The Concert for Bangladesh Streaming Free on iTunes

in Music | July 30th, 2011

A quick heads up: You can stream The Con­cert for Bangladesh for free on iTunes this week­end. Exact­ly 40 years ago (August 1, 1971), Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist George Har­ri­son and sitarist Ravi Shankar teamed up to stage two ben­e­fit con­certs at Madi­son Square Gar­den, hop­ing to raise mon­ey for refugees from East Pak­istan (now inde­pen­dent Bangladesh). The con­cert film came out a year lat­er in 1972, and now, to mark its anniver­sary, the good folks at Apple are stream­ing the film for free. Acts include Ravi Shankar, George Har­ri­son (his first since The Bea­t­les’ breakup), Bob Dylan, Eric Clap­ton, Bil­ly Pre­ston and more.

Our friends on Twit­ter (fol­low us here) tell us that the film should be acces­si­ble through­out most of the world, although there are some excep­tions. Apolo­gies in advance if you run into dif­fi­cul­ties. H/T to Ed.

Note: NPR is car­ry­ing a video stream of The New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. Catch it here.

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The Tarantino Mixtape (NSFW)

in Art, Film, Music | July 29th, 2011

Take Quentin Taran­ti­no’s movies, then let Eclec­tic Method decon­struct and recon­struct the scenes, leav­ing you with The Taran­ti­no Mix­tape, which is a lit­tle Not Safe for Work.

Based in Lon­don, the mem­bers of Eclec­tic Method have been exper­i­ment­ing with audio-visu­al mix­ing of sounds and images for a good decade. 60+ of their videos appear online, includ­ing their lat­est release — a Star Wars remix called Dark Wars. H/T Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What if Taran­ti­no Direct­ed the Super Bowl Broad­cast?

“Tarantino’s Mind,” Award Win­ning Short Film

Tarantino’s Favorite Films Since ’92

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Time Capsule: The Internet in 1995

in History, Technology | July 29th, 2011

On Jan­u­ary 27, 1994, the Today Show ran a hilar­i­ous seg­ment try­ing to unrav­el this crazy new thing called “The Inter­net.” A year lat­er, how­ev­er, it looks like the media had it all fig­ured out. Check out this 1995 MTV trend piece by Kurt Loder: We got a kick out of the clunkiess of the old new media (Com­puserve! Dial-up! Netscape!), but Loder also touch­es on hack­ing, inter­net pornog­ra­phy, pri­va­cy, and free­dom of speech issues that still haven’t been resolved. The biggest shock­er of the clip is not how much things have changed but how much they haven’t.

Oh, and also, Moby had hair?

via The Awl

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Interviews with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

in Philosophy, Video - Science | July 29th, 2011

In 2008, the evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins pre­sent­ed The Genius of Charles Dar­win, a three-part doc­u­men­tary that was lat­er named “Best TV Doc­u­men­tary Series” at the British Broad­cast Awards. Dur­ing the film­ing of the pro­gram, Dawkins inter­viewed var­i­ous experts — biol­o­gists, philoso­phers, cler­gy­man, evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gists, etc. — and wound up with 18 hours of raw footage. Some of the uncut inter­views have now made their way online (as well as DVD), and we’re high­light­ing a few today.

Above, Dawkins spends a good while with Peter Singer, the Prince­ton philoso­pher, oth­er­wise known as the Father of the Ani­mal Rights Move­ment. The wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­u­al­ly comes back to ani­mal rights and veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and why Dar­win­ism lends sup­port to both. The best part comes toward the end, when Singer tells Dawkins (a meat eater), “I have assim­i­lat­ed Dar­win on this issue bet­ter than you have because .… you’re still influ­enced by these ves­tiges of reli­gious belief that sep­a­rate us from the ani­mals.…” Dawkins out-Dawkinsed.

Oth­er uncut inter­views fea­ture con­ver­sa­tions with Steven Pinker, Daniel Den­nett, and Craig Ven­ter.

Relat­ed note: We’d like to thank RichardDawkins.net for re-broad­cast­ing our post ear­li­er this week: 50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

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The Persecution of Daniel Lee

in Life, Technology | July 29th, 2011

A sto­ry appear­ing in July’s Stan­ford Mag­a­zine begins with the cap­tion: “An Inter­net smear cam­paign near­ly destroyed the South Kore­an star, but he fought back with the only weapon he had: the truth.” And, from there, you’re launched into one of the more flab­ber­gast­ing sto­ries you’ve read in some time. Give The Per­se­cu­tion of Daniel Lee a read, and you’ll see that we’re not being the least bit hyper­bol­ic.

The inter­net can be a won­der­ful place. We all know that. But, as with any oth­er place humans inhab­it, it has a dark side, and that’s what we encounter here…

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Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

in Literature, Philosophy | July 28th, 2011

Cyn­i­cism. Ruth­less­ness. Devi­ous­ness. Pow­er pol­i­tics. These words are often asso­ci­at­ed with Nic­colò Machi­avel­li, the author of The Prince (1532). But, it turns out, he was any­thing but. He was a sweet man (though some­thing of a phi­lan­der­er), a pro­found demo­c­rat, good look­ing, a par­ty ani­mal. In short, Machi­avel­li has got­ten a bad rap, says nov­el­ist Salman Rushdie.

