Vintage Literary T‑Shirts

Out of Print Cloth­ing “cel­e­brates the world’s great sto­ries through fash­ion,” work­ing with artists to design t‑shirts that fea­ture icon­ic book cov­ers. The cat­a­log lets you choose from Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm, Salinger’s Catch­er in the Rye, William S. Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch, Bul­gakov’s Russ­ian clas­sic Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta or 29 oth­er vin­tage shirts, each of which costs a fair­ly rea­son­able $28. See the full list of shirts here.

via @AndrewHazlett

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The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

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!

A Slo-Mo Look Inside North Korea

In North Korea, the pro­pa­gan­da machine is kick­ing into gear, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for Kim Jong-un to replace his father Kim Jong-il. Ear­li­er this month, father and son attend­ed a mas­sive mil­i­tary parade togeth­er. Osten­si­bly meant to com­mem­o­rate the 65th anniver­sary of the found­ing of the Work­ers’ Par­ty, the parade was real­ly about giv­ing the son a big com­ing-out par­ty – a first intro­duc­tion to domes­tic and for­eign audi­ences. And depart­ing from the usu­al script, the North Kore­an regime allowed West­ern jour­nal­ists to cov­er the event live and on-site. Hence the video above. Using Canon 60D and 1DmkIV cam­eras, the Guardian bril­liant­ly cap­tured the pro­pa­gan­dis­tic essence of the moment.

Relat­ed note: It has­n’t been updat­ed in a while, but the blog North Kore­an Econ­o­my Watch uses Google Earth to pro­vide the most exten­sive map­ping of North Korea’s eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary infra­struc­tures. It’s a great way to fur­ther demys­ti­fy the secre­tive state. Thanks to Ed for the tip.

Sir Ken Robinson: A Creative Education

Do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? Sir Ken Robin­son asked that ques­tion at the 2006 TED con­fer­ence. And the talk res­onat­ed wide­ly. His short pre­sen­ta­tion remains one of the most watched and “favor­it­ed” videos in TED’s large cat­a­logue of inspir­ing videos. Quite an accom­plish­ment.

Now, with the lat­est RSA video, Sir Ken returns to delve deep­er into this basic ques­tion. He asks, Why do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? And why is this prob­lem built into the mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem? And how can we bring a “par­a­digm” shift – one that will let schools fos­ter cre­ativ­i­ty at long last?

Run­ning 11 min­utes, the cre­ative­ly-ani­mat­ed video above (how fit­ting!) gives you some answers. But real­ize that the clip is an excerpt from a longer 52 minute lec­ture avail­able in its entire­ty here.

A quick PS: Wired UK recent­ly asked the big ques­tion: “What inno­va­tion would most improve edu­ca­tion in the next decade?” You will find suc­cinct answers by Ken Robin­son, Chris Ander­son (head of TED), yours tru­ly and sev­er­al oth­ers here.

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David Lynch Talks Meditation with Paul McCartney

David Lynch has been prac­tic­ing Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion for decades, and, last year, he inter­viewed anoth­er long­time TM prac­ti­tion­er – Sir Paul McCart­ney. The inter­view (find Part 1 above and Part 2 here) turned quick­ly to The Bea­t­les, their involve­ment with the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi (guru of the TM move­ment), and their famous trip to his ashram in Rishikesh (India) in Feb­ru­ary 1968. There, among oth­er things, they wrote 48 songs – many of which con­tributed to The White Album – before hav­ing a falling out with the guru and leav­ing town.

The film­mak­er sat down with McCart­ney before a ben­e­fit con­cert staged by The David Lynch Foun­da­tion in April 2009. Lynch’s orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides schol­ar­ships to schools so that stu­dents can learn TM. Both Paul and Ringo per­formed at ben­e­fit that night…

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!

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Open Video, Open Knowledge

Read­ers of Open Cul­ture will appre­ci­ate how video has become, in many ways, our newest vernacular—growing in pop­u­lar­i­ty every day, and esti­mat­ed to reach 90 per­cent of world­wide web traf­fic by 2013. Yet so lit­tle of our mov­ing image her­itage is actu­al­ly online. As of Octo­ber 2010, just sin­gle per­cent­age points of the great col­lec­tions at the BBC Archive, ITN Source, Library of Con­gress, Nation­al Archives, etc., are actu­al­ly dig­i­tized and avail­able over the Inter­net! A new short film out this week from the UK’s JISC Film & Sound Think Tank makes the point with clar­i­ty. (Watch here or above.)

What if it were pos­si­ble to enjoy the world’s largest and most pop­u­lar infor­ma­tion com­mons and enable it with down­load­able video–video of great qual­i­ty, whose orig­i­na­tors, own­ers, and righthold­ers opened to reuse and remix by any­one for free?

Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion and iCom­mons have pro­duced a report–just out now–to help cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions under­stand and appre­ci­ate the pos­si­bil­i­ties pre­sent­ed by open­ly licensed assets for Wikipedia and the open web. Video for Wikipedia: A Guide to Best Prac­tices for Cul­tur­al and Edu­ca­tion­al Insti­tu­tions describes how Wikipedia is now open­ing its doors to video, and how lead­ing insti­tu­tions can par­tic­i­pate in what is, in effect, the newest knowl­edge rev­o­lu­tion.

The issues are sit­u­at­ed, of course, with­in the larg­er con­text of build­ing a free and informed soci­ety. For uni­ver­si­ties, muse­ums, archives, and oth­ers, bring­ing video online from our cul­tur­al her­itage (and equip­ping stu­dents to use it) has become a new cul­tur­al imper­a­tive. Open video on Wikipedia is not sim­ply a call for free media frag­ments to be stored online. It augurs a new vision of teach­ing and learn­ing, and a new cre­ative and polit­i­cal dis­course. Every­one is invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this con­ver­sa­tion just get­ting under­way…

This post was con­tributed by Peter Kauf­man, the CEO and pres­i­dent ofIntel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion, who shares our pas­sion for thought­ful media.

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Richard Grayson, an Amer­i­can com­pos­er and pianist, has a knack for impro­vis­ing on the piano. Ask him to play Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars in the style of Beethoven, and he has it cov­ered. (Watch above.) The same goes for The Mup­pets’ Theme in the style of a Bach fugue; “Sin­gin’ in the Rain” in the style of Wag­n­er, or Wag­n­er’s “Ride of the Valkyries” in the style of a Tan­go. You will find 70+ impro­vi­sa­tions on Grayson’s YouTube Chan­nel. Find it here.

via Metafil­ter

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Mark Twain #1 on Amazon

The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mark Twain (Vol. 1) hit the stands just yes­ter­day, and already it stands atop the Ama­zon best­seller list, leapfrog­ging past Stieg Lars­son, Bill Bryson, Jon Stew­art, and even the lat­est, sup­pos­ed­ly great­est Amer­i­can nov­el­ist, Jonathan Franzen. Although he died a cen­tu­ry again, Twain has still got it.

The 766 page auto­bi­og­ra­phy pub­lished by UC Press runs $18.99 in hard­cov­er on Ama­zon, and the Kin­dle ver­sion a far cool­er $9.99. You can read excerpts in PDF for­mat here and here. Mean­while you can also find free ver­sions of Twain’s clas­sics – Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Tom Sawyer – in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.