Modern Masters: Watch BBC Series Introducing the Art of Warhol, Matisse, Picasso and Dali

in Art, Television | June 18th, 2012

Mod­ern art. Like it or not, it’s had a pro­found impact on the way our world looks. As crit­ic Alas­tair Sooke explains in this four-part series from the BBC, the great art­works of the past cen­tu­ry have exert­ed an influ­ence that extends far beyond muse­um walls.

Mod­ern Mas­ters, first broad­cast in 2010 on the main­stream chan­nel BBC One, looks at the life, work, and abid­ing influ­ence of Hen­ri Matisse, Pablo Picas­so, Sal­vador Dali and Andy Warhol. “Art dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry was rad­i­cal, intox­i­cat­ing, and immense­ly influ­en­tial,” says Sooke, deputy art crit­ic of The Dai­ly Tele­graph. “Matisse, Picas­so, Dali and Warhol did­n’t just change art his­to­ry; they changed the world.”

Episode one, Andy Warhol: For a series exam­in­ing the influ­ence of 20th cen­tu­ry art through the prism of celebri­ty artists, it’s fit­ting that Sooke should begin with an artist obsessed with celebri­ty. Sooke fol­lows Warhol (see above) from his impov­er­ished child­hood in Pitts­burgh to New York City, where he strug­gled as a com­mer­cial artist before becom­ing famous as a pop artist. Along the way he shows how Warhol’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty now per­me­ates our cul­ture. The oth­er three episodes pro­ceed along sim­i­lar lines. Each is just under an hour long.

Episode two, Hen­ri Matisse:

Episode three, Pablo Picas­so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU5TDkjhLNs#t=09

Episode four, Sal­vador Dali:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art: From Cézanne to Andy Warhol

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

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Paul McCartney Turns a Spry 70 Today, Thanks to Meditation, a Vegetarian Diet and Three Hour Gigs

in Life, Music | June 18th, 2012

Paul McCart­ney turns 70 today, and he’s look­ing a whole lot more spry than some of his con­tem­po­raries. (Hel­lo Kei­th Richards!) What’s the key to his longevi­ty? It starts with putting on three hour shows. He recent­ly told one news­pa­per, “I’ve been hav­ing car­dio-vas­cu­lar exer­cise for years but it’s on stage. I can’t believe I do a three-hour show with­out tak­ing a breath.”

You could also trace his dura­bil­i­ty back to lifestyle choic­es made in the 1960s. Above, McCart­ney explains to David Lynch how he took up tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion when the Bea­t­les met Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi through George Har­ri­son and his wife in 1967. Famous­ly, The Bea­t­les trav­eled to India in ’68 to study TM at the Mahar­ishi’s ashram. The trip did­n’t go well, but McCart­ney stuck with the med­i­ta­tion. Below, we also give you McCart­ney extolling the virtues of a veg­e­tar­i­an diet, some­thing he took up decades ago. The clip comes from a longer video he shot for PETA, a non-prof­it he has sup­port­ed for years..

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Do Khan Academy Videos Promote “Meaningful Learning”?

in K-12, Video - Science | June 18th, 2012

If you ever won­dered whether pro­fes­sion­al sci­en­tists are skep­ti­cal about some of the incred­i­bly fun, attrac­tive and brief online videos that pur­port to explain sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples in a few min­utes, you’d be right.

Derek Muller com­plet­ed his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion by research­ing the ques­tion of what makes for effec­tive mul­ti­me­dia to teach physics. Muller curates the sci­ence blog Ver­i­ta­si­um and received his Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney in 2008.

It’s no small irony that Muller’s argu­ment, that online instruc­tion­al videos don’t work, has reached its biggest audi­ence in the form of an online video. He launch­es right in, lec­ture style, with a gen­tle attack on the Khan Acad­e­my, which has famous­ly flood­ed the Inter­net with free instruc­tion­al videos on every sub­ject from arith­metic to finance.

While prais­ing the academy’s founder, Salman Khan, for his teach­ing and speak­ing tal­ent, Muller con­tends that stu­dents actu­al­ly don’t learn any­thing from sci­ence videos in gen­er­al.

In exper­i­ments, he asked sub­jects to describe the force act­ing upon a ball when a jug­gler toss­es it into the air. Then he showed them a short video that explained grav­i­ta­tion­al force.

In tests tak­en after watch­ing the video, sub­jects pro­vid­ed essen­tial­ly the same descrip­tion as before. Sub­jects said they didn’t pay atten­tion to the video because they thought they already knew the answer. If any­thing, the video only made them more con­fi­dent about their own ideas.

