The Open Culture Archive

≡ Category: Random | ≅ Comments

Want to see every post that we have written since 2006? Then look back through our Archive. We just created it and added it to the site, partly in response to a reader request. You can permanently find the Archive in the second column, between “Essentials” and “Categories.” Enjoy.

Socrates Flubs His Academic Interview

≡ Category: Philosophy, Random | ≅ Comments

What happens when Socrates tries to land a job at a university? It doesn’t go so well. Below, we have the comments returned by the interview committee, as imagined by THE (Times Higher Education). In this piece, you’ll also find Tolstoy, Kafka, Jane Austen and other geniuses coming up short with the search committees. Now to [...]

Special Discount at The Teaching Company

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A little something special for our readers courtesy of The Teaching Company…
If you’re not familiar with them, The Teaching Company provides a very nice service. The company travels across the US, and they record great professors lecturing on great topics. Their academic courses will appeal to almost any lifelong learner (see their rich catalogue of 200+ [...]

Bike Tricks Courtesy of Thomas Edison

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Voila, the 1899 precursor to this amazing 2009 bike stunt video originally found on the @courosa Twitter stream. And who can doubt that we’re making progress?
via Andrew Sullivan

Hard Words in The New York Times

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When you’re reading The New York Times and stumble upon a word you don’t know, you can highlight it and the Times will give you the definition. Naturally, the Times keeps track of the definitions it provides. So what are the most commonly looked up words? You can find the top ten below. (Get a [...]

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

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A nice creative use of Legos. For $55, you can build The Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater, two Frank Lloyd Wright creations, with Legos. That’s right up there with Classic Photographs Remade Lego Style.

via BoingBoing

Getting Hired and Fired by The New Yorker, As Told by Tweets

≡ Category: Media, Random | ≅ Comments

After 17 years of climbing the ladder, Dan Baum finally landed his dream job at The New Yorker. But things didn’t work out quite as he planned. On Twitter this week, Baum tells the story of his rise and fall. You can read a consolidated Twitter-style transcript here. A pretty intriguing look at what happens [...]

The Invention of Self: One Woman, Eight Characters

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At the TED Conference, actress Sarah Jones takes a funny look at “the invention of self,” which is a fancy way of saying she does some good impersonations. Coming up, Jones impersonates an elderly Jewish women, a young fast-talking Dominican college student, people from various nationalities (China, India, France, Germany, Jordan, etc.). And it’s all mixed with [...]

Open Culture on Facebook

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Just a quick fyi, we created a little Facebook page where you can access our daily content. So head over and become a “Fan.” And tell a friend.
Also, please note, you can find us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed. And remember that we’re now located at www.openculture.com  
Have a good weekend.

Photo Animation Goodness

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Give this a minute. It gets quite good once it gets going. Thanks Philip for sending this along. (Readers always feel free to send intelligent audio & video our way.)

How Do You Use Open Courses?

≡ Category: Most Popular, Random | ≅ Comments

I was asked by a newspaper reporter today how people, like you, are using open university courses (such as those found here). And the truth is, I’m not always sure. So I figured, why not put the question out there and ask you. Here it goes: How are you using these courses? Are you listening [...]

Open Culture Now at OpenCulture.com … and a Small Favor to Ask

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Here’s a quick announcement, and please take note. Starting today, you can find Open Culture at www.openculture.com. Our old domain (oculture.com) will still work, as will old links. But they’ll forward (hopefully) seamlessly to the new domain. Why the change? Because it seemed time to have the url actually match the site’s name.
If you encounter [...]

Welcome New York Times Readers

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If you’re visiting Open Culture thanks to The New York Times article, and if you’re looking for audio downloads for your next road trip, then please explore our Audio & Podcast Collection, which includes (among other things) free audio books, free foreign language lessons, free university courses, and much more. You can download these audio files [...]

