Miscellaneous

Memorable Online Courses:

Physics Lectures by Walter Lewin (Youtube channel)

Very well done demos. Lewin is clearly a master of his craft.

Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Materials by Polina Anikeeva at MIT (edX course)

Evolution Lectures by Stephen C. Stearns of Yale (Youtube channel)

Introduction to Solid State Chemistry by Prof. Donald Sadoway at MIT (Youtube channel)

Personality Lectures by Jordan Peterson (Youtube channel)

Rise and Fall of British Empire by Prof P. Allitt (The Great Courses)

History of Russia by Prof. Mark Steinberg (The Great Courses)

Story of Human Language by Prof. John McWhorter (The Great Courses)

Never thought I would enjoy linguistics this much.

Living the French Revolution by Suzanne Desan (The Great Courses)

Silicon Photonics Design, Fabrication and Data Analysis by Lukas Chrostowski at UBC (edX course)

Decent amount of fundamentals, and practical intro to Silicon Photonics. Includes designing your own chip and going through fabrication remotely. Rare to find a course of this quality and depth online.

Nature of Earth: An Introduction to Geology by Prof. John J. Renton (The Great Courses)

Hilariously reports things to be “as far as he knows” even when they are widely held to be facts.

Besides being a great accompaniment to a trip through the southwest, this course taught me about the Chinese Seismometer.

Each dragon head contains a carefully balanced brass ball which falls out into the corresponding frog’s mouth in response to the passing of a seismic wave along the axis of the dragon’s tongue.

This incredible instrument was supposedly used by the Emperor’s government to know in which direction to send aid in the event of a distant earthquake.

Nanotechnology: A Maker’s Course from Duke University (Coursera)

Not deep at all, but it helps to get familiarized with the fabrication and characterization equipment.

Fall and Rise of China by Prof. Richard Baum (The Great Courses)

The professor, R Baum, famously got his hands on some surveillance documents in the 70s [as a grad student in Taiwan] which detailed the secret proceedings of the Chinese Communist party.

Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior by Stephen C. Stearns (Open Yale Courses)

Hardcore History - Dan Carlin (podcast)

The Character of Physical Law and QED Lectures by Richard Feyman

Hands down the best moment of the “Character of Physical Law” lectures

“At the time of Keplar, the question of what drove the planets around the Sun was answered by saying there were angels behind here [points behind planet, tangential to the orbit] beating their wings and pushing the planets along, around the orbit. As we’ll see, that answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is the angels sit in a different direction and the wings go [points in radial direction towards the sun]…”

Great point from QED lecture 1 (Newton’s Lenses):

Newton is usually thought of as a theorist, but he got some of his deeper insights about light from making his own lenses. He knew that when polishing lenses with ever finer grit polish, the lenses became clear—not because the scratches would be polished away completely, but because the finest polish left scratches that were invisible…but definitely there. The fact that scratches below a certain size became invisible hinted at something like a wave nature of light and refined Newton’s theory of reflection.

Talks:

“Fun with Metals” - Robert Pond

Lots of gems in this talk. For example:

https://youtu.be/o1FVwJ6NX1g

“The Electricity Metaphor for the Web’s Future” - Jeff Bezos

Washing machines used to screw into light-bulb sockets and maim people (in the pre-switch years you would need to unscrew the male socket to shut off your appliance).

“Intro to Lockpicking” - Preston Thomas, TOOOL: The Open Org. of Lockpicking

Lockpicking is fun, but this talk is especially interesting as an example of truly explaining something down to its first principles. A good rule of thumb is comparing your understanding of X to the level of understanding this talk provides about the basics of locks and how to pick them.

“What Bodies Think About: Bio-electric Computation Outside the Nervous System” - Prof. Michael Levin

Seeing Things in a Different Light - Stephen Curry [Bragg Lecture]

Anatomy of Next by Founder’s Fund (podcast, not technically a talk)

From an episode I listened to recently about space travel/mars:

“Stop day trading and look up.”

Youtube Channels:

AvE

ElectroBOOM

3blue1brown

SmarterEveryDay

AppliedScience

zefrank1

Movies

Kin Dza Dza

Russian Sci-Fi masterpiece.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/yuorWUx6c0Y

Brilliant moment when the shorter “Chetlyanin” alien street musician explains that “having enough Ketzeh [rare gold-esque substance] gives you the right to wear maroon pants” and that means:

The Etsilops [the corrupt police of their planet Plyuk] aren’t allowed to beat you at night. Never. [this last word he says in a particularly wistful tone — not being in possession of enough Ketzeh to wear maroon pants himself

Etsilops scenes: https://youtu.be/iTqAt6sZ2sM https://youtu.be/4xqTqcS4sXc

Scene with the quote above: https://youtu.be/kK79aufv1_g

Art

Favorite installation @ Burning Man 2018 (laying under this thing at night was incredible)

Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep

Russian Children’s Stuff: tbd

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest. ~Confucius