv­ing por­trait” of the wind’s foot­prints at any giv­en moment, but they make sure we know it’s art, not sci­ence. Please, they note, do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wild­fires.

But the Wind Map archive can’t help but offer mete­o­ro­log­i­cal val­ue. Watch the wind pat­terns as Hur­ri­cane Sandy brewed off the East­ern seaboard in Octo­ber and again when it hit land. Oth­er images in the archive gallery include days that pro­duced some beau­ti­ful whorls of wind.

The site includes links to infor­ma­tion about wind pow­er. Made vis­i­ble, the wind can be seen as the force it is, beau­ti­ful, pow­er­ful, har­ness­able.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Cool and Creepy Visu­al­iza­tion of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at . 

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Documentary Charts the Rise of Punk’s Godfather

in Film, Music | February 20th, 2013

Now Lit­tle John­ny Jew­el,
Oh, he’s so cool,
He has no deci­sion,
He’s just try­ing to tell a vision

So go the first lines of “Lit­tle John­ny Jew­el,” the first sin­gle from bril­liant New York free-jazz punk band Tele­vi­sion, writ­ten in trib­ute to James Newell Oster­berg, bet­ter known as Iggy Pop. The song’s release in 1975 sad­ly coin­cid­ed with the final breakup of Pop’s ground­break­ing Detroit pro­to-punk garage band The Stooges, after which the self-destruc­tive front­man checked him­self into a men­tal insti­tu­tion to get clean. Maybe it seemed that the vision was spent, and might have been had David Bowie not stepped in, swept Pop away to Berlin, and helped him pro­duce his first solo album, 1977’s The Idiot, quick­ly fol­lowed by the return to raw form, Lust for Life (with its dement­ed cov­er art of a grin­ning Pop, look­ing for all the world like the high school year­book pho­to of a burned-out future ser­i­al killer).

By 1986, Pop had cement­ed his sta­tus as a solo artist, Bowie col­lab­o­ra­tor, and esteemed fore­fa­ther of punk and new wave, releas­ing the Bowie-pro­duced Blah Blah Blah, with its sin­gle “Real Wild Child.” It’s at this point in his career that the Dutch film above, Lust for Life, caught up with him. The doc­u­men­tary opens with a cap­ti­vat­ing live per­for­mance of the title song from an ’86 show in Utrecht. Pop describes his sound as ema­nat­ing from Motor City’s “indus­tri­al hum” and his encounter with Chica­go blues. Lat­er, Stooges gui­tarist Ron Asheton takes us on a tour of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan ball­room where Elek­tra records scout, rock jour­nal­ist, and punk impres­sario Dan­ny Fields dis­cov­ered and signed The Stooges in 1968. The late Asheton plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the film, demon­strat­ing the Stooges gui­tar sound and open­ing up about the band’s rise and demise. From there, we’re trans­port­ed via some vin­tage, grainy footage to a Stooges gig, with a shirt­less Iggy emerg­ing from the crowd after a stage-dive (he gets cred­it for invent­ing the move).

The Stooges mate­r­i­al pro­vides cru­cial con­text for the emer­gence of Iggy Pop from the grit­ty Detroit garage-rock scene (which includ­ed anoth­er sem­i­nal pro­to-punk band, the MC5, with whom the Stooges often played). In one inter­view clip Pop explains in detail how he devel­oped his song­writ­ing with Asheton, draw­ing from John­ny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Vel­vet Under­ground, his own exper­i­ments with poet­ry, and the dull grind of Mid­west­ern life. These ani­mat­ed inter­views are price­less win­dows on the ear­ly influ­ences of the so-called “god­fa­ther of punk,” sit­u­at­ing The Stooges as emerg­ing direct­ly from late-six­ties psy­che­del­ic rock. In some ways, Detroit bands like The Stooges and the MC5 (like Black Sab­bath in England)—with their abra­sive noise-rock cacoph­o­ny, near-met­al crunch, and min­i­mal­ist blues foundations—provide the miss­ing link between six­ties rock and roll and punk. Strip­ping the for­mer of its excess­es and draw­ing on raw blues and coun­try sen­ti­ment and loads of late-20th cen­tu­ry dis­af­fec­tion, they took the nihilism in songs like The Stones’ “Street Fight­ing Man” to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion. That seems, at least, the under­ly­ing premise of the film, and it makes a good case.

