It’s nice to see cultural anthropology professor Michael Wesch getting featured right now on YouTube’s homepage. (A professor getting featured on YouTube? That has to be a first.) Anyway, Wesch is directing viewers to a film called RIP: A Remix Manifesto, a prize winning film that offers a “probing investigation into how culture builds upon culture [think mashup] in the information age.” I have posted the trailer above. You can also watch the complete movie in multiple parts on YouTube (Part 1 is here), or directly download the entire film and name your price. If you haven’t seen Wesch’s own videos, you can watch his creative pieces here, here, and here.
Einstein’s Relativity: An Animated New Yorker Cartoon
In the past couple of years, The New Yorker has rolled out a series of animated cartoons, which puts in motion its famous cartoons. They can be watched iTunes, YouTube or right on the web.
Interviews with Schoenberg and Bartók
We gave you Tchaikovsky’s Voice Captured on an Edison Cylinder (1899) and James Joyce Reading from Finnegans Wake. And now, thanks to Robert, we let you listen in on interviews with two other great composers — Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Béla Bartók (1881–1945) recorded in 1944.
Google Puts Supreme Court Opinions Online
A quick fyi: Starting today, you can find online legal opinions from the Supreme Court, as well as federal and state courts, thanks to Google Scholar. When you visit Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and then begin your query. If you type “separate but equal,” Scholar with present you with famous Supreme Court Cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. You get the gist. You can read more about this online legal database over at Google’s blog.
UPDATE/NOTE FROM READER: “This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org. Oyez is easy to use, has lots of additional content, including summaries and audio of oral arguments, and is ad-free and Creative Commons licensed for its original content. Plus, you can search by court term, Justice, and the name of the legal counsel.” An alternative source to look at…
The Crowdsourced Musical Collaboration
This musical bit is easier watched than described. Click through, start the 20 videos playing in any order/timing that you want, and see what you get. You can read the FAQ for the InB b 2.0 project here.
Thanks V for the tip!
Nabokov’s Last
Vladimir Nabokov wanted his last unfinished novel destroyed (learn more about it here). But, 32 years after his death, the book is being published. You can buy The Original of Laura starting Tuesday. Meanwhile, you can also read through a few excerpts thanks to the Times Online.
Tchaikovsky’s Voice Captured on an Edison Cylinder (1890)
Take a quick trip back in time, to 1890. Here you can listen to Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, etc.) and other eminent musicians having some fun, recording their voices on a then new-fangled technology, the phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. To get a transcript of what the friends had to say, you can read the transcript after the jump. Thanks Maggie for this tip. (via BoingBoing)
Can Cultural Evolution Stave Off Global Collapse?
The pattern always repeats itself. Civilizations rise and fall. Then new ones take their place. But, something else may be about to happen. There might be an impending collapse of our entire global civilization. Not one major civilization, but the entire global civilization, gone. Or, so that’s how Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich sees it. Ehrlich, who has been called “one of the most influential ecologists of our age,” sees one thing staving off disaster. A big shift in culture first and foremost. A cultural evolution. Watch above.
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