Take a Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios, Courtesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

in Google, Music | April 16th, 2015

Once again, Google qui­et­ly drops a nifty piece of inter­ac­tive web­bery and acts like it ain’t no big deal.

Google’s new web site, Inside Abbey Road, lets view­ers walk inside Abbey Road Stu­dios, check out the famous record­ing stu­dio (home to most of the Bea­t­les’ songs, birth­place of Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s The Bends, Kanye West­’s Late Reg­is­tra­tion, the list goes on) inspect the rooms, and watch inter­views and mini-docs. It also match­es up icon­ic pho­tos (includ­ing the one shot out­side of the famous cross­walk) with the stu­dio today. The site is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and the stu­dio to cel­e­brate over 80 years of music his­to­ry.

Inside Abbey Road

Abbey Road exist­ed before the Fab Four and Cliff Richard, of course, and the new site includes footage of com­pos­er Sir Edward Elgar open­ing the stu­dio in 1931 and con­duct­ing a record­ing of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.”

There’s plen­ty of mod­ern footage too, from Kylie Minogue and Rob­bie Williams to Take That and Sig­ur Rós. You have to poke around a lit­tle bit to find every­thing, but the site includes a map in case you get lost.

abbey road beatles

You can also have a go at mix­ing a four-track record­ing in the con­trol booth, fool around on the J37 tape deck that was the height of tech dur­ing the time of Sgt. Pep­per, and try to find the rumored echo cham­ber. (Trust me, it’s there.)

abbey road board

If you want to take a break out­side and watch a real-time ver­sion of this dig­i­tal loca­tion, there’s always the Abbey Road traf­fic cam, where you watch a whole bunch of tourists try to get their Bea­t­les on with­out get­ting hit by an irate lor­ry dri­ver.

Take your vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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Günter Grass Takes On Facebook: “Someone Who Has 500 Friends, Has No Friends.”

in Current Affairs, Literature, Politics | April 15th, 2015

Inci­sive social crit­ic, nov­el­ist, poet, sculp­tor, and inspi­ra­tion to such tren­chant fab­u­lists as John Irv­ing and Salman Rushdie, Ger­man writer Gün­ter Grass passed away this week with a well-defined lega­cy as “his country’s moral con­science.” Win­ner of the Nobel Prize in 1999, the author did not shy away from con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal stances—despite his own once-hid­den past as a teenage mem­ber of the Hitler Youth and Waf­fen-SS. In 2012, Grass caused an inter­na­tion­al stir with the pub­li­ca­tion of his poem “What Must Be Said,” a fierce cri­tique of Israel’s mil­i­tarism. The poem drew some rather pre­dictable charges, and its pub­li­ca­tion, wrote Der Spiegel, broached what many con­sid­ered a taboo sub­ject. The inci­dent rep­re­sents only one of Grass’s many pub­lic state­ments, woven through­out his art and life, against nation­al­ism and war.

Which brings us to the video inter­view above from 2013. While not exact­ly address­ing a mat­ter of dire geopo­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, Grass nonethe­less levies his char­ac­ter­is­tic crit­i­cal wit against a cor­po­rate enti­ty that threat­ens to swal­low the globe, vir­tu­al­ly—Face­book. Remark­ing on his chil­dren and grandchildren’s expe­ri­ence with the social net­work, Grass says he told one of them, “Some­one who has 500 friends, has no friends.” It’s some­thing of a famil­iar sen­ti­ment by now—we’ve all read numer­ous think-pieces more or less say­ing the same thing. But Grass goes on to define the val­ue of what he calls “direct expe­ri­ences” in spe­cif­ic terms—with the admis­sion that he feels like “a dinosaur” for writ­ing his man­u­scripts by hand and typ­ing them on an old Olivet­ti type­writer.

The idea of own­ing a mobile phone and being acces­si­ble at all times—and as I know now, under sur­veil­lance, is abhor­rent to me. With the lat­est find­ings in mind, it sur­pris­es me—that mil­lions of peo­ple do not dis­tance them­selves from Face­book and all that—and say “I want no part of it.”

