The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Wikipedia | ≅ Leave a Comment
Wikipedia is now opening the online encyclopedia to video, giving contributors a new way to convey information in a richer way. And they’re making a point of using video in an open format (Ogg Theora).
Among the confluence of factors coming together in 2010 are: 1) the growing awareness that video is the dominant medium of [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ 3 Comments
Right in time for the weekend… Working in partnership with Stella Artois, TheAuteurs.com is now featuring a selection of its favorite films that have played at the Cannes Film Festival.
The lineup, including many prize winners, features movies by Federico Fellini (Amarcord), Wong Kar-wai (Happy Together), Michelangelo Antonioni (L’avventura), Jacques Tati (Mon oncle), and others. [...]
≡ Category: Books, Literature | ≅ 4 Comments
Here’s a little nugget for you. The great inventor Thomas Edison visited the home of Mark Twain in 1909, and captured footage of “the father of American literature” (says Faulkner) walking around his estate and playing cards with his daughters, Clara and Jean. The film is silent and deteriorated. But it’s apparently the only known [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 1 Comment
Lots of new archives have been coming online lately. So, why not give them a quick mention.
CSPAN: This week, the American cable network finally completed the digitization of its vast video archive. What does that mean for you? It means you can access online every C-SPAN program aired since 1987. 160,000 hours of video in [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 9 Comments
A couple of days ago, we featured a video posted on Penguin’s YouTube Channel that used a smart video technique to restore faith in the future of book publishing. A couple of our readers were quick to point out that the video’s creative element was highly similar to an award-winning video called “Lost Generation”. (See [...]
≡ Category: Life, Science | ≅ 4 Comments
Robert Sapolsky – one of the world’s leading neurobiologists, a MacArthur Fellow, Stanford professor, and author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers — breaks down an intriguing question. Precisely in what ways are we (humans) different from other animals inhabiting our world? The differences are fewer than we think. But there are some, and they’ll make [...]
≡ Category: Books | ≅ 3 Comments
Smart and hopeful. But you need to stick with it for a couple of minutes. A job well done…
≡ Category: Online Courses, Physics | ≅ Leave a Comment
BigThink asked Dr. Michio Kaku to sum up Einstein’s legacy in a nutshell. Above, you get his attempt in a quick minute. Obviously, this is just beginning to scratch the surface, and knowing you, you want to go deeper. So here you go: Leonard Susskind, a world famous physicist, offered a series of six courses [...]
≡ Category: History, Life | ≅ Leave a Comment
During the past decade, Tony Judt emerged as one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He’s combative, often controversial (especially when talking about Israel), and sometimes disliked. But he’s taken seriously. And many have had nothing but sheer praise for his master work, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. The NYU historian had built up a [...]
≡ Category: History, Theater | ≅ 1 Comment
March 15th. It translates to the Ides of March on the Roman Calendar. And it’s the date when Julius Caesar was famously assassinated in 44 B.C. To mark the occasion (today is the Ides of March), we bring you a dramatic, six-minute clip of the assassination scene from the film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
This weekend, The Guardian film critic and select filmmakers listed their favorite movie scenes of all time. It starts with the iconic shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho (above). No surprise there. And then what? The very long car chase from The French Connection, Robet DeNiro’s talking to the mirror scene in Taxi Driver, the memorable last minutes of [...]
≡ Category: Twitter | ≅ Leave a Comment
Guaranteed to make you smarter, or your money back. You can follow us on Twitter here. (Or become a Facebook fan.) Here they go:
RT @BoingBoing: Most beautiful bookstore – Buenos Aires’s Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid http://bit.ly/c5iapa
RT @Alyssa_Milano: Two new MIT classes focus on helping #Haiti: http://is.gd/aa43H (via @brainpicker)
RT @guardianculture: “Solar” by Ian McEwan http://bit.ly/dpqBAq
RT @kirstinbutler: [...]
≡ Category: Art | ≅ 5 Comments
My old home town in time lapse video. Thanks Ian for the excellent find. Have a good weekend all.
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ 2 Comments
Christopher Hitchens — he’s an irritant to the left (a big defender of the bungled Iraq war) and to the right (an atheist who wrote the controversial bestseller God is Not Great). He’s an equal opportunity polemicist. Now, in the April edition of Vanity Fair, he’s back. This time, he’s deconstructing the Ten Commandments and offering his [...]
≡ Category: Sci Fi, Theater | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Twilight Zone aired between 1959 and 1964, and it became one of America’s iconic television shows. Although the program ended long ago, the show lives on today … on the radio. Airing on 200 stations across the US, Twilight Zone Radio dramatizes Rod Serling’s classic scripts for today’s radio audiences. And it does it [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Note: Some language is NOT safe for work…
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This past weekend, François Alaux and Herve de Crecy’s 17 minute film, Logorama, won the Oscar for the best Short Film (Animated). The plot comes basically boils down to this: “In a world made up entirely of trademarks and brand names, Michelin Man [...]
≡ Category: Art, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Fans of avant-garde art, take note. UbuWeb hosts a vast archive of online avant-garde media, and they’ve been doing it since 1996. The site features a large mp3 sound archive, alongside an extensive film/video collection where you’ll find some vintage clips. Take these items for example:
Four American Composers: Philip Glass – Peter Greenaway’s documentary from [...]
≡ Category: Education, Web/Tech | ≅ 8 Comments
Professors are increasingly souring on students bringing their laptops to class. Some are banning them. (The Washington Post has more on that.) And some are banning them emphatically. Like the physics professor from the University of Oklahoma. (Watch the video above.) What’s the solution? Maybe this student has the right idea (said in jest).
≡ Category: Education | ≅ 2 Comments
The average American spends a good 100 minutes per day commuting to and from work. (More on that here.) That amounts to about 433 hours per year! Now imagine using that time to learn something new — to read a great book, to take a class from a top university, to learn a new language. To make [...]
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