Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

Chief Judge Rubén Castil­lo of the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois has ruled that the char­ac­ters and sto­ry lines used in 50 Sher­lock Holmes texts pub­lished by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives con­tem­po­rary authors the abil­i­ty to write their own Sher­lock Holmes mys­tery sto­ries and keep con­tribut­ing to a rich tra­di­tion of detec­tive fic­tion. It would also seem­ing­ly put pre-1923 texts firm­ly in the pub­lic domain. (You can find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and oth­er relat­ed sto­ries in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the edi­tor of The Com­plete Anno­tat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who filed the civ­il suit, praised the judge’s deci­sion, say­ing “Peo­ple want to cel­e­brate Holmes and Wat­son, and now they can do that with­out fear.” Now it’s time for them to write some­thing that can hold a can­dle to what Conan Doyle cre­at­ed those many years ago.

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via Arts Beat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

The Rolling Stones “Shattered” Covered by Eddie Vedder & Julie Andrews (Ok, It’s Really Jeanne Tripplehorn)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

Pearl Jam front­man Eddie Ved­der and actress Jeanne Trip­ple­horn (Basic Instinct, The Firm, Big Love) per­formed this delight­ful cov­er of The Rolling Stones’ 1978 hit “Shat­tered” at a recent fundrais­er for a non-prof­it called Heal EB. EB stands for Epi­der­mol­y­sis Bul­losa, a dis­ease that caus­es blis­ters (some­times poten­tial­ly fatal ones) to erupt on the skin after the mildest trau­ma. You can lis­ten to The Rolling Stones’ orig­i­nal record­ing here, and fol­low along with the lyrics here. Or, bet­ter yet, you can close your eyes and sim­ply imag­ine Julie Andrews singing these risqué‎ lines. Yeah, on sec­ond thought, do that. H/T Marc

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: A High­light in Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life

in Online Courses, Philosophy | December 21st, 2013

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 100 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video – Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners — iTunes Video – Web Video – Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day leg­ends – Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Teacher Helps His Student Overcome Stuttering and Read Poetry, Using the Sound of Music

in Education, Life, Music | December 19th, 2013

Musharaf Asghar, a stu­dent at Thorn­hill Acad­e­my in north­east Eng­land, over­came an acute stam­mer when his teacher, Matthew Bur­ton, bor­rowed an idea from The King’s Speech. The teacher asked his stu­dent to put on some head­phones play­ing the music of Ben Howard, and to start recit­ing a poem called ‘The Moment.’ Sud­den­ly, for the first time, the words began to flow. All of this was cap­tured in a doc­u­men­tary series, Edu­cat­ing York­shire, that aired on the BBC. The seg­ment above con­cludes with Mushy, as he’s known, giv­ing a short talk in front of his class, at what looks like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. It did­n’t take long for his fel­low stu­dents to break down in tears.

Writ­ing recent­ly in The Guardian, the stu­dent recalls. “My nerves over speak­ing in assem­bly were TERRIBLE though. I did­n’t realise how big 200 peo­ple looks like. I was sweat­ing and I had a lit­tle wob­ble but even­tu­al­ly, I man­aged to get through it. I was excit­ed, if ner­vous, about the whole thing going out. But I’m real­ly hap­py and proud to be on tel­ly as I hope it gives oth­er peo­ple with a stam­mer the con­fi­dence to have a go at pub­lic speak­ing. My speech is get­ting bet­ter every week. Every­one at col­lege gives me time, but I’m get­ting quick­er any­way so they don’t miss their bus while they are lis­ten­ing to me. I still won’t be apply­ing for any call-cen­tre jobs yet though.” Find more infor­ma­tion on how music ther­a­py can help peo­ple over­come stut­ter­ing here.

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via @courosa

French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Customers

in Food & Drink, Life | December 19th, 2013

A cou­ple of days ago, we high­light­ed a delight­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explain­ing How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way. It comes to you cour­tesy of the RATP, the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that makes the sub­ways and trains run in Paris (some­times on time).

