The Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring's opening scene

The prologue, spoken by Galadriel, shows the Dark Lord Sauron forging the One Ring which he can use to conquer the lands of Middle-earth through his enslavement of the bearers of the Rings of Power—powerful magical rings given to individuals from the races of Elves, Dwarves and Men. A Last Alliance of Elves and Men is formed to counter Sauron and his forces at the foot of Mount Doom, but Sauron himself appears to kill Elendil, the king of the Mannish kingdom of Gondor. Just afterward, Isildur grabs his father's broken sword Narsil, and slashes at Sauron's hand. The stroke cuts off Sauron's fingers, separating him from the Ring and vanquishing his army. However, because Sauron's life is bound in the Ring, he is not completely defeated until the Ring itself is destroyed. Isildur takes the Ring and succumbs to its temptation, refusing to destroy it, but he is later ambushed and killed by orcs and the Ring is lost in the river into which Isildur fell.

The Ring is found two-and-a-half millennia later, and eventually it comes to the creature Gollum, who takes it underground for five centuries, giving Gollum "unnaturally long life." The Ring leaves him however, and is found by the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, much to the grief of Gollum. Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire with the Ring.

The Libertarian Alternative - The Free State Project

Host Mark Selzer interviews Amanda Phillips, President of the Free State Project, at the Libertarian Party of Minnesota 2005 convention.

The Secret History of Hacking

'Invasion of the data snatchers,' screamed a New York Times headline in 1989, reflecting rising panic over insecure computer systems. A hacker is a brilliantly devious criminal mind breaking the world's most secret IT systems for money or political espionage, if you believe many similarly hysterical press reports. In fact, the truth is a lot more intriguing.

The Secret History of Hacking uncovered the real story of a counter culture that has corporate America on the run. (...)

The same spirit was at work with the appearance of the home computer. The pioneers were keen to share and explore the technology for its own sake. Among the most prominent players was Steve Wozniak who went on to develop the Apple computer. Only when the commercial element crept in did the shutters come down on the ownership of ideas.

A strong undercurrent of mischievous daring runs through the hackers' ethos. Since the sixties, hackers have been breaking into much of the globe's state-of-the-art electronic systems involving government, military institutions, businesses and individuals. The code was always 'look but don't touch'.

The story of 1

The story of the number one is the story of Western civilization. Terry Jones ("Monty Python's Flying Circus") goes on a humor-filled journey to recount the amazing tale behind the world's simplest number. Using computer graphics, "One" is brought to life, in all his various guises, in STORY OF 1. One's story reveals how celebrated civilizations in history were achieved, where our modern numbers came from and how the invention of zero changed the world forever - and saved us from having to use Roman numerals today.

How old is One? A precise answer is impossible, but a notched bone (called the Ishango bone) found in the Congo proves that he's been around for at least 20,000 years. His life really took off 6,000 years ago, when the Sumerians turned him into a cone-shaped token and then into the first-ever numeric character, invention that made arithmetic - and therefore city life - possible, providing the means to assess wealth, calculate profits and loss, and, perhaps most important, collect taxes.

Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science - Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is Oxford University's "Professor for the Public Understanding of Science." Author of the landmark 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, he's a brilliant (and trenchant) evangelist for Darwin's ideas. In this talk, titled, "Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science," he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe.

How juries get fooled by statistics - Peter Donnelly

Statistician Peter Donnelly explores the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics, and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials. Donnelly is a statistics professor at Oxford University who collaborates with biologists, applying statistical models to genetics, with the hope of shedding more light on evolutionary history and the structure of the human genome.

Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer

Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth - from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards - and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason. Don't miss the one-minute challenge testing your own observational skills... Shermer is the founder/publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and author of several books, including Why People Believe Weird Things.

Vision of free online education - Richard Baraniuk

Richard Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system. In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that's changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world.

Wikipedia's collaborative system - Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales explains how Wikipedia's collaborative system works, and why it succeeds. Wales is founder of Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, ever-expanding, and thoroughly addictive encyclopedia of the future.

Our species' survival - David Deutsch

Legendary physicist David Deutsch is author of The Fabric of Reality and the leading proponent of the multiverse intrepretation of quantum theory - the astounding idea that our universe is constantly spawning countless numbers of parallel worlds. In this rare (and delightfully engaging) public appearance, he weaves a complex and captivating argument placing the study of physics at the center of our species' survival.

Do schools today kill creativity? - Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than ... all » undermining it. Robinson is author of "Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative", and a leading expert on innovation and human resources.

Matrix Reloaded - Neo vs Agent Smith

The Oracle wishes Neo good luck and exits the courtyard just before Agent Smith (But never referred to as an "Agent" in this movie) arrives. While it appeared that he was destroyed at the end of The Matrix by Neo, Smith explains that he and Neo are now somehow connected. Some part of Neo had imprinted onto him, causing a deep transformation. Disobeying deletion, Smith is no longer an Agent of the system; he, like Neo, is free. He has become more aggressive, has gained the ability to make endless duplicates of himself, and has decided that his purpose in life is destruction as an end in itself. After this brief explanation, he recruits an ever-increasing gang of self-copies to attack Neo (a scene known as "The Burly Brawl"). At the end of the fight, Neo overpowers a mountain of Smiths and flies to an exit.

Charlie Rose - An hour with Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton is an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. His best-known works are techno-thriller novels, films and television programs. His works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Swedish Television

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch feminist and political writer, daughter of the Somali warlord Hirsi Magan Isse. When she was six, her family left Somalia, eventually settling in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 — under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy.

She is a prominent and controversial author, film maker, atheist, and critic of Islam, and Christianity. [Hirsi Ali] has received numerous awards for her human rights work, and in 2005, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is currently a fellow at the think tank American Enterprise Institute.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

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Are you green? How many flights have you taken in the last year? Feeling guilty about all those unnecessary car journeys? Well, maybe there's no need to feel bad.

According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it.

We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.

V for Vendetta Speech

V for Vendetta is a 2006 film set in a dystopian future United Kingdom, where a mysterious anarchist, wearing a Guy Fawkes costume, works to bring down an oppressive fascist government, profoundly affecting the people he encounters.

«Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well, certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. More »»

Get a Mac - Security

The Get a Mac campaign is a current (2006-2007) television advertising campaign created for Apple Inc. by TBWA, their advertising agency. (...) Mac begins with the traditional "I'm a Mac" greeting in which PC begins to respond, but is interrupted by a Secret Service agent with "Mac has issued a salutation, cancel or allow?". After PC's reply, Mac questions the Agents presence, with PC explaining that it is Vista's new Security feature. PC states that he could turn it off, but then he wouldn't get any warnings at all thus defeating its purpose. The scene ends with the Secret Service Agent requesting of PC - "You are coming to a sad realization, cancel or allow?" in which PC replies "allow" in a depressing tone.