Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Worldwide

in Harvard, MIT, Online Courses | May 2nd, 2012

It all start­ed ear­ly last fall. Sebas­t­ian Thrun went a lit­tle rogue (oh the audac­i­ty!) and start­ed offer­ing free online cours­es under Stan­ford’s ban­ner to mass audi­ences, with each course promis­ing a “state­ment of accom­plish­ment” at the end. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of stu­dents signed up, and uni­ver­si­ties every­where took notice.

Since then we have wit­nessed uni­ver­si­ties and star­tups scram­bling fair­ly mad­ly to cre­ate their own MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), hop­ing to gain a foothold in a new area that could even­tu­al­ly dis­rupt edu­ca­tion in a major way. In Decem­ber, MIT announced the cre­ation of MITx, promis­ing free cours­es and a “cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion” to stu­dents world­wide. Sebas­t­ian Thrun left Stan­ford to cre­ate Udac­i­ty, and anoth­er Stan­ford spin­off, Cours­era, gained instant trac­tion when it announced in April that it had raised $16 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal and signed part­ner­ships with Prince­ton, Penn and U Michi­gan.

Now comes the lat­est news. MIT has teamed up with its Cam­bridge neigh­bor, Har­vard, to cre­ate a new non prof­it ven­ture, EDX. To date, Har­vard has bare­ly dab­bled in open edu­ca­tion. But it’s now throw­ing $30 mil­lion behind EDX (M.I.T. will do the same), and togeth­er they will offer free dig­i­tal cours­es world­wide, with stu­dents receiv­ing the oblig­a­tory cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery at the end. The EDX plat­form will be open source, mean­ing it will be open to oth­er uni­ver­si­ties. Whether EDX will replace MITx, or sit uncom­fort­ably beside it, we’re not entire­ly sure (though it looks like it’s the for­mer).

Class­es will begin next fall. And when they do, we’ll let you know … and, of course, we’ll add them to our mas­sive col­lec­tion of 450 Free Online Cours­es.

For more infor­ma­tion, you can watch the EDX press con­fer­ence here and read an FAQ here.

via The Har­vard Crim­son and MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

Hitchcock on the Filmmaker’s Essential Tool: The Kuleshov Effect

in Film, Psychology | May 2nd, 2012

Alfred Hitch­cock once said that all art is emo­tion, and that the task of the film­mak­er is to use the tools of his medi­um to manip­u­late the audi­ence’s emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. In the scene above from the 1964 CBC doc­u­men­tary A Talk with Hitch­cock, the great direc­tor demon­strates one of the most fun­da­men­tal tools at a film­mak­er’s dis­pos­al: the Kuleshov effect.

In the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, Russ­ian film­mak­er and the­o­rist Lev Kuleshov dis­cov­ered that a sin­gle shot of an actor with an ambigu­ous expres­sion on his face could con­vey a mul­ti­tude of very dis­tinct mean­ings in the mind of the view­er, depend­ing on the nature of the shot imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing it. In 1918 he con­duct­ed his famous exper­i­ment (below) using a sin­gle shot of the silent film actor Ivan Moz­zhukhin’s face look­ing at some­thing off-cam­era.

Kuleshov spliced it in with a series of quite dif­fer­ent images–a bowl of soup, a dead child, a scant­i­ly clad woman–and dis­cov­ered that the audi­ence would inter­pret Moz­zhukhin’s emo­tion (hunger, pity, lust) depend­ing on the jux­ta­po­si­tion.

Kuleshov’s dis­cov­ery was the out­come of a very delib­er­ate process. In 1916 he and sev­er­al col­leagues made a sys­tem­at­ic study of audi­ence reac­tions at movie the­aters across Moscow. They quick­ly found that the bour­geoisie were too reserved, so they spent most of their time at the­aters in work­ing class neigh­bor­hoods, where the emo­tions flowed freely. They noticed that audi­ences react­ed dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing upon where the film was pro­duced. As Kuleshov writes in his essay, “The Prin­ci­ples of Mon­tage”:

When we began to com­pare the typ­i­cal­ly Amer­i­can, typ­i­cal­ly Euro­pean, and typ­i­cal­ly Russ­ian films, we noticed that they were dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er in their con­struc­tion. We noticed that in a par­tic­u­lar sequence of a Russ­ian film there were, say, ten to fif­teen splices, ten to fif­teen dif­fer­ent set-ups. In the Euro­pean film there might be twen­ty to thir­ty such set-ups (one must not for­get that this descrip­tion per­tains to the year 1916), while in the Amer­i­can film there would be from eighty, some­times upward to a hun­dred, sep­a­rate shots. The Amer­i­can films took first place in elic­it­ing reac­tions from the audi­ence; Euro­pean films took sec­ond; and the Russ­ian films, third. We became par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by this, but in the begin­ning we did not under­stand it.

Kuleshov even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed that the essence of cin­e­ma is mon­tage, that a film sto­ry is best told by cut­ting between dis­crete pieces of film. His stu­dent Sergei Eisen­stein saw the basic struc­ture as a col­li­sion between shot A (“the­sis”) and shot B (“antithe­sis”) to cre­ate a com­plete­ly new idea (“syn­the­sis”) in the mind of the view­er.

The noto­ri­ety of Kuleshov’s exper­i­ment with Moz­zhukhin tends to focus atten­tion on the human face (it has even inspired sci­en­tif­ic research on the con­tex­tu­al fram­ing of emo­tion­al attri­bu­tions), but the effect is far more gen­er­al. “We are accus­tomed,” writes Eisen­stein in Film Sense, “to make, almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly, a def­i­nite and obvi­ous deduc­tive gen­er­al­iza­tion when any sep­a­rate objects are placed before us side by side.”

Kuleshov showed this in sev­er­al oth­er exper­i­ments. In one, he depict­ed a sin­gle woman through a series of shots show­ing the body parts of mul­ti­ple women. In anoth­er he cre­at­ed an “arti­fi­cial land­scape” by splic­ing an image of the White House into a sequence of images of Moscow. The will­ing­ness of audi­ences to make mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions between unre­lat­ed images gives a film­mak­er con­sid­er­able expres­sive pow­er.  In his book On Direct­ing Film, David Mamet writes:

Doc­u­men­taries take basi­cal­ly unre­lat­ed footage and jux­ta­pose it in order to give the view­er the idea the film­mak­er wants to con­vey. They take footage of birds snap­ping a twig. They take footage of a fawn rais­ing his head. The two shots have noth­ing to do with each oth­er. They were shot days or years, and miles, apart. And the film­mak­er jux­ta­pos­es the images to give the view­er the idea of great alert­ness. The shots have noth­ing to do with each oth­er. They are not a record of what the pro­tag­o­nist did. They are not a record of how the deer react­ed to the bird. They’re basi­cal­ly unin­flect­ed images. But they give the view­er the idea of alert­ness to dan­ger when they are jux­ta­posed. That’s good film­mak­ing.

There is an old say­ing that a work of art is only com­plet­ed in the mind of the behold­er. Kuleshov showed that it’s true.

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:

Alfred Hitch­cock Reveals The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitch­cock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuf­fin’

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

The Broken Tower, James Franco’s Docudrama On “Difficult” Poet Hart Crane: A Preview

in Film, Poetry | May 2nd, 2012

Above, you’ll find a short trail­er for The Bro­ken Tow­er, a film about Hart Crane: can­dy-for­tune scion, hard-drink­ing sex­u­al adven­tur­er, nar­row­ly appre­ci­at­ed poet, and sui­cide vic­tim at 32. The motion pic­ture indus­try loves to dra­ma­tize this sort of lit­er­ary life, although it tends to choose lit­er­ary fig­ures whose lega­cies have, in the full­ness of time, accrued them a rea­son­able pop­u­lar­i­ty. But Crane, though often seen as a more opti­mistic coun­ter­part in mod­ernism to T.S. Eliot, lacks almost all of Eliot’s name recog­ni­tion out­side schol­ar­ly cir­cles. Part of this has to do with his noto­ri­ous­ly “dif­fi­cult” ver­bal style, which has made him near­ly syn­ony­mous with a cer­tain strain of poet­ic com­plex­i­ty. Allen Gross­man once gave a lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go called “On Com­mu­nica­tive Dif­fi­cul­ty in Gen­er­al and ‘Dif­fi­cult’ Poet­ry in Par­tic­u­lar: The Exam­ple of Hart Crane’s ‘The Bro­ken Tow­er.’ ” (The title name-checks the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished bio­graph­i­cal poem from which the new pic­ture takes its name.) Even Ten­nessee Williams, a known fan of Crane’s work, said he could “hard­ly under­stand a sin­gle line” of it — adding that, of course, “the indi­vid­ual lines aren’t sup­posed to be intel­li­gi­ble.”