Let’s now head 600 miles south, to the Riv­iera city of Nice, where some café own­ers opt­ed for anoth­er way to keep bad behav­ior in check. At the Petite Syrah, they’ve imple­ment­ed a sim­ple pric­ing scheme that works like this:

If you ask for “a cof­fee” (it’s most like­ly an espres­so), it will run you 7 euros, or $9.50.

If you ask for a “cof­fee please,” the charge drops to €4.25/$5.80.

But if you start your order by say­ing “Hel­lo, may I have a cof­fee, please,” the bill becomes a man­age­able €1.40.

Now, truth be told, the pric­ing scheme is more car­rot than stick. The café’s man­ag­er read­i­ly admits that he has nev­er actu­al­ly charged any of the puni­tive high­er prices. But that’s not to say that the scheme does­n’t work. Accord­ing to manager/owner Fab­rice Pepino, reg­u­lar cus­tomers quick­ly took note of the sign and began to “say, ‘Hel­lo, your high­ness, will you serve me one of your beau­ti­ful cof­fees.” Eh voilà, no more cof­fee jerks.

via Kot­tke/The Local

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

New Art Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses Features All 265,000 Words Written by Hand on Big Wooden Poles

in Art, Books, Literature | December 18th, 2013

This week, Stephen Gertz, the edi­tor of Book Tryst, has on dis­play an Incred­i­ble Art Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Here’s how he describes the ambi­tious project:

James Joyce com­plet­ed his nov­el, Ulysses, on Octo­ber 30, 1921. Nine­ty years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2011, Char­lene Matthews, the Los Ange­les-based book artist and book­binder recent­ly the sub­ject of a pro­file in Stu­dios mag­a­zine, began work on an extra­or­di­nary edi­tion of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach’s true first edi­tion with all its typos includ­ed.

Two years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2013, she com­plet­ed it: the entire text of Ulysses — all of its approx­i­mate­ly 265,000 words in eigh­teen episodes — tran­scribed by hand onto thir­ty-eight sev­en-foot tall, two-inch diam­e­ter poles: Ulysses as a land­scape to phys­i­cal­ly move through; the nov­el as lit­er­ary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with lan­guage as fra­grant, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry bark, and trunks reach­ing toward the sky.

Head over to Book­tryst to look over a gallery of images and learn more about Matthews’ grand under­tak­ing. And if you’d like a nice intro­duc­tion to Ulysses, please see some of the instruc­tive mate­r­i­al we’ve list­ed below.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Hear James Joyce Read a Pas­sage From Ulysses, 1924

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Watch Kids’ Priceless Reactions to Hearing the Timeless Music of The Beatles

in K-12, Life, Music | December 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day, John McMil­lian, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, appeared on KQED’s Forum in San Fran­cis­co (lis­ten here) to talk about his new book Bea­t­les vs. Stones. It offers a new look at how the two British bands co-exist­ed, often helped one anoth­er, and strate­gi­cal­ly defined them­selves against each oth­er. The Bea­t­les were every­man’s band. Whole­some, clean-cut, wit­ty, the Fab Four appealed to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. The Stones, try­ing to make a name for them­selves in the wake of Beat­le­ma­nia, posi­tioned them­selves as the anti-Bea­t­les. As the jour­nal­ist Tom Wolfe once wrote, “The Bea­t­les want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town.”

50 years lat­er, The Bea­t­les still have a near­ly uni­ver­sal appeal. The Boomers and their now mid­dle-aged chil­dren haven’t let dust gath­er on The Bea­t­les’ discog­ra­phy. And, if you plunk the grand­chil­dren in front of old Bea­t­les’ videos, they’ll love what they see. Just watch above.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

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

How to Follow Open Culture Posts: Daily Email & RSS Are Gold, Twitter Is an Option, Forget About Facebook

in Uncategorized | December 16th, 2013

Read­ers often ask us, “What’s the best way to make sure that I don’t miss any of your posts?” The answer, right now, is pret­ty clear: Sign up for our dai­ly email. Each day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od. Faith­ful­ly it will appear in your inbox each day. The oth­er great option is our trusty RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenCulture

You can always fol­low us on Twit­ter (or Google Plus), where we high­light our dai­ly posts, plus many oth­er cul­tur­al curiosi­ties found on the web. The only down­side is that a riv­er of mate­r­i­al flows through Twit­ter, so you’ll have to keep a pret­ty close eye on things to spot our posts.

