From Washington to Lincoln — The Geography of US Presidential Elections
We have now posted Lecture 2 of our ongoing course, The Geography of US Presidential Elections, presented by Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. You can download it via TunesU here (in high res) or you can watch it embedded below. This week, Professor Martin Lewis takes you through America’s early formative elections, starting with Washington and Jefferson’s electoral victories and moving through the transformative Civil War. To watch the first lecture, click here. And to ask Professor Lewis questions about the second lecture, just click here. And keep in mind, this is all free. For more free courses, check out our big collection here.
Ninth Circuit Judge on The Dating Game Way Back When
The name Alex Kozinski probably won’t mean much to many of you. But if you’re a lawyer, or a Supreme Court watcher, you’ll know that he’s the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (a really prestigious position). Rather recently, he’s been associated with a highly visible pornography scandal related to one of his cases, and now this. A video documenting his appearance long ago on The Dating Game, a wonderful piece of Americana. And the best part is that he beat Squiggy from the other slice of Americana, Laverne & Shirley. Oh, the endless wealth of YouTube:
Free Tech How-To Books
Thanks to BoingBoing, you can get free access (for 30 days) to three popular tech manuals:
• JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
• Learning Perl
• Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
Electing a US President in Plain English
We’re less than two weeks away (finally, at long last) from the next US presidential election, and that means that it’s a good time to decipher America’s convoluted electoral system. So here’s a piece from The Common Craft Show, which does it in a fairly creative way:
Your Digital Magazine Rack
A quick fyi: Alltop is a new web service (created by Guy Kawasaki) that aggregates RSS feeds about popular topics. Name a topic and they bring you stories from “the best websites and blogs” on the issue. If you want to see a sample of what I’m talking about, you can take a look at the area where Alltop was kind enough to list Open Culture. We’re in their college section. But you can also find hundreds of other topic areas here — art, books, health, writing, coffee, human rights, you get the picture.
More Free Classical
Until November 24, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, based in the Netherlands, is offering 10 symphonies as free downloads. You have to register, but once you do, you can download high quality performances of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, and more. Hat tip to Metafilter for pointing this one out.
The Sun and Its Magnetic Beauty
In case you missed them, I wanted to flag some photos that made their way around the blogosphere yesterday, thanks in part to BoingBoing. The Swedish 1‑m Solar Telescope, operated by the Institute for Solar Physics, has captured images that let you see the sun in an entirely new way. Below, you’ll find a detailed view of the magnetic structure of the Sun’s surface. Rather beautiful. For more photos, definitely have a look here.
via BoingBoing
Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin — Round #4
This one features a guest appearance by Palin herself. Video starts after the brief, but unavoidable commercial. Let ‘er roll:
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