There should be plenty of things to watch about Darwin this year, as we mark 200 years since his birth, and 50 since the law (in the traditional sense) of Evolution by Natural Selection was first presented.
This is the first in a 3 part series, presented by Dawkins, with the following parts being shown on Channel 4 in the UK, next, and the following Monday.
Running time: 48 mins.
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The first in a 2 part series that takes the theme of conquering cold, as the premise for human progress.
Here, the late, great, Maynard Smith talks about what it means to say something is living. Like many virtuosos, he makes something difficult seem simple, with utterly clear explanations – the lecture is a small masterpiece.
He considers that what some biologists (such as Stuart Kauffman) define as life i.e. self reproducing things that metabolize, does not differentiate between life and something like a flame and that we must always add heredity (of infinite possible variety) to account for what we consider to be truly alive.
This leads to life as seen from an information perspective i.e how we transmit information between generations, and he outlines 9 milestones in the evolution of life from this vantage point, from replicating molecules to electronic information communication.
The history of the first great particle accelerator.
time: 23 mins
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Spacefest 2009 will be held in San Diego Feb 19-22 next year in San Diego. This trailer is a great taster. It is also a way to plug the place where I found it, my favorite new weblog: Bad Astronomy, which is bad ass, indeed.
This has to be the most extreme example of what Smashing Telly set out to promote, the antithesis of ‘moronic 30 second dog on skateboard’ clips, this is 42 hours of gloriously intelligent video.
With people not much older than Fuller, like George Orwell, having not a single audio or video recording of themselves in existence, Buckminster Fuller fans can consider themselves lucky that such a film legacy exists.
In 1975 Buckminster Fuller recorded these sessions entitled ‘Everything I know’, in Philadelphia. This is the first film in the series, the entire set is available at the Wiki below.
1 hr 19 min 59 sec
Murray Gell-Mann: Beauty and truth in physics
Gell-Mann is possibly the single most important human being alive. Worth a listen. I particularly like his innocent, eccentric giggling at his own jokes and his enthusiasm – the mark of someone who has never been coached in public speaking by a PR flack, because he transcends that kind of crap and appears genuine.
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Day to Day communications at CERN in 1974, what a wonderfully prescient title for a short film about a place that would permanently change global, day to day communications, a decade and a half later, when the Web was invented there.
I love this film. it perfectly represents a time and place. The opening sequence with Cat Stevens and time bleached, aerial footage of Geneva makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.