Planet of the Apes: A Species Misunderstood

in Film, Video - Science | August 12th, 2011

The Plan­et of the Apes film fran­chise began back in 1968, and it enjoyed a good run dur­ing the 1970s. Now Hol­ly­wood hopes to reboot the series with the release of Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes, a new film star­ring James Fran­co, Frei­da Pin­to, John Lith­gow and Andy Serkis. You don’t need to watch the film to get the gist of the plot: Chimps pow­ered by a genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered retro­virus go wild and start tak­ing over the world. Watch the trail­er and see for your­self.

At Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, Thomas Gille­spie, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Pub­lic Health and Bio­di­ver­si­ty Con­ser­va­tion, has turned the block­buster release into a good teach­ing moment. In this five minute video, Gille­spie dis­cuss­es the real char­ac­ter­is­tics of this often mis­un­der­stood species, cov­er­ing every­thing from their real tem­pera­ment to their breed­ing habits and com­mon social struc­tures. Take a look and get the real­i­ty behind the fic­tion.

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The Moon Up Close, in HD

in Astronomy, Video - Science | August 11th, 2011

For the past two years, NASA’s Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbit­ing the Moon, gath­er­ing data that will help astro­nauts pre­pare for long-dura­tion expe­di­tions to the lunar sur­face, and even­tu­al­ly push fur­ther into the “infi­nite fron­tier of space.” (Read more about the big pic­ture plan here.)

As part of this mis­sion, the LRO has trav­eled approx­i­mate­ly 50 kilo­me­ters (31 miles) above the Moon, cre­at­ing a 3‑D map of the lunar sur­face. And now we’re receiv­ing images that show us the Moon in unprece­dent­ed detail and focus. The val­leys. The craters. The des­o­late sur­face. They’re all there, as nev­er seen before, in HD.

This strik­ing clip oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

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Crater Lake Under the Stars

in Art | August 11th, 2011

Ben Canales took a trip to Crater Lake to shoot the stars, sac­ri­fic­ing mon­ey and per­son­al rela­tion­ships along the way. But he’s not com­plain­ing. The results are just painful­ly pret­ty…

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Pachelbel’s Music Box Canon

in Music | August 10th, 2011

Johann Pachel­bel (1653 — 1706) wrote his Canon in D major in the late 17th cen­tu­ry, then it dis­ap­peared for a good 300 years. It did­n’t mount a come­back until Arthur Fiedler first record­ed the Canon in 1940, and until the Jean-François Pail­lard Cham­ber Orches­tra pop­u­lar­ized the piece with two famous record­ings (lis­ten here). Now the Canon is every­where. You hear it at wed­dings, of course. It finds its way into Bea­t­les’ tracks. It goes fan­tas­ti­cal­ly viral on YouTube. (This leg­endary clip has 91 mil­lion views.) And now it gets cranked out of music box­es.

This video arranged by Vi Hart has a nice way of strip­ping things down and remind­ing us what a canon is fun­da­men­tal­ly about. Along very sim­i­lar lines, you will want to check out this clip show­ing how a Bach Canon Works. It’s pret­ty amaz­ing.

via Metafil­ter

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The Making of The Shining

in Film | August 10th, 2011

In 1980, Stan­ley Kubrick shot The Shin­ing, the clas­sic hor­ror film based on Stephen King’s nov­el. Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, the direc­tor allowed his daugh­ter Vivian, then 17 years old, to shoot a doc­u­men­tary called Mak­ing The Shin­ing, which lets you spend 33 min­utes being a fly on the wall. The film orig­i­nal­ly aired on the BBC and gave British audi­ences the chance to see Jack Nichol­son revving him­self up to act, and Shel­ley Duvall col­laps­ing in the hall­way from stress and fatigue. Min­utes lat­er, we watch Mr. Kubrick exert some direc­to­r­i­al force on the actress, and we under­stand her predica­ment all the more.

via Coudal.com

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)

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Harry Partch’s Kooky Orchestra of DIY Musical Instruments

in History, Music, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | August 9th, 2011

Com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor Har­ry Partch (1901–1974) is one of the pio­neers of 20th-cen­tu­ry exper­i­men­tal instru­men­ta­tion, known for writ­ing and play­ing music on incred­i­ble cus­tom-made instru­ments like the Boo II and the Quad­ran­gu­laris Rever­sum, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for many of today’s most cre­ative exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ments.

In this Uni­ver­sal News­reel footage from the 1950s, Partch con­ducts a stu­dent music per­for­mance on his instru­ments, built with insights from atom­ic research and Partch’s 30-year obses­sion with find­ing the elu­sive tones that exist between the tones of a reg­u­lar piano. The set­ting is Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, CA. The unortho­dox orches­tra per­forms music tuned to the 43-tone scale Partch invent­ed, rather than the usu­al 12-tone, even though indi­vid­ual instru­ments can only play sub­sets of the scale.

For more on Partch’s genius and sem­i­nal inno­va­tion, see his excel­lent 1949 med­i­ta­tion, Gen­e­sis of a Music: An Account of a Cre­ative Work, its Roots, and its Ful­fill­ments.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Pendulum Waves as Kinetic Art

in Physics, Video - Science | August 9th, 2011

This Har­vard-pro­duced video has gone viral, and then some, hav­ing clocked more than 3,000,000 views. We’ve watched the pen­du­lum balls swirl, mov­ing almost impos­si­bly from pat­tern to pat­tern, and we’ve remained daz­zled all along. But the mechan­ics behind this chore­o­graphed action haven’t real­ly been brought to the fore. So let’s turn to Har­vard’s web site to under­stand how this kinet­ic art works:

The peri­od of one com­plete cycle of the dance is 60 sec­onds. The length of the longest pen­du­lum has been adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes 51 oscil­la­tions in this 60 sec­ond peri­od. The length of each suc­ces­sive short­er pen­du­lum is care­ful­ly adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes one addi­tion­al oscil­la­tion in this peri­od. Thus, the 15th pen­du­lum (short­est) under­goes 65 oscil­la­tions. When all 15 pen­du­lums are start­ed togeth­er, they quick­ly fall out of sync—their rel­a­tive phas­es con­tin­u­ous­ly change because of their dif­fer­ent peri­ods of oscil­la­tion. How­ev­er, after 60 sec­onds they will all have exe­cut­ed an inte­gral num­ber of oscil­la­tions and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

We’re adding this clip to our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. You’ll also find a good num­ber of Physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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A Day in California

in Life | August 9th, 2011

Opin­ions are famous­ly mixed on South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It has nev­er been Woody Allen’s kind of place. In Annie Hall, he quipped “I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cul­tur­al advan­tage is that you can turn right on a red light.” But this is com­ing from a guy who prefers fog and over­cast skies to sun­ny days at the beach, some­one who does­n’t quite con­nect with what has drawn 25 mil­lion peo­ple to the region. Ryan Kil­lack­ey’s short film, “A Day in Cal­i­for­nia,” will speak to those res­i­dents, or any­one who dreams of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia life. He worked on the project for a year and a half, and it com­bines 10,000 images into a seam­less whole. Learn more about the project or watch the film here.

via @alyssa_milano

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