Lou Gehrig, Yankee Legend, Stars in 1938 Western Rawhide

in Film | August 18th, 2011

In 1938, Lou Gehrig began his six­teenth sea­son as the New York Yan­kees’ first base­man. He con­tin­ued build­ing toward his leg­endary record of play­ing 2,130 con­sec­u­tive games. His bat­ting aver­age held at a respectable .295, though down from the scorch­ing .351 of the year before. And, dur­ing the pre­sea­son, Gehrig crossed over to Hol­ly­wood and starred in Rawhide, a West­ern film shot dur­ing an era when West­erns were a sta­ple of Amer­i­can film­go­ers. (John Wayne starred in more than 40 West­erns dur­ing the 1930s, and you can watch many of them online here.)

The plot of Rawhide is implau­si­ble, to say the least. The film starts with Gehrig play­ing him­self, telling reporters at Grand Cen­tral sta­tion:

I am through with base­ball… I got what I want. My sis­ter and I bought a swell ranch in a peace­ful val­ley.  I am going to wal­low in peace and qui­et for the rest of my life. I am going to hang up my spikes for a swell old pair of car­pet slip­pers.

Of course, things don’t turn out to be very peace­ful or qui­et in the town of Rawhide. And the 58 minute dra­ma unfolds from there. This being a no-spoil­er zone, we won’t tell you the rest.

The next year, the unthink­able hap­pened. The Iron Horse was afflict­ed by ALS. His bat­ting aver­age plum­met­ed to .145, and soon enough, Gehrig deliv­ered his “luck­i­est man on the face of the earth” speech and left base­ball. Years lat­er, neu­rol­o­gists looked back at Rawhide to see if Gehrig dis­played any vis­i­ble signs of the motor neu­ron dis­ease in ear­ly 1938. But none could be detect­ed.

Rawhide appears in the “West­erns” sec­tion of our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, along with The Pride of the Yan­kees, a Lou Gehrig biopic filmed in 1942. It starred Gary Coop­er was nom­i­nat­ed for a num­ber of Acad­e­my awards.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The DIY Tornado Machine

in Science, Video - Science | August 18th, 2011

Bob Smer­beck, a senior mete­o­rol­o­gist for AccuWeather.com, has fig­ured it all out — how to let loose a tor­na­do in the com­fort of his own home. Using a hair dry­er, plas­tic tubes, and a light switch, Smer­beck can recre­ate the basic dynam­ics of super­cell thun­der­storms that pro­duce tor­na­does — except his tor­na­does are inch­es, not miles, wide.

As Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can explains it, tor­na­does take form when winds occur­ring at dif­fer­ent lev­els of the atmos­phere vary in direc­tion caus­ing thun­der­storms to rotate, and when the rota­tion with­in the thun­der­storm extends down to the ground. Smer­beck­’s DIY machine sim­u­lates these move­ments, and you can do the same. You will just need to fol­low a series of videos cre­at­ed by the Tor­na­do Project on YouTube. Start with Part 1 here, and then pro­ceed to Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. 

More fas­ci­nat­ing videos can be found in our new col­lec­tion: 125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

h/t  @sheerly

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hiroshima After the Atomic Bomb in 360 Degrees

in History | August 17th, 2011

In ear­ly August 1945, the world offi­cial­ly entered the atom­ic age when the Unit­ed States dropped two dev­as­tat­ing bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, killing 200,000 peo­ple. The destruc­tion is hard to put to words. But when words fail, images begin to fill the void.

Last week, 360Cities gave view­ers one very stark reminder of what hap­pened 66 years ago when the site post­ed a panoram­ic view of Hiroshi­ma. When you click here, you can look north, south, east and west at the wide­spread destruc­tion. Noth­ing was left untouched. This panora­ma is the byprod­uct of sev­er­al images tak­en by dif­fer­ent pho­tog­ra­phers — three from the Unit­ed States and one from Japan. The 360Cities blog tells you more about the project here. H/T Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshi­ma After­math, 1946

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Cookie Monster/Tom Waits Mashup

in Comedy, Music | August 17th, 2011

Tom Waits and Cook­ie Mon­ster. They are one-of-a-kind char­ac­ters … and yet strange­ly inter­change­able. Above, we have the body of Cook­ie Mon­ster chan­nel­ing the voice of Tom Waits, singing “God’s Away On Busi­ness.” And if you doubt the sim­i­lar­i­ties, sim­ply give a lis­ten to the all-time favorite C is for Cook­ie…

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

via metafil­ter

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

David Lynch’s Eraserhead Remade in Clay

in Animation, Film | August 17th, 2011


David Lynch spent five years work­ing on his sur­re­al­ist film Eraser­head, and when it final­ly hit cin­e­mas in 1977, crit­ics panned the film. (Vari­ety called it a “sick­en­ing bad-taste exer­cise.”) Then, adding insult to injury, the film was reject­ed by the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val.

Time has cer­tain­ly been kinder to Eraser­head. Over the years, Stan­ley Kubrick, George Lucas, and John Waters have count­ed them­selves as major fans of the film. Charles Bukows­ki claimed that his love affair with cable tele­vi­sion start­ed when he first tuned in and start­ed watch­ing Eraser­head. Rock bands have named them­selves after the film. And now the lat­est hon­or: Lee Hard­cas­tle has remade the film in clay­ma­tion, and the plot unfolds in pret­ty much 60 sec­onds flat. H/T ope­dr

More Clay­ma­tion Films:

Chess in Clay­ma­tion

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

Down to the Bone

Pla­to’s Repub­lic … in Clay

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

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. 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:

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

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast