How does 109-year-old Alfred “Alfie” Date keep himself busy? Apparently by knitting sweaters for endangered penguins. The oldest man in Australia, Alfie began knitting these little sweaters at the request of The Penguin Foundation in 2013, after hundreds of Little Penguins were injured by a big oil spill. He makes the sweaters in different styles. But you can’t beat a penguin wearing a Penguin Books logo. We dare you to try.
Richard Dawkins — some know him as the Oxford evolutionary biologist who coined the term “meme” in his influential 1976 book, The Selfish Gene; others consider him a leading figure in the New Atheism movement, a position he has assumed unapologetically. In recent years, Dawkins has made his case against religion though different forms of media: books, documentaries, college lectures, and public debates. He can be aggressive and snide, to be sure. But he dishes out far less than he receives in return. Just witness him reading the “love letters” (as he euphemistically calls them) that he has received from the general public. They are not safe for work. You can see him reading a previous batch of letters here.
Standing at just under 17 inches, Gnome Chomsky the Garden Noam clutches his classic books, ‘The Manufacture of Compost’ and ‘Hedgerows not Hegemony’ – with his open right hand ready to hold the political slogan of your choosing. His clothes represent a relaxed but classy version of regular gnome attire, including: a nice suit jacket-tunic, jeans, boots, traditional gnome cap, and glasses. Additionally, Noam Gnome stands on a base complete with a carved title – for anyone who may not immediately realize the identity of this handsome and scholarly gnome.
The gnome costs $195 painted and $95 unpainted (plus shipping). The bummer is that the gnomes are currently out of stock, and when they’ll come back is anyone’s guess. That said, if you really want one, the site’s (presumed) owner Steve encourages you to drop him an email. I might have to send one myself.
Over the holidays, the cast of Downton Abbey let their hair down a bit when they released a nine-minute parody of the ITV show. It stars George Clooney, and there’s even a little cameo by Jeremy Piven. It’s quite funny. Don’t miss it.
Now comes something even more relaxed. The video above features three actresses from Downton Abbey — Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith), Lesley Nicol (Mrs. Patmore), and Phyllis Logan (Mrs. Hughes) — playing “Cards Against Humanity.” The game’s own web site bills it as “a party game for horrible people.” While I’m sure that Mr. Carson would be completely scandalized by the scene above — it’s definitely Not Safe for Work — I guess we could mildly celebrate the fact that “Cards Against Humanity” has been released under a Creative Commons license, and you can download the game for free.
During the 1950s, when a hula hoop craze swept across America, the Carlon Products Corp. (a company that specialized in making lightweight plastic pipes), managed to produce some 50,000 hula hoops per day. That got other companies thinking. How could they capitalize on this mania, if not directly, then indirectly? When a second hula hooping craze gripped the country during the mid-1960s, Transogram Games introduced the “Swing Wing,” possibly the worst idea for a kids’ toy until Bag O’ Glass (who here remembers that classic SNL skit?). It’s a dizzying toy, backed by a dizzying — but you have to admit catchy — commercial. Buyer beware, there’s a Swing Wing on ebay. Never opened and ready to go for 53 clams.
Is there anything worse than flying from Newark to San Francisco? Maybe it’s watching mannequins taking this cross-country flight. Talk about tedium. And yet there’s something a little brilliant about this six hour advertisement from Virgin Airlines — which promises a more inspiring flight. I mean how many six hour advertisements have you seen, let alone ones that have “action” from start to finish? Somewhere, someone’s going to watch this thing all the way through. Maybe it’s you.
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!
Winning a Nobel Prize has its perks. When you talk, people listen. And you end up doing a lot of talking. And travelling.
Reflecting on how the Nobel Prize changed his life, Walter Gilbert (1980 winner in Chemistry) commented, “You can find yourself spending years travelling and talking right after winning.”
And what if you want to take your Nobel Prize on the road with you? According to astrophysicist Brian Schmidt (winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics), that can present its own challenges. He recently told an audience in New York:
‘There are a couple of bizarre things that happen. One of the things you get when you win a Nobel Prize is, well, a Nobel Prize. It’s about that big, that thick [about the size of an Olympic medal], weighs a half a pound, and it’s made of gold.”
“When I won this, my grandma, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, wanted to see it. I was coming around so I decided I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X‑ray machine. I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X‑rays—it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.”
“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Sweden.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’
At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”
Last Monday,Yukie Ota, a Japanese born flutist now living in Chicago, was performing in the first round of the Carl Nielsen International Flute Competition in Denmark, when a butterfly flitted across the stage and landed, rather inconveniently, on the bridge of her nose. Not missing a beat — er, a note — Ota took a quick glance at the critter, and played on, unfazed. On the merits of her performance, Ota made it to the final round of the competition held on Saturday. She eventually lost out to Sébastian Jacot, who apparently played the entire competition with a damaged flute. In other news, you can check out Vladimir Nabokov’s delightful butterfly drawings here.
Sign up for our daily email and, once a day, we’ll bundle all of our daily posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read format. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
