From The Internet Archive: “Recorded here is the complete, original story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as penned by Fitzgerald in the early 1920s, published originally in Colliers and finally collected in the popular Tales of the Jazz Age.” You can download and listen to this Fitzgerald story here. Multiple formats are available. We’ve also added this work to our Free Audio Book collection, along with some other good works: Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat, Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself and Other Poems, and Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary.
Shakespeare on the iPhone
Last week, we flagged for you a list called the 100 Best iPhone Apps for Serious Self-Learners. What the list missed is another nice app that puts the complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone. And, the best part, it’s all free. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy functionality: you can search the text by keyword and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app automatically remembers the last page you read. Not bad. And, again, you can find the Bard app here.
Math on the Tube
During the past couple of days, fans from our Facebook page have recommended two math videos for us. Here they go: “D” offers up a piece called “The New Math” (above), which talks, yes, about the revolution in teaching mathematics. As you’ll see, the piece breaks into comic song, and it all kind of has an Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant feel to it. A bit of a strange combo, to be sure.
Next up, Heather gives us Mathmaticious (get it here), which is a mathematical parody of Fergie’s “Fergalicious,” although sadly or, maybe actually happily, I’m not familiar with it. Snooty, snarky me…
‘Stanford Open Office Hours’ on Facebook
Think back to the office hours you attended in college. Now put a Web 2.0 slant on it. On Facebook, Stanford faculty members are now holding public office hours. This week, you can watch an introductory video (view here or below) by Philip Zimbardo, the psychology professor best known for the Stanford Prison Experiment, which explains why good people can commit unthinkable acts. His more recent research does a 180 and looks at how ordinary people commit heroic acts. And, separately, he’s trying to understand how our attitudes toward time affect our overall happiness (more on that here). Once you watch the initial video, you can pose questions to Prof Zimbardo in the comment thread beneath the clip. (You can do this through Tuesday afternoon). In the coming days, Prof. Zimbardo will respond to your questions in a follow-up video.
To participate, you will need to join Facebook and become a “fan” of Stanford’s Facebook page, And you’ll perhaps want to read over the ground rules for the Open Office Hours. Lastly, if you’re not a Fan of Open Culture’s Facebook Page, it’s time to get on board.
Obama Does Stand Up Comedy
From last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (Also get Wanda Sykes’ standup appearance here. Rather funny.)
These clips come from CSPAN’s YouTube Channel, which is included in our Intelligent YouTube Video Collection
Jack Kerouac Meets William F. Buckley (1968)
Rewind the videotape to 1968. Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, appears (seemingly drunk) on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.” As you’ll see, this meeting of the Beat and the father of modern American conservatism is not exactly filled with substance. But the clip has some historical curiosity. You can find more Kerouac video and audio on the Digital Beat web site.
The Fate of Nabokov’s Final, Unpublished Work
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he was working on a manuscript called The Original of Laura. And he asked that it remain locked in a Swiss vault and never published. His son, Dmitri, who also happens to be his translator and surviving heir, is now wondering what to do with “the most concentrated distillation of [my father’s] creativity.” To burn or not to burn? That’s Dmitri’s dilemma, and it gets explored in this piece by Slate.
Related Video Content:
100 Best iPhone Apps for Serious Self-Learners
With a little luck, we’re going to be bringing you an Open Culture iPhone app in the next couple of months. In the meantime, here’s a handy list of iPhone apps for “serious self-learners.” Let me give you a quick sample of the apps you’ll find highlighted here: Aristotle’s complete works, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook., The World Factbook ‘09, Taber’s Medical Dictionary, The Peterson Field Guide to Backyard Birds, and a lot more. Note, some of the apps are free, and others not.
PS: See Open Culture’s new free app that gives you access to hundreds of free audio books, university courses, foreign language lessons and more.
Thanks Bryan for the tip on this one.
Did Gauguin Cut Off Van Gogh’s Ear?
Curious piece in the Telegraph. It starts:
He is known as the tortured genius who cut off his own ear as he struggled with mental illness after the breakdown of his friendship with a fellow artist. But a new study claims Vincent Van Gogh may have made up the story to protect painter Paul Gauguin who actually lopped it off with a sword during an argument…
New Kindle Out, But Can You Read It at Night?
Before you get dissuaded by my original comments, please see my latest update down below.
As we mentioned earlier this week, Amazon unveiled its new Kindle this morning in NYC. The Kindle DX ($489) features a large screen (9.7 inches measured diagonally) and it’s intended to make reading newspapers, college textbooks and PDFs a more user-friendly experience. Plenty of news outlets have provided coverage of the unveiling: Engadget, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, etc. And it’s mostly positive. But I’m left wondering if the Kindle DX addresses the major problem with Kindle 2 ($359). If you spend some time on Amazon’s Kindle discussion forum, you’ll see that one of the longest threads (so far containing 857 posts) is devoted to complaints about the Kindle’s light fonts and dark background — a bad combo, especially when you try to read it at night. (Others have kvetched about it here.) I bought the Kindle 2, and really loved it in many ways. But I couldn’t use it in lower light conditions. At night, the screen gets muddy, and the words don’t pop off of the page. And that’s a deal breaker for me. Meanwhile, with the same lighting, a traditional book reads perfectly well. The major problem with the Kindle gets down to this: Users can’t really customize the look & feel of the reading material. Yes, you can increase and decrease the size of the fonts. But you can’t make the fonts darker (unless you know how to hack the darn thing). Nor can you make the background lighter. This one-size-fits-all approach is what Gutenberg gave us in the 15th century. (Sorry, don’t mean to knock on Gutenberg.) It shouldn’t be what Amazon gives us for $359 in 2009. Could you imagine Apple serving this up? Hardly. And speaking of Apple, it may have its own e‑book reader coming soon. According to PC Magazine, Apple may be rolling out the iPad ($699), which could be an e‑book/internet reader and media player all rolled into one. For now, I’m waiting to see what Apple brings to market and hoping that Amazon finds religion. When they get the Kindle right, it will be great.
UPDATE: A year later, a new Kindle is out (see Wifi version here, and 3G wireless version here). The contrast is noticeably improved with this model. But, even better, Amazon now sells (separately) a case that has a built in retractable light. Taken together, you can now read the Kindle fairly well at night, under pretty much any light conditions. This Kindle I kept, and I’m a bigger fan than before.
Dramatizing the Middle East
When Israel entered Gaza earlier this year, Caryl Churchill, whom Tony Kushner calls “one of the most important and influential playwrights living,” wrote a nine minute play entitle “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza.” In February, it had a brief run at London’s Royal Court Theatre and elicited very different reactions. Some celebrated the play, calling it “dense, beautiful, elusive and intentionally indeterminate” but also appropriately “disturbing” and “provocative;” others labeled it a blood libel and essentially anti-semitic. Although controversial, the Guardian felt that it was important for people to see the play and form their own views. So they commissioned a performance and had it distributed online. You can watch it above, draw you own conclusions, and, if you want, read more about the project over at the Guardian.
This piece of video was sent to us by rkclibrary over Twitter. Thanks for thinking of us.
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