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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Letters with Literary Character

in Literature | May 27th, 2010

Ben Green­man, a fic­tion writer and edi­tor at the New York­er, has a short sto­ry col­lec­tion com­ing out this June. What He’s Poised To Do makes let­ters and let­ter-writ­ing a the­mat­ic focus, and even before its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion, Green­man’s col­lec­tion has inspired a blog that encour­ages every­day peo­ple to write let­ters to great lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. The sam­ple below gives you the gist of the project … and then some. If so inspired, send your own let­ter to: Le******************@***il.com.

Ernest Hem­ing­way | The Sun Also Ris­es | 1926

Dear Brett,

I find myself in the hor­ri­ble posi­tion of telling you what a tru­ly ter­ri­ble human being you are. I know what you’re doing with Jake and Robert when you’re very much engaged to Michael. Now, don’t give me any sob sto­ry about how you lost your “only true love” at such a young age. This gives you NO right to be a tramp. Also, half the women in Paris would agree that you are NOT charm­ing when you are drunk like you think you are. In fact I would go as far as to say you are repul­sive in all forms of the word. Occa­sion­al­ly, I cringe when you speak because it is always to use some­one. You’re despi­ca­ble. Dis­gust­ing. You’re a pedan­tic wee­nie.

Sin­cere­ly,
Alexan­dria Smith

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Clouds, Stars and Meteors Over the Cotopaxi Volcano

in Random | May 26th, 2010

So beau­ti­ful you don’t need sound or com­men­tary. Now added to our YouTube Favorites.

via 3QuarksDaily

HT Mike

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The Greek Crisis Explained

in Current Affairs | May 26th, 2010

On a lighter note, and while we’re on the sub­ject of eco­nom­ic cri­sis, we offer you an ani­mat­ed (and not so seri­ous) expla­na­tion of the finan­cial cri­sis in Greece. The saga con­tin­ues with Episode 2.

Thanks Eren, aka @Gulfi

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Economic Crisis and Globalization

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 25th, 2010

The news isn’t good. The Euro is los­ing val­ue dai­ly. Coun­tries are slip­ping into “sov­er­eign debt crises” – mean­ing they’re going broke. And the mar­kets are swoon­ing once again. We’re watch­ing the prover­bial oth­er shoe drop.

Through­out this cri­sis, many Amer­i­cans have direct­ed their anger at Wall Street (and deserved­ly so). But few have won­dered whether there’s any­thing basi­cal­ly wrong with Amer­i­can-style cap­i­tal­ism. And, if any­thing, the only orga­nized protest move­ment (The Tea Par­ty) has assert­ed that we need more cap­i­tal­ism in our lives, not less.

In some rare quar­ters of acad­eme, cap­i­tal­ism still does­n’t get off so easy. And that brings us to three new online cours­es taught by the econ­o­mist Richard D. Wolff at The New School in NYC. Above, we fea­ture the first lec­ture from Eco­nom­ic Cri­sis and Glob­al­iza­tion, a course that takes a less ortho­dox view of how we’re man­ag­ing the Great Reces­sion. (Find the oth­er sev­en lec­tures here.) His oth­er cours­es, both on Marx­i­an eco­nom­ics, appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Eco­nom­ics.

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Writing the U.S. Constitution (in Tweets)

in History, Twitter | May 25th, 2010

223 years ago today, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion start­ed meet­ing secret­ly in Philadel­phia. Sev­er­al months lat­er, the meet­ings end­ed with the sign­ing of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Start­ing today, the Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter will use Twit­ter to reen­act the events of the Con­ven­tion. You can fol­low @SecretDelegate, a mys­te­ri­ous insid­er, who will show you what hap­pened inside the pri­vate pro­ceed­ings. The “Twit­ter Con­ven­tion” will con­clude on Sep­tem­ber 17, when the Con­sti­tu­tion was signed, and only then will the true iden­ti­ty of @SecretDelegate be revealed. You can be among the first to fol­low these tweets.

Look­ing for more Open Cul­ture? Find us on Twit­ter at @openculture.