Grass’ aver­sion to Facebook—and the online world in general—isn’t strict­ly polit­i­cal, but lit­er­ary as well. He acknowl­edges the ease and speed of the inter­net as a research tool, and yet… “lit­er­a­ture… You can’t speed it up when you work with it. If you do, you do so at the expense of qual­i­ty.” To hear more from Grass about the writ­ing process and his atti­tudes toward lit­er­a­ture and activism, read his inter­view in the Paris Review.

via Bib­liokept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

Stephen Hawk­ing Starts Post­ing on Face­book: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Uni­verse Exist

Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day: Face­book Page Tracks the Philosopher’s Wartime Expe­ri­ence 100 Years Ago

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madonna to Aerosmith

in Film, Music | April 15th, 2015

fincher videos madonna

A whole gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers who came to promi­nence in the late 90s and ear­ly 00s got their start in music videos. Spike Jonze, for instance, went from mak­ing the Beast­ie Boys’ best video, “Sab­o­tage,” to mak­ing Being John Malkovich, the great­est film ever about being John Malkovich. Simon West has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of mak­ing Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up,” mak­ing him the hand­maid­en to that loath­some of inter­net meme’s, rick­rolling. He then went on to make the over­stuffed spec­ta­cle Con Air, mak­ing him the hand­maid­en of Nico­las Cage’s dread­ful action career. And Michael Bay, Mr. Death-Of-Cin­e­ma him­self, made slick videos for the Divinyls before branch­ing off into explo­sion porn with the Trans­form­ers fran­chise.

Yet the most cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er to come out of music videos is David Finch­er. Even before he made his green-tint­ed feel-bad mas­ter­pieces like Zodi­ac and The Social Net­work, he already made a deep impact on Amer­i­can pop­u­lar con­scious­ness – espe­cial­ly if you were watch­ing a lot of MTV dur­ing the wan­ing days of the Cold War. Here are five of his most famous and fine­ly-craft­ed vids.

“Vogue,” Madon­na (1990)

Shot in gor­geous black and white, Finch­er makes Madon­na look like a Hol­ly­wood icon of yore while spin­ning one daz­zling image after anoth­er of well-appoint­ed, and remark­ably lim­ber, men vogu­ing. The video was report­ed­ly shot at a break­neck pace, just 16 hours, to accom­mo­date Madonna’s tour sched­ule.

“Straight Up,” Paula Abdul (1989)

Finch­er cap­tures Paula Abdul’s sass and her con­sid­er­able danc­ing prowess in this stark, graph­ic video that is almost com­plete­ly devoid of grey.

“Free­dom! ’90,” George Michael (1990)

George Michael refused to par­tic­i­pate in the shoot for this video. So Finch­er did what I wish I could do — call up a bunch of super­mod­els includ­ing Nao­mi Camp­bell, Lin­da Evan­ge­lista and Cindy Craw­ford and get them to help out. The result feels like a Victoria’s Secret cat­a­logue come to life.

“Janie’s Got a Gun,” Aero­smith (1989)

The song might be catchy but the lyrics are about mur­der and child abuse. Finch­er shoots Aerosmith’s like­ly are­na rock anthem as a crime sto­ry, com­plete with lush col­ors and moody, expres­sion­is­tic depic­tions of the deeds. The video proved to be great train­ing for his sub­se­quent films.

“Express Your­self,” Madon­na (1989)

Madonna’s “Express Your­self” was the most expen­sive music video made up to that point, cost­ing $5 mil­lion. A riff off the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece, Metrop­o­lis, this work fea­tures far more corsets, naked men and crotch grabs than Fritz Lang’s film. Madon­na had a great deal of say over the final prod­uct. “I over­saw every­thing — the build­ing of the sets, every­one’s cos­tumes, I had meet­ings with make-up and hair and the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, every­body,” she told Rolling Stone mag­a­zine. “Cast­ing, find­ing the right cat — just every aspect.” The suc­cess of this video land­ed Finch­er his first fea­ture film, the trou­bled Alien3.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Disney’s 12 Timeless Principles of Animation Demonstrated in 12 Animated Primers

in Animation | April 15th, 2015

Last year, we fea­tured Dis­ney’s twelve time­less prin­ci­ples of ani­ma­tion, which Dis­ney ani­ma­tors Frank Thomas and Ollie John­ston first laid out in their 1981 book The Illu­sion of Life: Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion. Even if you’ve nev­er heard of the prin­ci­ples of “squash and stretch,” “fol­low-through,” and “sol­id draw­ing” before, you’ll sure­ly rec­og­nize their appli­ca­tion — in Dis­ney car­toons and most oth­ers besides — as soon as you read their expla­na­tions in that post. Not for noth­ing has Thomas and John­son’s book attained near-Bib­li­cal sta­tus among ani­ma­tors.

These 12 prin­ci­ples give ani­ma­tion the clar­i­ty of com­po­si­tion and rich­ness of motion Dis­ney’s stan­dards have us expect­ing. But how to actu­al­ly exe­cute these 12 prin­ci­ples in your own work? Alan Beck­er Tuto­ri­als breaks it down in a series of 12 videos focused on each prin­ci­ple, clear­ly illus­trat­ing how each looks in prac­tice and suc­cinct­ly explain­ing what it takes to do it right — and show­ing what hap­pens when you don’t.

Because most of us grew up watch­ing car­toons, and more than a few of us have tak­en the inter­est with us into adult­hood, we know good ani­ma­tion when we see it. After watch­ing these brief tuto­ri­als, even if you have no pro­fes­sion­al inter­est in bring­ing draw­ings to life, you’ll find out how much qual­i­ty ani­ma­tion has to do with adher­ence to the 12 prin­ci­ples. You can learn about all of them on the series’ Youtube playlist, a view­ing expe­ri­ence that will enrich your mem­o­ries of the best car­toons you watched in child­hood with an under­stand­ing of what made them the best — and an under­stand­ing of what made all the oth­ers seem so cheap. I’m look­ing at you, Grape Ape.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch The Hitch: An Indie-Documentary on The Life & Times of Christopher Hitchens

in Current Affairs, Film, Religion | April 14th, 2015

A quick note: Kristof­fer Seland Helles­mark was look­ing for a doc­u­men­tary on Christo­pher Hitchens to watch, but could nev­er find one. So, after wait­ing a while, he said to him­self, “Why don’t I just make one?” The result is the 80-minute doc­u­men­tary about Hitchens, lov­ing­ly enti­tled The Hitch, which fea­tures clips from his speech­es and inter­views. We’ve added it to our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

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Mike Leigh’s Five-Minute Films: A Revealing Look at the Director’s Early Cinematic Work (1975)

in Film | April 14th, 2015

Mike Leigh works like few oth­er direc­tors. While most movies start with the script, Leigh devel­ops a sto­ry and char­ac­ters with his actors dur­ing long rehearsals. Leigh then assem­bles these exer­cis­es into a script. He will shoot some of that script and then rehearse some more. The result of this unusu­al style is that the actors know their char­ac­ters down to the mar­row. The film feels alive.

Back in 1975, just as Leigh was begin­ning to devel­op his famed method, the BBC com­mis­sioned him to make a series of five-minute movies. Leigh described the con­cept of the assign­ment to writer Sean O’Sullivan:

I thought it was a crack­ing idea, and I would have done forty of them or fifty – so you’d see them all the time, and some­times you might see a char­ac­ter you nev­er saw again, some­times you might see some­body pop­ping up for a moment and then be a main char­ac­ter in anoth­er one, or there’d be a cou­ple of ones that would run on to a nar­ra­tive. It would be a whole micro­cosm of the world. There was debate about whether they should be shown at the same time or they should be dot­ted around the chan­nel, like cur­rants in the pud­ding, as Tony Gar­nett, the pro­duc­er, called it.

The project, sad­ly, was can­celed before it even aired and only five movies were made. Those five were not broad­cast until 1982 when Leigh had already become a big name in British tele­vi­sion.

In some of his best works like Life is Sweet and Naked, Leigh focused on the small dra­mas of work­ing class life, min­ing the unar­tic­u­lat­ed sad­ness and anger sim­mer­ing just beneath the sur­face of mod­ern Britain. His Five-Minute Films show ear­ly glim­mers of his lat­er great­ness.

The plot of the first film, The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final, is sim­ple to an extreme. The short, which con­sists of ten vignettes span­ning a half-dozen years, is about a cou­ple decid­ing whether or not to have a baby. The name­less bloke repeat­ed­ly asks his reluc­tant part­ner, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a kid?” At the end of the movie, he’s kick­ing the ball around with his young son. The end. It is almost as if Leigh want­ed to see how lit­tle back­sto­ry and char­ac­ter psy­chol­o­gy he could get away with.

The sec­ond film, Old Chums, is the dia­met­ri­cal oppo­site to the first – it’s all about char­ac­ter. The sto­ry, which unfolds in real-time, shows Bri­an, who is dis­abled and in crutch­es, walk­ing to the car as he par­ries the con­ver­sa­tion­al onslaught of a boor­ish ex-school­mate, Ter­ry. The movie buries you in names and long past events that have lit­tle bear­ing on the sto­ry, but leaves cen­tral ques­tions like “what does Ter­ry actu­al­ly want?” tan­ta­liz­ing­ly vague.

A third film, Pro­ba­tion, appears above. You can watch the remain­der of Leigh’s Five-Minute Shorts here. We’ll also add them to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films:King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Brian May Shows You How to Play Licks & Solos from 18 Queen Songs, and Reveals the Joy of the Guitar Riff

in Music | April 14th, 2015

In the world of rock gui­tar, gear is king. And tech­nique, one might say, is queen. Both rule, but the equip­ment can receive an unfair share of roy­al treat­ment. There is good rea­son for this. Elec­tri­fied instru­ments play­ing elec­tric music require heaps of wires, cir­cuits, spe­cial­ized effects, and ampli­fiers to make the sounds we’ve come to asso­ciate with hard rock and heavy met­al. But those sounds didn’t come about by acci­dent. They were designed at par­tic­u­lar times by par­tic­u­lar gui­tarists and engineers—serious gear­heads. Per­haps the most obses­sive of them all is Bri­an May, whose flashy but taste­ful play­ing with Queen set the bar for pyrotech­nics artists and fel­low gear­heads like Eddie Van Halen. Maybe it’s his work as an astro­physi­cist (no, real­ly!) that inspired his sci­en­tif­ic approach to mak­ing music. Wher­ev­er it comes from, no one plays, and sounds, quite like Bri­an May.

In the video above from 1984, May gives lessons on how to play his famous licks and solos from eigh­teen Queen songs. But first, he gets into the tech­ni­cal specs of his ampli­fiers, effects, and his gui­tar, “Red Spe­cial,” an instru­ment of his own design and build that func­tioned like no oth­er at the time. Even today, no gui­tar but a Bri­an May sig­na­ture gui­tar—now mass-pro­duced—sounds like a Bri­an May gui­tar. At one point, May says, “I’ve had this gui­tar for 20 years, and it’s pret­ty much the only thing I can play to get the right sound.” He still feels the same way, as you can see in his much more recent “Rig Run­down,” that peri­od­ic delight of gui­tar geeks every­where in which famous gui­tarists show­case the gear that gets them “the right sound.”

May’s full immer­sion in the tech­ni­cal details of elec­tric gui­tars and ampli­fiers is rivaled only by his com­plex and intri­cate gui­tar lines. If you can keep up with him in the instruc­tion­al video at the top, you might just learn a thing or two about the so-called “lick.” Just above, how­ev­er, May helps guide us through an explo­ration of a much more direct and prim­i­tive means of expression—the riff. The BBC spe­cial also fea­tures such mas­ters of this repet­i­tive, rhyth­mic motif as Joan Jett, Wayne Kramer, Nile Rodgers, Tony Iom­mi, and Dave Davies, as well as—in archival footage—riff pio­neers Chuck Berry and Link Wray, each of them demon­strat­ing the ear­worms they’re known for. Bri­an May’s riffs—in “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” for example—may be more clas­si­cal than most, but they’re no less mem­o­rable. And after watch­ing his extend­ed les­son, you now know exact­ly how he built them, piece by piece.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Modernist Gas Stations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

in Architecture | April 14th, 2015

1024px-LindholmServiceStation

Just a few miles from where I live on Los Ange­les’ Olympic Boule­vard stands the Helios House, which, the name notwith­stand­ing, is a gas sta­tion — and quite a strik­ing one. Made of stain­less steel tri­an­gles, it looks like a piece of very ear­ly com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery brought into the mod­ern phys­i­cal world. The Helios House intro­duced me to the con­cept of the archi­tec­tural­ly for­ward gas sta­tion, but, built in 2007, it actu­al­ly came late to the game: wit­ness, for instance, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1956 R.W. Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion in Clo­quet, Min­neso­ta (above and below).

LloydWrightGasStation,Cloquet

“In the ear­ly 1930s, Wright began devel­op­ing con­cepts for Broad­acre City, a city spread out to the point where it would be ‘every­where and nowhere,’” we wrote when we first post­ed about the build­ing in 2011.

“The design for the Lind­holm gas sta­tion came direct­ly from this con­cep­tu­al project.” Alas, writes The Atlantic’s Daniel From­son, Wright’s ambi­tious design did­n’t catch on: “Cer­tain ele­ments, such as gas pumps hang­ing from an over­head canopy—intended to boost effi­cien­cy and save space—were pro­hib­it­ed by Clo­quet fire bylaws (although, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, hang­ing pumps even­tu­al­ly became pop­u­lar in Japan). The unortho­dox sta­tion was also esti­mat­ed by one trade pub­li­ca­tion to have cost two to three times as much as a stan­dard design.”

gas_station_nuns_island_v210212_sm7

But Wright does­n’t stand alone among the mod­ernist mas­ters in hav­ing done gas-sta­tion work. Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, anoth­er archi­tect with a pen­chant for reimag­in­ing the ele­ments of the city, put his hand (or at least those of some­one in his office ) to the task in 1969, com­ing up with the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly stripped-down Nuns’ Island gas sta­tion in the mid­dle of Mon­tre­al’s Saint Lawrence Riv­er. Unlike the Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion, it no longer per­forms its intend­ed func­tion, but it does have a repur­posed future as a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter. His oth­er gas sta­tion, put up at the cam­pus of the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy where he head­ed the depart­ment of archi­tec­ture, has­n’t sur­vived at all.

