Home

The film, produced by the brilliant and ecology-minded French director Luc Besson, is the work of acclaimed aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, whose cinematography, covering landscapes in 54 countries, provides a journey you’ll never be able to experience anywhere else. Bertrand’s views of Earth from above are so powerfully exquisite they will bring you to tears.

Nut, along with its enthralling images, the film delivers alarming statistics about climate change and how quickly it is transforming our beautiful planet into a place that will be uninhabitable. Glenn Close does a beautiful job with the English language narration, Salma Hayek voices the Spanish version and other ecology-minded actors contribute the French and other language editions. They’re all available online.

The documentary is intended to spur you to sustainable behavior, and ends with some instruction about how you can help conserve our Home.

Besson told me that the reason they named the film Home, although it’s actually extra-terrestrial in its point of view, is because “the word ‘home’ has the same meaning in all cultures, all languages. It is a place that people of all ages–even little kids–can identify and love. It is central to their sense of themselves. Earth is the only ‘home’ we have, so we must care for it that way.”

This is a must see film, especially for kids. Well, and parents, too. And, yes, any and everyone who thinks about what the future holds for our species and all the others that share our Home.

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Fractals - The Colors Of Infinity (By Arthur Clarke)

The Mandelbrot set – someone has called it the thumb-print of God – is one of the most beautiful and remarkable discoveries in the entire history of mathematics.
With Arthur C. Clarke as narrator and interviews with a number of notable mathematicians, including Benoît Mandelbrot, this program graphically illustrates how simple formulas can lead to complicated results: it explains the set, what it means, its internal consistency, and the revolutions in thought resulting from its discovery. Asked if the real universe goes on forever, Stephen Hawking defines its limit of smallness; the Mandelbrot set, on the other hand, may go on forever.
The invention of the silicon chip in the 1970’s created a revolution in computers and communication and hence transformed our way of life. We are now seeing another revolution which is going to change our view of the universe and give us a better understanding of its’ working.
This film will explore the fractal universe and on our voyage of discovery, we will be helped by: Professor Ian Stewart of the Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, an author of over 100 published scientific works; Dr. Michael Barnsley, former professor of mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology who received a 2.5 million dollar government grant in 1991 to develop a fractal image compression systems.

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The Future of Nano - Electric Power Generation

Justin Hall-Tipping CEO of "Nanoholdings" Explains how nanotechnology is set to change the future of energy and replace fossil and nuclear fuels.

Nano: The Next Dimension

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies represent a formidable challenge for the research community and industry.

World-class infrastructure, new fundamental knowledge, novel equipment for characterisation and manufacturing, multi-disciplinary education and training for innovative and creative engineering, and a responsible attitude to societal demands are required.

This documentary film, made available by the European Commission, provides a glimpse of some of the many activities that are being carried out in Europe in these fast-grozing fields of research and technological development.

Circus School

A revealing look at the rigorous physical training endured by young Chinese acrobatic students.

Future Intelligence (Discovery)

Catch a first-time glimpse at smart technology that will put android helpers in the home, network commuters and entire cities to the Web, and bring us entertainment systems that can virtually make dreams come true.

Advances in artificial intelligence are creating machines with near human-like mental agility. Intelligence will be embedded everywhere – even in our clothing, thanks to smaller, more powerful computers.

Soon, we will be able to build computers with artificial intelligence and processing power that rivals the human brain.

Intelligence will be everywhere, in our clothing, our vehicles and homes. Intelligent robots will serve us – until they don’t feel like doing so anymore. And what happens then…?

Revolution OS

Revolution OS is a documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

The film begins in medias res with an IPO, and then sets the historical stage by showing the beginnings of software development back in the day when software was shared on paper tape for the price of the paper itself. It then segues to Bill Gates’s Open Letter to Hobbyists in which he asks Computer Hobbyists to not share, but to buy software. (This letter was written by Gates when Microsoft was still based in Arizona and spelled “Micro-Soft”.)

Richard Stallman then explains how and why he left the MIT Lab for Artificial Intelligence in order to devote his life to the development of free software, as well as how he started with the GNU project. Linus Torvalds is interviewed on his development of the Linux kernel as well as on the GNU/Linux naming controversy and Linux’s further evolution, including its commercialization. Richard Stallman remarks on some of the ideological aspects of open source vis-á-vis Communism and capitalism and well as on several aspects of the development of GNU/Linux.

Michael Tiemann (interviewed in a desert) tells how he met Stallman and got an early version of Stallman’s GCC and founded Cygnus Solutions. Larry Augustin tells how he combined the resulting GNU software and a normal PC to create a UNIX-like Workstation which cost one third the price of a workstation by Sun Microsystems even though it was three times as powerful.

His narrative includes his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and ends with its IPO. Frank Hecker of Netscape tells how Netscape executives released the source code for Netscape’s browser, one of the signal events which made Open Source a force to be reckoned with by business executives, the mainstream media, and the public at large.

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Arduino

The Arduino is a type of open source hardware. Using an Arduino is fairly straightforward: buy a board and attach it to a personal computer via a cable.

Then load instructions into the Arduino’s processor via the personal computer, William Gurstelle explained.

Once programmed, the Arduino makes decisions based on the information transmitted by whatever sensors you’ve hooked up, and does something corporeal, such as turn on or off the motors, displays, valves, and lights attached to it.

