John Lennon’s Victorian Circus Poster Lovingly Remade by Artists and Engravers

in Art, Music | October 9th, 2012

This won­drous lit­tle video is, as they say, guar­an­teed to raise a smile. Accord­ing to Bea­t­les leg­end, John Lennon was shoot­ing a pro­mo­tion­al film for “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” in ear­ly 1967 when he passed by an antique shop and dis­cov­ered a poster from 1843 trum­pet­ing the arrival of Pablo Fan­que’s Cir­cus. The cir­cus, the poster pro­claimed, was to be “for the ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite.” Intrigued, Lennon bought the quirky Vic­to­ri­an poster, hung it on his wall at home, and then pro­ceed­ed to write “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite!,” the sev­enth track on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band.

Almost 45 years lat­er, Bea­t­les fans still can’t shake the poster from their minds. And, just recent­ly, Peter Dean and a team of artists decid­ed to recre­ate the poster using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of wood engrav­ing and let­ter­press print­ing. They share their expe­ri­ence in the ele­gant video above. Your can buy your own copy of the lim­it­ed edi­tion print here.

via Kot­tke

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:

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

A Short History of Romanian Computing: From 1961 to 1989

in History, Technology | October 9th, 2012

The “Politehni­ca” Uni­ver­si­ty of Timisoara, Roma­nia, an engi­neer­ing school estab­lished in 1920, takes its mot­to from Fer­di­nand I: “It’s not the walls that make a school, but the spir­it liv­ing inside.” While the walls of “Politehni­ca” are as state­ly as any­one could ask for, what’s inside, accord­ing to the short doc­u­men­tary above, is also pret­ty spiffy—the spir­it of com­put­ing his­to­ry, Roman­ian style. With a score that sounds a lit­tle like an out­take from Logan’s Run, this video gives us a tour of the university’s Muse­um of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, opened Novem­ber 16, 2001.

We meet a num­ber of ancient machines, many of which were respon­si­ble for design­ing build­ings and hydro­elec­tric dams and some of which still func­tion. There’s the Mecipt 1, a mas­sive 1961 main­frame sys­tem cov­ered in dials, switch­es, and rout­ing sys­tems and look­ing some­what more indus­tri­al than the machines built by Fairchild and IBM at the same time. Next comes Mecipt 2 in 1963, which was in oper­a­tion for six­teen years and did much of the build­ing design. The micro­com­put­ers TIMS and MS-100 resem­ble the orig­i­nal busi­ness machines made in the six­ties by com­pa­nies like Hewlett-Packard and Data Gen­er­al Corp. Over­all, the short doc takes us through the exper­i­men­tal course of Roman­ian com­put­ing from 1961 to 1989. The read­er who brought this to our atten­tion points out that there’s lit­tle mate­r­i­al out there on Roman­ian com­put­er engi­neer­ing. This short doc offers a rare look at a very lit­tle-known and fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry.

h/t Alin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intelligent Art Appreciation Guide

in Art, Technology | October 9th, 2012

Yes­ter­day saw the launch of what you’ll sure­ly find the most intrigu­ing use of Syr­i­a’s domain name exten­sion yet, espe­cial­ly if you fol­low the visu­al arts. It serves the pun­ning site Art.sy, to which you’ll soon point your brows­er when­ev­er you want to dis­cov­er new imagery that appeals to your aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. Thus holds the the­o­ry, in any case, behind this ser­vice cre­at­ed by the Art Genome Project. It aims to become to visu­al art what Pan­do­ra has become to music: a vir­tu­al mind that can take your tastes, turn right back around to rec­om­mend works that please those tastes, and — in the best of all pos­si­ble out­comes, lit­tle by lit­tle — broad­en those tastes as well. Tell Art.sy what has recent­ly cap­ti­vat­ed you in the muse­ums, and it will dig through pieces from Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery, the Los Ange­les Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, the Coop­er-Hewitt Nation­al Design Muse­um, the British Muse­um, and else­where, try­ing its best to find some­thing else that will do the same. In total, Art.sy hosts “17,000+ art­works by 3,000+ artists” from “300+ of the world’s lead­ing gal­leries, muse­ums, pri­vate col­lec­tions, foun­da­tions, and artist estates from New York to Lon­don, Paris to Shang­hai, Johan­nes­burg to São Paulo.”

