Hard Words in The New York Times

When you’re read­ing The New York Times and stum­ble upon a word you don’t know, you can high­light it and the Times will give you the def­i­n­i­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, the Times keeps track of the def­i­n­i­tions it pro­vides. So what are the most com­mon­ly looked up words? You can find the top ten below. (Get a longer list here.) So, smart read­ers, did you know all of them?

  1. sui gener­is
  2. solip­sis­tic
  3. louche
  4. lacon­ic
  5. sat­ur­nine
  6. ante­dilu­vian
  7. epis­te­mo­log­i­cal
  8. shib­bo­leths
  9. penury
  10. sump­tu­ary

via @aknopf

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A nice cre­ative use of Legos. For $55, you can build The Guggen­heim Muse­um and Falling­wa­ter, two Frank Lloyd Wright cre­ations, with Legos. That’s right up there with Clas­sic Pho­tographs Remade Lego Style.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Getting Hired and Fired by The New Yorker, As Told by Tweets

After 17 years of climb­ing the lad­der, Dan Baum final­ly land­ed his dream job at The New York­er. But things did­n’t work out quite as he planned. On Twit­ter this week, Baum tells the sto­ry of his rise and fall. You can read a con­sol­i­dat­ed Twit­ter-style tran­script here. A pret­ty intrigu­ing look at what hap­pens inside the mag­a­zine world.

PS Find us on Twit­ter. We’re @openculture

The Invention of Self: One Woman, Eight Characters

At the TED Con­fer­ence, actress Sarah Jones takes a fun­ny look at “the inven­tion of self,” which is a fan­cy way of say­ing she does some good imper­son­ations. Com­ing up, Jones imper­son­ates an elder­ly Jew­ish women, a young fast-talk­ing Domini­can col­lege stu­dent, peo­ple from var­i­ous nation­al­i­ties (Chi­na, India, France, Ger­many, Jor­dan, etc.). And it’s all mixed with some humor. Runs about 21 min­utes.

Open Culture on Facebook

Just a quick fyi, we cre­at­ed a lit­tle Face­book page where you can access our dai­ly con­tent. So head over and become a “Fan.” And tell a friend.

Also, please note, you can find us on Twit­ter or sub­scribe to our RSS feed. And remem­ber that we’re now locat­ed at www.openculture.com  

Have a good week­end.

Photo Animation Goodness

Give this a minute. It gets quite good once it gets going. Thanks Philip for send­ing this along. (Read­ers always feel free to send intel­li­gent audio & video our way.)

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How Do You Use Open Courses?

I was asked by a news­pa­per reporter today how peo­ple, like you, are using open uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (such as those found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es). And the truth is, I’m not always sure. So I fig­ured, why not put the ques­tion out there and ask you. Here it goes: How are you using these cours­es? Are you lis­ten­ing to (or watch­ing) these cours­es pure­ly for per­son­al enrich­ment? Or are you spend­ing time with these cours­es for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons? Are you try­ing to boost your resume/career with these cours­es? Also, dur­ing this reces­sion, are these cours­es sud­den­ly more attrac­tive? Or were they attrac­tive to you all along? Last­ly, what top­ics do you gen­er­al­ly tend to focus on? His­to­ry? Lit­er­a­ture? Com­put­er Sci­ence? Physics?

Ok, folks, give a hand and let me know your thoughts. Please feel free to write your thoughts in the com­ments below, or write us at mail [at] openculture.com.

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Open Culture Now at OpenCulture.com … and a Small Favor to Ask

Here’s a quick announce­ment, and please take note. Start­ing today, you can find Open Cul­ture at www.openculture.com. Our old domain (oculture.com) will still work, as will old links. But they’ll for­ward (hope­ful­ly) seam­less­ly to the new domain. Why the change? Because it seemed time to have the url actu­al­ly match the site’s name.

If you encounter any tech­ni­cal prob­lems, please let us know at ma**@*********re.com. Also, let me please ask a quick favor from you. If you’ve pre­vi­ous­ly linked to our site, could you please update your links to reflect the new domain? Sim­ply change ocul­ture to open­cul­ture, and keep the rest of the link the same, and you’re good to go. This will be a big help to us. Mean­while, if you’ve nev­er told a friend about Open Cul­ture, now would be a good time to spread the word.

Last­ly, I want to extend a big thanks to Eric Ober­le for mak­ing this switch pos­si­ble and for gen­er­al­ly keep­ing the site run­ning smooth­ly. With­out Eric, I would have blown this site to pieces long ago. We’re only still around because of him. Thanks â€‘e!

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