Six Ideas That Set the West Apart from the Rest (And Why It’s All Over Now Baby Blue)

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | September 28th, 2011

We’re tack­ling anoth­er big ques­tion today with the help of Har­vard eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son. And the ques­tion goes like this: Why has the West cre­at­ed so much pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty over the past sev­er­al cen­turies, when the rest of the world did not? For Fer­gu­son, the “great diver­gence” can be explained by six big ideas, or what he calls killer apps for the ben­e­fit of his technophile TED audi­ence:

1. Com­pe­ti­tion
2. The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion
3. Prop­er­ty Rights
4. Mod­ern Med­i­cine
5. The Con­sumer Soci­ety
6. Work Eth­ic

These apps, it turns out, are open source. Any­one can down­load and use them. And that’s pre­cise­ly what Asia has done. The great diver­gence is over (baby blue)…

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Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Resolution)

in Google, History, Religion | September 26th, 2011

Thanks to Google and the Israel Muse­um in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your brows­er and start tak­ing a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient bib­li­cal texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten between the third and first cen­turies BCE, and they con­sti­tute the old­est known pieces of the Hebrew Bible. Since 1965, they have been on dis­play in Jerusalem. But no mat­ter where you live, you can view five dig­i­tized Dead Sea Scrolls, each pho­tographed at a res­o­lu­tion of 1,200 megapix­els. That’s rough­ly 200 times greater than your aver­age cam­era.

To learn more about The Dead Sea Scrolls, watch this free lec­ture from The Great Cours­es: “Reveal­ing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World”  pre­sent­ed by Gary A. Rends­burg, Rut­gers. (Get more free lec­tures by The Great Cours­es here.)

And, to put all of this con­text, please vis­it this free course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty: Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) by Chris­tine Hayes. You will find it list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

via Offi­cial Google Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Frank W. Buckles, The Last U.S. Veteran of World War I

in Film, History, Life | September 22nd, 2011

Frank Woodruff Buck­les was born on Feb­ru­ary 1st, 1901. At the age of 16, he enlist­ed in the U.S. Army by con­vinc­ing recruit­ing offi­cers that he was, in fact, 21. In this short film, Buck­les recalls this time so long ago and the last year of the Great War. There are two par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing pas­sages in this doc­u­men­tary: when he talks about the dif­fi­cul­ties vet­er­ans expe­ri­enced after return­ing home, and when Buck­les voic­es his opin­ions on war in gen­er­al, and par­tic­u­lar­ly war today (“How did we get involved in this thing, Iraq? It was crazy, we have no damn busi­ness in there.”)

Frank died on Feb­ru­ary 27th, 2011, at the age of 110. The last sur­viv­ing U.S. vet­er­an of World War I, he was prop­er­ly laid to rest at Arling­ton Nation­al Ceme­tery (find video of the cer­e­mo­ny here). There are two trib­utes to Mr Buck­les that offer more insight into his life: a short video by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs and an obit­u­ary in the Wash­ing­ton Post.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Duck and Cover: The 1950s Film That Taught Millions of Schoolchildren How to Survive a Nuclear Bomb

in Film, History | September 16th, 2011

After the Sovi­et Union test­ed its first atom­ic bomb in August, 1949, Amer­i­can anx­i­ety lev­els ran high­er. The fear of nuclear war was in the air. And a young gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans soon got its intro­duc­tion to Duck and Cov­er, the lit­tle tech­nique that would save lives if the U.S. ever endured a Hiroshi­ma-style bomb­ing. Or so it was believed.

In 1951, the US gov­ern­ment, work­ing with Archer Pro­duc­tions and stu­dents from Queens, NY, pro­duced a short instruc­tion­al film giv­en the no-frills title Duck and Cov­er. Shown to mil­lions of chil­dren nation­wide over many years, the film became a cen­ter­piece of the gov­ern­men­t’s emer­gency pre­pared­ness pro­gram. Since then, the film has been entered into the Nation­al Film Reg­istry (2004) and has inspired var­i­ous par­o­dies, includ­ing this recent goof from the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence.” Hope you get some­thing from this nos­tal­gia-induc­ing piece of film.…

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Kurt Von­negut Gives a Ser­mon on the Fool­ish­ness of Nuclear Arms: It’s Time­ly Again (Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine, 1982)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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She Was the One: An Animated 9/11 Remembrance

in History, Life, Media | September 9th, 2011

The first day was all smoke, debris, orga­nized may­hem, and pure dis­be­lief. The next day, real­i­ty hit home. That’s when you walked out in the streets (in my case, Brook­lyn), and saw your first miss­ing per­son sign, one of hun­dreds you’d see over the com­ing months in Man­hat­tan and the out­er bor­oughs. The num­bers you heard on TV, the body count, became real faces — real peo­ple.

In Octo­ber 2003, Sto­ryCorps, a non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to record­ing oral his­to­ries of every kind, got under­way with a small Sto­ry­Booth in Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal. Eight years lat­er, it has record­ed and archived more than 35,000 inter­views from 70,000 par­tic­i­pants. And, more recent­ly, it has turned its focus to 9/11 and the days that fol­lowed. The goal: to memo­ri­al­ize in sound every per­son lost on that day. You can vis­it the emerg­ing audio archive here.

The poignant clip above, which tells the per­son­al sto­ry of Richie Pecorel­la and Karen Juday, appears in a larg­er series of Sto­ryCorps ani­mat­ed videos, all avail­able here. You can sup­port the Sto­ryCorps project by mak­ing a dona­tion, large or small today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Archive of 9/11 TV Cov­er­age Launch­es with 3,000+ Hours of Video

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The Making of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Animated Short

in Animation, Film, History | September 9th, 2011

Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short–stream­able over at Archive.org–used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme, the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds, hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films. (Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films here.)

You will find Edu­ca­tion for Death per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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Archive of 9/11 TV Coverage Launches with 3,000+ Hours of Video

in History, Media, Television | August 25th, 2011

The dra­ma of 9/11 unfold­ed before the world on TV. Even many New York­ers, myself includ­ed, watched the trau­mat­ic events on CNN rather than wit­ness­ing them first­hand. Dur­ing the days that fol­lowed, we were bom­bard­ed with end­less replays — the planes hit­ting the build­ings, the tow­ers aflame and col­laps­ing, the piles of smok­ing debris left behind. Then, mer­ci­ful­ly, the cov­er­age dis­ap­peared.

Almost a decade lat­er, the Inter­net Archive has launched a 9/11 Tele­vi­sion News Archive, a resource for schol­ars, jour­nal­ists, and any­one inter­est­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion. The archive brings togeth­er more than 3,000 hours of tele­vi­sion cov­er­age from 20 US and inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, and the cov­er­age can be seg­ment­ed by day, time and news provider.

Yet one more rea­son why we con­sid­er the Inter­net Archive one of the most valu­able sites on the web.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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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

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