While the documentary’s few min­utes of nar­ra­tion are in Dutch, the major­i­ty of Lust for Life is cut togeth­er from Eng­lish-lan­guage inter­views and old per­for­mance footage of Iggy and The Stooges. One rare clip has Pop in a black-and-white TV talk show inter­view com­par­ing John­ny Rot­ten to Sig­mund Freud, then stand­ing and tak­ing a bow to a guf­faw­ing audi­ence. It’s a clas­sic Iggy Pop moment, that allur­ing com­bi­na­tion of eru­di­tion, show­man­ship, unset­tling weird­ness, and sheer tak­ing-the-piss. Under­neath the seem­ing­ly unhinged chaos and mad­ness of Iggy Pop’s stage show has always lay a wicked intel­li­gence, uncom­pro­mis­ing work eth­ic, and pum­mel­ing dri­ve to “tell a vision.”

Near­ly thir­ty years after Tele­vi­sion’s nod to Jim Oster­berg, Hen­ry Rollins—another usu­al­ly-shirt­less, hyper­ki­net­ic punk frontman—vividly described the qual­i­ties above in his spo­ken word trib­ute to Iggy, the sur­vivor who still puts most rock stars to shame (from Rollins’ 2004 DVD Live at Luna Park). Rollins tells a hilar­i­ous sto­ry of how Pop blew his mind (and destroyed the stage) in a 1992 show open­ing for the Beast­ie Boys, which sparked Rollins many attempts to com­pete with his idol. After hear­ing the real thing, tell me what you think of Rollins’ Iggy Pop impres­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Sid Vicious and Nan­cy Spun­gen Take Phone Calls on New York Cable TV (1978)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

The History of Music Told in Seven Rapidly Illustrated Minutes

in Music | February 20th, 2013

Your sens­es do deceive you, my friends. This is not the lat­est, great­est video from RSA Ani­mate. No, this video comes to us via Pablo Morales de los Rios, a Span­ish artist, who has artis­ti­cal­ly nar­rat­ed the his­to­ry of music — or the His­to­ria de la Músi­ca – in a shade less than sev­en min­utes. 6:59, to be pre­cise. You don’t need much Span­ish under your belt to real­ize that the sto­ry starts 50,000 years ago, then moves quick­ly from the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyp­tians, to the trou­ba­dours of the Mid­dle Ages. The video gives dis­pro­por­tion­ate atten­tion to clas­si­cal music dur­ing the fol­low­ing peri­ods — Renacimien­to, Bar­ro­co, Clas­si­cis­mo and Roman­ti­cis­mo. But before wrap­ping up, we tack over to Amer­i­ca and wit­ness the birth of jazz and the blues, before head­ing back across the pond for the Invasión británi­ca. Artis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, it all cul­mi­nates in a pret­ty inter­est­ing way. But we’ll let you see how things play out.

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:

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores Online

A Big Bach Down­load – All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picasso, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

in Literature, Poetry | February 20th, 2013

eBay prices for the album Gertrude Stein Reads Her Own Work range from $20 to $200. Vinyl purists, and Stein purists, may long for one of the still-sealed copies at the upper end of that range. The rest of us can enjoy hear­ing its record­ings as mp3s, free on the inter­net cour­tesy of PennSound. These clips, record­ed between 1934 and 1935 (which came out in album form in 1956) let you put your­self in the pres­ence of the poet. Much of the work she reads aloud here comes inspired by observ­ing oth­er cre­ative lumi­nar­ies. The record’s pro­duc­ers includ­ed these homages along with a piece of an inter­view, vari­ants of well-known poems such as “How She Bowed to Her Broth­er” (which often appears under the name “She Bowed to Her Broth­er”), and an excerpt from her nov­el The Mak­ing of Amer­i­cans.