Extreme Sheepherding

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File this clip (now added to our YouTube Favorites) under Random. See you next week. 
via Alfred A. Knopf Twitter Feed (ours here)

One Year in 40 seconds

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Here’s what it looks like if you plant a camera in the same location for one year and snap photos throughout the changing seasons. Video is striking but random. So we’re filing it under “Random.”

Iraqi Reporter Throws Shoes at President Bush

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We’ve been having some problems posting videos, and think we now have it figured out. So we’re posting a test. 
In case you don’t know the backstory, President Bush made a final surprise trip to Iraq today and held a joint news conference. It ended abruptly when an Iraqi journalist started throwing his shoes at him. [...]

A Little Alice’s Restaurant on Thanksgiving

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What’s Thanksgiving without Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant?”
The video is below. The lyrics to the song, originally released in 1967, are here. An interview with Guthrie is here (use Real Player to listen).
Have a good holiday. We’ll be back on Monday (maybe sooner).

Arlo Guthrie Alice's Restaurant

Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong with Nunchucks

≡ Category: Random | ≅ Comments

Nope, this is not exactly another piece of vintage YouTube goodness. From what I can piece together, Nokia is marketing a Bruce Lee cell phone in China, and this is the commercial that’s backing their promotion. Needless to say, there are some digital enhancements going on here. But it’s amusing nonetheless.

 
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Einstein the Talking Parrot

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No commentary really needed. Just watch. Filed under “Random” and added to our YouTube playlist.

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Oxford Scholars Name Top Ten Irritating Phrases

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What are some of the most annoying phrases in the English language? In a new forthcoming book, A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, Oxford researchers list the common phrases that we use incorrectly or just all too excessively. Here’s the list (and if you have your own disliked expressions, list them below in [...]

“Angels We Have Heard On High” Played with Broccoli

≡ Category: Music, Random | ≅ Comments

Classic!

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Elephant Jumping On Trampoline

≡ Category: Random | ≅ Comments

This is half art/half random, or maybe it’s better to say half random/half art. Anyway, it calls to mind one of our popular posts (Elephant Painting) from months to go. So here it is, an animated short by Nicolas Deveaux.

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Ninth Circuit Judge on The Dating Game Way Back When

≡ Category: Law, Random | ≅ Comments

The name Alex Kozinski probably won’t mean much to many of you. But if you’re a lawyer, or a Supreme Court watcher, you’ll know that he’s the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (a really prestigious position). Rather recently, he’s been associated with a highly visible pornography scandal [...]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Presented creatively …

A Day in the Life of Air Traffic

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The AirTraffic team presents a rather intriguing visualization of what global air traffic looks like over a 24 hour period. File this under Random. Here it goes:

 
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Live Streams of the Olympics

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A quick fyi, you can catch live streams of the Olympic Games via the web.
If you live in the US, you can watch at NBCOlympics.com,
If you live in the UK and Europe, you can get the stream at BBC TV Olympics
If you live on China’s Mainland, you can see the games at CCTVOlympics.com
And for Australian [...]

Tsunami Surfing

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A little summer randomness. It’s actually quite beautiful …
(And, no, I’m not sure if this is technically a tsunami.)

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A Year in Antarctica Boiled Down to Six Minutes

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1200 people live in Antarctica during the summer, and about 200 in winter. Assuming that you’re not among them, we’ve posted this time lapse video to show you what you’re missing:

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When the Flintstones Peddled Cigarettes

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What can you say about this? A quick trip back to the 1950s… File this under Random …
(For foreign readers, all you need to know is that The Flintstones was a classic American cartoon.)

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Related Content:
Rewind the Videotape: Mike Wallace Interviews 1950s Celebrities

Architecture in Motion

≡ Category: Art, Random, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments

When completed in Dubai, this “dynamic building” designed by David Fisher will be in constant motion, always changing its shape, and also generate its own electric energy. You can reserve your apartment today, or wait for similar buildings to get erected in Moscow and New York. The whole concept feels a bit Las Vegas-esque. But [...]