A Tour Inside Salvador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Spanish Home

in Art | January 26th, 2012

Along the Cos­ta Bra­va in north­ern Spain, in the lit­tle sea­side vil­lage of Portl­li­gat, sits the house that became Sal­vador Dalí’s main res­i­dence in 1930. It start­ed off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalí went to work on the struc­ture, ren­o­vat­ing it lit­tle by lit­tle over the next 40 years, cre­at­ing a liv­ing, breath­ing, labyrinthine home that reflects the artist’s one-of-a-kind aes­thet­ic. Writ­ing about the house, the author Joseph Pla once said:

The dec­o­ra­tion of the house is sur­pris­ing, extra­or­di­nary. Per­haps the most exact adjec­tive would be: nev­er-before-seen. I do not believe that there is any­thing like it, in this coun­try or in any oth­er.… Dalí’s house is com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed.… It con­tains noth­ing more than mem­o­ries, obses­sions. The fixed ideas of its own­ers. There is noth­ing tra­di­tion­al, nor inher­it­ed, nor repeat­ed, nor copied here. All is inde­ci­pher­able per­son­al mythol­o­gy.… There are art works (by the painter), Russ­ian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed ani­mals, stair­cas­es of geo­log­i­cal walls going up and down, books (strange for such peo­ple), the com­mon­place and the refined, etc.

For many, it’s a long trip to Portl­li­gat, and only eight peo­ple can vis­it the house at a time. So today we’re fea­tur­ing a video tour of Dalí’s Span­ish home. The inte­ri­or shots begin around the 1:30 mark. If you love taxi­dermy, you won’t be wast­ing your time.

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:

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

Sal­vador Dalí Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dalí on Spell­bound

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

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Wilco Rehearses ‘The Weight’ Backstage in Chicago with Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe

in Music | January 26th, 2012

In Decem­ber, the alter­na­tive rock band Wilco played a spe­cial series of home­town shows called the “Incred­i­ble Shrink­ing Tour of Chica­go.”

The tour kicked off on Decem­ber 12 at the majes­tic Civic Opera House and con­tin­ued over the next four nights, mov­ing to suc­ces­sive­ly small­er and more inti­mate venues: the Riv­iera, the Vic, the Metro, and final­ly Lin­coln Hall, with a capac­i­ty of only 500 peo­ple.

At the opera house on open­ing night, Wilco played a 24-song ret­ro­spec­tive of the band’s 18-year his­to­ry, fol­lowed by an extend­ed series of encores fea­tur­ing Mavis Sta­ples and Nick Lowe. The grand finale was a stir­ring ren­di­tion of The Band’s clas­sic “The Weight.”

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Zoran Orlic caught a spe­cial moment before the show (above), when the musi­cians gath­ered in the dress­ing room to rehearse “The Weight.” You can see ama­teur footage of the on-stage per­for­mance of the song here, and learn more about the con­cert (plus see a clip of the band per­form­ing “One Sun­day Morn­ing”) on the WXRT web­site.

And for an inter­est­ing com­par­i­son, watch The Band’s per­for­mance of “The Weight” (below) from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s film The Last Waltz, which also fea­tures a guest appear­ance by Mavis Sta­ples, along with her father and sis­ters in The Sta­ple Singers. Although the film con­sist­ed most­ly of footage from The Band’s farewell con­cert on Novem­ber 25, 1976, Scors­ese filmed “The Weight” after­ward, on an MGM sound­stage.

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Alain de Botton Wants a Religion for Atheists: Introducing Atheism 2.0

in Philosophy, Religion | January 26th, 2012

Last sum­mer Alain de Bot­ton, one of the bet­ter pop­u­lar­iz­ers of phi­los­o­phy, appeared at TED­G­lob­al and called for a new kind of athe­ism. An Athe­ism 2.0. This revised athe­ism would let athe­ists deny a cre­ator and yet not for­sake all the oth­er good things reli­gion can offer — tra­di­tion, rit­u­al, com­mu­ni­ty, insights into liv­ing a good life, the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence tran­scen­dence, tak­ing part in insti­tu­tions that can change the world, and the rest.