But to get straight into the tex­tu­al sub­stance, lis­ten to “The Fif­teenth of Novem­ber… T.S. Eliot,” her por­trait of her col­league in let­ters. Then hear her cap­tur­ing a cer­tain well-known painter in “If I Told Him: a Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so.” And on painter Hen­ri Matisse, she begins her remarks as fol­lows: “One was quite cer­tain that for a long part of his being one being liv­ing he had been try­ing to be cer­tain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and then when he could not come to be cer­tain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing, when he had com­plete­ly con­vinced him­self that he would not come to be cer­tain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing he was real­ly cer­tain then that he was a great one and he cer­tain­ly was a great one.” If you feel proud of read­ing that whole sen­tence in one go, wait until you hear Stein speak it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

James Joyce in Paris: “Deal With Him, Hem­ing­way!”

Find works by Gertrude Stein in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Unbelievers, A New Film Starring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Werner Herzog, Woody Allen, & Cormac McCarthy

in Film, Religion, Science | February 19th, 2013

The so-called New (or “Gnu”) Athe­ism arrived at a time when fear, anger, and con­fu­sion over extrem­ist reli­gion had hit a fever pitch. Sud­den­ly, peo­ple who didn’t pay much atten­tion to religion—their own or any­one else’s—became intense­ly inter­est­ed in reli­gious crit­i­cism and debate; it was the per­fect cli­mate for a pub­lish­ing storm, and that’s essen­tial­ly how the move­ment began. It was also, of course, pre­dat­ed by thou­sands of years of philo­soph­i­cal athe­ism of some vari­ety or anoth­er, but “new” athe­ism had some­thing dif­fer­ent to offer: while its pro­po­nents large­ly hailed from the same worlds as their intel­lec­tu­al predecessors—the arts, polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and activism, the sci­ences and aca­d­e­m­ic philosophy—after Sep­tem­ber 11, these same peo­ple took the dis­cus­sion to the pop­u­lar press and a pro­lif­er­a­tion of inter­net out­lets and well-orga­nized con­fer­ences, debates, and meet­ings. And their expres­sions were uncom­pro­mis­ing and polem­i­cal (though not “militant”—no shots were fired nor bombs det­o­nat­ed).

In the wake of over a decade of con­tro­ver­sy unleashed by “new athe­ism,” a new film The Unbe­liev­ers (trail­er above) fol­lows two promi­nent sci­en­tists and stars of the movement–evolutionary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss—as they trek across the globe and explain their views. Dawkins and Krauss receive sup­port from a cast of celebri­ty inter­vie­wees includ­ing Ricky Ger­vais, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, Cor­mac McCarthy, Sarah Sil­ver­man, Ayaan Hir­si-Ali, and sev­er­al more. The film’s web­site has no offi­cial release date (oth­er than “2013”), but it does fea­ture links to online buzz, both glib—Krankie snarks that the trail­er makes it look like Dawkins and Krauss have packed in the sci­ence and start­ed a band—and sub­dued; the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Post does lit­tle but quote from the press pack­age.

These cham­pi­ons of rea­son-over-reli­gion have always had pow­er­ful crit­ics, even among those who might oth­er­wise seem sym­pa­thet­ic (take Marx­ist lit­er­ary crit­ic Ter­ry Eagleton’s charge that new athe­ism is noth­ing but counter-fun­da­men­tal­ism). Then there is the host of reli­gious detrac­tors, many of them respect­ed sci­en­tists and philoso­phers them­selves. One notable name in this camp is famed geneti­cist Fran­cis Collins, who head­ed the Human Genome Project. Obvi­ous­ly no denier of the explana­to­ry pow­er of sci­ence, Collins nonethe­less argues for faith as a dis­tinct kind of knowl­edge, as he does in the inter­view excerpt below from an appear­ance on The Char­lie Rose Show.

