Miss USA 2011: Should Schools Teach Evolution? … or Math?

“Should evo­lu­tion be taught in schools?” That was the ques­tion actu­al­ly put to par­tic­i­pants in the Miss USA pageant held this past June.

In response, MacKen­zie Fegan and her friends had some fun with the whole line of think­ing, shoot­ing their own mock video in reply. Enjoy, and do know that we heart Miss Ver­mont…

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

50 Famous Sci­en­tists & Aca­d­e­mics Speak About God: Part II

Do Physi­cists Believe in God

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

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The Decemberists’ New Video Inspired by Scenes from Infinite Jest

Michael Schur, the co-cre­ator of NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation, has had a long-run­ning fas­ci­na­tion with David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s sprawl­ing mag­num opus, Infi­nite Jest.  So when his favorite band, The Decem­berists, asked him to shoot a video for their new track “Calami­ty Song,” he knew the cre­ative direc­tion he want­ed to take. And so here it is — the new­ly-pre­miered video that makes “Escha­ton” its cre­ative focus. Fans of DWF’s nov­el will remem­ber that Escha­ton — “basi­cal­ly, a glob­al ther­monu­clear cri­sis recre­at­ed on a ten­nis court” — appears on/around page 325. The New York Times has more, and you can also find anoth­er ver­sion of the video if you’re hav­ing prob­lems view­ing it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project

The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever, Curat­ed by Kevin Kel­ly

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Martin Scorsese Documentary on George Harrison Coming This Fall

Mar­tin Scors­ese (Rag­ing Bull, Taxi Dri­ver, Good­fel­las) has always had a pen­chant for the rock­u­men­tary. In 1978, he direct­ed The Last Waltz fea­tur­ing the farewell con­cert of The Band — a film lat­er called “the great­est rock con­cert movie ever made.” Then, after a hia­tus, Scors­ese returned to music again, shoot­ing No Direc­tion Home: Bob Dylan (2005) and Shine a Light, a trib­ute to the Rolling Stones, in 2008.

If you’re tack­ling Dylan and the Stones, then why not go for the tri­fec­ta and bring your cin­e­mat­ic tal­ents to bear on The Bea­t­les? And so it shall be. On Octo­ber 5th and 6th, HBO will air George Har­ri­son: Liv­ing in the Mate­r­i­al World, a two-part doc­u­men­tary ded­i­cat­ed to the Bea­t­le who long played in the shad­ow of John and Paul. Scors­ese’s lat­est film will fea­ture unseen archival mate­ri­als and inter­views with Paul, Ringo, Eric Clap­ton, Tom Pet­ty, Ter­ry Gilliam, Phil Spec­tor and oth­ers. It will also be co-released with a 400-page hard­cov­er book writ­ten by Olivia Har­ri­son, which uses pho­tographs, let­ters, diaries, and mem­o­ra­bil­ia to trace the arc of George’s life. Can hard­ly wait. H/T Wired

Note: You can find The Last Waltz and Taxi Dri­ver in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Why Music Mat­ters in Two Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an Mode

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

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Anselm Kiefer at Work, Creating His “World of Ruination”

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a newish film direct­ed by Sophie Fiennes, lets you sit back and watch the Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer at work, cre­at­ing his large-scale “world of ruina­tion.” The film has no nar­ra­tion, only some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. And, more than any­thing, it gives you a direct, unem­bell­ished view of Kiefer’s “alchem­i­cal cre­ative process” that reg­u­lar­ly takes over his stu­dio in south­ern France. Above, Kiefer puts the fin­ish­ing touch­es on, then rais­es, one of his elab­o­rate cre­ations. The clip, along with oth­ers, appears in a larg­er, more com­pelling for­mat on the film’s offi­cial web site. H/T NYRB

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep dai­ly.

Archive of 9/11 TV Coverage Launches with 3,000+ Hours of Video

The dra­ma of 9/11 unfold­ed before the world on TV. Even many New York­ers, myself includ­ed, watched the trau­mat­ic events on CNN rather than wit­ness­ing them first­hand. Dur­ing the days that fol­lowed, we were bom­bard­ed with end­less replays — the planes hit­ting the build­ings, the tow­ers aflame and col­laps­ing, the piles of smok­ing debris left behind. Then, mer­ci­ful­ly, the cov­er­age dis­ap­peared.

Almost a decade lat­er, the Inter­net Archive has launched a 9/11 Tele­vi­sion News Archive, a resource for schol­ars, jour­nal­ists, and any­one inter­est­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion. The archive brings togeth­er more than 3,000 hours of tele­vi­sion cov­er­age from 20 US and inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, and the cov­er­age can be seg­ment­ed by day, time and news provider.

Yet one more rea­son why we con­sid­er the Inter­net Archive one of the most valu­able sites on the web.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Biblioburro: Library on a Donkey

For more than a decade, Luis Sori­ano, a pri­ma­ry school teacher, has trav­eled the rugged ter­rain of Colom­bia by don­key, deliv­er­ing books to chil­dren in hun­dreds of rur­al vil­lages. The project, pow­ered by his two don­keys Alfa and Beto, goes by the name “Bib­liobur­ro.” And it seeks to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy in areas where access to books is not always a giv­en. You can find more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures on the home­page of the Bib­liobur­ro project and also make a small dona­tion. A video update shows what these dona­tions are actu­al­ly used for.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: The clip above is part of a 60-minute PBS doc­u­men­tary avail­able in full here. If you are a teacher and want to work with the film in class, you will appre­ci­ate this relat­ed les­son plan. Bib­liobur­ro has even been cov­ered by The New York Times, and there is now a sim­i­lar project under­way in Ethiopia.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

The Brief Wondrous Career of Arthur Rimbaud (1870–1874)

Arthur Rim­baud, once described by Vic­tor Hugo as ‘an infant Shake­speare,’ burst onto the Parisan lit­er­ary scene in 1870, short­ly before he was 16. By the time 1874 rolled around, Rim­baud had bro­ken the con­ven­tions of poet­ry and fash­ioned a new, mod­ern poet­ic lan­guage. He had pub­lished all of his major works — Illu­mi­na­tions, Une sai­son en enfer, etc. and had his absinthe/hashish-fueled affair with Paul Ver­laine. Then, com­mit­ting an act that still haunts his fans today, the 20 year old renounced poet­ry utter­ly and com­plete­ly and start­ed trav­el­ing the world.

The mys­tery of Rim­baud’s renun­ci­a­tion and his short-lived lit­er­ary career gets revis­it­ed in this week’s edi­tion of The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at Con­struc­tion Site

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Richard Feynman: The New Graphic Novel


Last week, we high­light­ed The Last Jour­ney Of A Genius, a doc­u­men­tary that record­ed the final days of the great physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and his obses­sion with trav­el­ing to Tan­nu Tuva, a state out­side of out­er Mon­go­lia.

Now here is what next week will bring — a new “sub­stan­tial graph­ic nov­el biog­ra­phy” that “presents the larg­er-than-life exploits of the Nobel-win­ning quan­tum physi­cist, adven­tur­er, musi­cian and world-class racon­teur.” The book writ­ten by Jim Otta­viani and illus­trat­ed by Leland Myrick runs a fair­ly hefty 272 pages. The video clip on Youtube will give you a good feel for the art­work that tells Feyn­man’s per­son­al tale.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures Online

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.