The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Books, Film, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
(NOTE: some strong language here…)
Back in 1975, filmmaker Tom Schiller (only 20 years old at the time) made a short documentary on the novelist Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn). In the scene above, Miller, then 81 years old, reminisces about his difficult early life in New York, and it all takes place on the [...]
≡ Category: Uncategorized | ≅ Leave a Comment
More cultural goodness from our Twitter stream this week. Find us on Twitter here. On Facebook here.
RT @palafo: RT @mathewi: The Big Picture has some stunning images up of the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile http://bit.ly/aNv8RV
RT @kim: The Office — Ricky Gervais’ Original British Version Now on @hulu | http://bit.ly/dxDM1o *good stuff #LoL
What a [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Philosophy | ≅ Leave a Comment
We take you back to a classic Monty Python skit. The scene is the 1972 Munich Olympics. The event is a football/soccer match, pitting German philosophers against Greek philosophers. On the one side, the Germans — Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Marx and, um, Franz Beckenbauer. On the other side, Archimedes, Socrates, Plato and the rest of the [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Guardian asked twenty nine writers to give their 10 Rules for Writing Fiction. Those given by Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) were arguably the pithiest, and we list them below. The full lineup of writers (including Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Ford) can be found here. (The New Yorker has since followed up with [...]
≡ Category: Law, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up…
Flumotion and the Open Video Alliance will be streaming a live event on Thursday, February 25th featuring Lawrence Lessig, the foundational voice of the free culture movement. The 45-minute speech will be delivered live from Harvard Law School via Flumotion’s Streaming Platform, and will explore the relationship between copyright, fair use, politics [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
The BBC brings you Folk America, a three-part documentary series on American folk music, “tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.” We feature above the third segment, Blowin’ in the Wind, which takes you straight to the 1960s, when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books | ≅ Leave a Comment
Perhaps you’re already familiar with Librivox. If not, you should be. Librivox provides over 3000 free audio books. The books (all in the public domain) are recorded by a passionate community of volunteers, and they’re all made freely available to you. (See their catalogue here.) Millions of people have downloaded their books. And, as you [...]
≡ Category: Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean and also the lowest known elevation on earth, plunging down some 36,200 feet. This graphic, sent along by Bill and Ian, puts the Trench into perspective, allowing you to see it in scale just how low it goes…
≡ Category: Music, Television | ≅ Leave a Comment
In the mid-1950s, the American composer Leonard Bernstein made several appearances on Omnibus, a television show dedicated to covering the sciences, arts and humanities. During his visits, Bernstein walked audiences through the art of making music. Take for example the clip above where he breaks down the making of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Just how did Beethoven [...]
≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Education, e-books | ≅ 4 Comments
Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon’s large e-book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
Note: You should be able to download Safran Foer’s new book for free (in audio format) through Audible.com’s no strings attached offer. Details here.
≡ Category: Science | ≅ 2 Comments
Imagine a TV display that contains millions of “smart pixels” that can move into different places and reliably create 3D images? That’s what researchers at an MIT research lab are currently doing. But, in the absence of real smart pixels, they’re using “remotely controlled micro-helicopters that can be choreographed electronically to display shapes and images.” [...]
≡ Category: Education, e-books | ≅ 4 Comments
This morning, Macmillan announced a new kind of textbook — a remixable electronic textbook that will give professors, according the New York Times, the ability “to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.” Essentially, Macmillan provides the core [...]
≡ Category: Education | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick fyi: Starting this morning, Stanford Continuing Studies opened registration for its spring lineup of online writing courses. Offered in partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program (one of the most distinguished writing programs in the country), these online courses give beginning and advanced writers, no matter where they live, the chance to refine their craft [...]
≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs, Economics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Loudon Wainwright III has released a new album, Songs for the New Depression, that fittingly features “The Krugman Blues,” an homage to the Princeton, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who has documented America’s economic spiral in The New York Times. You can watch the Krugman Blues above, and get the full album at Wainwright’s web [...]
≡ Category: Psychology, Religion, Science | ≅ 1 Comment
More and more, the Dalai Lama has been developing an interest in what modern science has to say about human emotion — or, more particularly, how neuroscience makes sense of meditation and compassion. Partly as a result, Stanford University has launched The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which is delving deeper into [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
A few resources for classical music lovers. They come recommended by Robert B, one of our faithful readers.
ArsAntiguaPresents.com offers a series of free audio programs of music from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras, all performed on period instruments. This month’s edition focuses on Mozart’s Salzburg Symphonies. You can start listening via mp3 right here.
Art [...]
≡ Category: Twitter | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick wrap up of the cultural items we tweeted and re-tweeted this week via our Twitter stream. You can start following us here: @openculture
RT @jonathanlandman: Insufferably brilliant: Bernstein on the Blues – Video Library – The New York Times -http://nyti.ms/dCkoqH
Deep Thinking Alive and Well on the Web http://bit.ly/dfAJtL
RT @TEDchris: Clever BBC video: #TED attendees on what the world needs [...]
≡ Category: Google, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
For three years, English teacher Jerome Burg has been using Google Earth to teach literature. Each “Lit Trip” involves mapping the movements of characters over a plot’s timeline and providing excerpts, pictures, and links at each location. I found a lit trip for one of my favorite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which involves a lot of movement across [...]
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