The debates seem like they could rage on inter­minably, and prob­a­bly will. I, for one, am grate­ful they can hap­pen open­ly and in rel­a­tive peace in so many places. But as the same sets of issues arise, some of the ques­tions become just a bit more nuanced. British pre­sen­ter Nicky Camp­bell, for exam­ple, recent­ly presided over a large debate among sev­er­al promi­nent sci­en­tists and cler­gy about whether or not all reli­gions should accept evo­lu­tion (below). While Dawkins and Krauss ulti­mate­ly advo­cate a world with­out reli­gion, the par­tic­i­pants of this debate try to shift the terms to how sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and reli­gious iden­ti­ty can coex­ist with min­i­mal fric­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Some­thing from Noth­ing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Dis­cuss Cos­mol­o­gy, Ori­gins of Life & Reli­gion Before a Packed Crowd

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Color Footage of Winston Churchill’s Funeral in 1965

in History | February 19th, 2013

On Jan­u­ary 24 1965, Sir Win­ston Churchill, the man who led Britain through the dark hours of the Sec­ond World War, died aged 90 at his Lon­don home. By decree of Queen Eliz­a­beth II, his body lay in state for three days in the Palace of West­min­ster and a state funer­al was held at St Paul’s Cathe­dral on Jan­u­ary 30. Churchill was the first states­man to be giv­en a state funer­al in the 2oth cen­tu­ry — a funer­al that saw the largest assem­blage of states­men in the world until the funer­al of Pope John Paul II in 2005. That day, the BBC report­ed that “silent crowds lined the streets to watch the gun car­riage bear­ing Sir Win­ston’s cof­fin leave West­min­ster Hall as Big Ben struck 09:45. The pro­ces­sion trav­elled slow­ly through cen­tral Lon­don to St. Paul’s Cathe­dral for the funer­al ser­vice.”  After the ser­vice, his cof­fin was tak­en by boat to Water­loo Sta­tion, where a spe­cial­ly pre­pared rail­way car­riage took Churchill to his final rest­ing place at Bladon near Wood­stock, close to his birth­place at Blenheim Palace.

This col­or footage of Churchill’s funer­al is nar­rat­ed by Wal­ter Thomp­son, Churchill’s for­mer body­guard.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

• A draft script for Win­ston Churchill’s obit­u­ary to be broad­cast by the BBC World Ser­vice, pre­pared in 1962
  
• Churchill’s obit­u­ary in the New York Times
• More BBC footage of the funer­al
• A selec­tion of Churchill’s most famous quotes

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

John Cleese’s Eulogy for Graham Chapman: ‘Good Riddance, the Free-Loading Bastard, I Hope He Fries’

in Comedy, Life | February 18th, 2013

The British come­di­an Gra­ham Chap­man delight­ed in offend­ing peo­ple. As a writer and actor with the leg­endary Mon­ty Python troupe, he pushed against the bound­aries of pro­pri­ety and good taste. When his writ­ing part­ner John Cleese pro­posed doing a sketch on a dis­grun­tled man return­ing a defec­tive toast­er to a shop, Chap­man thought: Bro­ken toast­er? Why not a dead par­rot? And in one par­tic­u­lar­ly out­ra­geous sketch writ­ten by Chap­man and Cleese in 1970,  Chap­man plays an under­tak­er and Cleese plays a cus­tomer who has just rung a bell at the front desk:

“What can I do for you, squire?” says Chap­man.

“Um, well, I won­der if you can help me,” says Cleese. “You see, my moth­er has just died.”

“Ah, well, we can ‘elp you. We deal with stiffs,” says Chap­man. “There are three things we can do with your moth­er. We can burn her, bury her, or dump her.”

“Dump her?”

“Dump her in the Thames.”

“What?”

“Oh, did you like her?”

“Yes!”

“Oh well, we won’t dump her, then,” says Chap­man. “Well, what do you think? We can bury her or burn her.”

“Which would you rec­om­mend?”

“Well, they’re both nasty.”

From there, Chap­man goes on to explain in the most graph­ic detail the unpleas­ant aspects of either choice before offer­ing anoth­er option: can­ni­bal­ism. At that point (in keep­ing with the script) out­raged mem­bers of the stu­dio audi­ence rush onto the stage and put a stop to the sketch.

