John Cage Unbound: A New Digital Archive Presented by The New York Public Library

in Music | April 18th, 2012

John Cage enthu­si­asts have sure­ly rejoiced at the New York Pub­lic Library’s open­ing of John Cage Unbound: A Liv­ing Archive, which offers vis­i­tors a chance to expe­ri­ence how the unique­ly inno­v­a­tive com­poser’s life and work con­tin­ue to affect the per­for­mance of music today. But if you don’t hap­pen to live in New York, no need to book a trip; you can browse the archive online when­ev­er and from wher­ev­er you please. One won­ders what Cage, who died the year before the debut of the World Wide Web as we know it, would have made of all the artis­tic inven­tion, son­ic and oth­er­wise, that the inter­net has enabled. I like to think he’d gaze with great fas­ci­na­tion at this site’s con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ed col­lec­tion of not only vin­tage John Cage footage — him play­ing ampli­fied cac­ti and plant mate­ri­als with a feath­er with Take­hisa Kosu­gi, him speak­ing in 1978 — but recent mate­r­i­al as well, such as Paul Schuet­te’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the piece “Water Walk,” and The Anta Project per­form­ing Cage’s famous “4’33”,” the piece that involves no play­ing, at the U.S.-Mexico bor­der.

Bridg­ing the gap between the old and the new, the video above col­lects per­son­al impres­sions of John Cage from those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in his 1970 per­for­mance at Carlisle, Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Dick­in­son Col­lege. “Intense, obser­vant, focused,” says the col­lege’s Pres­i­dent William Dur­den. “Not nec­es­sar­i­ly a per­son who took up space, but a per­son who real­ly… chis­eled space.” Think­ing about the nature of the con­cert, Joe Sobel, a musi­cian who built an instru­ment out of junked car horns espe­cial­ly for it, remem­bers that “if you approached it in a dour, seri­ous way, you weren’t going to be able to make any sense of it. In order to enjoy it, you had to be open and will­ing to get the joke.” He could say the same about every­thing John Cage ever did. Hear­ing these reflec­tions and then, lat­er in the video, see­ing a group of Dick­in­son stu­dents grap­ple with putting on Cage’s “Radio Music” — a piece played not with tra­di­tion­al instru­ments, but lit­er­al radios — even view­ers who aren’t yet John Cage enthu­si­asts may find them­selves intrigued. Spend­ing an evening at John Cage Unbound will get them up to speed on the com­poser’s endur­ing rel­e­vance; pair it with a read­ing of Cage’s famous book/manifesto Silence, and you’ll nev­er think about music in quite the same way again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

The Con­tro­ver­sial Sounds of Silence: John Cage’s 4’33″ Per­formed by the BBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

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

Growing Up in the Universe: Richard Dawkins Presents Captivating Science Course for Kids (1991)

in K-12, Video - Science | April 18th, 2012

Back in 1825, Michael Fara­day, the ven­er­at­ed Eng­lish sci­en­tist, estab­lished The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren. Fara­day gave the inau­gur­al lec­ture him­self, hop­ing to get a younger gen­er­a­tion inter­est­ed in sci­ence, and the tra­di­tion has car­ried on ever since. Above, we’re skip­ping for­ward 166 years to 1991, when Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s best known evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gists, pre­sent­ed a five part lec­ture series called Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse. It’s a rather bril­liant look at life, the uni­verse, and our place in it. And while it’s geared toward a younger crowd, adults will enjoy it too. Orig­i­nal­ly tele­vised by the BBC, the lec­tures now appear on YouTube, cour­tesy of The Richard Dawkins Foun­da­tion for Rea­son and Sci­ence.

All of the lec­tures, whose titles are list­ed below, can be viewed in the playlist above. More RI Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren can be viewed online here. This series will be added to our col­lec­tion. 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Lec­ture 1: Wak­ing Up in the Uni­verse

Lec­ture 2:  Designed and Desig­noid Objects

Lec­ture 3:  Climb­ing Mount Improb­a­ble

Lec­ture 4: The Ultra­vi­o­let Gar­den

Lec­ture 5: The Gen­e­sis of Pur­pose

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!

