Universities Launch “Futurity” to Bring Science to the Web

in Science | September 16th, 2009

A lit­tle break­ing news… 35 lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a sim­ple goal — edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about new sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs. In the old days, uni­ver­si­ties depend­ed on the tra­di­tion­al press to spread the word about new sci­en­tif­ic advances. Now, with jour­nal­ism in cri­sis and news­pa­pers fold­ing, the schools can no longer bank on that. And so we get Futu­ri­ty, which is essen­tial­ly a non­prof­it wire ser­vice that will dis­trib­ute news through major news sup­pli­ers on the web (Yahoo News & Google News) and also through social media chan­nels (Twit­ter, Face­book and MySpace). On the list of par­tic­i­pat­ing uni­ver­si­ties, you will find UC Berke­ley, Stan­ford, Johns Hop­kins, Carnegie Mel­lon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Duke, Prince­ton, Yale and many oth­ers. You can get a full list here, and read more about the ven­ture here.

Thanks Denise for the tip on this one. Have some­thing you want to share with your fel­low read­ers? Send your tips to

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The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats

in Literature, Poetry | September 15th, 2009

William_Butler_Yeats_by_John_Singer_Sargent_1908

Por­trait of William But­ler Yeats by John Singer Sar­gent, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s a hap­py trend. Increas­ing­ly, we’re see­ing muse­ums launch­ing dynam­ic online exhi­bi­tions to accom­pa­ny their exhi­bi­tions on the ground. In the past, we high­light­ed the Tate Mod­ern’s panoram­ic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William But­ler Yeats, an online exhi­bi­tion cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Library of Ire­land. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 arti­facts & man­u­scripts and “attend” three in-depth tuto­ri­als explor­ing the evo­lu­tion of three major poems (‘Sail­ing to Byzan­tium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nine­teen Hun­dred and Nine­teen’). You can also lis­ten to Yeats, one of Ire­land’s tow­er­ing poets, recit­ing his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free.’ To lis­ten, click “Areas” on the bot­tom nav­i­ga­tion, then click “Verse and Vision” on the cen­ter menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Final­ly, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book col­lec­tion.

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Watch Birds Sitting on Electrical Wires Become Sheet Music & Make a Melody

in Music | September 15th, 2009

What’s the sto­ry behind this video? Here it is, straight from the pro­duc­er, Jar­bas Agnel­li from Brazil: “Read­ing a news­pa­per, I saw a pic­ture of birds on the elec­tric wires. I cut out the pho­to and decid­ed to make a song, using the exact loca­tion of the birds as notes (no Pho­to­shop edit). I knew it was­n’t the most orig­i­nal idea in the uni­verse. I was just curi­ous to hear what melody the birds were cre­at­ing.” You can get more details here.

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Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

in Physics, Stanford | September 14th, 2009

For the past two years, Stan­ford has been rolling out a series of cours­es (col­lec­tive­ly called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum) that gives you a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac New­ton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, to black holes and string the­o­ry, comes out of Stanford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (my day job). And the cours­es are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an impor­tant physi­cist who has engaged in a long run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing. The final course, Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the cours­es can be accessed imme­di­ate­ly below. Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of con­tent. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

PS If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you should con­sid­er check­ing out Prof. Susskind’s new course. It will take a year­long look at new rev­o­lu­tions in Par­ti­cle Physics, and how impor­tant the­o­ries will be test­ed by the Large Hadron Col­lid­er in Europe. His course begins next week. Learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Stephen Hawk­ing Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

Learn­ing Physics Through Free Online Cours­es

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Google Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars?

in e-books, Google | September 14th, 2009

Crit­ics of Google Book Search (and its class-action set­tle­ment with pub­lish­ers) are pop­ping up every­where. Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have voiced their dis­plea­sure. The US Jus­tice Depart­ment has placed the set­tle­ment under review. Ama­zon is protest­ing. Yahoo and Microsoft have piled on too. And now you can add aca­d­e­mics to the list. Writ­ing in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Geof­frey Nun­berg, a promi­nent UC Berke­ley lin­guist (who also often appears on NPR), won­ders what will hap­pen to schol­ar­ship if Google Book Search becomes the world’s largest dig­i­tal library (some­thing the class action set­tle­ment would vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­tee). The prob­lem comes down to this:  The aver­age per­son will be able to “google” the dig­i­tal library (“When was the Fran­co-Pruss­ian War?”) and find use­ful infor­ma­tion. But schol­ars will run into prob­lems when they try to ask more fine­ly tuned ques­tions. (“When did the word hap­pi­ness start to replace the word felic­i­ty in the Eng­lish lan­guage?) And that’s because Google’s meta­da­ta is a “train wreck: a mish­mash wrapped in a mud­dle wrapped in a mess.” For exam­ple, accord­ing to Nun­berg, Google meta­da­ta says that all of the fol­low­ing texts were pub­lished in 1899. Ray­mond Chan­dler’s Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Park­er, André Mal­raux’s La Con­di­tion Humaine, Stephen King’s Chris­tine, The Com­plete Short­er Fic­tion of Vir­ginia Woolf, Ray­mond Williams’s Cul­ture and Soci­ety 1780–1950, and Robert Shel­ton’s biog­ra­phy of Bob Dylan. And it dates Tom Wolfe’s Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties back to 1888. You don’t real­ly need to be an aca­d­e­m­ic to get the gist. Google has some kinks to work out, espe­cial­ly if it’s going to be the only major online library in town. For more, you can read Nun­berg’s longer piece here.

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Beethoven’s 5th: The Animated Score

in Music | September 13th, 2009

On Fri­day, we gave you this ani­mat­ed piece that shows the genius of Bach. Now, we give you an ani­mat­ed score of Beethoven’s 5th, and here you can find a chart that explains what the col­ors in the score mean. Essen­tial­ly each col­or rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar instru­ment. Get the chart here, and don’t for­get that you can find more free clas­si­cal music in our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. (We’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.)

via The Dai­ly Dish

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James Watson on Jesus as Scientist

in Science | September 11th, 2009

Speak­ing Wednes­day night at Har­vard, James Wat­son, the co-dis­cov­er­er of DNA, was asked by NPR’s Robert Krul­wich: “Can a gen­tle per­son do well in sci­ence?” His response: “Jesus would not have suc­ceed­ed.” Sad com­men­tary, and it’s the type of com­ment that you’d expect from Wat­son. But it’s also some­what dis­proved by the career of E.O. Wil­son, who shared the stage with Wat­son that night. You can get more cov­er­age of this con­ver­sa­tion over at the New­Sci­en­tist.

In the mean­time, check out our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, which includes Krul­wich’s pro­gram, Radio Lab. These pod­casts are also avail­able on our free iPhone app.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Cre­ation

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The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection

in Literature | September 10th, 2009

poeA quick note: The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, a human­i­ties research library and muse­um at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, is com­mem­o­rat­ing the 2009 bicen­ten­ni­al of Edgar Allan Poe, Amer­i­can poet, crit­ic and inven­tor of the detec­tive sto­ry, with the exhi­bi­tion “From Out That Shad­ow: The Life and Lega­cy of Edgar Allan Poe.” To mark the occa­sion, the Cen­ter’s web site has launched The Edgar Allan Poe Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion, and it nice­ly fea­tures Poe’s man­u­scripts, his let­ters and doc­u­ments, pho­tographs and even cryp­tographs that Poe liked to solve. (You can try to solve them too.) Have a look, and then feel free to down­load read­ings of Poe’s work in our col­lec­tion of  Free Audio Books.

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