February 6, 2006

New Discoveries in New Guinea

It’s amazing how the reticular activating system works. Just yesterday I’m watching the excellent National Geographic documentary Guns, Germs and Steel based UCLA professor Dr. Jared Diamond’s book of the same name. In it he discusses at length the people of New Guinea and the reasons for their lack of material wealth when compared with those in North America and Europe.

Then today I’m scanning my blogs and see a post from 37signals pointing me too an article in The Independent entitled “Scientists hail discovery of hundreds of new species in remote New Guinea” with the following quote:

An astonishing mist-shrouded “lost world” of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists… The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a “Garden of Eden”… In a jungle camp site, surrounded by giant flowers and unknown plants, the researchers watched rare bowerbirds perform elaborate courtship rituals. The surrounding forest was full of strange mammals, such as tree kangaroos and spiny anteaters, which appeared totally unafraid, suggesting no previous contact with humans.

How cool is that?

I’d highly recommend checking out the documentary or listening to Diamond’s book on audio.

What a fascinating world we live in huh?

February 6, 2006

webcast.berkeley Courses Podcasted

I was very excited this semester to see what Berkeley was going to unveil for their webcast.berkeley courses. We were told at the podcasting expo that some of their courses were going to be podcasted and that they had a sweet set up. Well they most certainly do. The audio quality it great, the courses look fascinating, and we just entered in all the ones they’re offering this semester:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/Results/Publisher/webcast.berkeley/467

And here’s the ones they are currently podcasting:

Operating Systems and System Programming
Economic Analysis – Microeconomics
European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present
US Foreign Policy After 9/11
Animal Behavior
Introduction to Computers
Introduction to Human Nutrition
Descriptive Introduction to Physics
Introductory Physics
Undergraduate Colloquium on Political Science

And throughout the month of February they’ll be offering more of them as podcasts. For the ones that aren’t currently being podcasted they can be listened to or viewed as streaming audio & video. Let us all offer our thanks to UC-Berkeley and start learning.