Oxford English Dictionary Free

in e-books | January 10th, 2011

Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick men­tion. The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, oth­er­wise known sim­ply as the OED, can be accessed for free until Feb­ru­ary 5. This gives you access to 600,000 words, 3 mil­lion quo­ta­tions, over 1000 years of Eng­lish. In brief, the author­i­ty on the Eng­lish lan­guage. To access the dic­tio­nary, sim­ply login with trynewoed as both the user­name and pass­word.

Note: Kaplan Pub­lish­ing has extend­ed its free ebook offer until Jan­u­ary 17. If you know any­one get­ting ready to take the SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc., then please send them to this page for more infor­ma­tion.

via Kot­tke

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World’s Smallest Periodic Table on a Human Hair

in Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2011

Fun with sci­ence. The world’s small­est peri­od­ic table etched onto a strand of hair belong­ing to chem­istry Pro­fes­sor Mar­tyn Poli­akoff (Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham). This clip comes from the Peri­od­ic Videos col­lec­tion and it comes rec­om­mend by the great @OliverSacks.

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:

Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

A Peri­od­ic Table Visu­al­iz­ing the Year & Coun­try in Which Each Ele­ment Was Dis­cov­ered

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Pre­sent­ed as Inter­ac­tive Haikus

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

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Arduino Documentary: Open Source Hardware is Here

in Film, Technology | January 10th, 2011

Open Source, it’s not just for soft­ware. It’s for hard­ware too. The new film, Arduino: The Doc­u­men­tary, revis­its a project launched in the Ital­ian town of Ivrea back in 2005. The chal­lenge? To devel­op cheap, easy-to-use elec­tron­ics com­po­nents for design stu­dents. (You can get into the tech­ni­cal side of things here.) The mes­sage? Geek.com sum­ma­rizes it well: “we are about to see an explo­sion of hard­ware devices that come from bed­room tin­ker­ers and stu­dent projects.” Note: A Span­ish ver­sion of the film is avail­able here, and they’re all released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Arduino: The Doc­u­men­tary will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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!

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Two Men: A Kafka Inspired Short Film

in Film, Literature | January 10th, 2011

Two Men, a short film direct­ed by Dominic Allen, takes an old philo­soph­i­cal sto­ry by Franz Kaf­ka, one set in Europe of course, and adapts it to a con­tem­po­rary Abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralian con­text, using indige­nous “non actors.” In rework­ing Kafka’s tale (read the orig­i­nal text here), Allen hoped to “affirm an ele­ment of human­i­ty’s com­mon­al­i­ty” … and “rein­force Kafka’s point that it’s impos­si­ble to ever tru­ly know anoth­er’s moti­va­tions.” Made in 2009, the film has since been screened at film fes­ti­vals in New York, Prague, Lon­don, and Syd­ney, and the film earned Allen the “Emerg­ing Aus­tralian Film­mak­er Prize” at the Mel­bourne Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kaf­ka: The Ani­mat­ed Short Film

Prague’s Franz Kaf­ka Inter­na­tion­al Named World’s Most Alien­at­ing Air­port

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17-Year-Old Joan Baez Performs at Famous “Club 47” in Cambridge, MA (1958)

in Music | January 9th, 2011

The video above brings you way back (we think) to 1958, when Joan Baez was only 17, to a con­cert she played at the leg­endary Club 47 in Cam­bridge, Mass. While the teenage ingénue broke onto the folk scene, Bob Dylan was still a stu­dent back in Hib­bing, Min­neso­ta. Five years lat­er, Baez intro­duced Dylan to the music world; the two dat­ed for a while; and then, even while going their sep­a­rate ways, they put their stamp on the 60s folk scene – a sto­ry that gets well doc­u­ment­ed in the book, Pos­i­tive­ly 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fari­na and Richard Fari­na. If you click here, you can watch Baez, now in her prime, per­form a com­plete con­cert in 1965. The show runs 65 min­utes and fea­tures 18 songs.

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:

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Let­ter To John Cage and Alan Hov­haness (1947)

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

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The Greatest Composers: According to You & The New York Times

in Music | January 8th, 2011

Antho­ny Tom­masi­ni, the chief music crit­ic for the New York Times, has start­ed the year with a play­ful way of find­ing out “what makes great music great?” To answer the ques­tion, he has invit­ed read­ers to make a list of the Top 10 com­posers in his­to­ry. And that invites answers to a series of sec­ondary ques­tions: “Should influ­ence mat­ter, or just the works them­selves? What about pop­u­lar­i­ty? Are there any objec­tive cri­te­ria?” The Times will actu­al­ly post a bal­lot next week. (Keep an eye on the Arts­Beat blog.) But, in the mean­time, Tom­masi­ni has kicked off the project by post­ing a video (above) focus­ing on the tow­er­ing Baroque com­pos­er, J.S. Bach. And, speak­ing of Bach, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post show­ing where you can down­load the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach for free.  Thanks to Joshua and Robin for the tip on the NYTimes project!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

