Steven Pinker: How Innuendo Makes Things Work

in Life, Psychology | February 15th, 2011

RSA has rolled out its lat­est ani­mat­ed video, and it’s a good one. This time we have Steven Pinker, the famed Har­vard lin­guist and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist, try­ing to make sense of innu­en­do. Why do we often say things in veiled terms, espe­cial­ly when every­one knows what’s real­ly being said? Pinker breaks it all down, and explains how lan­guage pro­vides the grease that lubri­cates every­day social rela­tion­ships.

This clip is an excerpt from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed at the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts in Lon­don. Watch the full talk here, and scroll through pre­vi­ous RSA Ani­mat­ed videos right here.

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NYU Launches Open Courses

in Online Courses | February 14th, 2011

Last sum­mer, NYU announced that it will join the open course­ware move­ment by mak­ing free cours­es avail­able online, all in video. Fast for­ward sev­er­al months, and you can now see the first fruits of NYU’s labor.

The Open Edu­ca­tion pilot fea­tures four cours­es, the first of ten cours­es that will even­tu­al­ly appear online.

  • His­to­ry of New York City: A Social His­to­ry – — iTunes Video –YouTube – Web Site – Prof. Daniel Walkowitz
  • Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture I: Begin­nings to Civ­il War – iTunes — YouTube – Prof. Cyrus Patell
  • Intro­duc­tion to Soci­ol­o­gy – Web Site – Prof. Har­vey Molotch
  • Genomes and Diver­si­ty – Web Site – Prof. Mark Sie­gal

You can prof­it from these cours­es no mat­ter where you live, and the same applies to NYU stu­dents. NYU now oper­ates cam­pus­es across the globe, from Argenti­na to Abu Dhabi, to Sin­ga­pore and soon Shang­hai. And the hope is these stu­dents can all par­tic­i­pate in a com­mon cur­ricu­lum. Hence a rea­son why NYU put these cours­es online.

You can read more about the NYU pilot here, and find 350 free online cours­es from stel­lar uni­ver­si­ties here. If you have a smart­phone, you can always access these cours­es on the fly…

H/T to Dara at Do It Your­self Schol­ar

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What’s Your English? British v. Canadian Rap Battle

in Language Lessons | February 14th, 2011

In 2010, the folks who pub­lish the Macmil­lan Dic­tio­nary launched the ‘What’s your Eng­lish?’ cam­paign. They then spent a good year trav­el­ing across the globe, vis­it­ing nations where Eng­lish is spo­ken, and ask­ing experts and every­day speak­ers to talk about their region­al dialects. The Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, Ire­land, Scot­land and Cana­da were obvi­ous stops. But the tour also swept through India, Rus­sia, Brazil, Chi­na, Mex­i­co and beyond. Now, to cap things off, Macmil­lan has post­ed a “rap bat­tle” between British and Cana­di­an Eng­lish, fea­tur­ing “Baba Brinkman” and hip hop emcee “Pro­fes­sor Ele­men­tal.” Get the lyrics/script here. H/T Metafil­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages

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First 360 Degree View of the Sun

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 13th, 2011

A new NASA break­through lets us see the sun in a 360 degree, panoram­ic view. The upshot? Bet­ter space weath­er reports com­ing our way. The video from NASA’s YouTube chan­nel has all the good details …

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100 Greatest Posters of Film Noir

in Art, Film | February 11th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1940s and 50s, Hol­ly­wood entered a “noir” peri­od, pro­duc­ing riv­et­ing films based on hard-boiled fic­tion. These films were set in dark loca­tions and shot in a black & white aes­thet­ic that fit like a glove. Hard­ened men wore fedo­ras and for­ev­er smoked cig­a­rettes. Women played the femme fatale role bril­liant­ly. Love was the surest way to death. All of these ele­ments fig­ured into what Roger Ebert calls “the most Amer­i­can film genre” in his short Guide to Film Noir. (Also find 23 noir films right here.)

Accom­pa­ny­ing noir films were visu­al­ly engag­ing movie posters, and Where Dan­ger Lives (a noir blog) now gives you the “100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir.” They’ve been work­ing through this “best of” list for the past three months, and they con­clude this week with the Top 10 …  the best of the best.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Free John Wayne Films

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IBM Supercomputer v. Humans on Jeopardy! Next Week

in Technology, Video - Science | February 11th, 2011

Next Mon­day, the long-run­ning Amer­i­can game show, Jeop­ardy!, will air a tour­na­ment of cham­pi­ons, pit­ting its two biggest win­ners, Ken Jen­nings and Brad Rut­ter, against Wat­son, IBM’s newest super­com­put­er. And it will pro­vide an occa­sion to answer an impor­tant ques­tion: Can com­put­ers under­stand the sub­tleties of lan­guage? Can they answer ques­tions when they’re posed in less than straight­for­ward ways? When, for exam­ple, the ques­tions use word­play and puns? IBM worked on the project for four years, and the ear­ly indi­ca­tions sug­gest that com­put­ers can undoubt­ed­ly mas­ter these sub­tleties. (Just watch this Wat­son match against less accom­plished Jeop­ardy! play­ers.) This arti­cle does a good job of explain­ing the fair­ly stag­ger­ing things hap­pen­ing on the back­end of the new IBM com­put­er, and how this research might shape the future of com­put­ing. The Watson/human face­off begins next Mon­day, with two match­es tak­ing place over three days. Once video becomes avail­able, as it inevitably will, we will tweet it on our ever-flow­ing Twit­ter stream.