Final­ly there’s Face­book, but you can almost for­get about that. Although near­ly a quar­ter mil­lion peo­ple have liked our Face­book page, Face­book has his­tor­i­cal­ly shown our posts to a frac­tion of that audi­ence (some­thing they’re can­did about). And because of a new algo­rithm change, the frac­tion is get­ting sub­stan­tial­ly small­er. The unfor­tu­nate bot­tom line is that you can’t rely on Face­book to give you what you want. But you can rely on our dai­ly email and our feed. They’re 100% guar­an­teed. Now back to our reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled pro­gram.

Google’s Moving Ad About 1947 Partition of India & Pakistan Tops 10 Million Views

in Google, History, Television | December 9th, 2013

Recent­ly, Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @stevesil­ber­man) shot us a note on Twit­ter, say­ing, “@openculture, do not miss this bril­liant ad. Most touch­ing movie (in 3 mins!) I’ve seen in years.” Released on Novem­ber 13th, the video has already clocked over 10 mil­lion views. But chances are you haven’t seen it. And that’s because it’s tar­get­ed to the web-enabled mid­dle class of India and Pak­istan. As The Dawn, Pak­istan’s old­est Eng­lish news­pa­per, describes it, the Google-cre­at­ed ad enti­tled “Reunion” “por­trays two child­hood friends, now elder­ly men, who haven’t seen each oth­er since they were sep­a­rat­ed by the 1947 par­ti­tion that cre­at­ed India and Pak­istan from the old British empire in South Asia. Par­ti­tion sparked a mass exo­dus as mil­lions of Mus­lims and Hin­dus fled across the new bor­ders amid reli­gious vio­lence.” Now Google search prod­ucts are help­ing to bring old friends and neigh­bors back togeth­er.

Cyn­ics may be quick to judge this a sac­cha­rine, manip­u­la­tive ad. But oth­ers are see­ing in it some­thing else — a sign that “per­son­al con­nec­tions between Indi­ans and Pak­ista­nis run deep.” Even if their gov­ern­ments gain some­thing from keep­ing the con­flict alive, every­day peo­ple in India and Pak­istan are increas­ing­ly ready to put his­to­ry aside.

Note: If you click CC at the bot­tom of the video, you can use cap­tions to trans­late the film into nine lan­guages, includ­ing French, Malay­alam and Urdu. It is pre­set to Eng­lish.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Turn Your Bike into an Electric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copenhagen Wheel”

in MIT, Sports, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde’s “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine” seemed like one of the cool­er inven­tions I’ve recent­ly stum­bled upon. But then I came across this: The Copen­hagen Wheel. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by researchers at MIT, the Copen­hagen Wheel “trans­forms ordi­nary bicy­cles quick­ly into hybrid e‑bikes.” It allows bike rid­ers to “cap­ture the ener­gy dis­si­pat­ed while cycling and brak­ing and save it for when you need a bit of a boost” — like climb­ing a hill in San Fran­cis­co. The wheel also feeds data to your iPhone, allow­ing you to mon­i­tor pol­lu­tion lev­els, traf­fic con­ges­tion, and road con­di­tions in real-time. After spend­ing sev­er­al years in devel­op­ment, the wheel can now be pre-ordered online and it will ship next spring. It retails for $699.

Get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on The Copen­hagen Wheel via this MIT web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­ers of the Invis­i­ble Bike Hel­met Describe Their Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Prod­uct in Short Doc­u­men­tary

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike