Since the introduction of open lectures by progressive thinking educational institutions like M.I.T., Stanford, Duke, Yale, and others, many exceptional presentations have bubbled to the top and should be watched.

Here are five must see open course video lectures as recommended by Virginia Heffernan of the NYTimes.

1. Walter H. G. Lewin, Powers of 10, M.I.T. (At about 2:40 watch Power of Ten video that is cut from the lecture)
2. Randy Pausch, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Carnegie Mellon
3. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, Duke and M.I.T. (the rest of his short clips)
4. Langdon Hammer, Modern Poetry, Yale
5. Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), Yale

I also recommend Mark Schlissel, Introduction - The Cell Theory, Bacteria, Animal Cells, Evolution (Viruses and Midochondria). (The good stuff starts at about 13:00).

I listened to about a quarter of all the lectures from this course—most of which were over my head, but the first and second (mp3) classes are fascinating and make me wish I studied biology at school.

What would you do first with the ability to travel through time? Desmond Warzel shares some clever writing, with Wikihistory, a message board by time travellers.

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?

At 18:33:10, SilverFox316 wrote:
Easy for you to say, BigChill, since to my recollection you’ve never volunteered to go back and fix it. You think I’ve got nothing better to do?

What would you do with a time machine?

I’ve grown out of my teenage fandom for all things Trek, but I found these excerpts from William Shatner’s new autobiography, Up Till Now, very interesting. They encompass a range of experiences from his time on Star Trek, where he confesses being the colossal jerk of legend, to his poignant recollections of the death of his third wife.

Honestly, I always assumed he killed her, but now I’m not so sure. Either way, I find this kind of bear-all openess, from a legend such as Shatner, riveting.

I just watched Dave Eggers TED talk about the 826 Valencia project. It’s inspiring and funny; please enjoy:

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don’t need to go that far, he reminds us—it’s as simple as asking a teacher “How can I help?” He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School.

I’m not sure if it can be considered sci-fi, since Bubble City takes place in “the real world” involving potentially real technology, but it’s got enough techie panache and thrilling conspiracy that make it the most fun fiction I’ve read in awhile.

Bubble City, a serial novel currently being written by the brilliant Aaron Swartz.

Ira Glass bequeaths the tricks of the trade in four YouTube videos that are extremely interesting, whether or not your are in the publishing/podcasting/video making business.

(via)

About a month ago I entered the SAT Blogger Challenge, an experiment to see how regular “bloggers” like myself compare to high school students in the United States with regard to essay writing ability.

I got a 4.

Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t even remember to spell-check it, but a few minutes ago I entered the Blogger SAT challenge.

We’re especially interested in finding out if bloggers, because of their regular practice in short-form writing, might be able to perform well on the test. On the blogger’s side, they’re used to cranking out pointless rants on a moment’s notice. But highschoolers are well-practiced at responding to their teachers’ inane writing prompts. Bloggers get to choose their topics, so blogging may not transfer well to the SAT’s writing prompt. Who can perform better on the SAT test? There’s only one way to find out.

So, without further ado, we present the Blogger SAT Challenge. We’ve prepared a (relatively) controlled environment where our victims volunteers can respond to a sample SAT question.

I just want to mention that 21 minutes goes REALLY fast when the pressure is on.

Depending on my “grade”, I’ll decide in the future whether this particular essay ever sees the light of day.

If you’ve got 20 minutes to kill, check out this Kevin Smith clip as he shares his interesting and very funny experiences rewriting the new Superman movie. Previous Superman story post, but Kevin tells it best. (Oh and by way of warning, if you’re not familiar with Kevin Smith you might want to know he’s infamous for his colourful language).

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

This clip is from a double DVD entitled “An Evening with Kevin Smith.”

(via The Sneeze)

Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, the new book by Julian Dibbell is now available.

Julian’s goal was to earn more money selling imaginary goods (ie. online gaming goods) than from his “real job” as a professional writer. He came up short of his goal by only a few hundred dollars and, though I haven’t read it yet, I understand the book documents the entire endevour from day 1.

In addition to bookstores selling his book, Play Money will also be available in the virtual world of Second Life (in the currency of that world—Linden dollars).

From the press release:

In-game versions of Play Money designed by Second Life coder/publisher Falk Bergman are available for L$750. These copies can be signed by Dibbell at his in-Second Life interview with journalist Wagner James Au on July 27th. For the Second Life resident who needs something a bit more tactile, L$6250 buys a real-life copy of Play Money, shipped with care to the buyer’s real life address, in addition to the standard in-game version.

(At the time of this press release, Linden dollars are trading at approximately L$300.00 to the US$1.00. Adjusted to US dollars, an online copy costs US$2.50, and the price of a real-life copy bought in-game is around US$20.85.)

I’ve previously written about Julian’s professional gameplaying.

My friend Gavin writes short stories and posts them on the web so that we can indulge in a minute or two of his brilliance. I just read one of his excellent stories, The Jumper, and I loved it. If you don’t think it’s hilarious, you are probably an android.

This is pretty interesting: Wikipedia users edit a meta article for Esquire.

This week, an Esquire editor invited Wikipedia users to edit an article that will appear in the magazine. Wikipedia users reacted strongly, with over 500 edits to WP:ITAAW before the article was frozen.

Editor A.J. Jacobs wrote the original article, which was riddled with deliberate errors. These errors were quickly corrected by users, who rewrote many sections from scratch. Jacobs said of the massive edits made by Wikipedians,

I just wanted to thank you all so much for participating in this experiment. It was absolutely fascinating. I was riveted to my computer, pressing refresh every 45 seconds to see the next iteration. And the next and the next.

The article will presumably run in the November 2005 issue.

In an effort to educate the masses via easily drawn stick figures my friend Gavin has put together a quick step-by-step explanation of how indie films are made. New Media students and Drama geeks alike, take note.