First Meeting Between Papua New Guinea Tribesmen & Outside World

in Film, History | June 24th, 2011

Before click­ing on this extra­or­di­nary video — which shows a meet­ing of civ­i­liza­tions that may nev­er hap­pen again on our plan­et — be sure to turn the sound off and spare your­self the awful sound­track. The expres­sions on the faces of the Toulam­bi tribes­men are enough any­way, and even though his­to­ry tells us that these par­ties end bad­ly for the team with the fewest toys, you can’t help feel­ing a cer­tain amount of awe and joy while watch­ing the encounter.

This footage was shot in Papua New Guinea by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, a Bel­gian film­mak­er and activist per­haps best known for his Acad­e­my Award-nom­i­nat­ed 1979 doc­u­men­tary Raoni: The Fight for the Ama­zon. You can vis­it Dutilleux’s web site to get more pho­tos and a lit­tle more back­sto­ry on the Toulam­bi. Have a good week­end…

via Metafil­ter

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.

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Darwin’s Personal Library Goes Digital: 330 Books Online

in Literature, Science, Video - Science | June 24th, 2011

When Charles Dar­win fin­ished read­ing Charles Lyel­l’s Prin­ci­ples of Geol­o­gy, a book sug­gest­ing that there are clear lim­its to the vari­a­tion of species, he wrote in the mar­gins: “If this were true adios the­o­ry.” It’s a great piece of mar­gin­a­lia. And it’s just one of many com­ments that adorn books in Dar­win’s per­son­al library, and help illu­mi­nate his intel­lec­tu­al path to writ­ing On The Ori­gin Of Species (1859).

Thanks to Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty library and sev­er­al part­ners, 330 of Dar­win’s most heav­i­ly anno­tat­ed texts have now been dig­i­tized and made avail­able online at the web­site of the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library. More will come in due time. You can begin your tour here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win’s Dan­ger­ous Idea

Dar­win’s Lega­cy

via Cam­bridge News (with thanks to Kirstin But­ler and Brain­Pick­er)

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Open Culture No. 5: The Best Culture Links of the Week

in Beat & Tweets | June 23rd, 2011

These cul­tur­al good­ies (and oth­ers) flowed through our Twit­ter stream dur­ing the past week. Find us at @openculture … or Like us on Face­book get more intel­li­gent media deliv­ered dai­ly.

Sources: @eugenephoto,  @boingboing,  @pbkauf ,  @coudal,  @LAReviewofBooks,  @stevesilberman,  @kottke,  @brainpicker,  @webacion

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The Joy of Easy Listening, BBC Documentary Online

in Music | June 23rd, 2011

A quicks heads up: If you like Herb Alpert and Engel­bert Humperdinck, then this BBC doc is def­i­nite­ly for you. Here’s what you get in 90 min­utes:

In-depth doc­u­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion into the sto­ry of a pop­u­lar music that is often said to be made to be heard, but not lis­tened to. The film looks at easy lis­ten­ing’s archi­tects and prac­ti­tion­ers, its dan­gers and delights, and the mark it has left on mod­ern life.
From its emer­gence in the 50s to its hey­day in the 60s, through its sur­vival in the 70s and 80s and its revival in the 90s and beyond, the film traces the hid­den his­to­ry of a music that has reflect­ed soci­ety every bit as much as pop and rock — just in a more relaxed way.
Invent­ed at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll, easy lis­ten­ing has shad­owed pop music and the emerg­ing teenage mar­ket since the mid-50s. It is a genre that equal­ly sound­tracks our mod­ern age, but per­haps for a rather more ‘mature’ gen­er­a­tion and there­fore with its own dis­tinct pur­pose and aes­thet­ic. Con­trib­u­tors include Richard Car­pen­ter, Herb Alpert, Richard Clay­der­man, Engel­bert Humperdinck, Jim­my Webb, Mike Flow­ers, James Last and oth­ers.

You can watch Part 1 above, and the remain­ing ones here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Best Magazine Articles Ever, Curated by Kevin Kelly

in Literature, Media | June 23rd, 2011

A few days ago, we asked you to send us your favorite non-fic­tion titles. We’ll be post­ing your many excel­lent sug­ges­tions soon, and, in the mean­time, we thought we should offer some­thing in return — more specif­i­cal­ly, yet anoth­er list of excel­lent non-fic­tion com­piled by some­one oth­er than our­selves.