‘The Ballad of the Skeletons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Collaboration with Philip Glass and Paul McCartney

in Film, Music, Poetry | April 17th, 2012

Allen Gins­berg was an unlike­ly MTV star. In late 1996 the Beat poet was 70 years old and in declin­ing health. He had less than a year to live. But Gins­berg man­aged to stay cul­tur­al­ly and polit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant, right up to the end. His last major project was a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Paul McCart­ney and Philip Glass, among oth­ers, on a musi­cal adap­ta­tion of his poem, “The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons.”

The poem was first pub­lished in 1995. The Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cli­mate from which it arose bears a strik­ing resem­blance to the one we’re liv­ing in today. “I start­ed it,” Gins­berg told Har­vey Kubernik of The Los Ange­les Times in 1996, “because [of] all that inflat­ed bull about the fam­i­ly val­ues, the ‘con­tract with Amer­i­ca,’ Newt Gin­grich and all the loud­mouth stuff on talk radio, and Rush Lim­baugh and all those oth­er guys. It seemed obnox­ious and stu­pid and kind of sub-con­tra­dic­to­ry, so I fig­ured I’d write a poem to knock it out of the ring.”

The skele­tal imagery was inspired by the Mex­i­can hol­i­day, the Day of the Dead, and takes a play­ful poke at the van­i­ty of human desires. “It’s an old trick,” Gins­berg told Steve Sil­ber­man in a 1996 inter­view for HotWired, “to dress up arche­typ­al char­ac­ters as skele­tons: the bish­op, the Pope, the Pres­i­dent, the police chief. There’s a Mex­i­can painter–Posa­da–who does exact­ly that.”

In Octo­ber of 1995, Gins­berg vis­it­ed Paul McCart­ney and his fam­i­ly at their home in Eng­land. He recit­ed “The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons while one of McCart­ney’s daugh­ters filmed it. As Gins­berg recalled to Sil­ber­man, he men­tioned that he had to give a read­ing with Anne Wald­man and oth­er poets at the Roy­al Albert Hall, and was look­ing for a gui­tarist to accom­pa­ny him. “Why don’t you try me,” McCart­ney said. “I love the poem.” Gins­berg con­tin­ued the sto­ry:

He showed up at 5 p.m. for the sound check, and he bought a box for his fam­i­ly. Got all his kids togeth­er, four of them, and his wife, and he sat through the whole evening of poet­ry, and we did­n’t say who my accom­pa­nist was going to be. We intro­duced him at the end of the evening, and then the roar went up on the floor of the Albert Hall, and we knocked out the song. He said if I ever got around to record­ing it, let him know. So he vol­un­teered, and we made a basic track, and sent it to him, on 24 tracks, and he added mara­cas and drums, which it need­ed. It gave it a skele­ton, gave it a shape. And also organ, he was try­ing to get that effect of Al Koop­er on the ear­ly Dylan. And gui­tar, so he put a lot of work in on that. And then we got it back just in time for Philip Glass to fill in his arpeg­gios on piano.

The record­ing was pro­duced by Lenny Kaye, gui­tarist for the Pat­ti Smith Group, who had put togeth­er a group of musi­cians for a per­for­mance of the song at a Tibet House ben­e­fit in April of 1996. One mem­ber of the audi­ence that night was Dan­ny Gold­berg, pres­i­dent of Mer­cury Records and a fan of Gins­berg. He invit­ed the poet to record the song, and it all came togeth­er quick­ly. In a 1997 arti­cle in Tikkun, Gold­berg remem­bered Gins­berg’s gid­di­ness over the project: “He loved that Paul McCart­ney had over­dubbed drums on ‘Skele­tons.’ He said, ‘It’s the clos­est I’m going to ever come to being in the Bea­t­les,’ and gig­gled like a teenag­er.”

