We told you about the book earlier this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on October 4th, The Magic of Realitywill be unlike any book written by Richard Dawkins before. It is illustrated for starters, and largely geared toward young and old readers alike. Perfect, he says, for anyone 12 and up. When it comes to the structure and gist of the book, Dawkins does a pretty good job of explaining things. So let’s let the video roll…
Note: If you’re willing to tweet about the book, you can view the first 24 pages of The Magic of Reality here.
Back in 1964, Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree, a widely loved children’s book now translated into more than 30 languages. It’s a story about the human condition, about giving and receiving, using and getting used, neediness and greediness, although many finer points of the story are open to interpretation. Today, we’re rewinding the videotape to 1973, when Silverstein’s little book was turned into a 10 minute animated film (now added to our free movie collection). Silverstein narrates the story himself and also plays the harmonica.… which brings us to his musical talents. Don’t miss Silverstein, also a well known songwriter, appearing on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Silverstein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-editor of the philosophy blog/podcast The Partially Examined Life for sending these along.
Some months ago, we asked you to name your favorite TED Talk. And, more than a few of you flagged Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation from 2006, Do Schools Kill Creativity? You’re in good company. The talk remains one of TED’s most popular videos of all time. Today, TED has released Robinson’s sequel (of sorts). Recorded this past February, Bring on the Learning Revolution! “makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning — creating conditions where kids’ natural talents can flourish.” Give it some time. Perhaps it’s another talk for the ages.
This year, Tim Burton’s production of Alice In Wonderland was welcomed by a flurry of media buzz and a rather polarized public response debating whether the iconic director had butchered or reinvented the even more iconic children’s classic. But discussion of the film’s creative merits aside, one thing it did do brilliantly was rekindle the public’s interest in what’s easily the most beloved work of children’s literature of the past two centuries.
So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel has generated hundreds of reprints, film adaptations and various derivative works over the years. Many of these works are now available in the public domain — even a simple search in the Internet Archive sends you down a rabbit hole of adaptations and remakes, spanning from landmark early cinema treasures to offbeat products of contemporary digital culture.
Today, we’ve curated a selection of the most interesting and culturally significant — the “curiouser and curiouser,” if you will — free versions of, tributes to, and derivatives of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.
The fundamentals: A Project Gutenberg free digital copy of Carroll’s original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland text
A 1916 abridged version intended for younger children, digitized by the Library of Congress, is available from the International Children’s Digital Library and features some wonderful illustration — though, regrettably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
For a classic with a spin, try this audio version read by blogger extraordinaire, BoingBoing co-editor, Popular Science columnist and vocal free content advocate Cory Doctorow
The earliest cinematic adaptation of the book, directed by Cecil Hepworth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clocking in at just 8 minutes and 19 seconds. Watch above.
In 1915, W. W. Young directed the second American adaptation of Alice — a massive six-reel production that showcased the rapid evolution of filmmaking in just a decade since the first production. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 minutes of it can be seen at the Internet Archive for free
A 1966 British adaptation by director Jonathan Miller for the BBC features an ambitious cast — including Peter Sellers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Gielguld as Mock Turtle, Michael Redgrave as The Caterpillar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hatter — and its soundtrack, scored by the legendary Ravi Shankar, exudes the borderline folk-psychedelia sound of the Woodstock era. The film, divided into seven parts, is available for free on YouTube.
This 2‑minute version of Alice In Wonderland shot in the virtual world Second Life is an eerie testament to just how widely Carroll’s classic resonates.
Perhaps the biggest treasure of all, Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript, available from the British Library — 91 pages of precious literary history, with original illustrations from artist John Tenniel. The online gallery also features a preface telling the fascinating story of the Oxford mathematician’s real-life inspiration for the book and the fate of the real Alice
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of eclectic interestingness and indiscriminate curiosity. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine and Huffington Post, and spends a disturbing amount of time curating interestingness on Twitter.
This comes to us via a tip from Twitter. The Khan Academy has now posted on YouTube over 800 videos (find a complete list here) that will teach students the ins-and-outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more. The clips have been recorded by Salman Khan, a Harvard Business School and MIT grad. And to give you a feel for them, we’ve posted above the first in a long sequence of lectures on differential equations. (The remaining lectures can be found here.) This YouTube channel, which now appears on our list, Intelligent YouTube Video Collections, is one of several video sites that provide free online tutoring via video. As mentioned in the past, you can find online good video collections dedicated to chemistry and calculus.
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