James Fran­co not only stars in The Bro­ken Tow­er, but wrote, direct­ed, and pro­duced the film as well. Per­haps I need hard­ly men­tion that, since Fran­co makes no effort (and the media even less) to con­ceal his lit­er­ary-aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests and pen­chant for fol­low­ing sev­er­al artis­tic pur­suits at all times. The Bro­ken Tow­er began as his NYU mas­ter’s the­sis, went on to play at the Los Ange­les Film Fes­ti­val, and has very recent­ly entered lim­it­ed the­atri­cal release. The clip above, tak­en from the Q&A at the pic­ture’s Boston Col­lege pre­miere, fea­tures both Fran­co and Paul Mar­i­ani, author of The Bro­ken Tow­er: The Life of Hart Crane, the biog­ra­phy that gal­va­nized Fran­co’s fas­ci­na­tion with Crane as he read it on the set of 2002’s Son­ny. After hear­ing both men describe how the grim yet opti­mistic, resis­tant yet com­pelling word­scape of Hart Crane drew them in, don’t be sur­prised if you feel the impulse to do some research of your own.

(See also: Hart Crane’s poems on Poemhunter.com.)

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

The Book Trail­er as Self-Par­o­dy: Stars Gary Shteyn­gart with James Fran­co Cameo

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

Q: Salvador Dalí, Are You a Crackpot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

in Art | May 2nd, 2012

By 1969, Sal­vador Dalí knew how to han­dle things. He had four decades of celebri­ty under his belt. He knew what his crit­ics had to say, and he had grown accus­tomed to deal­ing with a skep­ti­cal media. A decade ear­li­er, Mike Wal­lace opened his inter­view with Dalí (watch here) by ask­ing him:

Dali, first of all let me ask you this, you’re a remark­able painter and you’ve ded­i­cat­ed your life to art, in view of this, why do you behave the way that you do? For instance, you have been known to dri­ve in a car filled to the roof with cau­li­flow­ers. You lec­tured, as I men­tioned, once with your head enclosed in a div­ing hel­met and you almost suf­fo­cat­ed. You issue bizarre state­ments about your love for rhi­noc­er­os horns and so on. You’re a ded­i­cat­ed artist, why do you or why must you do these things?

By 1969, lit­tle had changed. In the vin­tage CBC clip, the inter­view­er begins the con­ver­sa­tion with a sim­i­lar ques­tion, only more blunt­ly phrased. “Peo­ple think you are crack­pot. Do you know what a crack­pot is? A crazy per­son.” Then Dalí, ever the sur­re­al­ist, gives his cryp­tic reply, refer­ring to him­self in the third per­son, and deflects the ques­tion rather per­fect­ly:

This is not absolute­ly exact. Because Dalí is almost crazy. But the only dif­fer­ence between crazy peo­ple and Dalí is Dalí is not crazy.

And so the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion goes.…

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:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

Screen Tests for Gone with the Wind: What Could Have Been

in Film | May 1st, 2012

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The image of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh togeth­er in Gone with the Wind is so firm­ly estab­lished in the iconog­ra­phy of pop­u­lar cul­ture that it seems almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine any­one else as Rhett But­ler and Scar­lett O’Hara.

Pro­duc­er David O. Selznick had his sights set on Gable almost from the start, but Leigh was cast only after a two-year search. Ever the oppor­tunist, Selznick turned his quest for the per­fect Scar­lett O’Hara into a grand pub­lic­i­ty stunt, inter­view­ing 1,400 unknown actress­es in a nation­wide cast­ing call and audi­tion­ing dozens of Hol­ly­wood actress­es.

