Aftermath of the Tsunami in Japan

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | March 18th, 2011

It was one week ago that a pow­er­ful 9.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck off the coast of north­ern Japan. The tsuna­mi that fol­lowed, with waves reach­ing as high as ten meters, swept as far as ten miles inward. In this video shot for The Guardian, we see the haunt­ing dev­as­ta­tion in Shin­tona, a small town in the Miya­gi pre­fec­ture (one of the areas worst affect­ed by the tsuna­mi). Amidst the wreck­age on the streets, it is quite stir­ring to peer inside some of the washed-out hous­es, where we observe bro­ken chi­na and dam­aged pho­tographs, remind­ing us how life can be so pro­found­ly and per­son­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by nature’s fury.

The Guardian arti­cle accom­pa­ny­ing this video can be read here. For more videos and resources relat­ed to the earth­quake in Japan, includ­ing ways you can help, see this post.

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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A is for Atom: Vintage PR Film for Nuclear Energy

in Current Affairs, Film, Video - Science | March 18th, 2011

As a dev­as­tat­ed Japan con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the dam­age to its nuclear facil­i­ties, sev­er­al oth­er nations have begun recon­sid­er­ing their nuclear poli­cies. Ger­many, for exam­ple, has tem­porar­i­ly closed down sev­en aging nuclear reac­tors, and oth­er coun­tries (includ­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na, and the US) have announced checks of their own safe­ty stan­dards.

Cyn­ics might sug­gest that these announce­ments are cal­cu­lat­ed less to make sub­stan­tive changes than to calm a fright­ened pub­lic, and attempts to man­age per­cep­tions of the atom­’s volatile pow­ers are noth­ing new. They began imme­di­ate­ly after the bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. The video above, pro­duced by Gen­er­al Elec­tric in 1952, was one of many Atom­ic Ener­gy “PR films” designed to sway pub­lic opin­ion in favor of this prof­itable and pow­er­ful new ener­gy resource. (Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, GE built the Fukushi­ma reac­tor that’s now in deep trou­ble.)

A is for Atom was a huge hit — it won sev­er­al hon­ors, includ­ing a spe­cial prize at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val and a Mer­it Award from Scholas­tic Teacher. In some ways those hon­ors were deserved. The movie is a spright­ly car­toon with cheer­ful nar­ra­tion and expla­na­tions of some dif­fi­cult physics, even as it avoids any engage­ment with the dark sides of nuclear ener­gy. In fact, the whole mes­sage boils down to a reas­sur­ance that the atom­’s mas­sive poten­tial is all “with­in man’s com­mand.”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reenacted with Claymation

in Art | March 17th, 2011

We take you back to the famous Roesch — Schlage chess match played in 1910. Nor­mal­ly, when we replay match­es in our minds, it looks some­thing like this. Or like this:

Game: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. Qe2 b5 6. Bb3 Be7 7. c3 O‑O 8. O‑O d5 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nf4 11. Qe4 Nxe5 12. Qxa8 Qd3 13. Bd1 Bh3 14. Qxa6 Bxg2 15. Re1 Qf3 16. Bxf3 Nxf3#

But, you have got to admit, it looks infi­nite­ly bet­ter when pre­sent­ed in clay­ma­tion like this. H/T to Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kas­parov Talks Chess, Tech­nol­o­gy and a Lit­tle Life at Google

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Middle Eastern History: Free Courses

in Current Affairs, History | March 17th, 2011

Image by Muham­mad Mah­di Karim;, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Right now, all eyes are turned toward Japan. That’s under­stand­able. But, all the while, the unrest in the Mid­dle East con­tin­ues unabat­ed, espe­cial­ly in Libya and Bahrain. So it seems time­ly to high­light a resource that will give you a deep­er under­stand­ing of this evolv­ing region. Richard Bul­li­et, a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, has post­ed a 26 lec­ture course called The His­to­ry of the Mod­ern Mid­dle East. The course takes you back to the found­ing of Islam, then works for­ward to the 19th and 20th cen­turies, cov­er­ing the cre­ation of Mid­dle East­ern states, the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, the role of oil, the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion, etc. In short, he gives you the lay of the mod­ern land.

