The Ice Book, a Beautiful Pop-Up Book

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2011

The Ice Book, seen above, is a paper the­atre brought to life with light. Watch as sheets of paper are illu­mi­nat­ed in a daz­zling ani­ma­tion dis­play. Accord­ing to the artists, Davy and Kristin McGuire, The Ice Book tells the sto­ry of a mys­te­ri­ous princess who lures a boy into her mag­i­cal world to warm her heart of ice. It was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, with the actors super­im­posed onto the mon­tages using a makeshift green screen, and pro­jec­tions cre­at­ed in Adobe After Effects. A sim­ple yet remark­able achieve­ment. You can learn more about the project here. Don’t miss the page describ­ing the behind the scenes work, or this oth­er pri­mo video that savors books in stop motion film.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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“From Dictatorship to Democracy.” Open Text Changes Face of Egypt.

in Current Affairs, Politics | February 17th, 2011

There’s some­thing won­der­ful about this .… unless you’re a dic­ta­tor. Today, The New York Times shines a good light on Gene Sharp, a shy Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al who has spent decades writ­ing on the art of non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Back in 2002, Sharp pub­lished “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy: A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Lib­er­a­tion,” a 93-page guide to upend­ing auto­crats. Then, he had the text trans­lat­ed into 24 lan­guages and made freely avail­able online, with all copy­right restric­tions removed.  The man­u­al has since inspired dis­si­dents in Bur­ma, Bosnia and Esto­nia, while giv­ing strate­gic direc­tion to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Ideas have pow­er. But good ideas have more pow­er when they’re open. You can down­load Sharp’s man­u­al here (PDF), and learn more about his mis­sion through his non­prof­it, The Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing of good ideas that are open, feel free to down­load 35o free online cours­es and teach your­self any­thing and every­thing.

via @philosophybites

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NASA Zooms into Spiral Galaxy

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

Cour­tesy of NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, we’re zoom­ing into a “majes­tic disk of stars and dust lanes” and get­ting a stun­ning view of the spi­ral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 mil­lion light-years away in the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). But wait, it gets even bet­ter. This high res­o­lu­tion still pho­to shows the spi­ral galaxy in all its beau­ty and splen­dor…

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Christopher Hitchens Answers Reddit User Questions

in Current Affairs | February 17th, 2011

A lit­tle ways back, Christo­pher Hitchens field­ed ques­tions for 30 min­utes from Reddit.com users, answer­ing any and every ques­tion they threw his way. What his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, events or books have been under­em­pha­sized in Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion? Has the Iraq War (some­thing Hitchens sup­port­ed) had a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact on Islam­ic extrem­ism? What do social­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an­ism have in com­mon intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if any­thing? Oth­er fig­ures inter­viewed by Red­dit users include Richard Dawkins, Noam Chom­sky, and Ron Paul.

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Evolution Made Us All

in Music, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net

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A Rare Look Inside Pixar Studios

in Art, Film | February 16th, 2011

Since 1995, Pixar has released a steady stream of award-win­ning ani­mat­ed films. First came Toy Sto­ry, then Find­ing Nemo, Mon­sters, Inc., The Incred­i­bles, and most recent­ly Toy Sto­ry 3. (You can revis­it Pixar’s clas­sics in this won­der­ful lit­tle trib­ute video.) Get­ting inside Pixar Stu­dios has nev­er been easy. But last week The New York Times pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a six minute video that takes you through the stu­dios designed by Steve Jobs him­self, and inside Pixar’s patent­ed ani­ma­tion process – a process that com­bines more tra­di­tion­al and cut­ting-edge ele­ments.

Note: This video tour also appears on Vimeo and YouTube.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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The First Talk Radio Show on the Net (1993)

in Radio, Technology | February 16th, 2011

Back in the ear­ly 1990s, while most of us were still try­ing to wrap our heads around this new thing called the inter­net (don’t miss this amus­ing bit), NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day start­ed push­ing the enve­lope and host­ing the first inter­net-based radio talk show. This marked the first time that lis­ten­ers could “phone into” a pro­gram via the web and talk togeth­er – in this case about the cre­ative uses of this emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The broad­cast, which sin­gle­hand­ed­ly brought the inter­net to a crawl, has now resur­faced online. You can lis­ten below (or here).

via @Alyssa_Milano and Extreme­Tech

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Norman Mailer & Gore Vidal Feud on The Dick Cavett Show

in Literature, Television | February 16th, 2011

Anoth­er chap­ter from Amer­i­ca’s long his­to­ry of inci­vil­i­ty. Today, we rewind the video­tape to Decem­ber 1971, when Gore Vidal (already known for his tele­vised spat with William F. Buck­ley) got into a ver­bal brawl with the always mer­cu­r­ial (and, on this occa­sion, sauced) nov­el­ist Nor­man Mail­er. What the tele­vi­sion audi­ence sees is just the tip of the ice­berg. Back in the green­room, Mail­er actu­al­ly head­butted Vidal, tak­ing revenge for a neg­a­tive review that Vidal pub­lished in the New York Review of Books that pre­vi­ous sum­mer. (Slate has more on this.) Cavett nav­i­gat­ed the whole scene rather remark­ably, as you’ll see. But still, almost 40 years lat­er, he mulls over the dif­fi­cul­ty of this one inter­view (and here again), even though many oth­ers (take for exam­ple this bit with Sly Stone) were no small chal­lenge…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

Mail­er on the Ali-Fore­man Clas­sic

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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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