A Beautiful Drone’s Eye View of Antarctica

in Travel | May 4th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already, check it out. When Stock­holm-based film­mak­er Kalle Ljung spent 16 days in the Antarc­tic ear­li­er this year, he “got to expe­ri­ence the most amaz­ing scenery and wildlife” and cap­tured some beau­ti­ful footage with a DJI Phan­tom 2 drone cam­era. Ready for some goose­bumps? Catch the scene (around the 6 minute mark) where Ljung dri­ves the cam­era straight through a hole in an ice­berg. Pret­ty amaz­ing to watch.

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!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage

A Eery Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

Drones over Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

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Read Noam Chomsky & Sam Harris’ “Unpleasant” Email Exchange

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | May 1st, 2015

In 2013, we doc­u­ment­ed the acri­mo­nious exchange between Noam Chom­sky and Slavoj Žižek, which all start­ed when Chom­sky accused Žižek of “posturing–using fan­cy terms like poly­syl­la­bles and pre­tend­ing [to] have a the­o­ry when you have no the­o­ry what­so­ev­er.” To which Žižek respond­ed: “Chom­sky, … always empha­sizes how one has to be empir­i­cal, accu­rate… well I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empir­i­cal­ly wrong in his descrip­tions…” And so it con­tin­ued.

Two years lat­er, Chom­sky now finds him­self in anoth­er fraught exchange — this time, with Sam Har­ris, author of The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. It’s a lit­tle hard to pin down when the dust-up first began. But, it at least goes back to Jan­u­ary, when Har­ris took Chom­sky to task  (hear an excerpt of a longer pod­cast above) for draw­ing a moral equiv­a­lence between U.S. mil­i­tary action and the vio­lence com­mit­ted by some of Amer­i­ca’s his­tor­i­cal foes (e.g., the Nazis dur­ing WWII and lat­er Al-Qae­da).

Over the past week, Chom­sky and Har­ris con­tin­ued the debate, trad­ing emails back and forth. Their corre­spon­dence runs some 10,000 words, but it only amounts to what Har­ris ulti­mate­ly calls “an unpleas­ant and fruit­less encounter” that demon­strates the “lim­its of dis­course.” It’s an exchange that Chom­sky seem­ing­ly pre­ferred to keep pri­vate (his per­mis­sion to print the emails was grudg­ing at best), and Har­ris saw some virtue in mak­ing pub­lic. The final email by Har­ris reads:

May 1, 2015

From: Sam Har­ris
To: Noam Chom­sky

Noam—

I’ve now read our cor­re­spon­dence through and have decid­ed to pub­lish it (www.samharris.org). I under­stand your point about “exhi­bi­tion­ism,” but I dis­agree in this case.

You and I prob­a­bly share a mil­lion read­ers who would have found a gen­uine con­ver­sa­tion between us extreme­ly use­ful. And I trust that they will be dis­ap­point­ed by our fail­ure to pro­duce one, as I am. How­ev­er, if pub­lish­ing this exchange helps any­one to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate about these top­ics in the future, our time won’t have been entire­ly wast­ed.

Sam

Whether Sam is right about that (is there some­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive here?), you can decide. Here’s the entire exchange.

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:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chom­sky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empir­i­cal­ly Wrong’

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Read 9 Free Books By Noam Chom­sky Online

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Hear the “Seikilos Epitaph,” the Oldest Complete Song in the World: An Inspiring Tune from 100 BC

in History, Music | May 1st, 2015

Last sum­mer, we fea­tured a Sumer­ian hymn con­sid­ered the old­est known song in the world. Giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of that post, it seems we may have long under­es­ti­mat­ed the num­ber of ancient-musi­cophiles on the inter­net. There­fore, we sub­mit today for your approval the Seik­i­los epi­taph, the old­est known com­plete musi­cal com­po­si­tion — that is to say, a song that our 21st-cen­tu­ry selves can still play and hear in its intend­ed entire­ty, more or less as did the ancient Greeks who lived dur­ing the first-cen­tu­ry (or there­abouts) era of its com­po­si­tion.

The Seik­i­los epi­taph’s sur­vival in one piece, as it were, no doubt owes some­thing to its short­ness. The Greeks could carve the entire thing onto the sur­face of a tomb­stone, exact­ly the medi­um on which the mod­ern world redis­cov­ered it in 1885 near Aidin, Turkey. Its lyrics, lib­er­al­ly brought into Eng­lish, exhort us as fol­lows:

While you live, shine

have no grief at all

life exists only for a short while

and time demands its toll.

The sur­face also bears an explana­to­ry inscrip­tion about — and writ­ten in the voice of — the arti­fact itself:  “I am a tomb­stone, an image. Seik­i­los placed me here as an ever­last­ing sign of death­less remem­brance.” The Greeks, like many peo­ples in the ancient world of unvar­nished mor­tal­i­ty, rel­ished a good memen­to mori, and this old­est com­plete song in the world offers one whose mes­sage still holds today, and which we can trace all the way to more recent words, like those of William Saroy­an, when he said, “In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugli­ness or death for your­self or for any life your life touch­es.”

Or for anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion, you can hear a mod­ern, gui­tar-dri­ven cov­er of the Seik­i­los epi­taph by Vlog­broth­er and famous inter­net teacher Hank Green, in a tru­ly strik­ing exam­ple of two eras col­lid­ing. But of course, the Youtube era has also made every­one a crit­ic. As one com­menter per­fect­ly put it, “I pre­fer his ear­li­er stuff.”

Seikilos epitaph

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

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Coffee is for People, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organic Coffee

in Food & Drink | May 1st, 2015

Pay a vis­it to Whole Foods, and you’ll find The David Lynch Sig­na­ture Cup Cof­fee line, which includes three pre­mier cof­fee blends, each taste-test­ed and select­ed by David Lynch him­self. Last year, Lynch talked with Vice.com about the gen­e­sis of his cof­fee line and explained:

One day, a friend came over to me and said, “David, you drink so much cof­fee, you should have your own line,” and one thing led to anoth­er, and I blind test­ed many, many dif­fer­ent cof­fees. Anoth­er friend of mine said, “I know these guys down in Long Beach who have the great­est cof­fee” but I tast­ed it, and it was ter­ri­ble, so I kept tast­ing dif­fer­ent cof­fees and dif­fer­ent mix­tures and kept com­ing back to this [blend] in blind tests over and over again.

Over the years, Lynch has released some uncon­ven­tion­al ads (of course!) for his cof­fee prod­ucts. Per­haps you recall this one from 2011, fea­tur­ing a seem­ing­ly sev­ered Bar­bie head. Or this almost epilep­sy-induc­ing one fom 2012. Now comes the lat­est ad, cre­at­ed by direc­tor Andrew Parkhurst, remind­ing us that cof­fee is for peo­ple, not robots. Kind of like Trix are for kids.

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!

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

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