To get more insight into this bad­ly mis­un­der­stood fig­ure, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing time with Phi­los­o­phy Bites’ inter­view (MP3 or iTunes) with Quentin Skin­ner, one of Eng­land’s finest intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ri­ans who has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on Machi­avel­li. You can also find The Prince list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. H/T Andrew Sul­li­van

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:

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Alain de Bot­ton Tweets Short Course in Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy

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Jason Alexander Promotes Netflix Relief Fund

in Comedy, Film | July 28th, 2011

Ear­li­er this month, Net­flix upped its month­ly sub­scrip­tion by a good 60%, cre­at­ing what amount­ed to a bour­geois tragedy for many. If you sub­scribe to Net­flix, then fear not. Help may be on its way. Fun­ny­orDie feels your pain, and, with the help of Jason Alexan­der (you know him from Sein­feld), they’re pro­mot­ing the Net­flix Relief Fund. Wink.

If you plan on stick­ing with Net­flix, you can find here a great list of qual­i­ty films, all stream­able via the web. (If need­ed, snag a free one month sub­scrip­tion to Net­flix here.) Or if you’re look­ing for oth­er options, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you’re pret­ty much guar­an­teed to find some­thing you like…

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Life in Moments/Moments in Life

in Art, Film, Life | July 28th, 2011

Back in 2009, the folks at Radi­o­Lab tack­led anoth­er big ques­tion: “What hap­pens at the moment when we slip from life…to the oth­er side? Is it a moment? If it is, when exact­ly does it hap­pen? And what hap­pens after­ward?”

The show (lis­ten here) inspired film­mak­er Will Hoff­man to shoot a video the med­i­tates on the lit­tle moments that give life (and death) their mean­ing. Some moments stand in iso­la­tion. Oth­ers moments are con­nect­ed, cre­at­ing a link between birth and death, cause and effect, begin­nings and ends. In this audio clip, Hoff­man talks with Radi­o­Lab co-host Robert Krul­wich about the vision inform­ing the video sim­ply called Moments. And, if it delights, don’t miss two oth­er Hoffman/RadioLab pro­duc­tions, one sim­ply called Words, the oth­er Sym­me­try.

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Movie Tearjerkers: What’s the Saddest Scene in Cinema?

in Film, Psychology | July 28th, 2011

Accord­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing piece in The Smith­son­ian, Fran­co Zef­firelli’s 1979 weep­fest The Champ is the most con­sis­tent­ly effec­tive tear­jerk­er in the his­to­ry of film. It’s also the tear­jerk­er most often used in sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of grief and sad­ness:

The Champ has been used in exper­i­ments to see if depressed peo­ple are more like­ly to cry than non-depressed peo­ple (they aren’t). It has helped deter­mine whether peo­ple are more like­ly to spend mon­ey when they are sad (they are) and whether old­er peo­ple are more sen­si­tive to grief than younger peo­ple (old­er peo­ple did report more sad­ness when they watched the scene). Dutch sci­en­tists used the scene when they stud­ied the effect of sad­ness on peo­ple with binge eat­ing dis­or­ders (sad­ness didn’t increase eat­ing).

We would have gone with either the last scene of West Side Sto­ry or that dev­as­tat­ing 1989 Negro Col­lege Fund com­mer­cial with the pen­nies. Feel free to post your own can­di­dates in the com­ments.

via Neatora­ma

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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A Heartfelt, Animated Tribute to Jim Henson

in Animation, Video - Arts & Culture | July 27th, 2011

Good luck stay­ing dry-eyed through this mov­ing trib­ute to Jim Hen­son, which fea­tures a group of pup­pets try­ing to cope with the death of their beloved cre­ator. It’s a long time since we’ve seen the so-called stages of grief dra­ma­tized so beau­ti­ful­ly and with such econ­o­my. (The film­mak­ers recent­ly fol­lowed up their 5‑minute short with a trail­er for what looks like a promis­ing fea­ture-length ver­sion.)

Hen­son fans may also want to check out his 1969 video primer on how to make pup­pets, as well as this new exhib­it at the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image, which hosts a won­der­ful trib­ute to the pup­peteer’s long time col­lab­o­ra­tion with Frank Oz.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Improv with New Yorker Cartoonists

in Art, Comedy | July 27th, 2011

When you think of The New York­er, you think about two things — long-form arti­cles and leg­endary car­toons. The two art forms have gone hand-in-hand since the mag­a­zine began pub­lish­ing in 1925, and, decades lat­er, a younger gen­er­a­tion of car­toon­ists still deliv­ers the laughs. Thanks to the Gel Con­fer­ence 2011 (see all videos here), you can spend 25 min­utes inside their artis­tic world. Matt Dif­fee, Drew Der­navich, and Zach Kanin talk about their some­times con­tro­ver­sial work at the mag­a­zine and draw improv car­toons based on audi­ence sug­ges­tions. Fun guar­an­teed for all. H/T @opedr

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: New York­er Car­toon Ani­mat­ed

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