Chap­man and Cleese had been close friends since their stu­dent days at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, and when Chap­man died of can­cer at the age of 48 on Octo­ber 4, 1989, Cleese was at his bed­side. Out of respect for Chap­man’s fam­i­ly, the mem­bers of Mon­ty Python decid­ed to stay away from his pri­vate funer­al and avoid a media cir­cus. Instead, they gath­ered for a memo­r­i­al ser­vice on Octo­ber 6, 1989 in the Great Hall at St. Bartholomew’s Hos­pi­tal in Lon­don. When Cleese deliv­ered his eulo­gy for Chap­man, he recalled his friend’s irrev­er­ence: “Any­thing for him, but mind­less good taste.” So Cleese did his best to make his old friend proud. His off-col­or but heart­felt eulo­gy that evening has become a part of Mon­ty Python lore, and you can watch it above. To see a longer clip, with mov­ing words from Michael Palin and a sing-along of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” led by Eric Idle, watch below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Finding Vivian Maier: New Documentary Reveals the Vision of Obscure Chicago Street Photographer

in Art, Life, Photography | February 18th, 2013

The posthu­mous dis­cov­ery of Vivian Maier’s pho­tographs is an art world stun­ner on the order of Hen­ry Darg­er’s mas­sive In the Realms of the Unre­al.

The syn­chronic­i­ty makes one won­der.

He was a Chica­go-based cus­to­di­an.

She was a Chica­go-based nan­ny.

They shared a com­pul­sion to create—some might say document—but were so intense­ly pri­vate, the rev­e­la­tions of their respec­tive lives’ work threw every­one for a loop.

Employ­ers and neigh­bors found it hard to believe they’d had it in them. (View an online gallery of her work here.)

Cura­tors, mar­veling at the quan­ti­ty of their out­put and qual­i­ty of the vision, piled on superla­tives.

Some­thing tells me the prick­ly Ms. Maier would not have appre­ci­at­ed any com­par­isons to a man whose work fea­tured so many rep­re­sen­ta­tions of naked, her­maph­ro­dit­ic girl-war­riors being bay­o­net­ted, but death makes it dif­fi­cult to keep hold of the reins gripped so tight­ly in life.

For the fore­see­able future, Maier’s lega­cy rests in the hands of John Mal­oof, the young Chicagoan who bought her neg­a­tives from an unpaid stor­age unit for less than $400, hop­ing he might find some­thing of rel­e­vance for a neigh­bor­hood his­to­ry project. He got more than he bar­gained for, obvi­ous­ly, but the years spent scan­ning the unknown artist’s work is begin­ning to pay off in exhi­bi­tions, gallery rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and a book. Now he is near­ing com­ple­tion of Find­ing Vivian Maier, a doc­u­men­tary film that promis­es to shed more light on this fas­ci­nat­ing tale.

Would the sub­ject have want­ed this?

Per­haps that’s a ques­tion for the Hen­ry Darg­er Study Cen­ter at the Amer­i­can Folk Art Muse­um…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Pho­tographs at Paris Pho­to 2012

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, a point and shoot hack, is relat­ed by mar­riage to anoth­er female street pho­tog­ra­ph­er with an inter­est­ing lens on his­to­ry. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Start Your Startup with Free Stanford Courses and Lectures

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | February 18th, 2013

Last spring, Ken Aulet­ta wrote a pro­file of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in the pages of The New York­er, which start­ed with the ques­tion: “There are no walls between Stan­ford and Sil­i­con Val­ley. Should there be?” It’s per­haps an unavoid­able ques­tion when you con­sid­er a star­tling fact cit­ed by the arti­cle. Accord­ing the uni­ver­si­ty itself, five thou­sand com­pa­nies “trace their ori­gins to Stan­ford ideas or to Stan­ford fac­ul­ty and stu­dents.” The list includes tech giants like Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Cis­co Sys­tems, Sun Microsys­tems, eBay, Net­flix, Elec­tron­ic Arts, Intu­it, Sil­i­con Graph­ics, LinkedIn, and E*Trade. And stay tuned, there’s more to come.

Stan­ford is one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing incu­ba­tors, and the rear­ing of young entre­pre­neurs does­n’t take place by mere osmo­sis. No, Stan­ford stu­dents can take cours­es focused on entre­pre­neur­ship, which give them access to sea­soned entre­pre­neurs and financiers. If you head over to eCorner, short for Entre­pre­neur­ship Cor­ner (Web — iTunes — YouTube), you can watch “2000 free videos and pod­casts fea­tur­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion thought lead­ers” who have paid vis­its to Stan­ford. Per­haps you’ll rec­og­nize a few of the names: Mark Zucker­berg? Lar­ry Page? Maris­sa May­er? Reid Hoff­man (above)?