Nuns Island

But Oob­ject includes it in their list of the top fif­teen mod­ernist gas sta­tions, which fea­tures build­ings by Nor­man Fos­ter and Arne Jacob­sen and should make fine fur­ther read­ing if you’ve enjoyed this post. See also Fla­vor­wire’s list of the world’s most beau­ti­ful gas sta­tions, which names not only Wright and Mies van der Rohe’s work, but the Helios House, a few pieces of swoop­ing mid­cen­tu­ry glo­ry in Los Ange­les and Scan­di­navia, and a “Teapot Dome Ser­vice Sta­tion” shaped like exact­ly that. If you’re going to pay today’s gas prices, after all, you might as well fill up under an aes­thet­i­cal­ly notable struc­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Contributions of Women Philosophers Recovered by the New Project Vox Website

in Philosophy | April 14th, 2015

project vox

“If I am con­demned, I shall be anni­hi­lat­ed to noth­ing: but my ambi­tion is such, as I would either be a world, or noth­ing.” — Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673)

A phi­los­o­phy can­di­date or fem­i­nist schol­ar ven­tur­ing into Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Project Vox web­site may expe­ri­ence a sen­sa­tion akin to dis­cov­er­ing King Tut’s tomb.

Such trea­sures! Not just a scrap here and a morsel there, but a seri­ous trove of infor­ma­tion about phi­los­o­phy writ by females!

Lady Damaris Masham (1658–1708), Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673), Vis­count­ess Anne Con­way (1631–1679), and Émi­lie Du Châtelet were high­ly thought of in their day, and praised by male con­tem­po­raries includ­ing John Locke.

Project Vox seeks to res­ur­rect their over­looked-to-the-point-of-undis­cov­ered con­tri­bu­tions by pub­lish­ing their long out of print texts, some trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time. Bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and sec­ondary resources will pro­vide a sense of each philoso­pher as well as her phi­los­o­phy.

Even­tu­al­ly, the site will include a forum where teach­ers can share les­son plans and arti­cles. Male phi­los­o­phy doc­tor­ates cur­rent­ly out­num­ber their female coun­ter­parts by an over­whelm­ing num­ber, but that may change as young women begin to see them­selves reflect­ed in the cur­ricu­lum.

Edu­ca­tors! Edu­cate thy­selves! Project Vox is the Guer­ril­la Girl of ear­ly mod­ern phi­los­o­phy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 110 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks: From Aris­to­tle to Niet­zsche & Wittgen­stein

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Shortest-Known Paper Published in a Serious Math Journal: Two Succinct Sentences

in Math | April 13th, 2015

shortest math paper

Euler’s con­jec­ture, a the­o­ry pro­posed by Leon­hard Euler in 1769, hung in there for 200 years. Then L.J. Lan­der and T.R. Parkin came along in 1966, and debunked the con­jec­ture in two swift sen­tences. Their arti­cle — which is now open access and can be down­loaded here — appeared in the Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Soci­ety. If you’re won­der­ing what the con­jec­ture and its refu­ta­tion are all about, you might want to ask Cliff Pick­over, the author of 45 books on math and sci­ence. He brought this curi­ous doc­u­ment to the web last week.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60 Free Online Math Cours­es

Free Math Text­books

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

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Stephen Hawking Sings Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song”: Hear the Newly-Released Single

in Astronomy, Comedy, Music, Physics | April 13th, 2015

The “Galaxy Song” first appeared in the 1983 film Mon­ty Python’s The Mean­ing of Life, and it has been revived in lat­er years — on Mon­ty Python albums, and in Mon­ty Python stage plays. Now the song orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Eric Idle has been re-record­ed, this time with the lyrics sung by the world-famous physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing. The lyrics include a lot of astro­nom­i­cal facts, some now con­sid­ered out­dat­ed by schol­ars. But that does­n’t take the fun out of the record­ing.

The song will be avail­able for down­load on iTunes. (If you live in the UK, find it here.) And it will also be released as a 7″ sin­gle. But you can stream it online for free above. Enjoy.

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:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

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