500 KM Asteroid Hits Earth

in Science, Video - Science | September 3rd, 2008

The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel has pro­duced a rather impres­sive (though cer­tain­ly bleak) sim­u­la­tion of what would hap­pen:

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Stephen Hawking Asks Big Questions About The Universe

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | August 19th, 2008

Speak­ing at the 2008 TED con­fer­ence, physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing asks some Big Ques­tions about our uni­verse: How did the uni­verse begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? And, dur­ing his ten minute talk, he offers some thoughts on how we might go about answer­ing these big enchi­la­da ques­tions. (We’ve added the clip to our YouTube playlist.)

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Top Ten Psychology Videos

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | August 11th, 2008

Psy­ch­Cen­tral has post­ed its list of the ten best psy­chol­o­gy videos avail­able on the web. Below, we have post­ed links to the videos them­selves. But if you want a quick descrip­tion of each clip, then def­i­nite­ly read through the orig­i­nal post. Thanks to Kottke.org for bring­ing this to light.

1. An Unqui­et Mind: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on Man­ic-Depres­sive Ill­ness

2. The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment

3. My Stroke of Insight

4. The Para­dox of Choice

5. Trapped: Men­tal Ill­ness in America’s Pris­ons

6. Teen Brain

7. Depres­sion: Out of the Shad­ows

8. Thin

9. I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help: Research on Poor Insight and How We Can Help

10. The Psy­chol­o­gy of Glob­al Warm­ing

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Understanding Modern Physics: Download Leonard Susskind Video Lectures

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | July 20th, 2008

What’s the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics? Here’s your chance to find out. Below, you will find three cours­es (the first of even­tu­al­ly six) pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his new book on that sub­ject here). Freely avail­able on iTunes and YouTube (see below), these video lec­tures trace the begin­nings of mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, tak­ing you from Isaac New­ton (or New­ton­ian Mechan­ics) to Albert Ein­stein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Notably, these cours­es were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that the con­tent was pitched to an audi­ence much like you — that is, smart peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an exten­sive knowl­edge of physics. Watch the video below — the first lec­ture that kicks off the series of cours­es — and you will see what I mean.

Final­ly, in case you’re won­der­ing, the next three cours­es (cov­er­ing quan­tum mechan­ics, elec­tro­mag­net­ism, cos­mol­o­gy, black holes, and more) will be pre­sent­ed this com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and, once taped, we will give you a heads up. Sign up for our RSS Feed and you will be sure to get an update. Also see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es for many more cours­es along these lines.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

Bonus Mate­r­i­al

In 2006–2007, Susskind taped a sep­a­rate series of lec­tures on Quan­tum Mechan­ics. You can down­load them as free video lec­tures as well:

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The African-American Freedom Struggle & Barack Obama’s American Dream (Free Stanford Course)

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses, Video - Science | July 15th, 2008

How about a blog post that does­n’t deal with the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing The New York­er’s clum­sy attempt at sat­i­riz­ing Barack and Michelle Oba­ma .… ? (Update: See the imag­ined, right-wing satir­i­cal car­toon of John McCain.)

When Stan­ford launched its new YouTube channel sev­er­al weeks ago, it debuted with a com­plete series of lec­tures from an under­grad­u­ate course called “African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle.” Taught by Clay­borne Car­son, a promi­nent his­to­ry pro­fes­sor who has edit­ed and pub­lished the papers of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., the course overviews the strug­gle for lib­er­ty and com­plete equal­i­ty, mov­ing from W.E.B. Du Bois (ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry), to MLK and Mal­colm X, down to Barack Oba­ma today. The lec­ture below, enti­tled “Barack Oba­ma’s Amer­i­can Dream,” sit­u­ates Oba­ma with­in the larg­er sweep of African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s rather con­ver­sa­tion­al in style, and it does a good job of get­ting into Oba­ma’s per­son­al biog­ra­phy. The com­plete lec­tures can be watched in their entire­ty on YouTube here, or down­loaded in video via iTunes. And be sure to see our larg­er col­lec­tion of 250 Free Online Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties, where you will also find this course.

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70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

  • @GoogleTalks
    • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
  • Al Jazeera Eng­lish
    • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
  • Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
    • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
  • BBC
    • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
  • BBC World­wide
    • Dit­to.
  • Big Think
    • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
  • Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • Brook­lyn Muse­um
    • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
  • Char­lie Rose
    • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
  • Cit­i­zen Tube
    • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
  • Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
    • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
  • Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
    • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

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Top 10 TEDTalks (and Do Schools Today Kill Creativity?)

in TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | June 28th, 2008

Late in the week, TEDTalks named its top ten videos. Whether this is a quan­ti­ta­tive or qual­i­ta­tive judg­ment, I am not sure.  On the list, you’ll find Al Gore talk­ing about how to avert a cli­mate cri­sis, David Gal­lo show­ing amaz­ing under­wa­ter crea­tures, and Ken Robin­son describ­ing why schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty (we’ve post­ed that one below). Again the full list is here.

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Superstring Theory Explained Dynamically

in Science, Video - Science | June 26th, 2008

“In clear, non­tech­ni­cal lan­guage, string the­o­rist Bri­an Greene explains how our under­stand­ing of the uni­verse has evolved from Ein­stein’s notions of grav­i­ty and space-time to super­string the­o­ry, where minus­cule strands of ener­gy vibrat­ing in 11 dimen­sions cre­ate every par­ti­cle and force in the uni­verse.” If you want to get deep­er into Greene’s work on string the­o­ry, I would rec­om­mend refer­ring back to this pre­vi­ous post.

This dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tion was made at the TED con­fer­ence. (PS You may also want to see Boing­Bo­ing’s new post: Top 10 TedTalks.)

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