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The Secrets to Living an Awesome Life

in Life, Psychology, TED Talks | January 7th, 2011

You have heard the mes­sage before – the secrets to liv­ing an excel­lent life. But they bear repeat­ing from time to time. And Neil Pas­richa, edi­tor of the 1000 Awe­some Things blog, com­mu­ni­cates it all in a rather touch­ing and earnest­ly straight­for­ward way. This talk comes from TEDx­Toron­to, staged in Sep­tem­ber 2010.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Ted Talk Under the Sun

Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth about What Moti­vates Us

Vik­tor Fran­kl on Our Search for Mean­ing

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Vivian Maier, Street Photographer, Discovered

in Art | January 6th, 2011

Vivian Maier grew up in France, immi­grat­ed to the US, spent 40 unas­sum­ing years work­ing as a nan­ny, and then, dur­ing her free time, took more than 100,000 pho­tographs of life on the Chica­go streets. Dis­cov­ered only in 2009, not long before her death, her pho­tog­ra­phy will be on dis­play at the Chica­go Cul­tur­al Cen­ter from Jan­u­ary to April 2011. This marks the first solo exhi­bi­tion of her work. The video above, along with this ded­i­cat­ed blog, will intro­duce you to this belat­ed­ly dis­cov­ered tal­ent. Thanks to @eugenephoto for send­ing this along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leon Levin­stein: Pho­tog­ra­phy Reveals How Lit­tle We See

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Disney’s Oscar-Winning Adventures in Music

in Film, Music | January 6th, 2011

Back in 1953, Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions released two short and cut­ting-edge music edu­ca­tion films. The ini­tial film, Melody, was the first car­toon ever filmed in 3D. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, cur­rent ver­sions only appear in 2D). Then came the sequel, Toot, Whis­tle, Plunk and Boom, which proved inno­v­a­tive in its own way. The short film, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of the horn, flute, gui­tar and drum, was the first car­toon filmed and shown in widescreen Cin­e­maS­cope. It won the 1954 Acad­e­my Award for Best Short Sub­ject (Car­toons) and was lat­er vot­ed #29 of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of all time. Giv­en these creds, you will find Toot, Whis­tle, Plunk and Boom in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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130 Free eBooks from Kaplan Publishing

in e-books | January 6th, 2011

A quick fyi for any­one try­ing to get into col­lege or grad­u­ate school: Through Jan­u­ary 17th, Kaplan Pub­lish­ing will let you down­load 130 eBooks to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Nook and Sony eRead­er – all for free. (You can find a spe­cial page for down­load­ing titles via the Kin­dle here.) Some select titles include: Get Into Grad­u­ate School, Get Into Law School, Kaplan Portable SAT, and Kaplan AP Sta­tis­tics. The full list of titles appears here, and you can start down­load­ing the books right here. Note that you will need to ini­ti­ate the down­load from a device list­ed above, and not your com­put­er. Remem­ber: this free offer will only last for the next few days …

Note: This offer pre­vi­ous­ly expired on Jan­u­ary 10th. Now it has been extend­ed to Jan­u­ary 17th.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

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Existentialism with Hubert Dreyfus: Five Free Philosophy Courses

in Online Courses, Philosophy | January 5th, 2011

Image by  Jörg Noller, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

All Things Shin­ing: Read­ing the West­ern Clas­sics to Find Mean­ing in a Sec­u­lar Age – This new book by Hubert Drey­fus (UC Berke­ley) and Sean Dor­rance Kel­ly (Har­vard) hit the book­shelves this week, and it cur­rent­ly ranks #56 on Ama­zon’s Top 100 List. Quite a coup for seri­ous think­ing.

Pro­fes­sor Drey­fus has taught many pop­u­lar exis­ten­tial­ism and phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy cours­es at UC Berke­ley, some of which laid the foun­da­tion for this book. Hap­pi­ly, you can find Drey­fus’ phi­los­o­phy cours­es online. And, even bet­ter, you can down­load them for free. The cours­es are list­ed below, and also in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

  • Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film - Stream – Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Hei­deg­ger – Stream — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Heidegger’s Being & Time – Stream — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Hei­deg­ger’s Being and Time, Divi­sion II — Free Online Audio — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
  • Man, God, and Soci­ety in West­ern Lit­er­a­ture — Free Online Audio – Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy with John Sear­le: Three Free Cours­es

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Michael Sandel’s Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

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