Sci­ence instruc­tion­al videos, Muller argues, shouldn’t just explain cor­rect infor­ma­tion, but should tack­le mis­con­cep­tions as well. He prac­tices this approach in his own work, like this film about weight­less­ness in the space sta­tion. Hav­ing to work hard­er to think through why an idea is wrong, he says, is just as impor­tant as being told what’s right.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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Udacity to Launch 5 New Courses, from Statistics to Physics. Shooting for Largest Online Class Ever.

in Math, Online Courses | June 18th, 2012

This week­end, the Wall Street Jour­nal pub­lished a gush­ing lit­tle pro­file on Sebas­t­ian Thrun. By now, you prob­a­bly know his bio. Thrun helped invent the self-dri­ving car at Google and taught arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence at Stan­ford, before ditch­ing his tenured teach­ing posi­tion and launch­ing Udac­i­ty, a new ven­ture that offers MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) to stu­dents every­where.

Also this week­end, Thrun kicked off an effort to “break the stu­dent record for the largest online class ever taught” with his new class, Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics: Mak­ing Deci­sions Based on Data. It starts June 25, and above you can watch Thrun give a short (Hans Rosling-like) intro­duc­tion to the class.  The course is entire­ly free and open to stu­dents every­where. Stu­dents will receive dynam­ic feed­back along the way, and dili­gent stu­dents will get a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion at the end. So what’s stop­ping you? Cer­tain­ly not mon­ey or geog­ra­phy. Oth­er cours­es start­ing on June 25 include:

Intro to Physics: Land­marks in Physics

Algo­rithms: Crunch­ing Social Net­works

Log­ic & Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics: Foun­da­tions of Com­put­ing

Soft­ware Test­ing: How to Make Soft­ware Fail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cours­era Adds Human­i­ties Cours­es, Rais­es $16 Mil­lion, Strikes Deal with 3 Uni­ver­si­ties

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Why the Uni­ver­si­ty Sys­tem, as We Know It, Won’t Last …. and What’s Com­ing Next

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

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Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2012

Today is “Blooms­day,” the day when lit­er­a­ture lovers around the world gath­er in book­stores and Irish pubs and oth­er fit­ting places to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece of high mod­ernism, Ulysses.

June 16, 1904 was the day Joyce first went out for a walk with his future wife, Nora Barnacle–a fate­ful day in his life, which he decid­ed to com­mem­o­rate in his great nov­el, first pub­lished in Paris in 1922. All the events in the book–more than 700 dense­ly writ­ten pages of exper­i­men­tal prose rich in allu­sions and struc­tured around Home­r’s Odyssey–take place on that sin­gle day in 1904. Just as William Blake could hold eter­ni­ty in an hour, Joyce could frame an epic in a day.

To cel­e­brate the occa­sion we bring you a pair of videos. Above, the British actor and writer Stephen Fry speaks briefly about his love of Joyce’s book. To find out if there are any events near you, vis­it the Rosen­bach Muse­um & Library’s Blooms­day Cen­tral Web site. And to dive into the book, you can find copies in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

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1905 Video: The Funeral of Hiram Cronk, The Last Surviving Veteran of the War of 1812

in History | June 16th, 2012

200 years ago today, Amer­i­ca stunned the world when it declared war on Britain, begin­ning what’s now called The War of 1812. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War had end­ed only 29 years ear­li­er. But despite agree­ments made with the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British kept pres­sur­ing the Unit­ed States, try­ing to sti­fle Amer­i­ca’s trade with France and the young nation’s expan­sion into the North­west Ter­ri­to­ry, among oth­er things. So the two coun­tries went to war again.

Now fast for­ward 93 years and watch as Hiram Cronk, the last sur­viv­ing vet­er­an of the war, gets laid to rest. Cronk, a shoe­mak­er by trade, served with the New York Vol­un­teers in the defense of Sack­et­t’s Har­bor, and lived to be 105 years old. Above, you’ll see crowds lin­ing the streets of Brook­lyn and watch­ing the mil­i­tary pro­ces­sion pass by. Some 25,000 peo­ple paid their respects that day.

via matthi­as­rasch­er

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Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin: Live at the Royal Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

in Music | June 15th, 2012

Here’s a Fri­day night dou­ble fea­ture for the die-hard rock and roll fan: two full-length Led Zep­pelin movies.

Both films grew out of band man­ag­er Peter Grant’s dream of bring­ing the expe­ri­ence of a Led Zep­pelin con­cert to the big screen. And although both were essen­tial­ly attempts at the same thing, the two films were shot more than three years apart, so they show the band in two dis­tinct peri­ods of its career.

Led Zep­pelin Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall:

On Jan­u­ary 9, 1970, less than three months after the release of Led Zep­pelin II, the band played the his­toric Roy­al Albert Hall on the third night of an eight-show UK tour. By all accounts it was a high-ener­gy show. When the con­cert was over, Nick Logan of the New Music Express wrote:

I spoke to Jim­my Page after the show and he con­fessed that the whole band had suf­fered extreme nerves before­hand, main­ly because peo­ple like John Lennon, Eric Clap­ton and Jeff Beck had request­ed tick­ets. “But it was just like it was at the Albert Hall in the sum­mer,” said Jim­my, “with every­one danc­ing around the stage. It was a great feel­ing. What could be bet­ter than hav­ing every­one clap­ping and shout­ing along? It’s inde­scrib­able; but it just makes you feel that every­thing is worth­while.

You can read Logan’s review of the show, along with oth­er press reports, at LedZeppelin.com. The con­cert was filmed by Peter White­head and Stan­ley Dorf­man. But the band was unhap­py with the qual­i­ty of the footage, and it was put away until the release of the two-disc Led Zep­pelin DVD in 2003. The film (above) cap­tures the pow­er­ful ear­ly phase of the band’s career. Here’s the set list:

  1. We’re Gonna Groove
  2. I Can’t Quit You Baby
  3. Dazed and Con­fused
  4. White Sum­mer
  5. What Is and What Should Nev­er Be
  6. How Many More Times
  7. Moby Dick
  8. Whole Lot­ta Love
  9. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Break­down
  10. C’mon Every­body
  11. Some­thin’ Else
  12. Bring It On Home

The Song Remains the Same:

Unhap­py with the Roy­al Albert Hall film, Grant wait­ed sev­er­al years before try­ing to pro­duce anoth­er con­cert film. With lit­tle more than a week left in the band’s 1973 North Amer­i­can tour, he hired film­mak­er Joe Mas­sot to doc­u­ment the final three shows at New York’s Madi­son Square Gar­den. Mas­sot scram­bled to assem­ble a film crew before the con­certs, which took place July 27–29. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the pro­duc­tion was a dis­or­ga­nized mess. Again the band was unhap­py with the con­cert footage. Even­tu­al­ly Mas­sot was fired from the project and Peter Clifton was hired to com­plete the film. In 1974 the band rent­ed space at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in Eng­land to film sup­ple­men­tary con­cert footage.

The movie was final­ly released in Octo­ber of 1976. Fans loved it but crit­ics found the film ama­teur­ish and self-indul­gent. The con­cert footage was inter­spersed with “fan­ta­sy sequences” filmed by Mas­sot of Grant and the band mem­bers play­ing dif­fer­ent roles. “The Song Remains the Same is not a great film,” Page said lat­er, “but there’s no point in mak­ing excus­es. It’s just a rea­son­ably hon­est state­ment of where we were at that par­tic­u­lar time.” The con­cert cap­tures the band at the height of their fame. Here are the songs played in the con­cert scenes:

  1. Bron-Yr-Aur
  2. Rock and Roll
  3. Black Dog
  4. Since I’ve Been Lov­ing You
  5. No Quar­ter
  6. The Song Remains the Same
  7. The Rain Song
  8. Dazed and Con­fused
  9. Stair­way to Heav­en
  10. Moby Dick
  11. Heart­break­er
  12. Whole Lot­ta Love

 

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A Master List of 500 Free Courses From Great Universities

in Online Courses | June 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the past two days, our list of Free Online Movies has been get­ting some good expo­sure. And we’ve got no com­plaints. But while assem­bling the movie list, we were also busy putting togeth­er a list of 500 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Here’s the low­down: This mas­ter list lets you down­load free cours­es from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and UC Berke­ley. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites. Right now you’ll find 55 cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy, 50 in His­to­ry, 50 in Com­put­er Sci­ence, 35 in Physics, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. Most of the cours­es were recent­ly pro­duced. But, in some cas­es, we’ve lay­ered in lec­ture series by famous intel­lec­tu­als record­ed years ago. Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list.

  • African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle – YouTube– iTunes – Clay Car­son, Stan­ford
  • Finan­cial Mar­kets 2011 — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site – Robert Shiller, Yale
  • Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse – YouTube – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
  • Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy – iTunes Video – YouTube – Robert Sapol­sky, Stan­ford
  • Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) – Down­load Course – Chris­tine Hayes, Yale.
  • Heidegger’s Being & Time – iTunes — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Inten­sive Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence Using C, PHP, and JavaScript – Mul­ti­ple For­mats – iTunes – David Malan, Har­vard
  • Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy and Par­ti­cle Physics – YouTube – Sean Car­roll, Cal­tech
  • Invi­ta­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture – Web Site — David Dam­rosch, Har­vard
  • iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment in iOS5 - HD Video iTunes — Stan­dard-Def Video iTunes — Paul Hegar­ty, Stan­ford
  • Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – YouTube — Web Site- Michael Sandel, Har­vard
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage – iTunes – John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Physics for Future Pres­i­dents – YouTube – Richard Muller, UC Berke­ley
  • Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics – Web Site - Richard Feyn­man, Pre­sent­ed at Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land
  • Sci­ence, Mag­ic and Reli­gion - iTunes — YouTube – Courte­nay Raiai, UCLA
  • The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 – YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Down­load Course – Amy Hunger­ford, Yale
  • The Art of Liv­ing – Web Site – Team taught, Stan­ford

Vis­it this list of Free Cours­es for many more hours of free enrich­ment. Sep­a­rate­ly, you might also want to check out our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons. It offers free lessons in over 40 lan­guages.

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