NYC book club to feature Sagan family book

On December 10, the Secular Humanist Society of New York book club will discuss Acquiring Genomes by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan; details here (Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience has been featured in the past).

Early animated feature "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" screening in NYC

On November 11 and November 15, the Museum of Modern Art will screen, with live piano accompaniment, one of the earliest animated features ever made (and made by one of the earliest female animators), Lotte Reiniger's 1926 Arabian Nights fantasy The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Reiniger made films by painstakingly animating intricate silhouette cutouts, and the results are gorgeous to behold. The screening is part of a series on film preservation, and so I assume it's a restored version; I haven't been able to find out exactly how (or if) this differs from the version that has been available on DVD for a while, but the runtime given is 8 minutes longer than the DVD's.

Francisco Ferrer centennial today

I'm too busy right now to do a real post (and I will eventually put up a post about the 2009 reunion, which was highly successful), but wanted to mark the occasion; I've posted previously about the subject here, here, and here.

Francisco Ferrer centennial

In only a few weeks, October 13, 2009 will mark the 100th anniversary of the death of educator Francisco Ferrer, an important figure in the history of freethought, education reform, and anarchism, whose execution for attempting to found secular schools in Spain sparked a long-lived movement in the United States to preserve his ideas and introduce freedom in education. I've already written blog posts on the 2006 and 2008 anniversaries, that give the background as well as I can. (I'm not going to organize a full-scale blog-a-thon like my Carl Sagan one, but feel free to post something appropriate on the anniversary, and I'll link to it.) Also, this Saturday brings the 2009 reunion of the Friends of the Modern School alumni association, held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, near the site of the modern school and colony which was at Stelton, New Jersey; this is not just a way for people associated with the school to keep in touch, but a way of preserving the history and discussing related issues; members of the general public who are interested in the history are welcome to attend.

What happened to Google Video?

I recently noticed that the webpages for individual videos on Google Video (I'm not talking about other pages on the site such as the front page or search pages) have had a bunch of little changes in layout and features made to them. To see what I mean, compare this screenshot of the old interface to the current version of the same video's page.

Frustratingly, some of the old features and video information have seemingly been completely removed, including the "view video at 100% or 200% size" menu options (turning some videos into a blurry mess when blown up to the full player window — yes, you can get around this by making your browser window smaller, but it's not exact, and it shouldn't be that hard to let the user specify whatever exact zoom ratio one wants); the "comments" and "more from user" tabs (the latter tab was always poorly implemented, with its pages of thumbnails to click through, but it was better than nothing); the green text line underneath the video title that lists the video's author info; and the listing, next to the video title, of the date a video was posted (replaced by a less precise "2 years ago" or the like).

The site has been circling the drain for a long time, as other, newer video sites have become more popular, particularly since Google disabled the ability to add new videos to the site earlier this year (though they left the existing videos alone at that time), and the old interface was somewhat clunky. But it was one of the oldest video websites around, and still has a sizable amount of content. And the changes don't seem to be netting much discussion (in fact the admittedly quick searching I've done hasn't turned up any discussion on blogs or elsewhere about the changes).

dorkbot-nyc is coming this fall

dorkbot-nyc, the funky meeting space for robot builders, programmers, nerds and other "people doing strange things with electricity" (although "We're very flexible on the people, strange and electricity parts"), is resuming this fall after a summer break (as it does each year); the details for the September meeting have just been posted.

Although I attend every meeting, my blogging about dorkbot-nyc has been somewhat irregular over the years (mostly due to laziness), but this season I'll try to be more conscientious about it.

"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" screening in NYC

The 1964 film by Sergei Paradjanov which provided the title for Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's book (and whose DVD release was noted here previously) is being screened, in a new 35mm print with subtitles, at Anthology Film Archives in NYC on the 21st and 23rd. AFA's website describes it as "[a] boldly conceived and astonishingly photographed blend of enchanting mythology, hypnotic religious iconography, and pagan magic."

new blog: According to Carl Sagan

There's a brand-new Sagan-related blog in town; topics in the 4 posts so far have ranged from the evolutionary origins of sports to neglected rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. Since Carl weighed in on a truly wide variety of topics, there should be plenty of material to blog about.

(Hat tip: Francois Tremblay; cross-posted to Celebrating Sagan)