What he’s describ­ing kind of sounds like what already hap­pens in the Uni­tar­i­an Church … or The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion found­ed by de Bot­ton in 2008. The school offers cours­es “in the impor­tant ques­tions of every­day life” and also hosts Sun­day Ser­mons that fea­ture “mav­er­ick cul­tur­al fig­ures” talk­ing about impor­tant prin­ci­ples to live by. Click here and you can watch sev­er­al past ser­mons pre­sent­ed by actress Miran­da July, physi­cist Lawrence Krauss, author Rebec­ca Sol­nit, and Alain de Bot­ton him­self.

If Athe­ism 2.0 piques your inter­est, you’ll want to pre-order de Bot­ton’s soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Reli­gion for Athe­ists: A Non-Believ­er’s Guide to the Uses of Reli­gion.

Thanks to Elana for send­ing this our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

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Watch Sunday & Wild Life: Two Animated Shorts Just Nominated for an Oscar

in Animation, Film | January 25th, 2012

When the 2012 Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions were announced yes­ter­day, there must have been plen­ty of smiles at the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da. For the eighth time, the Cana­di­an film producer/distributor scored a dou­ble nom­i­na­tion in the same cat­e­go­ry. In this case, Sun­day by Patrick Doy­on, and Wild Life by Aman­da For­bis and Wendy Til­by, were select­ed as final­ists for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film.

Thanks to the NFB, you can watch Sun­day (above) and Wild Life (below) online for a lim­it­ed time, along with the NFB’s nine Oscar-win­ning films. The film provider also makes hun­dreds of free movies avail­able via the web and the iPad — some­thing to keep in mind for a good rainy day.

More great films can be found in our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Movies Online.

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Apocalypse Not Quite Yet: Why Solar Storms Won’t End the World in 2012

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | January 25th, 2012

With the largest solar storm since 2005 light­ing up the night skies this week after a pair of solar flares sent streams of charged par­ti­cles hurtling toward the earth, prophets of doom have been light­ing up the Inter­net.

Bob Thiel, a self-described “Church His­to­ry and End Times Exam­in­er” and author of 2012 and the Rise of the Secret Sect, wrote yes­ter­day: “Worse solar flares will ulti­mate­ly hap­pen after the ‘Great Tribu­la­tion’ begins (Rev­e­la­tion 16: 8–9), and one or more that affect satel­lites and elec­tric­i­ty could hap­pen even today.” Hmm. Inter­est­ing.

Although very seri­ous ques­tions do exist about the readi­ness of our elec­tric pow­er grid and satel­lite infra­struc­ture to with­stand a major solar storm like the one in 1859 that short­ed out tele­graph wires and caused auro­rae so bright a crew of gold min­ers in Col­orado report­ed­ly got out of bed in the mid­dle of the night to cook break­fast, the cur­rent increase in solar activ­i­ty is part of a reg­u­lar 11-year cycle and pos­es no spe­cial risk, accord­ing to NASA helio­physi­cist Alex Young. (See the video above.) And any­way, Young says, the peak isn’t expect­ed to hit until 2014, well after the Mayan cal­en­dar has run its course.

For an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the past week’s solar activ­i­ty you can lis­ten to Phil Plait, author of Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine’s “Bad Astron­o­my” blog, in an inter­view yes­ter­day with Patt Mor­ri­son of Los Ange­les pub­lic radio KPCC. And for a look at the earth-direct­ed coro­nal mass ejec­tion of Jan­u­ary 22, you can watch anoth­er NASA video below.

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Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncovered by AT&T: Watch Online

in Film, Technology | January 25th, 2012

Before Jim Hen­son joined Sesame Street in 1969, the great pup­peteer took on var­i­ous projects dur­ing the 60s, some­times cre­at­ing exper­i­men­tal films (for exam­ple, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short Time Piece), oth­er times pro­duc­ing primers on pup­pet mak­ing, and then pur­su­ing the occa­sion­al com­mer­cial project — like the one just uncov­ered by AT&T.

Back in 1963, Hen­son was asked to cre­ate a short film for a Bell Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sem­i­nar held in Chica­go. The con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers sent a three-page memo to Hen­son out­lin­ing the main themes of the con­fer­ence — one being the strange and some­times fraught rela­tion­ship between man and machine. Hen­son’s film only runs three min­utes, but it gets the mes­sage across … and then some.

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:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

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Cambridge Nights: Late Night TV-Style Show Takes Deep Look at Scientific Thinking

in MIT, Science, Video - Science | January 24th, 2012

Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts is one of the world’s great intel­lec­tu­al cross­roads. With Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty at one end of town and the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy at the oth­er, many of the most influ­en­tial thinkers of our time either work there or vis­it. That gave César Hidal­go an idea.

Hidal­go is a pro­fes­sor at M.I.T., where he stud­ies the rela­tion­ship between physics, net­work sci­ence and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Build­ing on his own inter­dis­ci­pli­nary curios­i­ty, Hidal­go thought it would be inter­est­ing to share a lit­tle of Cam­bridge’s intel­lec­tu­al wealth with the out­side world, so in Octo­ber he and the M.I.T. Media Lab launched a series of infor­mal Web inter­views called Cam­bridge Nights: Con­ver­sa­tions About a Life in Sci­ence.

Cam­bridge Nights is a lit­tle like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, if Leno talked about things like frac­tal geom­e­try in the meta­bol­ic the­o­ry of ecol­o­gy. That’s the sub­ject of the dis­cus­sion above fea­tur­ing the renowned physi­cist Geof­frey West, pro­fes­sor and past pres­i­dent of the San­ta Fe Insti­tute, who gives a fas­ci­nat­ing account of the uni­ver­sal scal­ing laws that per­vade all life, from sin­gle-celled organ­isms and com­plex species to whole ecosys­tems.

What sets Cam­bridge Nights apart from oth­er Web forums, like Big­Think, is that guests are under no pres­sure to com­press or “pop­u­lar­ize” their ideas. “We invite them because we want to hear what they have to say, and we want to give them the time to say it com­fort­ably,” writes Hidal­go. “There are many high-speed for­mats out there. Cam­bridge Nights is an alter­na­tive where thoughts can be devel­oped and reflect­ed upon with­out the need to rush.”

In the first sea­son, Hidal­go talks with six schol­ars from fields span­ning the nat­ur­al and social sci­ences, includ­ing physi­cist and net­work sci­en­tist Albert-Lás­zló Barabási, biol­o­gist Marc Vidal and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment expert Lant Pritch­ett. A num­ber of guests are already lined up for Sea­son Two, includ­ing exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker.

To view all six videos from Sea­son One, and to learn more about the project, vis­it the Cam­bridge Nights web­site.

Cours­es from MIT can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

via The New York Times

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Nine PAC Ads from Stephen Colbert Spoof U.S. Election System

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Politics | January 24th, 2012

When the Supreme Court, in its infi­nite wis­dom, decid­ed that cor­po­ra­tions enjoy the free speech rights of indi­vid­u­als, it took a bad cam­paign finance sys­tem and made it worse. Sud­den­ly, free-spend­ing PACs, rep­re­sent­ing pow­er­ful busi­ness inter­ests, could flood our cam­paign finance sys­tem with unprece­dent­ed amounts of mon­ey and dis­tort the way we elect lead­ers in the Unit­ed States. In the ear­ly days of the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion process, we’re already see­ing the results. Super PACs, some­times receiv­ing $5 mil­lion from one indi­vid­ual, are run­ning attack ads — lots of attack ads — in pri­ma­ry states. And the real del­uge has yet to come. Just wait until next fall.

What to do about the sanc­tioned dis­tor­tion of our polit­i­cal sys­tem? It’s hard to be opti­mistic when fix­ing the prob­lem would real­is­ti­cal­ly require a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. But that’s what Lawrence Lessig (Har­vard law pro­fes­sor and founder of Cre­ative Com­mons) is try­ing to do. Appear­ing at Google (see below), Lessig describes how spe­cial inter­ests cor­rupt our polit­i­cal sys­tem, and what we can do to stop it. But even Lessig will admit that it’s an uphill bat­tle.