Or, if you go to YouTube and iTunes, you’ll gain access to entire cours­es ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing stu­dents the mod­ern art of start­ing star­tups. Two cours­es (both housed in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es and our col­lec­tion of 150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es) war­rant your atten­tion. First, Chuck Eesley’s course, Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship (YouTube — iTunes Video) intro­duces stu­dents to “the process used by tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neurs to start com­pa­nies. It involves tak­ing a tech­nol­o­gy idea and find­ing a high-poten­tial com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, gath­er­ing resources such as tal­ent and cap­i­tal, fig­ur­ing out how to sell and mar­ket the idea, and man­ag­ing rapid growth.” The course fea­tures 28 video lec­tures in total.

Once you have a broad overview, you can dial into an impor­tant part of get­ting a new ven­ture going — rais­ing cap­i­tal. Hence the course Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal (iTunes Video — YouTube), a course cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at Stan­ford that “explores how suc­cess­ful star­tups nav­i­gate fund­ing, man­ag­ing, and scal­ing their new enter­prise.” It fea­tures guest speak­ers from the VC world that fuels Sil­i­con Val­ley.

It goes with­out say­ing that Stan­ford offers many world-class cours­es across oth­er dis­ci­plines, from phi­los­o­phy and physics to his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. You can find 68 cours­es from Stan­ford in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ford Launch­es iPhone/iPad App Course on iTune­sU

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

The Stan­ford Mini Med School: A Free Course Now Online

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

In Under Three Minutes, Hans Rosling Visualizes the Incredible Progress of the “Developing World”

in Economics, Math | February 18th, 2013

Hans Rosling knows how to make a con­cise, pow­er­ful point. His mas­tery of sta­tis­tics and visu­al aids does­n’t hurt. Behold, for instance, the Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Health visu­al­iz­ing the health of 200 coun­tries over 200 years with 120,000 data points. His abil­i­ty to con­dense vast amounts of infor­ma­tion into short bursts while pro­vid­ing the widest pos­si­ble con­text for his points nat­u­ral­ly endears him to the TED audi­ence, which val­ues coun­ter­in­tu­itive intel­lec­tu­al impact deliv­ered with the utmost suc­cinct­ness. We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a TED Talk from where­in the excitable pro­fes­sor explains world pop­u­la­tion growth and pros­per­i­ty with props bought at IKEA. (The man comes from Swe­den, after all. One must rep­re­sent.) Now, on Bill Gates’ Youtube chan­nel, you can watch Rosling’s short­est and slick­est video yet: “The Riv­er of Myths.”

Open­ing with a visu­al­iza­tion of 1960’s world child mor­tal­i­ty num­bers graphed against the num­ber of chil­dren born per woman, Rosling uses his sig­na­ture method of sta­tis­ti­cal-ani­ma­tion show­man­ship to explode myths about the poten­tial of devel­op­ing nations. We see that, as a coun­try’s wealth ris­es, its health ris­es; as its health ris­es, its child mor­tal­i­ty drops; and as its child mor­tal­i­ty drops, so does its num­ber of chil­dren born per woman, which leads to a sus­tain­able over­all pop­u­la­tion size. He then exam­ines the sep­a­rate regions of Ethiopia, for­mer­ly a devel­op­men­tal lag­gard, show­ing that the cap­i­tal Addis Aba­ba ranks repro­duc­tive­ly among the devel­oped nations, while only remote regions lag behind. “Most peo­ple think the prob­lems in Africa are unsolv­able, but if the poor­est coun­tries can just fol­low the path of Ethiopia, it’s ful­ly pos­si­ble that the world will look like this by 2030.” We then see a pro­jec­tion of all the world’s nations clus­tered in the small-fam­i­ly, low-mor­tal­i­ty cor­ner of the graph. “But to ensure this hap­pens, we must mea­sure the progress of coun­tries. It’s only by mea­sur­ing we can cross the riv­er of myths.” Have you heard a more pow­er­ful argu­ment for the use­ful­ness of sta­tis­tics late­ly?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

200 Coun­tries & 200 Years in 4 Min­utes, Pre­sent­ed by Hans Rosling

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.