Mele­na Ryzik in The New York Times describes Art.sy’s elab­o­rate sys­tem of code-based aes­thet­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion as devel­oped by “a dozen art his­to­ri­ans who decide what those codes are and how they should be applied,” in which “some labels (Art.sy calls them “genes” …) denote fair­ly objec­tive qual­i­ties, like the his­tor­i­cal peri­od and region the work comes from and whether it is fig­u­ra­tive or abstract, or belongs in an estab­lished cat­e­go­ry like Cubism, Flem­ish por­trai­ture or pho­tog­ra­phy,” while oth­ers “are high­ly sub­jec­tive, even quirky.” Ryzik lists the pos­si­ble codes for a Picas­so as includ­ing “Cubism,” “abstract paint­ing,” “Spain,” “France” and “love,” and those for a Jack­son Pol­lock as “abstract art,” “New York School,” “splattered/dripped,” “rep­e­ti­tion” and “process-ori­ent­ed.” Here we have yet anoth­er rea­son to main­tain a high artis­tic aware­ness in our high-tech time. Still, I can’t help but recall the wise coun­sel Stephen Fry offered in an inter­view we fea­tured back in August: a tru­ly life-enrich­ing rec­om­men­da­tion engine would­n’t give you the same art you’ve always enjoyed; it would give you the exact oppo­site.

You can learn more about the ins-and-outs of Art.sy here.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

What If Money Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Living from Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts

in Life, Philosophy | October 9th, 2012

Alan Watts came to San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the ear­ly 1950s, wrote his best­seller Way of Zen, and became one of the fore­most pop­u­lar­iz­ers of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Tao­ism and var­i­ous forms of East­ern phi­los­o­phy. His TV show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life (1960), intro­duced Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic con­cept of med­i­ta­tion (watch here). And his radio show and lec­tures forced lis­ten­ers to pause and look at their lives from a fresh per­spec­tive. Again and again, Watts chal­lenged the West­ern empha­sis on mon­ey-mak­ing to the exclu­sion of all else. We’ve heard Watts rail against this soul-crush­ing val­ue in a lec­ture ani­mat­ed by the cre­ators of South Park. (I’m not kid­ding you.) And, in the new­ly-pro­duced video above, he con­tin­ues along the same tra­jec­to­ry. So, as you drink your morn­ing cof­fee and pon­der your day, ask your­self: Are you putting mon­ey-mak­ing before hap­pi­ness itself? Or are you pur­su­ing the pas­sions that bring hap­pi­ness, achiev­ing excel­lence, and then let­ting the mon­ey fol­low? With that, I’ll let you con­tin­ue with your 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:

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

How Political Commitment Led Lucy Lawless (AKA Xena, the Warrior Princess) to Study Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Politics, Television | October 8th, 2012

It’s cer­tain­ly not uncom­mon for celebri­ties to take up polit­i­cal caus­es, though this does not usu­al­ly lead to them get­ting arrest­ed for hol­ing up in a high tow­er oil-drilling ship for four days. What’s less com­mon is for this inter­est to bur­geon into a full-on obses­sion with all things philo­soph­i­cal, but that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to Lucy Law­less (best known as Xena, the War­rior Princess).