That leaves us with the next best solu­tion: turn a joke of an elec­tion sys­tem into a good joke. Enter Stephen Col­bert. The come­di­an has cre­at­ed his own Super PAC (run by Jon Stew­art) that comes com­plete with its own TV ads. The par­o­dy above — an attack ad on attack ads — makes its point pret­ty effec­tive­ly. You can watch eight more Col­bert PAC com­mer­cials here, and make a dona­tion to his PAC here. And, if you’re feel­ing gen­er­ous, you can show your sup­port for Open Cul­ture here.

Break­ing News: Stephen Col­bert ends qua­si-pres­i­den­tial cam­paign

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James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

in Film | January 24th, 2012

The James Bond movie fran­chise began in 1962, with the release of Dr. No, star­ring a young Sean Con­nery. (Watch the orig­i­nal trail­er here.) And it did­n’t take long for the pro­duc­ers, Albert R. Broc­coli and Har­ry Saltz­man, to real­ize that they were onto some­thing. Speak­ing in 1965, Broc­coli and Saltz­man (above) spec­u­lat­ed that they had cre­at­ed “a mod­ern mythol­o­gy,” the Super­man of their age, and a long-last­ing “enter­tain­ment trend.” How right they were.

Fifty years have passed since audi­ences saw the first Bond movie. Sev­en actors have played James Bond in 22 films. And the next movie, Sky­fall, will hit the­aters in Novem­ber, with Daniel Craig play­ing the lead role. This marks a cause for cel­e­bra­tion (or at least a chance for Hol­ly­wood to ring the reg­is­ter). In the very near future, you can buy the com­plete James Bond Film Col­lec­tion (22 titles in total) on Blu-ray for $199.99, which works out to $9 per film and that does­n’t fac­tor in 130 hours of bonus mate­r­i­al. The clip below will pitch you on the Blu-ray release that can be pre-ordered here. If you’re look­ing for free James Bond media, don’t miss Ian Flem­ing (the cre­ator of the James Bond lit­er­ary char­ac­ter) in con­ver­sa­tion with Ray­mond Chan­dler in 1958 here.

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Leonard Cohen’s New Album, Old Ideas: Stream It for Free Online

in Music | January 24th, 2012

Fans of Leonard Cohen, you’ve wait­ed patient­ly. Sev­en long years. Now it’s final­ly here. Cohen’s new album Old Ideas offi­cial­ly hits the streets next week. But it’s now stream­ing online for free cour­tesy of NPR. It will only last a lim­it­ed time. So set­tle in now and lis­ten to the ten tracks, which as Guardian crit­ic Kit­ty Empire puts it, are not about “death, betray­al and God, juicy as these are,” but rather “the stuff that has made Cohen indis­pens­able for six decades: desire, regret, suf­fer­ing, mis­an­thropy, love, hope, and ham­ming it up.”

The poet­ic lines of the first track, “Going Home,” have been pub­lished in The New York­er. You can pre-order the album here. H/T @opedr

More Leonard Cohen Videos & Movies:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen (1971 Doc­u­men­tary)

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Watch the Film

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Global Warming: A Free Course from UChicago Explains Climate Change

in Science, Video - Science | January 23rd, 2012

Two weeks ago, we fea­tured Har­vard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lec­tures pre­sent­ed by Har­vard experts, each focus­ing on the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. One thing Har­vard Thinks Green did­n’t offer was a primer on cli­mate change itself, a good sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion of the under­ly­ing prob­lem. Enter Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube), a 23-lec­ture course pre­sent­ed by David Archer, a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of The Geo­phys­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. The first half of the class explains cli­mate physics and how the cli­mate works; the sec­ond half shows how human activ­i­ty and ever-increas­ing car­bon lev­els dis­rupt the equi­lib­ri­um of the envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a very uncer­tain future for gen­er­a­tions to come. The first, short lec­ture above out­lines the scope of the class.

Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UChica­go in Fall 2009, Archer’s course was geared to non-sci­ence majors and taught in con­junc­tion with his text­book, Glob­al Warm­ing: Under­stand­ing the Fore­cast, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Ama­zon here. Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube) is now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

Prof. Bri­an Cox Has a Mad­den­ing Con­ver­sa­tion with a Cli­mate Sci­ence-Deny­ing Politi­cian

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