J.R.R. Tolkien in His Own Words

in Literature | January 3rd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, author of the fan­ta­sy nov­els The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings. He was born on Jan­u­ary 3, 1892 to British par­ents in Bloem­fontein, South Africa. His father died when he was 3 years old, and he moved with his moth­er to Eng­land. The young boy took an ear­ly lik­ing to sto­ries of mag­ic and myth. In his 1947 book On Fairy Sto­ries, Tolkien wrote:

I had very lit­tle desire to look for buried trea­sure or fight pirates, and Trea­sure Island left me cool. Red Indi­ans were bet­ter: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a whol­ly unsat­is­fied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange lan­guages, and glimpses of an archa­ic mode of life, and above all, forests in such sto­ries. But the land of Mer­lin and Arthur were bet­ter than these, and best of all the name­less North of Sig­urd and the Vol­sungs, and the prince of all drag­ons. Such lands were pre-emi­nent­ly desir­able.

The urge to com­pose his own tales came ear­ly, but Tolkien became side­tracked by an inter­est in the sub­tleties of lan­guage. In a let­ter to W.H. Auden in 1955 he wrote:

I first tried to write a sto­ry when I was about sev­en. It was about a drag­on. I remem­ber noth­ing about it except a philo­log­i­cal fact. My moth­er said noth­ing about the drag­on, but point­ed out that one could not say “A green great drag­on,” but had to say “a great green drag­on.” I won­dered why, and still do. The fact that I remem­ber this is pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a sto­ry again for many years, and was tak­en up with lan­guage.

Tolkien became a philol­o­gist. He stud­ied Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture at Exeter Col­lege, Oxford and–after a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence in the trench­es of World War I–embarked on an aca­d­e­m­ic career. He became an expert on Anglo Sax­on and Norse mythol­o­gy.

But the misty forests of Tolkien’s child­hood imag­i­na­tion nev­er left him. One day in the ear­ly 1930s, he was at home grad­ing a large stack of stu­dent papers when his mind began to wan­der. On a blank sheet in one of the papers, the pro­fes­sor found him­self writ­ing, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hob­bit.” He did­n’t know what a hob­bit was, but soon found him­self spin­ning a tale, which he told to his young chil­dren. In 1937 it was pub­lished as The Hob­bit.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Hob­bit, not only with chil­dren but with adults, led to requests for a sequel, and in 1954 and 1955 Tolkien’s epic tril­o­gy, The Lord of the Rings was pub­lished. It went on to become one of the most pop­u­lar works of fic­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with over 150 mil­lion copies sold worldwide–and count­ing.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Tolkien’s 120th birth­day, we present a fas­ci­nat­ing film on the author from the BBC series In Their Own Words: British Nov­el­ists. The 27-minute film was first broad­cast in March of 1968, when Tolkien was 76 years old, and includes inter­views and footage of the old man at his haunts in Oxford. H/T The Writer’s Almanac.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

The Best of Open Culture 2011

in Art, Books, Education, Film, Music, Online Courses | January 2nd, 2012

Before we rush head­long into a new year, it’s worth paus­ing, ever so briefly, to con­sid­er the ground we cov­ered in 2011. What top­ics res­onat­ed with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re high­light­ing 10 the­mat­ic areas (and 46 posts) that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief jour­ney back into time. Tomor­row, we start look­ing for­ward again.

1) Uni­ver­si­ties Offer More Free Cours­es, Then Start Push­ing Toward Cer­tifi­cates: The year start­ed well enough. Yale released anoth­er 10 stel­lar open cours­es. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Cours­es). Then oth­er uni­ver­si­ties start­ed push­ing the enve­lope on the open course for­mat. This fall, Stan­ford launched a series of free cours­es that com­bined video lec­tures with more dynam­ic resources — short quizzes; the abil­i­ty to pose ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance; a state­ment of accom­plish­ment from the instruc­tor, etc. A new round of free cours­es will start in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Final­ly, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer sim­i­lar cours­es, but with one big dif­fer­ence. Stu­dents will get an offi­cial cer­tifi­cate at the end of the course, all at a very min­i­mal charge. More details here.

2) Cul­tur­al Icons at Occu­py Wall Street: OWS was a big nation­al sto­ry, and we were always intrigued by its cul­tur­al dimen­sion — by the cul­tur­al fig­ures who cham­pi­oned the move­ment. You can revis­it performances/speeches by: Philip Glass & Lou Reed; Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie; David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash; Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig; Noam Chom­sky; and Slavoj Zizek. Also check out: 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard and Artis­tic Posters From Occu­py Wall Street.

3) Books Intel­li­gent Peo­ple Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read” end­ed up gen­er­at­ing far more con­ver­sa­tion and con­tro­ver­sy than we would have expect­ed. (Users have left 83 com­ments at last count.) No mat­ter what you think of his ratio­nale for choos­ing these texts, the books make for essen­tial read­ing, and they’re freely avail­able online.

Tyson’s list dove­tails fair­ly nice­ly with anoth­er list of essen­tial texts — The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume set that’s avail­able online. Accord­ing to Charles W. Eliot, the leg­endary Har­vard pres­i­dent, if you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing these books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. And that could part­ly apply to anoth­er list we pulled togeth­er: 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books — the great lit­er­ary clas­sics taught in class­rooms all across Amer­i­ca, all free…

4) Christo­pher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christo­pher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — pro­lif­ic, inci­sive, surly and defi­ant, espe­cial­ly when asked about whether he’d change his posi­tion on reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the after­life. All of this was on dis­play when he spoke at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les last Feb­ru­ary. We cov­ered his com­ments in a post called, No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forc­ing us to ques­tion the whole mod­ern mean­ing of Christ­mas.

Dur­ing Hitch’s final days, Stephen Fry emceed a large trib­ute to his friend in Lon­don, an event that brought togeth­er Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, poet James Fen­ton and actor Sean Penn. It’s well worth a watch. But you also should­n’t miss some oth­er great videos fea­tur­ing the wis­dom of Mr. Fry — his intro­duc­tion to the strange world of nanoscience, his ani­mat­ed debate on the virtues (or lack there­of) of the Catholic Church, and his thought­ful reflec­tion, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

5) Four for the Fab Four: John, Paul, Ringo and George. We sneak them in when­ev­er we can. A sprin­kling here and there. This year, we served up an ever-pop­u­lar post, Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and a no less pop­u­lar free­bie: Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook. Trail­ing right behind are two oth­er good Bea­t­les picks: All Togeth­er Now: Every Bea­t­les Song Played at Once and The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig.

6) Wis­dom from Great Philoso­phers: Want the chance to take cours­es from great philoso­phers? Here’s your oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our meta post brought togeth­er courses/lectures from Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel. You could get lost in this for days. Also while you’re at it, you should check out The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps, an ongo­ing pod­cast cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) that moves from the Ancients to the Mod­erns. Plus we’d encour­age you to revis­it: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er in 1971.

7) Vin­tage Film Col­lec­tions: Scour­ing the web for vin­tage films. It’s some­thing we love to do. In 2011, we brought you 22 films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, 32 Film Noir clas­sics, and a series of films by the great Russ­ian direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky. All are list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

8) Back to the Future: We had fun going back — way back — and see­ing how past gen­er­a­tions imag­ined the future. Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Future in 1964 … And Pret­ty Much Nailed It. Before that, Amer­i­can fash­ion design­ers looked rough­ly 70 years into the future and guessed how women might dress in Year 2000. Turns out fash­ion design­ers aren’t the best futur­ists. And, even before that (cir­ca 1922), we get to see the world’s first mobile phone in action. Seri­ous­ly!

9) Ani­mat­ed Films: 2011 start­ed off on exact­ly the right note. On Jan­u­ary 1, we fea­tured Shel Sil­ver­stein’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree. Then some oth­er gems fol­lowed: Des­ti­no, the Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed in 1946 and fin­ished in 1999; Spike Jonze’s Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny; John Tur­tur­ro nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Ita­lo Calvino’s fairy tale, “The False Grand­moth­er;” and a series of ani­mat­ed films fea­tur­ing the voice of Orson Welles. Also let’s not for­get these splen­did ani­ma­tion con­cepts for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay and, just for good mea­sure, Ter­ry Gilliam’s vin­tage primer on mak­ing your own cut-out ani­ma­tion.

10) New Archives & Art on the Web: Last but not least — 2011’s new archival projects that brought great cul­ture to the web.

• Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You
• Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online
• Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Res­o­lu­tion)
• The Smith­son­ian Launch­es Wildlife Pho­to Archive
• Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

And now onward into 2012.…

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers

in Current Affairs, Economics, Harvard | December 12th, 2011

Last Wednes­day, the Occu­py move­ment gained a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum when eight fac­ul­ty mem­bers from Har­vard, Boston Col­lege, and N.Y.U. gath­ered in Cam­bridge to present a day­long Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor of Democ­ra­cy and Cit­i­zen­ship and Co-Direc­tor of Trans­paren­cy Pol­i­cy Project at Har­vard) took a vague the­sis of the Occu­py move­ment — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bull­shit” — and gave it some aca­d­e­m­ic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequal­i­ty Grown in Amer­i­ca? And What Should We Do About It?” The oth­er talks are avail­able on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Het­ero­dox Eco­nom­ics: Alter­na­tives to Manki­w’s Ide­ol­o­gy - Stephen Mar­glin, Wal­ter Bark­er Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Wall Street’s Role in the Euro­pean Finan­cial Cri­sis - Richard Park­er, Lec­tur­er in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Senior Fel­low at the Shoren­stein Cen­ter, Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Occu­py Move­ment and Stu­dent Debt Refusal — Andrew Ross, Pro­fes­sor of Social and Cul­tur­al Analy­sis, New York Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics for the 99% — Juli­et Schor, Pro­fes­sor of Soci­ol­o­gy, Boston Col­lege

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynam­ics of Mod­ern Mon­ey — Chris­tine Desan, Pro­fes­sor of Law, Har­vard Law School, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Fear and Pow­er — Brad Epps, Pro­fes­sor of Romance Lan­guages & Lit­er­a­tures and Depart­ment Chair for Stud­ies in Women, Gen­der, and Sex­u­al­i­ty, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Vig­i­lance, Inquiry, Alien­ation & Hope at Har­vard and in the USA - John Wom­ack, Robert Woods Bliss Pro­fes­sor of Latin Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-Esque Event

Philosophy in Prison: Weighty Conversations about Right and Wrong

in Life, Philosophy | December 7th, 2011

When not found­ing tech com­pa­nies, Damon Horowitz teach­es phi­los­o­phy through the Prison Uni­ver­si­ty Project, bring­ing col­lege-lev­el class­es to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In three min­utes, Horowitz raps about phi­los­o­phy meet­ing real life — about how pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of seri­ous crimes come to terms with Socrates (who fin­ished his days in prison), Hei­deg­ger, Kant, cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tives, ques­tions of right and wrong, and the rest. The “talk” was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at TED 2011 last March.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

Post-Apocalyptic Cover Art Created in Amazing Time-Lapse Film

in Animation, Art | December 1st, 2011

Dei Gaztelu­men­di is a young Span­ish artist. He was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a cov­er illus­tra­tion for the com­ic book mag­a­zine Xabiroi, and decid­ed to make a time-lapse video of the process. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the artist begins with a rough sketch on paper and then builds lay­er upon lay­er of detail using the Adobe Cre­ative Suite soft­ware. Thir­ty hours of work are com­pressed into 11 min­utes. “A lot of emo­tion went into this paint­ing,” Gaztelu­men­di said on his blog, “since I made it as a gift to one of my bud­dies, who trag­i­cal­ly lost a leg in a motor­bike acci­dent about a year ago.” Gaztelu­men­di was born in San Sebas­t­ian, Basque Coun­try, Spain in 1987, and began illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books as a teenag­er. He stud­ied ani­ma­tion at Sheri­dan Col­lege in Ontario, Cana­da, where his the­sis film was a whim­si­cal tale called Earlth & Moonch. Since grad­u­at­ing with high hon­ors last year, Gaztelu­men­di has been work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor, spe­cial­iz­ing in crea­ture and char­ac­ter art. You can see more of his work at Deisign.com.

Striking Posters From Occupy Wall Street: Download Them for Free

in Art, Current Affairs | November 23rd, 2011

Occu­py Wall Street and the glob­al Occu­py Move­ment have inspired some strik­ing art­work. Graph­ic artists from around the world (includ­ing Shep­ard Fairey men­tioned here ear­li­er today) have con­tributed their tal­ents to the move­ment. Many of their posters are avail­able for free or at low cost, either direct­ly from the artist or through orga­ni­za­tions like Occuprint and Occu­py­To­geth­er. You can post them in your town.

New York­er cov­er artist and book illus­tra­tor Eric Drook­er has cre­at­ed sev­er­al beau­ti­ful posters, includ­ing the one above. You can down­load a high-res­o­lu­tion copy suit­able for print­ing at OccupyTogether.org.

