The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Leave a Comment
A good find over at Metafilter. Desjardins asks “Need a little Tolstoy while you’re waiting in line? How about some Mark Twain on the subway? Booksinmyphone puts – surprise! - books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to download classics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Thanks to some digital hocus pocus, John Lennon is back and helping promote One Laptop Per Child, a charity working to bring cheap computers and internet access to children in developing countries. Done with the approval of Yoko Ono, the commercial stitches together old recordings of Lennon’s voice and adds at least a couple of new [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was produced in 1981 by the BBC and PBS, and it features Richard Feynman, the charismatic, Nobel prize-winning physicist, talking in a very personal way about the joys of scientific discovery, and how he developed his enthusiasm for science. About the program, Harry Kroto (winner of the Nobel Prize for [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Voila, the birth, life and death of a G-type star, like our Sun. 12 billion years boiled down to six simple minutes. We’ve added it to our YouTube Favorites.
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≡ Category: Random | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s what it looks like if you plant a camera in the same location for one year and snap photos throughout the changing seasons. Video is striking but random. So we’re filing it under “Random.”
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
This weekend’s New York Times ran a piece detailing how the record industry has dithered and continually failed to release several long-awaited Beatles’ projects. It also mentioned how fans and collectors have forged ahead and put together unauthorized bootleg projects, some of which the Times calls “curatorial masterpieces.” In particular, the article highlights the Purple Chick label, which [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
When the twin towers were taken down in September 2001, America looked to make sense of what happened. And it wasn’t long before many started turning to The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, a book written by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard poli sci professor who passed on last week.
The book itself was [...]
≡ Category: Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
Eartha Kitt also left us this week. She won fame on Broadway, in movies and cabaret, and through music and films. But my inner four year old will always remember her role as Catwoman on the 1960s TV series “Batman.” (Actually, I’ll really remember her for the leading role she played in my first memorable childhood [...]
≡ Category: Theater | ≅ Leave a Comment
Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, died in London on Wednesday. As The New York Times obit mentions, when Pinter won the Nobel in 2005, his declining health prevented him from attending the awards ceremony in Stockholm. Instead, he gave his acceptance lecture – “Art, Truth & Politics” — via a recorded video, which we’re [...]
≡ Category: History | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a logical (but unplanned) follow up to our previous post that looked back at Christmas Eve during World War I.
Here we present a Christmas propaganda film that came out of England during the Second World War. Britain is under German siege. But it’s enduring the Blitz and keeping a stiff upper lip, and Christmas will [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 4 Comments
We take you back to 1977 and what The Washington Post calls “one of the most successful duets in Christmas music history — and surely the weirdest.” The ’40s-era crooner meets the glam rocker, to be precise. Get the backstory here. (And, yup, we’ve added the clip to our YouTube Favorites.)
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≡ Category: History, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Right in time for Christmas Eve…
World War I was a relentlessly grinding and brutal war. Europe had never experienced anything like it. But there was one notable moment of respite, a brief moment when humanity showed back through. Christmas Eve, 1914. The moving story of what happened that night gets recounted in John McCutcheon’s touching [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ Leave a Comment
The New York Times thinks that e-books may have finally turned the corner in 2008. The Kindle is sold out until February (which messes up my Christmas plans). Sales of Sony’s e-book reader have tripled over last season. And we’re now seeing e-books hit the bestseller list. The digital age for books may be upon [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
In a quick 59 seconds, David Lynch tells you the films and filmmakers that he likes best (see below). In equally succinct videos, though with a bit more salty language (read: language that’s not ideal for work), Lynch also gives you his thoughts on product placement and the whole concept of watching a movie on an [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
A couple of big blogs recently highlighted a clip of the Muppets doing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. It’s cute, and I was hardly surprised that the video logged 3.6 million views on YouTube.
Not far behind, at 3.2 million views, is a long video showing Herbert Von Karajan leading a live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
About the Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a New York Times op-ed had this to say today:
It “is anything but a cheery holiday tale.” It “is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
According to Discover Magazine…
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Let me indulge in a brief bit of nostalgia for a sec. Somehow my once wayward friends and I scored tickets to Live Aid back in 1985, which meant that we got to spend a scorching day at Philly’s JFK Stadium, watching live acts that included Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Aired first in September, this BBC production asks famous scientists to offer important words of advice to the next American president. What does Obama need to know to make smart decisions about key issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to climate change? Here it goes:
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