For even deep­er con­text, you can access two oth­er free cours­es taught by Bul­li­et: First, the His­to­ry of the World to 1500 AD, avail­able on YouTube here, and sec­ond, the His­to­ry of Iran to the Safavid Peri­od (essen­tial­ly pre-mod­ern Iran) avail­able on the Inter­net Archive here. All three cours­es appear in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our mega col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. In total, you will now find 1,700 cours­es, all free to down­load to your com­put­er or mobile device…

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Endangered Species in Unforgettable Images

in Books, Life, Science | March 17th, 2011

Some books lend them­selves espe­cial­ly well to trail­ers. Rare: Por­traits of Amer­i­ca’s Endan­gered Species, pre­sent­ed by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er Joel Sar­tore, offers one good exam­ple. Sar­tore’s footage of these rare crea­tures, all shot against a sim­ple white back­ground, leaves you want­i­ng more. For­tu­nate­ly there’s plen­ty more on the book’s site, includ­ing a nice behind-the-scenes video, and an exten­sive gallery (you may need to scroll down). Be sure that you don’t miss the ocelot.

If you’ve gone through the site and you’re still not sat­is­fied, there’s always the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s new wildlife pho­to archive, which we’ve been lost in all week.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Faith: Time-Lapse from Mecca

in Art, Film, Religion | March 16th, 2011

Mec­ca — Muham­mad’s birth­place and the heart of Islam – beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tured by Hosain Hadi, using just his Canon 5D mark ll.

H/T @MatthiasRascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

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The Birth of a Word: Deb Roy at TED

in MIT, Science, TED Talks | March 16th, 2011

Deb Roy is the direc­tor of the Cog­ni­tive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab. For the first few years of his son’s life, Roy installed cam­eras in every room of the fam­i­ly home. Now he jokes that he has the “largest home video col­lec­tion ever made” – rough­ly 90,000 hours of images and footage of the grow­ing baby’s world. The pur­pose was to con­sid­er and ana­lyze all the fac­tors impact­ing his son’s first words, includ­ing the 7 mil­lion words that the boy heard from his father, moth­er, nan­ny, and oth­er vis­i­tors to the house.

Roy’s talk made one of the biggest splash­es at TED this year, not only for what he learned about ear­ly lan­guage acqui­si­tion, but also for his breath­tak­ing data visu­al­iza­tion maps. Even by TED stan­dards, it’s an idea-packed 20 min­utes: Impres­sive. And when you con­sid­er that Roy is now on sab­bat­i­cal and employed by the AI com­pa­ny Bluefin Labs, work­ing on, among oth­er things, social media and mar­ket research, it all becomes more than a lit­tle bit fright­en­ing.

On a brighter note, Roy’s son turned out to be an ear­ly talk­er.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Forget the Films, Watch the Titles

in Literature | March 16th, 2011

Some watch the Super Bowl for just the com­mer­cials. Oth­ers watch films for the title designs. Title sequences begin and end every movie. They can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery.” And they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way. The ins-and-outs of title design get lov­ing­ly cov­ered by a web­site called For­get the Films, Watch the Titles, and today we’re fea­tur­ing the clos­ing moments of Lemo­ny Snick­et’s A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events, a 2004 black humor film. This five minute ani­mat­ed sequence is the work of Jamie Caliri, a direc­tor with a self-described pas­sion for visu­al sto­ry telling. Not too long ago, we high­light­ed the ani­ma­tion con­cepts he devel­oped for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay. And, here, Caliri sits down for an inter­view with For­get the Films, Watch the Titles and talks about his art­ful approach to title design…

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