The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Art, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
French photographer Tanguy Louvigny created this time-lapse film of bucolic Normandy and Brittany using High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging techniques. From forest floor to setting sun, Louvigny’s shots render fine detail across an extremely wide range of luminosity. To achieve this he used the auto-bracketing feature of his Canon EOS 400D and 60D cameras to create three [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
The French love their jazz. The people love it. Their cows love it no less. Here we have The New Hot 5, a New Orleans-style band, bringing their act to the pastures of Autrans, France, and treating the audience to an American classic, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” You can learn more about The New Hot 5 at [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last week, composer Philip Glass and rock legend Lou Reed embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement. Initial video & audio clips capturing their appearances were shoddy at best. Now Jean Thevenin (who joined the protest at Lincoln Center Plaza) has given us a better view, producing a short, elegant film simply called Visible Shape. The accompanying music is [...]
≡ Category: Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Let’s let The Paris Review give you the backstory: In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. Did they consciously plant symbols in their work? he asked. Who noticed symbols appearing from their subconscious, and who [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ 9 Comments
There are many ways to make a movie, says film critic Jim Emerson, and many ways to make a mess. The truck chase scene from Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight is frankly a mess, as Emerson demonstrates in a fascinating video essay (above) produced as the first in a three-part series on the language [...]
≡ Category: Life, Philosophy | ≅ 2 Comments
Since the late 1990′s, Alain de Botton has been breaking down difficult philosophical and literary ideas and seeing how they apply to people’s everyday lives. He did this with his 1997 bestseller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step further with his television series called Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. Then, in the summer [...]
≡ Category: Life, Philosophy | ≅ Leave a Comment
When not founding tech companies, Damon Horowitz teaches philosophy through the Prison University Project, bringing college-level classes to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In three minutes, Horowitz raps about philosophy meeting real life — about how prisoners convicted of serious crimes come to terms with Socrates (who finished his days in prison), Heidegger, Kant, [...]
≡ Category: Animation, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Saharan desert ants are known to wander great distances in search of food. Twisting and turning on their way, the ants manage to return to their nests along surprisingly direct paths. They sense direction using light from the sky, but how do they judge distance? By counting steps, apparently. As National Public Radio science correspondent [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
The Live on Letterman concert series has brought you Peter Gabriel, Coldplay and Wilco (click to watch concerts), and now it returns with Ryan Adams playing solo at the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York city. During the 70-minute concert recorded Monday night, Adams performed ”Lucky Now” from his new album Ashes and Fire, plus some fan favorites ”Oh [...]
≡ Category: Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
After producing 60 Second Adventures in Thought and The History of English, the Open University returns with a new video series, Seven Wonders of the Microbe World. Microbes have given us some devastating diseases, everything from the Black Death to cholera, syphilis, typhoid and the occasional yeast infection. But our microbial friends have also done us [...]
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