The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Apple, e-books, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Perhaps you’re accustomed to downloading free lectures and courses on iTunes U. Now, you have a new option. Last week, Apple began introducing free eBooks to its media collection. And, to kick things off, they’re giving users access to 18 free textbooks sponsored by Connexions (a Rice University project); a series of 100 ebooks produced [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
Published first in 1921, then again in 1944, Virginia Woolf’s short story, “A Haunted House,” runs a mere 692 words – which makes it a Halloween treat that is short and sweet. We give you an appropriately somber reading of Woolf’s story above, with the accompanying text here. Or you can find an mp3 version [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | ≅ 2 Comments
This 45 second timelapse video of the “Galactic Center of the Milky Way” rising over Texas Star Party (2009) just gets more spectacular as it rolls along. William Castleman created this sequence using a Canon EOS-5D, with exposures at 20 and 40 second intervals. This complements nicely Stéphane Guisard’s panoramic view of the Milky Way [...]
≡ Category: Education, Technology | ≅ 4 Comments
Nowadays, any well-rounded student must learn to master reading, writing and math. And then add something new to the mix: learning to code. If you didn’t learn to program software in school, not to worry. Free materials abound on the web, and we have made them easy to find. Above, you can start watching the [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Education | ≅ 7 Comments
So if you want the full case against getting a PhD in the humanities, here you go. Every argument the disillusioned academic can possibly make now packed into one semi-comic video. If you’re in the humanities, the litany of complaints, whether fair or not, will hardly be unfamiliar to you. Now on a more serious [...]
≡ Category: Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick note for our readers: This week, we soft launched a new mobile web site for Open Culture – one designed to give our readers the ability to access Open Culture content with far greater ease on their smartphones. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone (or any phone with an advanced [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
For a brief time in 2008, Stephen Fry, the popular British author, writer and comedian, produced a series of podcasts – called “Podgrams” – that drew on his writings, speeches and collective thoughts. (Find them on RSS and iTunes here). During one particular episode, Fry meditated on language (the English language & his own language) [...]
≡ Category: Books, Science | ≅ 4 Comments
Jerome Groopman, the New Yorker staff writer and Harvard med school prof, has edited The Best American Science Writing 2010 – a new collection that brings together “the most crucial, thought-provoking, and engaging science writing” during the past 12 months. The 368 page book runs $10.19 online. But before you run out and buy it, [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, History | ≅ 9 Comments
Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, has lost some friends lately among geeks (term used lovingly, if not self-referentially) and conservatives. First came the suggestion that Twitter hasn’t made human change agents obsolete. We still need MLKs and Gandhis to change the world. And then, speaking at The New [...]
≡ Category: Art | ≅ Leave a Comment
We’re getting closer to a world where you can ask: why go to a museum when it can come to you? This summer, the Getty Museum used Augmented Reality (AR) technology to showcase one of the most complex objects in its collection – The Augsburg Display Cabinet (or Kabinettschrank) built around 1630. As shown above, [...]
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