Jeff Bezos: What Life Story Will You Write?

in Books, Life | October 4th, 2010

A quick bit of inspi­ra­tion from the man who has changed the way we buy books, and now the way we’re read­ing them – Jeff Bezos (CEO, Ama­zon). Speak­ing at Prince­ton’s grad­u­a­tion last May, Bezos dis­cussed the life choic­es that we all face: Will you fol­low dog­ma? Or be orig­i­nal? Will you play it safe? Or take good risks? Will you be a cyn­ic? Or a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of oth­ers? Or will you be kind?

In short, your life sto­ry comes down to your choic­es. What sto­ry will you write? And how will it read when you’re 80?

via TED

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs Talks Life at Stan­ford Grad­u­a­tion

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Zooming into Italian Masterpieces

in Art | October 3rd, 2010

This past week, an Ital­ian web site (Hal­tadefinizione) placed online six mas­ter­pieces from the famous Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, all in super high res­o­lu­tion. Each image is packed with close to 28 bil­lion pix­els, a res­o­lu­tion 3,000 times greater than your nor­mal dig­i­tal pho­to. And this gives art con­nais­seurs every­where the abil­i­ty to zoom in and explore these paint­ings in exquis­ite­ly fine detail – to see strokes and details not nor­mal­ly seen even by vis­i­tors to the Uffizi. The paint­ings fea­tured here include Bot­ti­cel­li’s The Birth of Venus; Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Annun­ci­a­tion and The Last Sup­per; The Bap­tism of Christ by Ver­roc­chio and da Vin­ci; Car­avag­gio’s Bac­chus; and the Por­trait of Eleono­ra of Tole­do by Bronzi­no. These mas­ter­pieces will remain online for free until Jan­u­ary 29. For more details on the project, look here. Thanks Clau­dia for the great heads up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

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Donald Duck Discovers Glenn Beck: A Remix

in Art, Current Affairs, Television | October 3rd, 2010

This week, Jonathan McIn­tosh (of Rebel­lious Pix­els) released a new cartoon,“Right Wing Radio Duck,” that remix­es dozens of clas­sic Walt Dis­ney car­toons from the 1930s to 1960s. The artis­tic work is seam­less. The video is down­right fun to watch. And the under­ly­ing mes­sage is entire­ly con­tem­po­rary. A la Col­bert: Keep Fear Alive.

The new video is released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and, accord­ing to the artist, this trans­for­ma­tive remix “con­sti­tutes a fair-use of any copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al as pro­vid­ed for in sec­tion 107 of the US copy­right law.” Will Dis­ney, a com­pa­ny that exer­cis­es enor­mous pow­er over Amer­i­can copy­right law, agree? That remains to be seen.

To Glenn Beck fans who dou­ble as OC read­ers (if we have any), I apol­o­gize in advance.

via Alec Couros (aka @courosa)

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74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

in Books, Literature, Most Popular | October 1st, 2010

To com­mem­o­rate Banned Books Week, the always great Inter­net Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books. The col­lec­tion fea­tures some seri­ous pieces of lit­er­a­ture (James Joyce’s Ulysses, F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Ten­der is the Night, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, etc.); some tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s clas­sics (Win­nie the Pooh); and some sin­is­ter books of unques­tion­able his­tor­i­cal impor­tance (Mein Kampf). These books can be down­loaded in mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal for­mats, includ­ing some­times ePub and Kin­dle for­mats. This gives you the abil­i­ty to read the the works on the Kin­dle, iPad, Nook and oth­er main­stream ebook read­ers. (See note below.) But the old fash­ioned com­put­er will also do the job.

Cen­sor­ship remains a seri­ous prob­lem in the US and beyond. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion record­ed 460 attempts in 2009 to restrict books in US schools and libraries. But they esti­mate that this rep­re­sents only 20–25% of actu­al attempts to cen­sor. All of this cen­sor­ship is neat­ly (and rather specif­i­cal­ly) tracked on Google Maps.

NOTE: Please see our pre­vi­ous post describ­ing how to add files to the Kin­dle. Mean­while this page describes how to trans­fer ePub files to the iPad.