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Can Monkeys Talk?

in Science | May 25th, 2010

If we believe that Homo sapi­ens (a.k.a. peo­ple) and mon­keys evolved from a com­mon ances­tor, then it makes sense to ask: Can mon­keys use lan­guage like we do? Do they make mere sounds? Or do they use spe­cif­ic sounds to com­mu­ni­cate a range of dif­fer­ent intend­ed things? Robert Sey­far­th, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, uses the case of the Vervet Mon­keys to answer these ques­tions. You can read more about his work in The New York Times.

via RichardDawkins.net

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Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!

in Education, K-12, TED Talks | May 24th, 2010


Some months ago, we asked you to name your favorite TED Talk. And, more than a few of you flagged Sir Ken Robin­son’s pre­sen­ta­tion from 2006, Do Schools Kill Cre­ativ­i­ty? You’re in good com­pa­ny. The talk remains one of TED’s most pop­u­lar videos of all time. Today, TED has released Robin­son’s sequel (of sorts). Record­ed this past Feb­ru­ary, Bring on the Learn­ing Rev­o­lu­tion! “makes the case for a rad­i­cal shift from stan­dard­ized schools to per­son­al­ized learn­ing — cre­at­ing con­di­tions where kids’ nat­ur­al tal­ents can flour­ish.” Give it some time. Per­haps it’s anoth­er talk for the ages.

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Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

in Books, Literature | May 24th, 2010

File this under “bet­ter late than nev­er.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writ­ing his mem­oirs, pro­duc­ing some 5,000 unedit­ed pages. How­ev­er, he stip­u­lat­ed that they could­n’t be pub­lished for at least a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing his death. (Apro­pos see this very rare footage record­ed by Thomas Edi­son show­ing Twain in his last year.) Fast for­ward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this Novem­ber, UC Berke­ley will pub­lish the first vol­ume of Twain’s man­u­script. The Inde­pen­dent tells you more about this lit­er­ary event, and sug­gests why Twain want­ed to keep his auto­bi­og­ra­phy under wraps. Get the full arti­cle here.

via @ebertchicago

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James Joyce Encoded in Venter’s Artificial Life

in Literature, Science | May 23rd, 2010

You may have heard the news last week: J. Craig Ven­ter and a team of sci­en­tists cre­at­ed the first liv­ing organ­ism – a “syn­thet­ic cell” – by way of a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed genome. We’re now see­ing the begin­nings of arti­fi­cial life. And it’s a big sto­ry, with many far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. But where does James Joyce fit into this pic­ture? Let me add this lit­tle fac­toid to the mix: Accord­ing to The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Ven­ter’s team insert­ed DNA water­mark codes into the genome so that they can dis­tin­guish between nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic bac­te­ria mov­ing for­ward. And when this code is trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, it will “spell out the names of the 46 researchers who helped with the project, quo­ta­tions from James Joyce, physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and J. Robert Oppen­heimer, and a URL that any­one who deci­phers the code can e‑mail.” Lots of smarts packed into the tini­est of pack­ages.

UPDATE: The quotes in water­mark appar­ent­ly read: “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” — James Joyce’s A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man; “SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”-A quote from an Oppen­heimer biog­ra­phy, Amer­i­can Prometheus; “WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” — Richard Feyn­man.

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David Simon Takes New York Down a Peg

in Television | May 21st, 2010

Speak­ing in New York City, David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, was­n’t shy about tak­ing the city to task. “There is no city more vain about its posi­tion in pop­u­lar cul­ture, more indif­fer­ent to oth­er real­i­ties, more self absorbed than oth­er cities.” “Man­hat­tan is [now] one big pile of mon­ey,” which leaves it divorced from the real prob­lems fac­ing oth­er Amer­i­can cities. So why are so many sto­ries and tele­vi­sion shows still cen­tered in New York, and how can they tell the real tale of urban Amer­i­ca in 2010?

This talk took place at The New School for Lib­er­al Arts in NYC.

via The Dai­ly Dish

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