Our Extraterrestrial DNA

in Life, Physics, Video - Science | August 17th, 2011

The search for extrater­res­tri­al life brings us right back to where we start­ed, plan­et Earth, at least for a moment. NASA researchers have dis­cov­ered evi­dence that some build­ing blocks of DNA, the mol­e­cule that holds the genet­ic instruc­tions for life, were like­ly cre­at­ed in space and then brought to Earth by mete­orites, leav­ing behind a “kit of ready-made parts” that con­tributed to the ori­gin of life. All of this gets spelled out by Dr. Michael Calla­han in this video released last week by NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter.

If you still find your­self doubt­ing our extrater­res­tri­al ori­gins, then chew on this more basic fact under­scored by physi­cist Lawrence Krauss. We are all star­dust. Put sim­ply, every lit­tle atom in our bod­ies comes from a super­no­va, an explod­ing star…

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

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Take Stanford Computer Science Courses This Fall: Free Worldwide

in Stanford, Technology | August 16th, 2011

This fall, pro­fes­sors from Stan­ford’s pres­ti­gious School of Engi­neer­ing will offer online three of its most pop­u­lar com­put­er sci­ence cours­es: Machine Learn­ing, Intro­duc­tion to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es. (You can sign up by click­ing on these links.) The cours­es will fea­ture short, inter­ac­tive video clips that stu­dents can watch when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want; short quizzes that pro­vide instant feed­back; and the abil­i­ty to rank ques­tions to be answered by Stan­ford instruc­tors. Accord­ing to the Stan­ford Report, “Already more than 58,000 peo­ple have expressed inter­est in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence course taught by Sebas­t­ian Thrun, a Stan­ford research pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence and a Google Fel­low, and Google Direc­tor of Research Peter Norvig.”

This isn’t the first time Stan­ford has offered free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es to the world. Back in 2008, Stan­ford Engi­neer­ing Every­where pre­sent­ed lec­tures from 10 com­plete online com­put­er sci­ence and elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing cours­es. This includes the three-course “Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence” sequence tak­en by the major­i­ty of Stan­ford under­grad­u­ates. These cours­es are all list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing sec­tions of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. H/T @eugenephoto

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence & Pro­gram­ming: Free Cours­es

Devel­op­ing Apps for iPhone & iPad: A Free Stan­ford Course

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William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique

in Art, Books, Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2011

In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tris­tan Tzara wrote “dada man­i­festo on fee­ble love and bit­ter love,” which includ­ed a sec­tion called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instruc­tions:

Take a news­pa­per.
Take some scis­sors.
Choose from this paper an arti­cle of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the arti­cle.
Next care­ful­ly cut out each of the words that makes up this arti­cle and put them all in a bag.
Shake gen­tly.
Next take out each cut­ting one after the oth­er.
Copy con­sci­en­tious­ly in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resem­ble you.
And there you are — an infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.

Decades lat­er, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs took this basic con­cept and put his own twist on it. Between 1961 and 1964, Bur­roughs pub­lished The Nova Tril­o­gy, a series of three exper­i­men­tal nov­els fash­ioned with his own cut-up method. Often con­sid­ered his defin­i­tive work of cut-up writ­ing, The Soft Machine, the first nov­el in the tril­o­gy, stitched togeth­er pages from a series of man­u­scripts that Bur­roughs him­self wrote between 1953 and 1958.

You can watch Bur­roughs demon­strat­ing his cut-up tech­nique above, and for­ev­er find this clip in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons, which lets you see great writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and thinkers talk­ing in their own words.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

 

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Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita: Just Another Great Love Story?

in Books, Literature | August 16th, 2011

We take you back to the mid 1950s, to an inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov and lit­er­ary crit­ic Lionel Trilling con­duct­ed soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of Loli­ta (1955). Loli­ta’s basic plot is well known — mid­dle-aged Hum­bert Hum­bert devel­ops a pas­sion­ate obses­sion for twelve-year old Dolores Haze and takes her on the road. For some crit­ics, this was enough to reject the book out of hand. One British review­er called it “the filth­i­est book I have ever read” (which per­haps did­n’t say much about the scope of his read­ing). Oth­er lit­er­ary observers, Trilling includ­ed, rec­og­nized the book’s lit­er­ary mer­its straight­away. And years lat­er, crit­ics still agree. Recent­ly, The Mod­ern Library called it the fourth most impor­tant nov­el pub­lished in Eng­lish dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The video above fea­tures Nabokov and Trilling talk­ing inter­est­ing­ly about how Loli­ta finds its place in a grand lit­er­ary tra­di­tion that’s more con­cerned with love, often scan­dalous love, than with sex per se. And, it’s in this sense that Loli­ta sits in the same tra­di­tion as Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na.

The video is actu­al­ly the sec­ond part of a longer inter­view. You can start with Part I here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Nabokov Tweaks Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”

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50 Famous Scientists & Academics Speak About God: Part II

in Religion, Science, Video - Science | August 15th, 2011

Last month, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing many Nobel prize win­ners, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. And boy did it gen­er­ate some debate. (Watch the video and read the com­ments here.) Now comes Part II, which fea­tures George Lakoff, Richard Dawkins, Simon Schaf­fer, Patri­cia Church­land, and Michio Kaku, among oth­ers. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) You can find this video, along with the first video in the series, in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

(more…)

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Bed Peace Revisits John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Vietnam Protests

in Film, History | August 13th, 2011

Briefly not­ed: Yoko Ono has post­ed on YouTube a 70 minute doc­u­men­tary that revis­its John and Yoko’s famous 1969 Bed-Ins, which amount­ed to a peace­ful protest against the Viet­nam War. The film has been added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Below the jump you can find Yoko’s let­ter to view­ers and a sum­ma­ry of the film.

(more…)

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Young Terry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Animation

in Animation, Art, Comedy, Film | August 12th, 2011

Put aside 14 min­utes and Ter­ry Gilliam, the leg­endary Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor, will show you how to make your own cutout ani­ma­tions. Gilliam start­ed out his career as an ani­ma­tor, then moved to Eng­land and joined up with Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. For years, he worked as the group’s ani­ma­tor, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es.

If you’ve nev­er tak­en a good look at his work, you will want to spend some time with The Mir­a­cle of Flight from 1974, or this ani­mat­ed sequence, Sto­ry Time, from 1968.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin on Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed

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Marlon Brando Screen Tests for Rebel Without A Cause (1947)

in Film | August 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1940s, Warn­er Broth­ers bought the rights to Robert Lind­ner’s book, Rebel With­out a Cause: The Hyp­no­analy­sis of a Crim­i­nal Psy­chopath, and began turn­ing it into a film. A par­tial script was writ­ten, and a 23-year old Mar­lon Bran­do was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For what­ev­er rea­son, the stu­dio aban­doned the orig­i­nal project, and even­tu­al­ly revived it eight years lat­er with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause appears here.

Down the road, you can find the Bran­do clip in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons, which fea­tures great thinkers and artists appear­ing in orig­i­nal video & audio. Tol­stoy, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, they’re all part of the mix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

The James Dean Sto­ry by Robert Alt­man (Com­plete Film)

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen­test for East of Eden

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.