In this fas­ci­nat­ing clip from the 1989 film Mak­ing of a Leg­end: Gone with the Wind, we see some of the 32 screen tests that were made for Scar­lett, along with a few for oth­er roles. Those try­ing out for Scar­lett include Tal­lu­lah Bankhead, Susan Hay­ward, Lana Turn­er, Joan Ben­nett, Jean Arthur and final­ist Paulette God­dard, who nar­row­ly missed get­ting the part. Selznick even­tu­al­ly chose Leigh, a rel­a­tive­ly unknown actress who he first thought was “too British” for the role of a south­ern belle. One thing Leigh had in com­mon with Scar­lett was self-assur­ance. In July of 1937–a year and a half before Selznick ever laid eyes on her–Leigh told a reporter for the Lon­don Evening News, “I’ve cast myself as Scar­lett O’Hara. What do you think?”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Audrey Hep­burn’s Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953)

Mar­lene Diet­rich’s Tem­pera­men­tal Screen Test for The Blue Angel

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen Test for East of Eden

Man Ray and the Cinéma Pur: Four Surrealist Films From the 1920s

in Film | April 30th, 2012

Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter, set­ting and plot. Today we present Man Ray’s four influ­en­tial films of the 1920s.

Le Retour à la Rai­son (above) was com­plet­ed in 1923. The title means “Return to Rea­son,” and it’s basi­cal­ly a kinet­ic exten­sion of Man Ray’s still pho­tog­ra­phy. Many of the images in Le Retour are ani­mat­ed pho­tograms, a tech­nique in which opaque, or par­tial­ly opaque, objects are arranged direct­ly on top of a sheet of pho­to­graph­ic paper and exposed to light. The tech­nique is as old as pho­tog­ra­phy itself, but Man Ray had a gift for self-pro­mo­tion, so he called them “rayo­graphs.” For Le Retour, Man Ray sprin­kled objects like salt and pep­per and pins onto the pho­to­graph­ic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amuse­ment park carousel and oth­er sub­jects, includ­ing the nude tor­so of his mod­el and lover, Kiki of Mont­par­nasse.

Emak-Bakia (1926):

The 16-minute Emak-Bakia con­tains some of the same images and visu­al tech­niques as Le Retour à la Rai­son, includ­ing rayo­graphs, dou­ble images and neg­a­tive images. But the live-action sequences are more inven­tive, with dream-like dis­tor­tions and tilt­ed cam­era angles. The effect is sur­re­al. “In reply to crit­ics who would like to linger on the mer­its or defects of the film,” wrote Man Ray in the pro­gram notes, “one can reply sim­ply by trans­lat­ing the title ‘Emak Bakia,’ an old Basque expres­sion, which was cho­sen because it sounds pret­ti­ly and means: ‘Give us a rest.’ ”

L’E­toile de Mer (1928):

L’E­toile de Mer (“The Sea Star”) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Man Ray and the sur­re­al­ist poet Robert Desnos. It fea­tures Kiki de Mont­par­nasse (Alice Prin) and André de la Riv­ière. The dis­tort­ed, out-of focus images were made by shoot­ing into mir­rors and through rough glass. The film is more sen­su­al than Man Ray’s ear­li­er works. As Don­ald Faulkn­er writes:

In the mod­ernist high tide of 1920s exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, L’E­toile de Mer is a per­verse moment of grace, a demon­stra­tion that the cin­e­ma went far­ther in its great silent decade than most film­mak­ers today could ever imag­ine. Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray’s film col­lides words with images (the inter­ti­tles are from an oth­er­wise lost work by poet Robert Desnos) to make us psy­cho­log­i­cal wit­ness­es, voyeurs of a kind, to a sex­u­al encounter. A char­ac­ter picks up a woman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers. She undress­es for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less inter­est­ed in her than in the weight she uses to keep her news­pa­pers from blow­ing away, the man lov­ing­ly explores the per­cep­tions gen­er­at­ed by her paper­weight, a starfish in a glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze of metaphors for cin­e­ma, and for vision itself, in lyri­cal shots of dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion that imply hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, almost mas­tur­ba­to­ry sex­u­al­i­ty.

Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (1929):

The longest of Man Ray’s films, Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (the ver­sion above has apparenl­ty been short­ened by sev­en min­utes) fol­lows a pair of trav­el­ers on a jour­ney from Paris to the Vil­la Noailles in Hyères, which fea­tures a tri­an­gu­lar Cubist gar­den designed by Gabriel Geu­vrikain. “Made as an archi­tec­tur­al doc­u­ment and inspired by the poet­ry of Mal­lar­mé,” writes Kim Knowles in A Cin­e­mat­ic Artist: The Films of Man Ray, “Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé is the film in which Man Ray most clear­ly demon­strates his inter­dis­ci­pli­nary atti­tude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ref­er­ence to Stéphane Mal­lar­mé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’aboli­ra le hasard.”

The films will be list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Venice in a Day: From Daybreak to Sunset in Timelapse

in Travel | April 30th, 2012

It’s not the first time­lapse video of Venice, and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last. You can bank on that. But what dis­tin­guish­es this clip from the oth­ers is its con­tin­u­al focus on the canals that make Venice, Venice. Gives this video three min­utes and it will give you a full day in the life of Venet­ian water­ways. And when you’re done, don’t miss How Venice Works, an impres­sive 18 minute video that explains the com­plex inner-work­ings of the city made up of 124 islands, 183 canals, 438 bridges and the rest. How it all hangs togeth­er is pret­ty amaz­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

It’s 5:46 A.M. and Paris Is Under Water

Neuroscience and Propaganda Come Together in Disney’s World War II Film, Reason and Emotion

in Animation, History, Psychology | April 30th, 2012

Last Fri­day, we post­ed Saul Bass’ Why Man Cre­ates. For anoth­er short film which drew Acad­e­my recog­ni­tion by using ani­ma­tion to illu­mi­nate basic human impuls­es, you could do worse than Dis­ney’s Rea­son and Emo­tion. Just as Bass’ pic­ture, a prod­uct of 1968, bears the mark of that era’s ascen­dant free-your-mind coun­ter­cul­ture, Dis­ney’s pic­ture reflects the con­cerns of 1943 Amer­i­ca. Mankind has always and prob­a­bly will always strug­gle with the con­flicts between what we con­sid­er our ratio­nal minds and what we con­sid­er our emo­tion­al impuls­es, but at that par­tic­u­lar time and in that par­tic­u­lar nation, mankind found itself even more con­cerned with the con­flict between the Axis and the Allies. Under­stand­ing how per­sua­sive a mes­sage they could send by unit­ing the cur­rent with the eter­nal, Dis­ney’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da came up with this eight-minute comedic illus­tra­tion of how our rea­son and emo­tion coex­ist, what an ide­al bal­ance between them looks like, and why you, a good Amer­i­can, should hold your emo­tion in check. “That’s right, emo­tion,” insists the nar­ra­tor, “go ahead, put rea­son out of the way. That’s great, fine — for Hitler.”

Enlight­ened 21st-cen­tu­ry view­ers will find plen­ty of the stiff, the square, and the stereo­typ­i­cal to object to here. Ven­tur­ing inside the head of an aver­age Amer­i­can man, the film sees a sober, bespec­ta­cled embod­i­ment of Rea­son at the steer­ing wheel. Behind him sits the jit­tery, club-swing­ing cave­man Emo­tion. When our man spies a “classy dish” on the side­walk, Emo­tion wrests con­trol from Rea­son, but suc­ceeds only in get­ting their humanoid vehi­cle slapped.

We then enter the mind of the slap­per to find Rea­son’s female equiv­a­lent, a syn­the­sis of all char­ac­ters ever named “Pru­dence,” at the wheel. Back-seat dri­ving is a rotund, excitable, (rel­a­tive­ly) skimpi­ly dressed Emo­tion. Rea­son believes she has done jus­tice with the slap, but Emo­tion argues, “He was cute! You wan­na be an old maid?” She then pro­pos­es an eat­ing binge, while Rea­son looks on in hor­ror at their con­trol room’s rapid­ly bal­loon­ing, sag­ging, “CHIN,” PROFILE,” and “FIGURE” charts.