Arduino, a small, open-source hardware microcontroller platform has been turning heads in it’s flexibility as a prototyping platform for a dizzying array of applications, from oscillators to robots to 3d printers, just to name a few.

This documentary interviews the revolutionary beginning of the creators behind this movement, and touches upon what it will mean for students, engineers, and garage tinkerers alike.

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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

The full book

Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.

To Infinity and Beyond

Documentary examining current ideas about very large numbers and infinity in regards to mathematics and the observable universe.
By our third year, most of us will have learned to count. Once we know how, it seems as if there would be nothing to stop us counting forever.
But, while infinity might seem like an perfectly innocent idea, keep counting and you enter a paradoxical world where nothing is as it seems.
Mathematicians have discovered there are infinitely many infinities, each one infinitely bigger than the last.
And if the universe goes on forever, the consequences are even more bizarre. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many copies of the Earth and infinitely many copies of you.
Older than time, bigger than the universe and stranger than fiction. This is the story of infinity.

To Infinity and Beyond 

Smartest Machine On Earth (2011)

An example of geeky-brainiac cross-promotion, Smartest Machine on Earth provides the background to next week’s Jeopardy showdown between Ken Jennings, whose face Alex Trebek got good and sick of in 2004; Brad Rutter, the winner of the most money in the show’s history; and Watson, an IBM computer that is the end result of a four-year effort to build the ultimate testament to machine learning.

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Style Wars

When director Tony Silver and co-producer Henry Chalfant delivered the broadcast version of their prize-winning film to PBS in 1983, the world received its first full immersion in the phenomenon that had taken over New York City. The urban landscape was physically transformed by graffiti artists who invented a new visual language to express both their individuality, and the voice of their community. In STYLE WARS, New York’s ramshackle subway system is their public playground, battleground, and spectacular artistic canvas. As MC’s, DJ’s and B-boys rock the city with new sounds and new moves, we see street corner breakdance battles turn into performance art.

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Evolution Documentary

Broadcast (2010) Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures -- 1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go?

The source of life's endless forms was a mystery until Charles Darwin's revolutionary idea of natural selection, which he showed could help explain the gradual development of life on Earth. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? And how did we evolve?

On the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," "NOVA" reveals answers to the riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand-new science --nicknamed "evo devo" -- are linking the enigma of origins to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of an embryo.

"NOVA" takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic and from the Cambrian explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Here scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. And, as "NOVA" shows, the results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while exposing clues to life's breathtaking diversity.

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The Great Robot Race (NOVA)

The Pentagon's DARPA Grand Challenge where 43 self driving computer cars compete in a Race against each other to find the best , where they face obstacles, dangers, and where the ultimate robot car is put to the ultimate test.  Watch documentary  

 

A Universe From Nothing (2009)

Lawrence Krauss gives a talk on our current picture of the universe, how it will end, and how it could have come from nothing.

Krauss is the author of many bestselling books on Physics and Cosmology, including “The Physics of Star Trek.”

If you’ve ever wanted to answer that annoying question, “how could the Universe have formed from nothing”, then watch this video.

Human v2.0

Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human – a human v2.0.

It’s predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity – we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely.

Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines.

One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment – and whatever it brings – is inevitable.

Stephen Hawking: Did God create the universe?

Stephen Hawking unfolds his personal, compelling vision of the biggest question of all: Who or what created the universe in which we live? The groundbreaking series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking combined cutting-edge CG with Hawking's witty, distinctive and incisive worldview. Now, we take the journey a step further, as physics and cosmology become tools to answer questions that philosophers have struggled with for thousands of years.

Extreme Astronomy

Around the world, a new generation of astronomers are hunting for the most mysterious objects in the universe. Young stars, black holes, even other forms of life. They have created a dazzling new set of super-telescopes that promise to rewrite the story of the heavens.

This film follows the men and women who are pushing the limits of science and engineering in some of the most extreme environments on earth. But most strikingly of all, no-one really knows what they will find out there.

Clips from the net COLLECTION 1

8 Hours in Brooklyn

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Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole

Touching the Void

To describe Touching the Void as a mountaineering documentary would be to do this breathtaking drama an injustice. By intercutting narration from the climbers themselves with a nail-biting reconstruction of their remarkable adventure in the Peruvian Andes, the film has the best of both genres: the authentic stamp of factual storytelling and the edge-of-the-seat tension of a dramatic movie.
In 1985, two British mountaineers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, embarked on a daring–arguably reckless in the extreme–attempt to climb the previously unconquered mountain Suila Grande. A mixture of overconfidence in their own abilities and underestimation of the climb’s difficulties brought them to grief after the successful slog to the summit. What follows is an often harrowing account of their perilous descent, during which Joe horribly shatters his leg and Simon is forced to cut the support rope on which Joe’s life, quite literally, is hanging by the proverbial thread. It’s no secret that both climbers lived to tell the tale, but at every stage the audience will be left guessing just how the crippled Simpson could possibly have found the inner strength to surmount each deadly trial.
Based on Joe Simpson’s gripping book, the film boasts glorious widescreen photography of Suila Grande and its notorious glacier. Actors take the place of the two climbers for close-ups, though Simpson did return to Peru in order to re-enact parts of his dreadful crawl back down the ice. The story of Simpson’s almost superhuman fortitude has become legendary in climbing circles, and even for viewers uninterested in mountaineering, Touching the Void is an astonishing slice of real-life drama, magnificently retold.

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