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Hear The Epic of Gilgamesh Read in the Original Akkadian and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

in History | October 1st, 2010

546px-AleppoNMTellHalafEnkiduGilg14Jh

Long ago, in the ancient civ­i­liza­tion of Mesopotamia, Akka­di­an was the dom­i­nant lan­guage. And, for cen­turies, it remained the lin­gua fran­ca in the Ancient Near East. But then it was grad­u­al­ly squeezed out by Ara­ma­ic, and it fad­ed into obliv­ion once Alexan­der the Great Hel­l­enized (Greek­i­fied) the region.

Now, 2,000+ years lat­er, Akka­di­an is mak­ing a small come­back. At Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, Dr. Mar­tin Wor­thing­ton, an expert in Baby­lon­ian and Assyr­i­an gram­mar, has start­ed record­ing read­ings of poems, myths and oth­er texts in Akka­di­an, includ­ing The Epic of Gil­gamesh. This clip gives you a taste of what Gil­gamesh, one of the ear­li­est known works of lit­er­a­ture, sounds like in its moth­er tongue. Or, you can jump into the full col­lec­tion of read­ings right here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Her­itage Key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

World Lit­er­a­ture in 13 Parts: From Gil­gamesh to Gar­cía Márquez

The Ancient His­to­ry Learn­ing Guide

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

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The Mother of All Funk Chords

in Media, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | September 30th, 2010

Who said there’s not an art to remix­ing? The Israeli artist Ophir Kutiel, oth­er­wise known as Kuti­man, cre­at­ed this video by weav­ing togeth­er scenes and tracks from 22 sep­a­rate music videos, all found ran­dom­ly on YouTube. (Find the full list below the jump.) First he lay­ered in the drums, then the bass and the gui­tar. And it’s hard to argue that the total isn’t greater than the sum of the parts. The video fig­ures into Kuti­man’s larg­er remix project called ThruY­OU, which TIME called one of the 50 best inven­tions of last year. Vis­it the ThruY­OU site to watch more remix videos in Kuti­man’s trade­mark style.

Thanks Evan for flag­ging this for us…

(more…)

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Neil Young’s Film “Le Noise” Debuts Online

in Film, Music | September 30th, 2010

It’s a dou­ble shot of Neil Young. This week, the Cana­di­an singer-song­writer released his lat­est album, Le Noise, along with an accom­pa­ny­ing 38 minute black & white film. Direct­ed by Adam Vol­lick, the movie fea­tures a live per­for­mance of the full album record­ed at the stu­dios of Daniel Lanois in Los Ange­les. The film offi­cial­ly debuts tonight, but you can catch it online right now. And please note: the album itself can be freely streamed online on NPR’s First Lis­ten site for a lim­it­ed amount of time.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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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The Adventures of Philip Marlowe: Hear the Classic Radio Episodes (1947–1951)

in Radio | September 29th, 2010

Dur­ing the 1930’s and 1940’s, Ray­mond Chan­dler gave life to the detec­tive Philip Mar­lowe, per­haps the most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter of the hard­boiled crime fic­tion tra­di­tion. Mar­lowe took cen­ter stage in Chan­dler’s influ­en­tial nov­els, The Big Sleep and The Long Good­bye. And, before too long, he start­ed appear­ing in adap­ta­tions for radio and cin­e­ma. Humphrey Bog­a­rt played Mar­lowe in 1946, and Elliot Gould tack­led the char­ac­ter in 1973. Mean­while, The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe took to the radio air­waves in the sum­mer of 1947.

The ini­tial episodes did­n’t quite gel and NBC quick­ly yanked the show. But, a year lat­er, CBS revived the radio pro­duc­tion with new writ­ers and actors, and, by 1949, the show had the largest radio audi­ence in the US. Thanks to the Inter­net Archive, The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe can now be accessed online for free. Find them on the IA site, or stream them below. We’ve also embed­ded of YouTube playlist of 72 episodes above. Each episode runs about 25 min­utes. Find them added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Beloved Sci-Fi Sto­ries as Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays:War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

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