Yet in its old-fash­ioned, super­cil­ious, and sim­plis­tic way, Rea­son and Emo­tion looks frankly at the chal­lenges we all face on a reg­u­lar basis when decid­ing, whether we be male or female, what to do, which foods to eat, and whom to try to meet. Research on what our cen­ters of rea­son and emo­tion actu­al­ly are and how they deter­mine our choic­es has risen to the height of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic fash­ion, and as for the film’s indict­ment of the Third Reich as a vast emo­tion-manip­u­la­tion machine, the unset­tling but sub­stan­tial field of dic­ta­to­r­i­al mind con­trol in all its forms has accu­mu­lat­ed its own enor­mous body of aca­d­e­m­ic study. We’ve grown just a lit­tle smarter about rea­son and emo­tion, war and peace, and men and women in the past 69 years, which makes Rea­son and Emo­tion a rich­er and more fas­ci­nat­ing watch now than it would have been then. The film has been added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Find more Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Films Here:

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

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

The Man Who Quit Money — and Lived to Tell About It

in Books, Life | April 30th, 2012

If you’re get­ting ready to start yet anoth­er work week, let us give you some food for thought.

12 years ago, Daniel Sue­lo walked into a phone booth, left his only mon­ey there ($30), and has­n’t touched any since — no cash, no loans, no cred­it cards, no bank accounts, no wel­fare pay­ments — nada. Instead, he sleeps in caves in the Utah desert (rent free), lives the life of a hunter-gath­er­er, remains active in his Moab com­mu­ni­ty and proves that much of what we con­sid­er a neces­si­ty real­ly isn’t at all.

Sue­lo was pro­filed in a 2009 piece in Details. He’s now the sub­ject of Mark Sun­deen’s new book, The Man Who Quit Mon­ey.

via Laugh­ing Squid

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All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

in Music, Technology | April 27th, 2012

When the Roland TR-808 rhythm machine first came out in late 1980 most musi­cians were not impressed. It was a drum machine that did­n’t sound like drums, with a hand­clap fea­ture that did­n’t sound like hands clap­ping. One review­er said the machine sound­ed like march­ing anteaters. But as Rho­dri Mars­den wrote in a 2008 arti­cle for The Inde­pen­dent, “One man’s trash is anoth­er man’s trea­sure.”

For some, the 808 was so bad it was good. They embraced the sheer arti­fi­cial­i­ty of the thing. Its idio­syn­crat­ic nois­es began show­ing up on hit records like 1982’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” by Mar­vin Gaye. “Boom­ing bass kicks, crispy snares and that annoy­ing cow­bell sound made famous dur­ing the 80’s are all part of the 808 and it’s famous sound,” writes Vin­tage Synth Explor­er. Yes, that annoy­ing cow­bell sound. On Whit­ney Hous­ton’s “I Wan­na Dance With Some­body,” writes Mars­den, the effect is like that of “a dis­tressed wood­peck­er.”

But as Nel­son George explains in his new video, All Hail the Beat (above), the 808 has remained a vital ele­ment in much of the pop music since the 1980s, in gen­res like hip hop, tech­no and house. Even though Roland stopped mak­ing the 808 in 1984 and many young musi­cans today have nev­er even seen one (a vin­tage 808 can cost over $2,000 on eBay) the machine’s 16 drum sounds have been wide­ly sam­pled, and have been built into many of the machines that have come lat­er.

Even the pho­ny hand­claps have become indis­pens­able. “Of course, they don’t sound like hand­claps,” pro­duc­er Jyoti Mishra told Mars­den, “but strange­ly, they have some­how become the sound of hand­claps. Every drum machine pro­duced since then has had to fea­ture that same kind of noise.”

To hear the 808 in its heyday–along with sev­er­al oth­er elec­tron­ic instru­ments, includ­ing Micro­moog and Prophet‑5 synthesizers–you can watch the video below from 1982, fea­tur­ing Afri­ka Bam­baataa & the Soul­son­ic Force per­form­ing “Plan­et Rock.”

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