PS NOVA aired a pro­gram last week ded­i­cat­ed to the Watson/Jeopardy! chal­lenge. If it’s not geoblocked, you can watch it right here. H/T to @eugenephoto for flag­ging the pro­gram.

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Rethinking Education: A New Michael Wesch Video

in Education | February 10th, 2011

Since 2007, Michael Wesch, a Kansas State Uni­ver­si­ty anthro­pol­o­gist, has released a series of viral videos inter­ro­gat­ing the ways in which new web tech­nolo­gies shape human com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inter­ac­tions with infor­ma­tion. First came The Machine is Us/ing Us, then Infor­ma­tion R/evolution and An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to YouTube. Now he’s back with a new video called “Rethink­ing Edu­ca­tion,” a mon­tage that pulls togeth­er sound bites of thought lead­ers (Tim O’Reil­ly, Yochai Ben­kler, Brew­ster Kahle, Ray Kurzweil, etc.) describ­ing how tech­nol­o­gy is alter­ing the broad­er edu­ca­tion­al land­scape…

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Tall Painting

in Art | February 10th, 2011

If I have this right, you’re look­ing at the drip­ping, flow­ing art of Holton Row­er, a New York-based artist, who also hap­pens to be the grand­son of Alexan­der Calder. The film itself was direct­ed and edit­ed by Dave Kauf­man. Enough said, I will let you sit back and watch grav­i­ty, paint and Holton do their thing…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cirque Calder

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Oedipus … Starring Vegetables

in Film, Literature, Theatre | February 9th, 2011

Sopho­cles and Aeschy­lus may be spin­ning in their graves. Or, who knows, they may be tak­ing some delight in this bizarre twist on the Oedi­pus myth. Run­ning eight min­utes, Jason Wish­now’s 2004 film puts veg­eta­bles in the star­ring roles. One of the first stop-motion films shot with a dig­i­tal still cam­era, Oedi­pus took two years to make with a vol­un­teer staff of 100. But the hard work paid off. The film has since been screened at 70+ film fes­ti­vals and was even­tu­al­ly acquired by the Sun­dance Chan­nel. Sep­a­rate videos show you the behind-the-scenes mak­ing of the film, plus the sto­ry­boards used dur­ing pro­duc­tion.

via Curios­i­ty Counts

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Undercity: Exploring the Underbelly of New York City

in Video - Arts & Culture | February 9th, 2011

Steve Dun­can is an urban his­to­ri­an and pho­tog­ra­ph­er whose mis­sion is to “peel back the lay­ers of a city to see what’s under­neath” – to piece togeth­er the com­plex cities we inhab­it. In this fas­ci­nat­ing video, we fol­low Dun­can as he explores the under­bel­ly of New York City. Andrew Won­der, using a Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 24mm f/1.4L lens, doc­u­ments the adven­ture. The sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences must be extra­or­di­nary, as Alan Feuer (who accom­pa­nied Steve and Andrew on one of their trips) writes in the New York Times:

The sounds down here are even more impres­sive than the sights and smells: the Nia­gara-like crash of water spilling in from side drains; the rum­ble of the sub­way; the guh-DUNK! of cars hit­ting man­hole cov­ers over­head, like two jabs on a heavy bag.

For more, I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing the NPR sto­ry, “Into the Tun­nels.” Also worth see­ing are Dun­can’s pho­tos of New York City bridges and the under­ground rivers of Lon­don. The video above has a run time of 28 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Under­ground

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Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” Played by Musicians Around the World

in Music | February 9th, 2011

Back in 2009, Play­ing for Change, a media project launched by music pro­duc­er Mark John­son, rolled out a video fea­tur­ing a glob­al cast of musi­cians per­form­ing Ben King’s Stand by Me (and, more recent­ly, anoth­er great one fea­tur­ing The Grate­ful Dead­’s “Rip­ple”). To date, the video has clocked more than 79,000,000 views on YouTube, and the song lat­er appeared on this CD/DVD. Now, Play­ing for Change has returned with a new video pay­ing trib­ute to Bob Mar­ley and his clas­sic track, “Redemp­tion Song.” Mar­ley would have turned 66 this week (note: this post was first pub­lished back in 2011), and coin­ci­den­tal­ly the song (watch Mar­ley’s acoustic ver­sion here) ranks 66th on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Great­est Songs of All Time. The eclec­tic ver­sion (above) is fea­tured on Songs Around The World, Part 2.

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