Dangerous Knowledge

in Math | June 2nd, 2010

In this 90-minute BBC doc­u­men­tary, Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge, David Mal­one takes a close look at four math­e­mati­cians — Georg Can­tor, Lud­wig Boltz­mann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Tur­ing – whose think­ing pro­found­ly influ­enced mod­ern math­e­mat­ics but also drove them (or so the pro­gram argues) to insan­i­ty and even­tu­al­ly sui­cide. Can­tor gave us “set the­o­ry.” Boltz­mann made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions in the fields of sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and sta­tis­ti­cal ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Gödel is remem­bered for his incom­plete­ness the­o­rems. Tur­ing built on Gödel’s work and laid the foun­da­tion for com­put­er sci­ence. They all spent their dif­fi­cult final years in var­i­ous states of men­tal decline.

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Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show

in Film, Poetry | June 2nd, 2010

The poem is “If” by Rud­yard Kipling (1899). The scene is The John­ny Cash Show, 1970. Hard to beat this…

via @caitlinroper

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The Beatles Complete on Ukulele

in Music | June 1st, 2010

You have to like the ambi­tion of this project. Roger Greenawalt and David Bar­ratt start­ed record­ing all 185 orig­i­nal Bea­t­les com­po­si­tions on the ukulele. They’re mak­ing a new song avail­able every week until July 31, 2012, the eve of the Lon­don Olympics. And, in each instance, they’re work­ing with dif­fer­ent accom­pa­ny­ing artists. As you’ll see, the styles and approach­es can vary wide­ly, and the ukulele sounds can be more or less pro­nounced. Just com­pare Black­bird and She Said She Said (two of my Bea­t­le faves) and you will see what I mean. To down­load the tracks, vis­it Roger and Dav­e’s web site, or load this feed to iTunes or your RSS read­er.

via metafil­ter

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Einztein

in Online Courses | June 1st, 2010

If you blink, you might miss the lat­est new ven­ture look­ing to cen­tral­ize the dizzy­ing num­ber of free online cours­es. Here’s the lat­est: The Einztein Knowl­edge Net­work. The more the mer­ri­er, I say…

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Bob Woodward: How Investigative Journalism Gets Done

in Media | June 1st, 2010

Work­ing for The Wash­ing­ton Post in 1972, Bob Wood­ward and Carl Bern­stein blew open the explo­sive Water­gate scan­dal – some­thing one news­pa­per exec called “maybe the sin­gle great­est report­ing effort of all time.” (The whole saga gets doc­u­ment­ed in All the Pres­i­den­t’s Men, avail­able in print and film.) Almost 40 years lat­er, Wood­ward still writes for the Post, and, even though he has pub­lished some clunk­ers since, he remains one of the most promi­nent inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists in the US. Above, Wood­ward describes how jour­nal­ists get their infor­ma­tion, how they risk blow­ing their sto­ries, and where jour­nal­ism might be head­ing in the dig­i­tal age.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Crisis & Dislocation: A Universal Story

in Film | May 31st, 2010

Buenos Aires has endured a lot – finan­cial crises, social protests, dic­ta­tor­ship and beyond. The award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary: ¿Sería Buenos Aires? (Maybe Buenos Aires?) takes a hard look at how the Argen­tines respond­ed to dis­lo­ca­tions cre­at­ed by forces beyond their con­trol. It’s a uni­ver­sal sto­ry that touch­es on prob­lems we all face today. Greece is just the lat­est unfor­tu­nate reminder of this. You can find this film, and 125 oth­er high qual­i­ty movies, in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider: A Look Back

in Film | May 29th, 2010

The actor Den­nis Hop­per died this morn­ing. You know him from Apoc­a­lypse Now and Blue Vel­vet. But, more than any oth­er film, his lega­cy is tied to Easy Rid­er. Hop­per direct­ed, co-wrote, and co-starred in the coun­ter­cul­ture clas­sic, which won the top prize at the 1969 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. Drugs, motor­cy­cles, hip­pies, com­mu­nal liv­ing – Easy Rid­er cap­tured the spir­it of the coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment, and now, 40 years lat­er, it serves as some­thing of a memo­r­i­al to the Wood­stock gen­er­a­tion. Above, we fea­ture the 1999 doc­u­men­tary Easy Rid­er: Shak­ing the Cage, which looks back at the mak­ing of the cult film. It includes inter­views with Den­nis Hop­per and his co-star Peter Fon­da. Part 1 appears above. You can access the remain­ing parts here: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7

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Putting the Web Inside the Printed Book

in Books | May 28th, 2010

There’s a lot of talk about “vooks” these days. Usu­al­ly vooks are all about mov­ing tra­di­tion­al books over to dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments (e.g., the iPad) and sur­round­ing them with sup­port­ing web media. But one com­pa­ny, Ubi­mark, is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. They’re keep­ing the print­ed word and putting the web inside the tra­di­tion­al book. Kind of. Using smart phones, read­ers can take pic­tures of “2D codes” embed­ded in print books. And, from there, the smart phone will launch maps, video, and oth­er web media that will col­lec­tive­ly enrich the words on the page. The video above, using Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days as an exam­ple, shows what this all looks like in action.

via Wired Cam­pus

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Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: 35 Days From Space

in Current Affairs, Life | May 28th, 2010

From Our Uni­verse Visu­al­ized on YouTube:

The MODIS instru­ment, on board NASA’s Ter­ra and Aqua satel­lites, is cap­tur­ing images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. The spill began on April 20, 2010 with the explo­sion of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig. This short video reveals a space-based view of the burn­ing oil rig and, lat­er, the ensu­ing oil spill through May 24, 2010. The oil slick appears gray­ish-beige in the images and changes due to chang­ing weath­er, ocean cur­rents, and the use of oil dis­pers­ing chem­i­cals. Images in the video time series were select­ed that show the spill most clear­ly. The full image archive is avail­able on the MODIS Rapid Response Web site at https://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

via Moth­er­Jones

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Space Shuttle Discovery: From Prep to Launch in Three Minutes

in Science | May 27th, 2010

Three min­utes of time lapse video dis­tills six weeks of footage show­ing the Space Shut­tle Dis­cov­ery get­ting ready for launch. It moves you from the Orbiter Pro­cess­ing Facil­i­ty to the launch­ing pad, and every­where in between. Air & Space has more details on the whole she­bang. Props to Joshua for send­ing this video our way.

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Martin Gardner: A Video Remembrance

in Math, Science | May 27th, 2010

This past week­end, Mar­tin Gard­ner, a gift­ed and pro­lif­ic pop­u­lar­iz­er of math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence, passed away at 95. Dur­ing his life, Gard­ner pub­lished more than 70 books and wrote the pop­u­lar “Math­e­mat­i­cal Games” col­umn for Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can mag­a­zine for 25 years. As The New York Times obit notes, his math­e­mat­i­cal writ­ings “intrigued a gen­er­a­tion of math­e­mati­cians,” and he earned the admi­ra­tion of many lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als, includ­ing W. H. Auden, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Jay Gould, Vladimir Nabokov, and Carl Sagan. Not bad for a man who nev­er took a col­lege-lev­el math course. Above, you will find a 46-minute video pro­file of Gard­ner from David Suzuk­i’s CBC tele­vi­sion series “The Nature of Things.” It’s a great intro­duc­tion to Gard­ner and his unique approach to math and sci­ence.

Thanks goes to Mike for send­ing the video our way.


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