KharazyanBlog

It's easy to forget these days that the internet started out as a place for academics and researchers to trade data and knowledge. Recapture the web's brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.

10. Teach yourself programming

Coding, whether on the web or on the desktop, is one of those skills you'll almost never regret having. Coincidentally, the web is full of people willing to teach, and show off, programming skills. Whether you're looking to knock out a modest Firefox extension or tackle your first programming language, there's no requirement to run out and buy the thickest book you can find at Barnes & Noble. Google Code University, for instance, hosts a whole CSE program's worth of straight-up coding lessons in its bowels. We've pointed out a lot of other programming resources found around the web, so you should be able to get started in almost any project. As for the random, unexpected, seemingly inscrutable bugs, well ... welcome to the fold.

9. Get a Personal MBA

"MBA programs don't have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work." The Personal MBA site occasionally updates its list of dozens of helpful business books, designed to teach both the nuts-and-bolts money stuff and the kind of thinking one needs to get ahead in sales, marketing, or wherever your interests lie. A business school can offer networking, mentoring, and other perks, but nobody can teach you enthusiasm and business savvy—except yourself.

8. Learn to actually use Ubuntu

Too often, newcomers to Ubuntu, the seriously popular Linux distribution, find that their questions about any problem great or small is answered with a curt "Search the forums," or "Just Google it." From experience, that's like telling someone there's maple sap somewhere in that forest, so here's a nail and get moving. With a brand-new installation sitting on your computer, few resources are as straight-forward and comprehensive as the Ubuntu Guide, which is packed with common stuff like installing VLC and getting VLC playback, but spans across topics including Samba and remote printing configuration. Author Keir Thomas also offered Lifehacker readers a little preview of his Ubuntu Kung Fu in two excerpts that tweak one's system into a faster, more efficient data flinger.

7. Get started on a new language

Nobody's pretending you can talk like a local without some immersion experience. But there's a lot of resources on the web for honing an already-sharpened second language, or at least picking up some of the vocab and nuances. Learn10 gives you 10 vocabulary builders delivered every day by email, through iGoogle, through an iPhone page, or most any other way you'd like. One Minute Languages podcasts its lessons and lets newcomers stream from the archives. And Mango Languages has about 100 lessons, shown to you in PowerPoint style with interstitial quizzes, to move you through any language without cracking a book. Not that books are bad, of course, but this is stuff you can crack out during a coffee break.

6. Trade your skills, find an instructor

As Ramit Sethi put it in our interview, many people don't realize the value of the skills they do have, whether it's something as simple as higher-level English or software lessons for those in need. A site like TeachMate capitalizes on the inherent disparities in our interests, letting someone willing to teach a bit of, for example, Russian language get cooking lessons in return. If a site like TeachMate doesn't quite reach you, try Craigslist, which, especially in a recession, is brimming with people looking to trade skills instead of cash.

5. Academic Earth and YouTube EDU

We have to guess that having a giant, searchable database of free academic lectures was just too good an idea for two different web firms to pass up. Academic Earth has been described as a Hulu-like aggregator for lots of major universities' content, and offers the slicker and more navigable front-end for them, as well as allowing embedding and sharing with no restrictions. YouTube EDU might have a broader reach, and the player and format might be a bit more familiar to most. Both sites offer both individual lectures and full course series, and are definitely worth checking out.

4. Teach yourself all kinds of photography

Sites like Photojojo and Digital Photography School are oft-linked resources around Lifehacker, and for good reason. They let the uber-technical shooters run wild in forums and discussion groups, but focus the majority of their front-page posts on things that beginning DSLR shooters and moderate consumer-cam photographers can grasp and mix into their daily camera work. Of course, we've compiled and sought out our own digital photography advice at Lifehacker, including photographer Scott Feldstein's guide to mastering your DSLR camera (Part 1 and Part 2), and our compilation of David Pogue's best photography tricks, plus ours. Then there's the simple pleasures of posting on Flickr, seeking out Photo by Marcin Wichary.

3. Get an unofficial liberal arts major

Whole-mind learning doesn't end the day you declare a major and start sending out resumes. A huge number of universities offer up some of their most unique and fascinating resources for free online, posting up databases, image galleries, and all kinds of stuff you wish you had time to dig through during your undergrad years. Learn everything you ever wanted to about Picasso at Texas A & M's Picasso Project. Indulge your inner geo-geek with super hi-res images from Hirise at the University of Arizona. Tour the world's spaces in 3D with The World Wide Panorama at UC Berkeley. Wendy Boswell discovered those resources and way more in her discovery of the .edu underground, and you can find a lot more down there, too.

