The “Ask Sam Harris Anything” Hour

Sam Har­ris — he wrote the best­sellers The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. He’s also one-fourth of the New Athe­ist quar­tet infor­mal­ly called The Four Horse­men (where you’ll also find Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Hitchens and Daniel Den­nett.) And he has most recent­ly argued that neu­ro­science can even­tu­al­ly answer all moral ques­tions. Sam Har­ris is very much a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. He’s out there and in the mix. And he’s now answer­ing ques­tions from Reddit.com users. Give Har­ris 54 min­utes and he’ll tell you how to pro­mote pub­lic ratio­nal­i­ty, why med­i­ta­tion can change your life, and much, much more …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Answers Red­dit User Ques­tions

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth His­to­ry in C Major”

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Splitscreen: A Love Story

The Nokia Short 2011 com­pe­ti­tion wrapped up this week­end at the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the jury gave the first prize to Splitscreen: A Love Sto­ry. Shot with a Nokia N8 mobile phone and a hand-held dol­ly (watch the “mak­ing of” video here), the film ele­gant­ly weaves togeth­er scenes from Paris and New York. A syn­chro­nized tale of two great cities. Then, it all comes togeth­er in Lon­don. Kudos to direc­tor JW Grif­fiths, and don’t miss his orig­i­nal pitch.

via Curios­i­ty­Counts

Gone With the Wind Turns 75, and Shows its Age

It’s with some dis­com­fort that the author names Gone with the Wind, pub­lished exact­ly 75 years ago today, her favorite child­hood book: It was thick, it was roman­tic — and per­haps most cru­cial­ly for any awk­ward, bespec­ta­cled pre­teen girl — it fea­tured a head­strong hero­ine whose appeal to the oppo­site sex derived more from her charm than her phys­i­cal beau­ty.

Nonethe­less, there’s no way around the pro­found fail­ings of both the book and the MGM epic film based on it: Nov­el and film treat­ed slav­ery as an inci­den­tal back­drop to the war; they glo­ri­fied and mis­rep­re­sent­ed the actions of the Ku Klux Klan; and most egre­gious­ly, they por­trayed the mas­ter-slave rela­tion­ship as one which nei­ther mas­ter nor slave should ever dream of alter­ing. In the words of his­to­ri­an and soci­ol­o­gist Jim Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Every­thing Your High School His­to­ry Text­book Got Wrong:

[Gone With The Wind] laments the pass­ing of the slave era as “gone with the wind.” In the nov­el, Mitchell states open­ly that African Amer­i­cans are “crea­tures of small intel­li­gence.” And this book is by far the most pop­u­lar book in the U.S. and has been for 60 years. The book is also pro­found­ly wrong in its his­to­ry. What it tells us about slav­ery, and espe­cial­ly recon­struc­tion, did not happen…it is pro­found­ly racist and pro­found­ly wrong. Should we teach it? Of course. Should we teach against it? Of course.

Mean­while, Hat­tie McDaniel took home a best sup­port­ing actress Oscar for her role as Scar­lett O’Hara’s loy­al house slave, Mam­my. She was the first African-Amer­i­can woman to win an Acad­e­my Award. The fact that she was not allowed to attend the film’s pre­miere in Atlanta makes her accep­tance speech (1940) even more poignant. It appears above.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Perils of the Bike Lane: Pratfalls with a Purpose

Com­plete­ly ran­dom. Can’t believe this guy (who hap­pens to be an HBO film­mak­er) did­n’t wear a hel­met. The best scene is saved for last.

via New York Times

Springsteen’s Eulogy for Clarence Clemons‎

Today, Bruce Spring­steen pub­lished on his web site a revised ver­sion of the eulo­gy he deliv­ered last week for Clarence Clemons, his friend and band mate. It’s equal parts hon­est and mov­ing. The talk builds momen­tum as it goes along, kind of like a Spring­steen song, with the rhythm real­ly pick­ing up here:

I think per­haps “C” pro­tect­ed me from a world where it was­n’t always so easy to be an inse­cure, weird and skin­ny white boy either. But, stand­ing togeth­er we were badass, on any giv­en night, on our turf, some of the bad­dest ass­es on the plan­et. We were unit­ed, we were strong, we were right­eous, we were unmov­able, we were fun­ny, we were corny as hell and as seri­ous as death itself. And we were com­ing to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Togeth­er, we told an old­er, rich­er sto­ry about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of friend­ship that tran­scend­ed those I’d writ­ten in my songs and in my music. Clarence car­ried it in his heart. It was a sto­ry where the Scoot­er and the Big Man not only bust­ed the city in half, but we kicked ass and remadethe city, shap­ing it into the kind of place where our friend­ship would not be such an anom­aly. And that… that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and dou­ble down on that sto­ry on a night­ly basis, because that is some­thing, that is the thing that we did togeth­er… the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fuck­ing big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tat­too it over your heart. Accept it… it’s the New World.

And final­ly the crescen­do:

SO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN… ALWAYS LAST, BUT NEVER LEAST. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE MASTER OF DISASTER, the BIG KAHUNA, the MAN WITH A PHD IN SAXUAL HEALING, the DUKE OF PADUCAH, the KING OF THE WORLD, LOOK OUT OBAMA! THE NEXT BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVEN THOUGH HE’S DEAD… YOU WISH YOU COULD BE LIKE HIM BUT YOU CAN’T! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BIGGEST MAN YOU’VE EVER SEEN!… GIVE ME A C‑L-A-R-E-N-C‑E. WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! … amen.

Get the full text here.

H/T to @opedr

iPhone Magic by Techno-Illusionist Marco Tempest

No more top hat and hand­ker­chief. Mar­co Tem­pest uses iPods and iPhones to cre­ate mag­ic for the 21st cen­tu­ry. He calls him­self a tech­no-illu­sion­ist. “I explore the bor­ders between tech­nol­o­gy and mag­ic,” says Tem­pest, “between what’s incred­i­bly real and incred­i­bly not.” Orig­i­nal­ly from Switzer­land, Tem­pest now lives in New York City. He was fea­tured in the inter­na­tion­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed tele­vi­sion series, The Vir­tu­al Magi­cian, and his work can be viewed on a YouTube chan­nel of the same name. His newest release, “iPod Magic–Deceptions,” fea­tures an appli­ca­tion he devel­oped to syn­chro­nize video play­back on mul­ti­ple screens. The App is called “Mul­ti­Vid.” You can down­load it for free here, and learn how to use it here.

via Dar­ren Brown

The History of the English Language in Ten Animated Minutes

Yes­ter­day, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty released ‘The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes,’ a wit­ty ani­mat­ed sequence that takes you through 1600 years of lin­guis­tic his­to­ry. The Vikings gave us “give” and “take.” Shake­speare added anoth­er 2,000 words and expres­sions to the mix. The British Empire (see video above) then brought the evolv­ing Eng­lish lan­guage to new lands, cre­at­ing new vari­eties of Eng­lish world­wide. And so the sto­ry con­tin­ues. You can find this series fea­tur­ing the voice of Clive Ander­son on iTunes or YouTube. We’ve includ­ed links to each YouTube chap­ter right below. Many thanks to Cather­ine for the heads up…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages

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Beatles, Friends & Family: Photos by Linda McCartney

In 1967, a young Lin­da East­man went to Lon­don to pho­to­graph the “Swing­ing Six­ties” and snagged exclu­sive pho­tos of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton and Jimi Hen­drix. In the midst of it all, she met Paul McCart­ney, and when the two mar­ried in 1969, she had a fixed place with­in rock ‘n rol­l’s inner cir­cle.

Dur­ing the com­ing decades, she took over 200,000 images. Yes, that means many more pho­tographs of rock stars and artists. But the empha­sis also shift­ed inward, to a new domes­tic life with Paul and their chil­dren — Heather, Mary, Stel­la, and James. Years lat­er, as Paul pre­pares to mar­ry again, the pho­to­graph­ic work of Lin­da McCart­ney (1941–1998) has been pub­lished in a 288-page ret­ro­spec­tive vol­ume called Lin­da McCart­ney: Life in Pho­tographs. It fea­tures a for­ward by Paul and some com­men­tary by Annie Lei­bovitz. An impres­sive sam­pling of Lin­da McCart­ney’s work can be pre­viewed on this web site.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.