“I went to the UN sum­mit on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment after get­ting involved in the whole… big oil protest… and I saw all of these peo­ple work­ing very hard but seem­ing­ly at cross-pur­pos­es about how do we cre­ate a just soci­ety.” On a full two-hour episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast (which she claims was large­ly respon­si­ble for turn­ing her on to phi­los­o­phy), she describes how this polit­i­cal inter­est drove her to look at the foun­da­tions and his­to­ries of the­o­ries of jus­tice, and even­tu­al­ly decide to go back to school to study phi­los­o­phy, which she’s now doing in New Zealand between flights to the states to film TV spots such as her recent appear­ance on NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life inter­view with Law­less is a five-per­son, round­table dis­cus­sion of Tom Payne’s 2010 book, Fame: What the Clas­sics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebri­ty. You can lis­ten here:

The the­sis of the book is that celebri­ties serve as an out­let for soci­ety’s aggres­sive instincts. Draw­ing on canon­i­cal texts about reli­gious anthro­pol­o­gy like James Fraz­er’s The Gold­en Bough, the author com­pares the treat­ment of mod­ern celebri­ties to ancient rites where young maid­ens were lav­ish­ly bestowed with finer­ies and then sac­ri­fied. Lucy thinks this well match­es her own expe­ri­ences, and talks about the exis­ten­tial weird­ness involved with being and deal­ing with the famous.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has also cov­ered relat­ed top­ics of Freud’s Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents and Niet­zsche’s Geneal­o­gy of Morals. You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast on iTunes.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. 

Marginal Revolution University Launches, Bringing Free Online Courses in Economics to the Web

in Economics, Online Courses | October 8th, 2012

A great year for open edu­ca­tion got even bet­ter with the launch of Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty. Found­ed by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, MRUni­ver­si­ty promis­es to deliv­er free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. And they’re get­ting start­ed with a course on Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, a sub­dis­ci­pline that explores why some coun­tries grow rich and oth­ers remain poor. In short, issues that have real mean­ing for every­day peo­ple world­wide.

In an announce­ment on the Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion blog last month, Cowen out­lined a few of the prin­ci­ples guid­ing the project:

1. The prod­uct is free, and we offer more mate­r­i­al in less time.

2. Most of our videos are short, so you can view and lis­ten between tasks, rather than need­ing to sched­ule time for them.  The aver­age video is five min­utes, twen­ty-eight sec­onds long.  When need­ed, more videos are used to explain com­plex top­ics.

3. No talk­ing heads and no long, bor­ing lec­tures.  We have tried to recon­cep­tu­al­ize every aspect of the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence to be friend­ly to the on-line world.

4. It is low band­width and mobile-friend­ly.  No ads.

5. We offer tests and quizzes.

6. We have plans to sub­ti­tle the videos in major lan­guages.  Our reach will be glob­al, and in doing so we are build­ing upon the glob­al empha­sis of our home insti­tu­tion, George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty.

7. We invite users to sub­mit con­tent.

8. It is a flex­i­ble learn­ing mod­ule.  It is not a “MOOC” per se, although it can be used to cre­ate a MOOC, name­ly a mas­sive, open on-line course.

9. It is designed to grow rapid­ly and flex­i­bly, absorb­ing new con­tent in mod­u­lar fash­ion — note the bee­hive struc­ture to our logo.  But we are start­ing with plen­ty of mate­r­i­al.

10. We are pleased to announce that our first course will begin on Octo­ber 1.

Book­mark MRUni­ver­si­ty and look out for its cur­ricu­lum to expand. In the mean­time, you can explore more Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Eco­nom­ics: A Free Online Course

Free Online Eco­nom­ics & Finance Cours­es

Mas­ter­ing Econo­met­rics: A Free Online Course

University Presses & Libraries Turn to Pinterest to Promote Books

in Books, Web/Tech | October 8th, 2012

I’ll admit it: I’m not a big Pin­ter­est user. Until very recent­ly I thought the social net­work­ing site was a bit twee—too much about cute clothes and crafts, not enough about ideas.

Turns out the web’s 15th largest site has a lot more to offer.

Open Cul­ture has its own embry­on­ic Pin­ter­est page. But, more impor­tant­ly, uni­ver­si­ty press­es are mak­ing wide­spread use of Pin­ter­est to pro­mote new book titles. Like­wise, aca­d­e­m­ic libraries are using their Pin­ter­est pages to pro­mote events and help fund major cap­i­tal improve­ments. For libraries and archives, a major ongo­ing mis­sion is to keep the col­lec­tions vis­i­ble. It’s not easy to let the world know about your one-of-a-kind hold­ings, and Pin­ter­est poten­tial­ly offers a great way to bring these mate­ri­als to new and  younger audi­ences.

