Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1903 Film Adaptation

Alice in Won­der­land has a long tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. You can find ver­sions from 2010, 1972, and 1951. You’ll even find a silent ver­sion dat­ing all the way back to 1903. Thanks to the British Film Insti­tute (BFI), you can watch online this silent ver­sion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic tale for the first time. Pro­duced just eight years after the birth of cin­e­ma, the film, orig­i­nal­ly run­ning 12 min­utes, was “the longest film pro­duced in Eng­land at that time.” The ver­sion above is unfor­tu­nate­ly incom­plete, run­ning just 9 and a half min­utes. But it has been recent­ly restored (to the best extent pos­si­ble). BFI offers more infor­ma­tion about this ear­ly cin­e­ma gem here. Final­ly, you can down­load a free copy of Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic, Alice in Won­der­land, with­in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

For more vin­tage movies, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­to of the Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

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Best Free Movies Online

With the Oscars com­ing up, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media re-aired today our inter­view from last Novem­ber. Here, we tell radio lis­ten­ers about the wealth of great movies avail­able online for free. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below (or here), and explore our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, which includes films by Hitch­cock, Polan­s­ki, Cop­po­la, David Lynch and many oth­ers. It also includes a long list of sites where you can freely watch movies online, includ­ing clas­sics, indies, doc­u­men­taries and beyond. Thanks to Jon Gor­don and Future Tense for talk­ing with me and help­ing get the word out.

Become a fan on Face­book or get extra cul­tur­al good­ies on Twit­ter!

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Catch TEDxNYED Live on Saturday

A quick heads up: On Sat­ur­day, an inde­pen­dent TED con­fer­ence will get under­way in New York City. It’s dubbed TEDxNYED, and a top notch line­up of speak­ers (includ­ing Lawrence LessigMichael Wesch, Gina Bian­chi­ni, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jay Rosen and oth­ers) will focus on a top­ic near and dear to our read­ers’ hearts: how new media and tech­nol­o­gy will shape the future of edu­ca­tion. And the best part? You can watch a live stream of the con­fer­ence here. Look for the web stream­ing to take place between 10am EST and 6pm EST. Again, this all hap­pens this Sat­ur­day. Please spread the word! Your friends will thank you.

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Where Is Technology Taking Us?

A recent Front­line doc­u­men­tary, Dig­i­tal Nation: A Life on the Vir­tu­al Fron­tier, asks just this question–particularly with regard to edu­ca­tion. Sub­jects include atten­tion span, mul­ti-task­ing, and the doubts of one-time tech­nol­o­gy evan­ge­list Dou­glas Rushkoff. But while some see tech­nol­o­gy as an obsta­cle to clear think­ing and human inter­ac­tion, oth­ers see it as essen­tial to con­tem­po­rary edu­ca­tion.

I have to say the whole sub­ject res­onates with my own ambiva­lent technophil­ia. You can watch the doc­u­men­tary above or here (and the trail­er fol­lows), but don’t for­get to check your news feeds, twit­ter, and face­book while it’s on in the back­ground.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

Opera in the Fruit & Veggie Market

The place: A pro­duce mar­ket in Valen­cia, Spain. The day: Just a day like any oth­er. But then sud­den­ly Verdi’s La travi­a­ta booms out over the speak­ers, and opera singers, ini­tial­ly mas­querad­ing as shop­keep­ers, take cen­ter stage. Stick with it until the end. The cus­tomer reac­tion is pre­cious. We’ve added this one to our YouTube favorites. Thanks Char­lie for the tip …

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Chilean Earthquake Waves in Animation

This ani­mat­ed footage gives you a more glob­al view of the Chilean earth­quake in action. Seen from this van­tage point, there’s a cer­tain beau­ty to Moth­er Nature in action. Waves rip­pling across the Pacif­ic, as if a stone were thrown into a calm pond. But, obvi­ous­ly, for those expe­ri­enc­ing the earth­quake on the ground, it’s a very dif­fer­ent and trag­ic sto­ry.

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Stars Orbiting Black Holes

Above, we bring you what astro­physi­cist Daniel Holz calls “one of the coolest movies in all of sci­ence.” What you see here is not exact­ly straight­for­ward. But it’s the work of UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, and it essen­tial­ly shows stars orbit­ing around a super­mas­sive black hole at the cen­ter of our galaxy over the past 15 earth years. Accord­ing to Holz, these orbits, filmed with the largest tele­scopes in the world on Mau­na Kea, are sim­ply “one of the best ways (short of the detec­tion of grav­i­ta­tion­al waves from black hole merg­ers) of con­firm­ing that black holes exist.” And it’s quite right­ly an “incred­i­ble feat of obser­va­tion­al astron­o­my.” For more, read Holz’s piece on Dis­cov­er’s Cos­mic Vari­ance blog. Anoth­er big thanks to Mike for pass­ing this one our way…

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Join the Facebook Committee to Support Liao Yiwu

For the 13th time, Chi­nese author­i­ties arrest­ed the well-known Chi­nese writer Liao Yiwu (The Corpse Walk­er) as he board­ed a plane to attend a lit­er­ary fes­ti­val in Cologne, Ger­many. He has now been placed under house arrest. You can learn more about it here. (Also read Philip Goure­vitch’s blog post for The New York­er.) Please join this new­ly cre­at­ed Face­book Group ded­i­cat­ed to pub­li­ciz­ing this sto­ry and win­ning his release. Be among the first to join. Make a dif­fer­ence here.

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John Battelle Doesn’t Like the iPad Because…

In short, it’s hard­ly open …

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World War II Relived through Sand Painting

How did the artist Kseniya Simono­va win the Ukrain­ian ver­sion of Britain’s Got Tal­ent? By using the art of sand paint­ing to recount the sto­ry of Ger­many’s inva­sion of Ukraine in 1941. Life was some­what ordi­nary, then it all fell apart. And, by the war’s end, an esti­mat­ed 10 mil­lion Ukraini­ans were left dead. It’s a dif­fi­cult sto­ry to tell. And I’m refer­ring not just to the sto­ry’s con­tent, but to the actu­al medi­um too. Thanks Steve for the heads up on this one.

For more sand paint­ing, check out the work of Ilana Yahav.

Chilean Quake Shortens the Day

An inter­est­ing fac­toid relat­ing to the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in Chile this week­end. A NASA sci­en­tist sur­mis­es that the quake prob­a­bly shift­ed the Earth’s axis and short­ened the day. As this piece in Busi­ness Week goes on to explain:

Earth­quakes can involve shift­ing hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters of rock by sev­er­al meters, chang­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass on the plan­et. This affects the Earth’s rota­tion, said Richard Gross, a geo­physi­cist at NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pasade­na, Cal­i­for­nia, who uses a com­put­er mod­el to cal­cu­late the effects.

“The length of the day should have got­ten short­er by 1.26 microsec­onds (mil­lionths of a sec­ond)… The axis about which the Earth’s mass is bal­anced should have moved by 2.7 mil­liarc­sec­onds (about 8 cen­time­ters or 3 inch­es).”

For more, read the com­plete Busi­ness Week arti­cle. And, con­sid­er donat­ing to a Chile relief fund. Mash­able tells you how…

via @slate

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