2. Learn an instrument

If being dropped off at the music store/mall/piano teacher's house wasn't a memorable part of your childhood, you might dig the digital age's equivalents a lot more. Guitar players, in particular, have a lot of places to turn for video, audio, and graphical teaching tools. Adam rounded a lot of them up in his guide to learning to play an instrument online. If you want to build a foundation for learning any instrument, though, Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net has Flash-based tutorials that offer a gentle tour through keys, time signatures, modalities, and the other ins and outs of notes and chords.

1. Learn from actual college courses online

A huge number of colleges, universities, and other degree-granting universities are going all open-source these days—giving away the actual guts of their courses, while retaining their revenue stream by awarding degrees only to those who pay. In this day and age, though, programming, marketing, design, and other self-taught skills are pretty valuable, however you came by them. Whether you're looking to break into a field or just augment your skill set, dig into our guide to getting a free college education online, which we then updated a bit with Education Portal's list of ten universities with the best free online courses. Just think about it—at home, with your coffee and comfortable chair, you're far more awake than the average co-ed who totally should have hit the hay a bit earlier last night.

Where do you turn when you have to teach yourself something? What skills or topics would you like to see more coverage of on Lifehacker, or just anywhere on the web? Help us plan a curriculum in the comments.

TV pitchman battered hooker in South Beach hotel room brawl

MARCH 27--Meet Vince Shlomi. He's probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she "propositioned him for straight sex." Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly "bit his tongue and would not let go." Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit, , notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse. "Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons," police reported. In a brief telephone interview, Harris declined to answer TSG questions about her run-in with Shlomi, though she did say she is considering a lawsuit against the pitchman. Asked if she worked as a hooker, Harris declined comment. As seen in the below mug shot, Shlomi was also injured during the fracas and, court records show, was treated at Mount Sinai Medical Center. While Shlomi and Harris were both arrested for felony aggravated battery, prosecutors this month declined to file formal charges against the combatants. Police records list Shlomi's occupation as "Marketing," but make no mention of his affiliation with the ShamWow or the Slap Chop, both of which sell for $19.95 (plus shipping and handling).

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon (screen film)



A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon is a 2001 documentary written, produced, and directed by Nashville, Tennessee-based filmmaker and investigative journalist Bart Winfield Sibrel, a critic of the United States space program and proponent of the unsubstantiated theory that the six Apollo lunar landing missions between 1969 and 1972 were hoaxes perpetrated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Sibrel believes that there were numerous insurmountable scientific and technical problems which made it improbable that men could land on the moon and return to Earth safely. Further, he believes that certain anomalies and inconsistencies in NASA's records of the landings point to a hoax, and that the space race was actually a race to develop armaments, citing a 95 percent similarity between the technologies that allowed the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the launch of the Saturn V rockets.

Bart Sibrel claims that NASA perpetrated a fraud, because of the perception that if the United States could put a man on the moon before the Soviet Union did it would be a major victory in the Cold War, since the Soviets had been the first to achieve a successful space launch (Sputnik in 1957), the first manned space flight (Vostok 1 in 1961), and the first spacewalk (Voskhod 2 in 1965).

Bart Sibrel also claims that the life-threatening events that occurred during the Apollo 13 mission were actually manufactured by the government to force people to pay attention to the space program. He suggests that this is proven by the claim that a number of viewers called the television networks complaining that coverage of the second lunar mission, Apollo 12, was interrupting repeats of the I Love Lucy program, saying: "it became clear that for the taxpayers, once was enough".

The 47-minute documentary primarily focuses on the Van Allen belts, areas of intense radiation circling the Earth, as a major reason why Sibrel believes it was impossible for a manned spacecraft to land on the moon. Bart Sibrel also presents what he claims is official NASA footage, shot over the course of three days, that was not meant for public release. In this footage, the crew of Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin are, according to Sibrel, staging part of their mission to make it appear that they were 130,000 miles from Earth. The illusion was allegedly perpetrated thus: a color camera was placed at the rear of the capsule, anything that could produce light was deactivated, and an insert was placed on the window to create a false terminator. Sibrel's allegation here is that it took three days for the astronauts to perfect their filming techniques rather than travel to the moon. Moreover, he contends that there is "Earthshine" clearly visible in the window after the lights were turned back on and that this proves that Apollo 11 was in low Earth orbit.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon also examines the still photographs and points out what it claims are anomalies, such as non-parallel shadows, to support the assertion that multiple artificial lighting sources were used; sped-up video footage of the astronauts walking on the lunar surface and lunar rovers driving on the surface are also used to advance the theory they were actually filmed on Earth and slowed down to simulate the moon's lower gravity. The lack of visible stars is another point stressed by Bart Sibrel.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon was narrated by a British stage actress named Anne Tonelson. Bart Sibrel himself makes no appearance in the film. He does appear prominently in the similarly-toned Fox Television Network special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?

Bart Sibrel also alleges that the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative was far simpler than the government claimed it was, and that tests were artificially manipulated to, according to the Government Accountability Office, fool the Soviets about U.S. military readiness.