Kevin Kel­ly, web-pio­neer, co-founder of Wired Mag­a­zine, for­mer edi­tor of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log, and one of the best all-around liv­ing argu­ments for ditch­ing col­lege and trav­el­ing the world instead, has put togeth­er a crowd­sourced list of the best mag­a­zine arti­cles from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s, almost all of them avail­able on the web. He’s also gath­ered the top 25 of all time (based on the num­ber of votes received) on one thrilling page.

The list includes pieces like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thomp­son, David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, and Gay Tale­se’s leg­endary 1966 Esquire cov­er sto­ry, Frank Sina­tra Has a Cold. It’s an invalu­able resource, whether you’re an aspir­ing jour­nal­ist or nov­el­ist, a his­to­ry buff, or just a per­son who wants to enjoy the evo­lu­tion of the past 60 years of the Eng­lish lan­guage.

You may already be famil­iar with the sites Instapa­per, Lon­greads, and Long­form. All three can help you find great read­ing mate­r­i­al on the web, orga­nize it, and down­load it to your Kin­dle, iPad, or tablet. Enjoy.

Get more clas­sics from our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

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.

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Man as Industrial Palace: Famous 1926 Lithograph Brought to Life

in Animation, Art | June 23rd, 2011

In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a Ger­man gyne­col­o­gist and anato­my text­book author, pro­duced a lith­o­graph called Der Men­sch als Indus­triepalast (Man as Indus­tri­al Palace) that depict­ed the human body as a fac­to­ry (see here), a chem­i­cal plant of sorts. Kah­n’s body came com­plete with mechan­i­cal lungs, a rock-sort­ing stom­ach, gears for a throat, and a switch­board for a brain, and it illus­trat­ed rather metaphor­i­cal­ly the degree to which indus­tri­al­iza­tion had tak­en over West­ern life, cre­at­ing deep anx­i­ety for some and curios­i­ty for oth­ers.

More than eighty years lat­er, Hen­ning Led­er­er, a Ger­man artist, has brought Kah­n’s mechan­i­cal body to life with some gift­ed ani­ma­tion. This dynam­ic ver­sion is cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art as part of the “Health for Sale” exhi­bi­tion. To learn more about Led­er­er’s project, you will want to spend more time on IndustriePalast.com and par­tic­u­lar­ly with this help­ful PDF. Oth­er ani­ma­tion by Led­er­er appears on Vimeo. Many thanks to Elliot for send­ing this along.

Don’t miss our new col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons, which presents footage of great musi­cians, writ­ers, film­mak­ers and thinkers.

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Renata Salecl: The Paradox of Choice

in Current Affairs, Psychology | June 22nd, 2011

With free­dom come choic­es. Every choice is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to select the best pos­si­ble out­come, the one that would make us hap­pi­est. More choic­es lead to more hap­pi­ness, right? Of course we find the oppo­site to be true. As choic­es increase, so does anx­i­ety. In the lat­est install­ment of the RSA ani­mat­ed lec­ture series, Sloven­ian social and legal the­o­rist Rena­ta Sale­cl argues that this anx­i­ety, cou­pled with the cap­i­tal­ist ide­al of the self-made per­son, leads to a kind of social paral­y­sis. “Today’s ide­ol­o­gy of choice,” says Sale­cl, “actu­al­ly paci­fies peo­ple and makes us con­stant­ly turn crit­i­cism to our­selves instead of orga­niz­ing our­selves and mak­ing a cri­tique of the soci­ety we live in.” The ani­mat­ed fea­ture was adapt­ed from a lec­ture Sale­cl gave last sum­mer in Lon­don. (You can watch the entire lec­ture here.) It draws on ideas pre­sent­ed in her book, Choice.

Oth­er RSA Videos:

Sir Ken Robin­son: A Cre­ative Edu­ca­tion

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Smile or Die: The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Steven Pinker: How Innu­en­do Makes Things Work

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The Elements of Creativity

in Art, Creativity, Technology | June 22nd, 2011

The Ele­ments of Cre­ativ­i­ty. They come down to this: Copy. Trans­form. Com­bine. Noth­ing is tru­ly orig­i­nal. Every­thing is a remix, more or less.

Direc­tor Kir­by Fer­gu­son first traced this idea through lit­er­a­ture and music, then through film­mak­ing. Next up? Tech­nol­o­gy, com­put­ers and user inter­face. Above we have the third and penul­ti­mate install­ment in the “Every­thing is a Remix” series. (You can watch it in large for­mat here.) Look for the final seg­ment to appear this fall, and con­sid­er sup­port­ing the project here.

Nice work Kir­by and h/t Brain­Pick­ings.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.