People of the world, Unite!

In our "free" society the real truth is that nearly everything costs you money.  But fear not, the underground movement is here to maintain a civilized society and support the culture of sharing.

For years bands like the Grateful Dead have allowed people to record their concerts and share with others.  This has continued on with other bands at The Archive.  Download full concerts for free in many different formats -and you might be surprised at the quality for some of these recordings.

For the mountain bike racer the tradition of underground races continues here in the great southwest - with the Colorado Endurance Series and it's siblings in New Mexico and Arizona.  But it is not just limited to mountain biking, and the trail running scene is following suit, especially down south in New Mexico where Mounain Trail Series and Albuquerque Fat Ass Series offer up some really interesting routes.  Better courses, better challenges, more camaraderie and absolutely no entry fees.  People just coming together for endurance exercise and entertainment.

Project Gutenberg provides free books in all types of formats wither for your your sophisticated pad viewer, or just plain old html.  Wikipedia as most people know is an online group effort to maintain an all encompassing electronic encyclopedia   All it takes to read is access to a computer.

And as you know, this here blog - and links to others are all free and open to the public.  Small contributions to the net, but the hit counts do show interest to some.

But lately, I've been spending some time over here at M.I.T. Open Courseware.  I've been needing a refresher for some engineering mathematics and was pleasantly surprised to see that one of our countries legendary mathematical geniuses - Dr. Gilbert Strang, among others, has embraced the concept of free education.  Complete courses taught at M.I.T. from online streaming videos, to syllabus sheets, homework assignments, and even exams are posted for you to watch, practice and test yourself, all without spending a nickel.  One of my favorite texts from my college days was Dr. Strang's graduate text on Linear Algebra - and because of the internet, you can watch a full semesters worth of Dr. Strang actually teach you Linear Algebra all for the price of the electrons your computer uses via the power company.

I started with Dr. Strang's highlights of Calculus refresher course, and what makes that even more amazing is that the textbook - his 1st edition of the book, plus solutions manual, instructor's manual, etc - are all free for download as a supplement to the course.  Books + classes for free.  Wow!  I went through a couple semesters of Calculus in just a couple of days and it brought back a lot of information.  Imagine what it can do to a high school or college kid going through this the first time.

And if the price of electrons is too much, then go to your public library and use the public computer.  Make sure to enjoy those free roads and sidewalks that got you there as well.