Big retail­ers haven’t fig­ured out how to make real mon­ey off of Pin­ter­est yet, though one the­o­ry holds that the site’s high­ly visu­al nature puts peo­ple in the mood to click and buy. True or not, uni­ver­si­ty press­es and libraries need all the help they can get to gin up sales, so they’re wad­ing into the Pin­ter­est waters and see­ing what hap­pens.

Alice Northover has cre­at­ed a Tum­blr that cat­a­logues a few of the best uni­ver­si­ty press­es that have Pin­ter­est pages. The list is a handy map of trea­sures to be found online.

There are the usu­al, and com­plete­ly worth check­ing out, sus­pects: Of course, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a page that fea­tures, among oth­er things, inter­views with Har­vard Press authors. Watch math­e­mati­cian Paul Lock­hart, author of Mea­sure­ment, trip out on par­al­lel­o­grams.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi has a robust pres­ence that fea­tures an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Faulkn­er crit­i­cism and appre­ci­a­tion.

Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty’s page links to its audio archive, which includes a fun, episod­ic pro­gram called “Wait? They Banned What?”. You might be sur­prised to find out that Bing Cros­by song was banned dur­ing World War II for being too catchy.

One of the best may be one of the most unsung, how­ev­er. New Zealand’s Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton’s library hous­es a major col­lec­tion of Samoan his­tor­i­cal objects. Check out the library’s repos­i­to­ry of amaz­ing South Pacif­ic his­to­ry.

These sites offer very few dec­o­rat­ing tips for your Air Stream trail­er, and I found no links to loca­vore jam-mak­ing busi­ness­es, but Alice, whomev­er she may be, has cre­at­ed a great cura­to­r­i­al tool for explor­ing a new trend in book pro­mo­tion.

But wait. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a pin on its page called “Lib­ri­an­ista” that links to short-hem­line clothes mod­eled by bespec­ta­cled cuties. I guess even the world’s old­est pub­lish­er gets to have a lit­tle fun.

Thanks to Kirstin But­ler for send­ing Alice’s Tum­blr our way.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

Miranda July Teaches You How to Avoid Procrastination

in Film, Life, Psychology | October 8th, 2012

I’ve always thought of writer, actor and film­mak­er Miran­da July as some­one who cre­ates her own oppor­tu­ni­ties. Long before her sto­ries in The New York­er, and before Me and You and Every­one We Know, the award-win­ning first fea­ture that cement­ed her indie dar­ling sta­tus, she was cir­cu­lat­ing video chain let­ters fea­tur­ing her own work and that of oth­er young, female film­mak­ers. She record­ed LPs and toured orig­i­nal per­for­mance art pieces.

What a relief to find out she’s a pro­cras­ti­na­tor, too.

July insists that her chat­ter­ing mon­key mind near­ly deprived her of the con­cen­tra­tion nec­es­sary to fin­ish writ­ing The Future, her sec­ond full-length film. One of its most com­pelling parts actu­al­ly wound up on the cut­ting room floor. In it (above), we see Sophie, the under-employed would-be dancer played by July, com­ing to grips with her own self-sab­o­tag­ing ten­den­cy toward pro­cras­ti­na­tion.

Of course, the rea­son we’re able to see it at all is that July, whose indus­tri­ous­ness sure­ly has earned her the right to spend a decade or so doing noth­ing but watch­ing YouTube and Googling her own name, repur­posed it as a short, instruc­tion­al film (A Handy Tip for the Eas­i­ly Dis­tract­ed), which offers an anti­dote for those of us who share her afflic­tion.

(Admit it. You’re pro­cras­ti­nat­ing now, aren’t you?)

