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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Fukushima Reactor Explained & Tsunami 101

in Current Affairs, Science, Video - Politics/Society | March 15th, 2011

We have two quick primers for you. First, this CNN video breaks down the prob­lems afflict­ing the Fukushi­ma Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Japan. Give the video three min­utes of your time, and you will get a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive overview of what’s going wrong.

And though it amaz­ing­ly feels like old news now, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic pro­vides a quick tuto­r­i­al on tsunamis. Please note that the video includes some dis­turb­ing footage.

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Who Is the World’s Most Typical Person?

in Current Affairs, Life | March 15th, 2011

In a world of 7 bil­lion peo­ple, who is the most “typ­i­cal”? That’s the ques­tion Nation­al Geo­graph­ic asks (and answers) in a visu­al­ly engag­ing video that kicks off a year-long look at glob­al pop­u­la­tion issues. Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s web­site now hosts a fea­ture arti­cle that pref­aces the series and also an accom­pa­ny­ing pho­to gallery.

On a rather relat­ed note, we’re all watch­ing the news in Japan go from bad to worse. First an earth­quake. Then a tsuna­mi. Now a poten­tial nuclear dis­taster. If you want to give a hand, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to the Japan­ese relief effort. Char­i­ty­Nav­i­ga­tor will help you eval­u­ate spe­cif­ic char­i­ties oper­at­ing in Japan and avoid scams. A decent place to begin…

via Brain Pick­ings

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Live Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Coverage on Al Jazeera

in Current Affairs, Television | March 10th, 2011

A quick news bul­letin: Japan was struck by a mas­sive 8.9 earth­quake today, fol­lowed by some dev­as­tat­ing tsunamis (see clip below). Al Jazeera is pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age (in Eng­lish) on the web. Start watch­ing here. Or find anoth­er live stream from NHK in Japan. What’s more, The Wall Street Jour­nal has a live blog ded­i­cat­ed to the earth­quake, and Google has set up a peo­ple find­er for those liv­ing in the coun­try. Our best wish­es to the peo­ple of Japan…

Tsuna­mi:

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Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington

in Current Affairs, Television | March 9th, 2011

We take you back to anoth­er era when fund­ing for pub­lic broad­cast­ing was in doubt – to 1969, when Richard Nixon planned to cut PBS’ fund­ing from $20 mil­lion to $10 mil­lion. Here Fred Rogers, the gen­tle cre­ator of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, gets six short min­utes before Sen­a­tor John Pas­tore, the chair­man of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and makes his pitch for pub­licly-fund­ed edu­ca­tion­al tele­vi­sion. In those 360 sec­onds, Rogers gets the gruff sen­a­tor to do a com­plete 180 – to end up say­ing “It looks like you just earned the 20 mil­lion dol­lars.” And, indeed, it turned out just that way. Those were the days…

via @webacion

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James Bond in Drag For International Women’s Day

in Current Affairs, Film | March 8th, 2011

We Are Equals pro­duced this 2‑minute video for the 100th anniver­sary of Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day. Daniel Craig and the great Dame Judi Dench reprise their roles from the last two James Bond films — with a twist. We’d say more, but the video speaks for itself. Enjoy!

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Michael Moore Tells Wisconsin Teachers “America Isn’t Broke”

in Current Affairs, Education, Film | March 6th, 2011

Jon Stew­art put it nice­ly. Now film­mak­er Michael Moore takes the gloves off. Vis­it­ing Madi­son, Wis­con­sin this Sat­ur­day, he told the crowd “Amer­i­ca isn’t broke.” Rather, the mon­ey that used to run the coun­try sim­ply got siphoned out of the sys­tem and put into unpro­duc­tive Wall Street accounts. Strong words, but if you con­sid­er that most US cor­po­ra­tions pay no US tax­es, that bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers pay far low­er tax­es than the rest of you, that we’re pre­serv­ing the unsus­tain­able Bush tax breaks that over­whelm­ing­ly ben­e­fit the extreme­ly wealthy, then you start to think about our nation­al deficits and Wis­con­sin’s bat­tles with teach­ers in a dif­fer­ent light.

Make no mis­take about it. The deficits are a real prob­lem. And any tru­ly exces­sive perks for pub­lic work­ers should be cut. But the mid­dle class should­n’t bear the sole brunt of the nation­al sac­ri­fice. And, so far, that’s all we see. Main Street took the hit in 2008 while Wall Street walked. And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing again…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jon Stew­art: The Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

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Jon Stewart: Teachers Have it Too Good (Wink)

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | March 4th, 2011

Jon Stew­art had to do it. He had to con­nect the dots. We’re going after the pub­lic ser­vants try­ing to do some good. But how about the non-con­tribut­ing bankers who kept their per­son­al gravy train rolling at tax­pay­er expense? Or the hedge fund man­agers who pay dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er tax­es than almost any­one read­ing this site? 15%?? And let’s not for­get that some of our our largest cor­po­ra­tions – includ­ing GE and Exxon — have recent­ly paid no US income tax? Ulti­mate­ly, this all gets down to who funds your next elec­tion. Banks and cor­po­ra­tions do. Kids and pub­lic ser­vants don’t. David Brooks makes that point rather well. I’m all for sac­ri­fice, but let’s make it fair and shared. Or is that idea too “social­ist” (or what we quaint­ly used to call “demo­c­ra­t­ic”)?

Relat­ed Note:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca is NOT Broke”

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