What Are You Staring At?

You stare. You get stared at. It hap­pens count­less times every day. But have you ever pon­dered what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing here? Rose­marie Gar­land-Thom­son, a pro­fes­sor at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, has been giv­ing it some thought. You can get a quick intro­duc­tion above, and more exten­sive think­ing in her new book, Star­ing: How We Look. Thanks Nicole for send­ing this along…

F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare

The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na hosts a few gems, includ­ing F. Scott Fitzger­ald (The Great Gats­by) read­ing lines from Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo. Or, more specif­i­cal­ly, Oth­el­lo’s ora­tion to Venet­ian sen­a­tors.

This comes to us via Mike. Thanks to all who start­ed send­ing good links our way. When­ev­er you see some­thing good, please fire us a quick email. It will take one minute out of your day and make the day for many oth­ers.

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British Library to Offer 65,000 Free eBooks

From the TIMES ONLINE:

More than 65,000 19th-cen­tu­ry works of fic­tion from the British Library’s col­lec­tion are to be made avail­able for free down­loads by the pub­lic from this spring.

Own­ers of the Ama­zon Kin­dle, an ebook read­er device, will be able to view well known works by writ­ers such as Charles Dick­ens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thou­sands of less famous authors.

You can read the rest about this Microsoft fund­ed ini­tia­tive here. In the mean­time, we’ve made it rel­a­tive­ly easy to down­load major clas­sics to your Kin­dle, iPhone, smart­phone or com­put­er. See our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks (and Audio Books).

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The Physics of a Quarterback’s Pass

A lighter piece for Super Bowl Sun­day. Yes, this clip isn’t exact­ly heady. And, yes, it botch­es some facts (archers appar­ent­ly shoot from 70 meters, not 20 yards). But, nonethe­less, it gives you the basic physics of Drew Brees’ pass­ing game. Brees will be play­ing QB for the New Orleans Saints tonight, and, as you’ll see, his accu­ra­cy is remark­able. Hat tip to Mike.

via Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine’s Cos­mic Vari­ance blog

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Learning Languages Online with The New York Times

How can you learn for­eign lan­guages online? Last week, The New York Times out­lined a good num­ber of options for its read­ers. And, for days, the arti­cle remained one of the most wide­ly read pieces on the NYT site. Today, the paper issued a fol­lowup post, high­light­ing yet more ways to learn lan­guages dig­i­tal­ly. And hap­pi­ly our col­lec­tion, Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, got a small men­tion there. When tak­en togeth­er, these two pieces spell out the dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties fair­ly well. Some of the sites men­tioned include LiveMocha.com, BBC lan­guages, and Man­go Lan­guages.

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The Beautiful Math of Coral & Crochet

Our read­er Gar­net sets the stage for this video: “Math­e­mati­cians have long declared that geo­met­ri­cal hyper­bol­ic space could not be mod­eled in the real world. Now it’s been done, through cro­chet! Watch TED video sci­ence writer Mar­garet Wertheim explain how the art of cro­chet emu­lates sea slugs cre­at­ing coral struc­tures in hyper­bol­ic space, using art to bring atten­tion to the dis­ap­pear­ance of coral through glob­al warm­ing.” You can get more infor­ma­tion about this pre­sen­ta­tion here. And, for more TED Talks, don’t for­get to check out this handy online spread­sheet.

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What Teachers Make

Great mes­sage. Give it a minute to get going. Per­formed by Tay­lor Mali at the Bow­ery Poet­ry Club on Novem­ber 12, 2005. Thanks Thomas for shar­ing.

This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites.

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An Open Invitation: Suggest & Contribute

Some­where dur­ing your day, you spot a great video, an enrich­ing audio lec­ture, or an excel­lent free ebook. And you think, that’s per­fect for Open Cul­ture. So you shoot us a quick note, and the next thing you know, your per­son­al dis­cov­ery is live on the site, being shared with thou­sands of like-mind­ed read­ers from across the globe — read­ers from Lon­don to New York, from Tehran to Ban­ga­lore, from Syd­ney to Sao Paulo and beyond. And our glob­al vil­lage is hap­py … and bet­ter off for it. Sounds good, right? We think so.

So here’s what we ask: When­ev­er you see a great piece of intel­li­gent media, please quick­ly send it our way. (We have a nice “Sug­gest a Link” but­ton on the upper right side of the site.) And, assum­ing it fits with Open Cul­ture’s gen­er­al mis­sion, we’ll share it with your fel­low read­ers, give you full cred­it, and thank you warm­ly. Look for­ward to your sug­ges­tions, and, if you haven’t already, please join us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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