In addi­tion to the sound­ness of her advice, her method­ol­o­gy is endear­ing­ly low-tech. As one who’s been known to attribute a lack of cre­ative out­put to a less than ide­al work­space, I found the clut­tered, shab­by apart­ment set both famil­iar and gal­va­niz­ing. If we’re going to make excus­es, we may as well own them. July takes yet anoth­er step by har­ness­ing them and forc­ing them to work for her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Affirm­ing Talks by Cul­tur­al Mav­er­icks (Includ­ing Miran­da July) Pre­sent­ed at The School of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of any num­ber of books includ­ing The Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late.

What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees (and What a Geographer Learns About Our Planet) from the ISS

in Astronomy, Video - Science | October 6th, 2012

Justin Wilkin­son has a pret­ty cool sound­ing gig. He’s the chief geo­sci­en­tist at NASA, and he learns all about plan­et Earth from space. When astro­nauts head to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), Wilkin­son asks them to snap pic­tures of var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. And, from this van­tage point 250 miles above the plan­et’s sur­face, he learns many things — for exam­ple, he tells Slate, “there are a lot more exam­ples of a geo­graph­i­cal phe­nom­e­non called an inland delta or megafan—that is, deltas formed far from coastlines—than was once thought.”

Out of Wilkin­son’s research comes some great pic­tures and videos, and today we’re fea­tur­ing two clips. The first video above shows you what an astro­naut sees at night, giv­ing you an aer­i­al tour of cities and coast­lines in the Amer­i­c­as, the Mid­dle East and Europe. The equal­ly impres­sive video below gives you stel­lar shots (in day­light) of Namib­ia, Tunisia, Mada­gas­car, Sici­ly, Chi­na, Iran, and Utah. You’ll find these videos added to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos. Cours­es on astron­o­my can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.  h/t @stevesilberman

Christopher Lee Narrates a Beautiful Animation of Tim Burton’s Poem, Nightmare Before Christmas

in Animation, Film | October 5th, 2012

Almost nine­teen years ago, the ide­al fall-hol­i­day ani­mat­ed film first opened: The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, direct­ed by stop-motion mas­ter Hen­ry Selick and pro­duced by Tim Bur­ton, pos­ses­sor of one of the best-known imag­i­na­tions of our time. Over a decade before that, in 1982, Bur­ton wrote a poem of the same name, telling essen­tial­ly the same sto­ry as would the film. Work­ing at the time as an ani­ma­tor at Dis­ney, he man­aged to catch his employ­er’s atten­tion by turn­ing these vers­es into con­cept art, sto­ry­boards, and char­ac­ter mod­els for adap­ta­tion into a poten­tial half-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial fea­tur­ing Vin­cent Price. But the world, much less Dis­ney, did­n’t yet seem ready for the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, much less the par­tic­u­lar note of jol­ly grim­ness struck by The Night­mare Before Christ­mas. Years would pass, both in terms of get­ting the project into the right hands and in terms of the painstak­ing pro­duc­tion itself, before we could enjoy Jack Skelling­ton’s acci­den­tal jour­ney into Christ­mas Town and his well-mean­ing but ill-fat­ed attempt to take that hol­i­day for him­self.

But when we got to enjoy it, boy, did we ever enjoy it: in its near­ly two decades of exis­tence, The Night­mare Christ­mas has, with its dis­tinc­tive intri­cate dark-yet-light aes­thet­ics, askew humor, and sur­pris­ing intel­li­gence, spawned a vast inter­na­tion­al sub­cul­ture of enthu­si­asts. But you can still expe­ri­ence the core of every­thing the film is, and every­thing it has become in the zeit­geist, in Bur­ton’s orig­i­nal poem. So why not also see it ani­mat­ed and read aloud by Christo­pher Lee, as you can in the video above? “It was late one fall in Hal­loween Land, and the air had quite a chill,” the hor­ror vet­er­an intones. “Against the moon a skele­ton sat, alone upon a hill.” Night­mare Before Christ­mas fans know where this is going, but they’ll still want to hear the rest; though clear­ly the direct source of so much in their beloved movie, the poem looks on Skelling­ton and his mis­ad­ven­tures from a few angles they would­n’t quite expect.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.