The not­ed Los Ange­les graph­ic artist, car­toon­ist and radio per­son­al­i­ty Lalo Alcaraz cre­at­ed this par­o­dy of the top­pling of the Sad­dam Hus­sein stat­ue in Bagh­dad for Occu­py Los Ange­les. In a mes­sage on his web­site, Alcaraz invites peo­ple to dis­trib­ute the image.

Alexan­dra Clot­fel­ter is a stu­dent of adver­tis­ing design and illus­tra­tion at the Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design in Geor­gia. Since donat­ing her design, “The Begin­ning is Near,” to Occuprint.org, it has become one of the most pop­u­lar posters to emerge from the move­ment. In response to requests, Clot­fel­ter is offer­ing a high-qual­i­ty Giclee print for sale, with a por­tion of the prof­its going to sup­port Occuprint­’s project of dis­trib­ut­ing free posters world­wide.

In this poster, Zucot­ti Park is por­trayed as the “Tip of the Ice­berg.” Indeed, the Occu­py move­ment extends to places like Lawrence, Kansas, where mural­ist, print­mak­er and writer Dave Loewen­stein is based. Loewen­stein’s design is avail­able for free at Occuprint.org.

Poster artist Rich Black of Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia cre­at­ed this image for Occu­py Oak­land. It’s avail­able for free down­load at Occuprint.org.

To see a vari­ety of Occu­py posters by oth­er artists (and to down­load them for free) you can vis­it Occuprint.org and OccupyTogether.org.

And don’t miss our post ear­li­er today: Shep­ard Fairey Caves In, Revis­es Occu­py Wall Street Poster.

Steve Jobs Muses on What’s Wrong with American Education, 1995

in Apple, Education | November 10th, 2011

In late Octo­ber, Com­put­er­world unearthed a lengthy inter­view with Steve Jobs orig­i­nal­ly record­ed back in 1995, when Jobs was at NeXT Com­put­er, and still two years away from his tri­umphant return to Apple. Filmed as part of an oral his­to­ry project, the wide-rang­ing inter­view begins with Jobs’ child­hood and his ear­ly school days, and it all sets the stage for Jobs to muse on the state of pub­lic edu­ca­tion in Amer­i­ca. He began:

I’d like the peo­ple teach­ing my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the com­pa­ny I work for, mak­ing a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars a year. Why should they work at a school for thir­ty-five to forty thou­sand dol­lars if they could get a job here at a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars a year? Is that an intel­li­gence test? The prob­lem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever hap­pened to edu­ca­tion because it’s not a mer­i­toc­ra­cy. It turns into a bureau­cra­cy, which is exact­ly what has hap­pened. The teach­ers can’t teach and admin­is­tra­tors run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s ter­ri­ble.

Asked what changes he would make, Jobs con­tin­ued:

I’ve been a very strong believ­er in that what we need to do in edu­ca­tion is to go to the full vouch­er sys­tem. I know this isn’t what the inter­view was sup­posed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.… The prob­lem that we have in this coun­try is that [par­ents] went away. [They] stopped pay­ing atten­tion to their schools, for the most part. What hap­pened was that moth­ers start­ed work­ing and they did­n’t have time to spend at PTA meet­ings and watch­ing their kids’ school. Schools became much more insti­tu­tion­al­ized and par­ents spent less and less and less time involved in their kids’ edu­ca­tion. What hap­pens when a cus­tomer goes away and a monop­oly gets con­trol … is that the ser­vice lev­el almost always goes down.

And so the answer. Vouch­ers, entre­pre­neur­ship and mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion:

I’ve sug­gest­ed as an exam­ple, if you go to Stan­ford Busi­ness School, they have a pub­lic pol­i­cy track; they could start a school admin­is­tra­tor track. You could get a bunch of peo­ple com­ing out of col­lege tying up with some­one out of the busi­ness school, they could be start­ing their own school. You could have twen­ty-five year old stu­dents out of col­lege, very ide­al­is­tic, full of ener­gy instead of start­ing a Sil­i­con Val­ley com­pa­ny, they’d start a school. I believe that they would do far bet­ter than any of our pub­lic schools would. The third thing you’d see is I believe, is the qual­i­ty of schools again, just in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. A lot of the pub­lic schools would go broke. There’s no ques­tion about it. It would be rather painful for the first sev­er­al years.… The biggest com­plaint of course is that schools would pick off all the good kids and all the bad kids would be left to wal­low togeth­er in either a pri­vate school or rem­nants of a pub­lic school sys­tem. To me that’s like say­ing “Well, all the car man­u­fac­tur­ers are going to make BMWs and Mer­cedes and nobody’s going to make a ten thou­sand dol­lar car.” I think the most hot­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket right now is the ten thou­sand dol­lar car area. You’ve got all the Japan­ese play­ing in it. You’ve got Gen­er­al Motors who spent five mil­lion dol­lars sub­si­diz­ing Sat­urn to com­pete in that mar­ket. You’ve got Ford which has just intro­duced two new cars in that mar­ket. You’ve got Chrysler with the Neon.…

