13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafalgar Square

in Music | May 3rd, 2009

Awe­some way to give the Mon­day blues a swift kick in the ass. Last Thurs­day, in Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square, a big crowd of 13,500 got togeth­er and sang “Hey Jude.” The project (arranged some­what spon­ta­neous­ly by T‑Mobile) gets bet­ter as things move along — kind of like the song itself.

All cred­it for find­ing this one goes to @courosa over on Twit­ter.

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Bach on Ukulele

in Music | May 2nd, 2009

Pret­ty intrigu­ing footage high­light­ed by Metafil­ter today: “John King, like­ly the world’s only clas­si­cal ukulele vir­tu­oso, died last month at the age of 55. Here he is per­form­ing a Bach pre­lude (above), play­ing more Bach, and play­ing Chop­sticks.” You can find more clips of King’s work on this YouTube chan­nel.

And while you’re at it, check out our list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions.

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Free PDF Download of The Alchemyst

in Books | May 2nd, 2009

A quick fyi: You can down­load a free PDF of Michael Scot­t’s Young Adult nov­el, The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel. It runs about 375 pages and is avail­able for a lim­it­ed time thanks to Pow­ell’s web site. Get it free here. Or buy a copy (and read user reviews) here.

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Ballard Rediscovered

in Literature | May 1st, 2009

J.G. Bal­lard, the con­tro­ver­sial author of Crash and Empire, died last month. One of our read­ers (Stephen) point­ed us to a Bal­lard short sto­ry pub­lished in the Guardian. “The Dying Fall” was lit­tle known and nev­er pub­lished in a Bal­lard col­lec­tion. And it’s here that the mod­ern world col­lides with the Renais­sance. 

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.