The full tran­script appears here. Or, if you want to watch the inter­view on video, you can jump to Com­put­er­world, where, rather lame­ly, you will need to reg­is­ter before watch­ing the actu­al talk. Bad job by Com­put­er­world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Copy of Steve Jobs Biog­ra­phy; Plus Inter­view with Author

Steve Jobs Demos the First Mac­in­tosh in 1984

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

20 Christian Academics Speaking About God

in Religion | October 21st, 2011

This sum­mer, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God and then Anoth­er 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God. If you’re count­ing, that makes 100. Right along­side these twin videos came 20 Chris­t­ian Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God, a mon­tage fea­tur­ing some respect­ed fig­ures (save Dinesh D’Souza) try­ing to square reli­gious beliefs with their sci­en­tif­ic work.

You could per­haps add Karl W. Giber­son and Ran­dall J. Stephens to this list, two pro­fes­sors who teach at a Chris­t­ian lib­er­al arts col­lege in Boston. Ear­li­er this week, Giber­son and Stephens pub­lished The Anoint­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Truth in a Sec­u­lar Age and an accom­pa­ny­ing op-ed in The New York Times called The Evan­gel­i­cal Rejec­tion of Rea­son. And it all points to a ten­sion with­in Amer­i­ca’s reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty — the one side that is “intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged, hum­ble and for­ward-look­ing” (like some of the folks shown above) and the oth­er side that is “lit­er­al­is­tic, over­con­fi­dent and reac­tionary” and often hos­tile to basic sci­ence. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the authors argue, this back­ward-look­ing view has become the main­stream with­in evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, and it does a strug­gling nation no favors.

Yes­ter­day, Giber­son appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. You can lis­ten to the inter­view here, or read the tran­script here.

(more…)

Legendary Folklorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

in Music | October 20th, 2011

In 1933, 18-year-old Alan Lomax took a break from col­lege to trav­el into the Amer­i­can South with his father, John Avery Lomax, on a quest to dis­cov­er and record tra­di­tion­al folk songs for the Library of Con­gress. It was the begin­ning of a jour­ney that would last the rest of his life.

With his father, and lat­er on his own, Lomax trav­eled the back roads of Appalachia and the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, from reli­gious revival meet­ings to prison chain gangs, in pur­suit of South­ern folk music in all its forms. Along the way he dis­cov­ered and record­ed such sin­gu­lar artists as Mis­sis­sip­pi Fred McDow­ell, Vera Hall and Lead Belly. Lat­er, Lomax would widen his field of research to focus on Euro­pean folk music, but in 1978 he went back to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta with a cam­era crew to doc­u­ment a cul­ture that was rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.

The result, The Land Where the Blues Began (watch it online here), is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at tra­di­tion­al coun­try blues in its native envi­ron­ment. Filmed in lev­ee camps, church­es, juke joints and on front porch­es across Mis­sis­sip­pi, the doc­u­men­tary draws atten­tion to musi­cians unknown out­side the Delta. The Land Where the Blues Began is a must-see for blues fans, and is now part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Leg­end of Blues­man Robert John­son Ani­mat­ed

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train

The History of Philosophy … Without Any Gaps

in Philosophy | August 31st, 2011

On Mon­day, we told you where you can down­load Free Cours­es from Top Philoso­phers (Fou­cault, Sear­le, Rus­sell and the rest). As the day went along, our list grew thanks to read­er sug­ges­tions, and we also dis­cov­ered anoth­er promis­ing resource — a pod­cast called “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don:

Begin­ning with the ear­li­est ancient thinkers, the series will look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Avi­cen­na, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.

That’s what Adam­son promis­es, and he does­n’t dis­ap­point. Over the past 34 months, Adam­son has pro­duced 136 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. That’s rough­ly 45 hours of audio, and there’s no telling how many more hours of audio will bring us to the mod­ern peri­od. The more, the bet­ter, we say.

You can access all episodes via these links: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site. Or find oth­er free phi­los­o­phy cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

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: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)