The record­ing fea­tures Gins­berg on vocals, Glass on key­boards, McCart­ney on gui­tar, drums, Ham­mond organ and mara­cas, Kaye on bass, Marc Ribot on gui­tar and David Mans­field on Gui­tar. Mer­cury released the song as a CD sin­gle in two ver­sions, includ­ing one with the lan­guage san­i­tized for radio and tele­vi­sion. The “B side” was a record­ing of Gins­berg’s “New Stan­zas for Amaz­ing Grace” that did not include McCart­ney or Glass. The next step was to cre­ate a video. As Gold­berg recalled, Gins­berg knew an oppor­tu­ni­ty when he saw one:

When Tom Fre­ston, the CEO of MTV, bought five of Allen’s pho­tos, Gins­berg prompt­ly called me, not too sub­tly imply­ing that if Mer­cury would fund pro­duc­tion of a video, we might be able to get on MTV. Allen had an unerr­ing instinct of how to mobi­lize his mys­tique for those who were inter­est­ed. He regaled Fre­ston with sto­ries of the beat­niks one night at our house, which made it almost impos­si­ble for MTV to reject his video despite the fact that he was decades old­er than typ­i­cal MTV artists and audi­ence mem­bers. A polit­i­cal satire of both gen­er­a­tions, “Skele­tons” received high­ly pubi­cized and much-cov­et­ed “buzz bin” rota­tion on MTV in the weeks before the last election–to the con­ster­na­tion of oth­er record com­pa­nies who were sub­mit­ting artists with more con­ven­tion­al cre­den­tials. This made Allen the only sev­en­ty-year-old besides Tony Ben­nett to ever be played on MTV.

The video was direct­ed by Gus Van Sant, who had ties to sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Beat gen­er­a­tion. Van Sant had direct­ed William S. Bur­roughs in the film Drug­store Cow­boy, and had made short films–Thanks­giv­ing Prayer and The Dis­ci­pline of DE– based on writ­ing by Bur­roughs. Gins­berg was hap­py with Van San­t’s work, despite a tight film­ing bud­get. “It’s a great col­lage,” Gins­berg told Sil­ber­man. “He went back to old Pathé, Satan skele­tons, and mixed them up with Rush Lim­baugh, and Dole, and the local politi­cians, Newt Gin­grich, and the Pres­i­dent. And mixed those up with the atom bomb, when I talk about the elec­tric chair– ‘Hey, what’s cookin?’–you got Satan set­ting off an atom bomb, and I’m trem­bling with a USA hat on, the Uncle Sam hat on. So it’s quite a pro­duc­tion, it’s fun.”

via @WFMU

Art Critic Robert Hughes Demystifies Modern Art in The Shock of the New

in Art, Television | April 17th, 2012

With the aid of YouTube, you can watch an episode of Robert Hugh­es’ doc­u­men­tary series The Shock of the New each week, just as it first aired on the BBC and PBS in 1980. But I defy you to watch “The Mechan­i­cal Par­adise,” the first of its eight install­ments, and not plow through the rest in a day. Hugh­es, a pro­lif­ic art crit­ic who has writ­ten books on every­thing from Fran­cis­co Goya to America’s cul­ture of com­plaint to the city of Barcelona to the his­to­ry of his native Aus­tralia, has also host­ed tele­vi­sion pro­grams about every­thing from Car­avag­gio to Utopi­an archi­tec­ture to the Mona Lisa. The Shock of the New, a project which found expres­sion as a book as well as these broad­casts, takes on the ambi­tious task of trac­ing the progress of mod­ernism through visu­al art. But the roots of the move­ment run deep­er into his­to­ry, and so this first episode begins at the base of the Eif­fel Tow­er, a mon­u­ment to the accel­er­at­ing sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal progress of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry that would so dis­rupt the aes­thet­ics of the twen­ti­eth.

As a read­er of art crit­i­cism, I’ve long trust­ed Hugh­es’ writ­ing on these sub­jects more than I do any­one else’s. Clear, bold, con­crete, and always, in a blunt­ly stealthy way, more nuanced than it seems, Hugh­es’ tex­tu­al per­sona stands against what, in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, he calls the “airy-fairy, metaphor-rid­den kind of pseu­do-poet­ry” that he sees as hav­ing flood­ed the field. As a guide through the his­to­ry of artis­tic mod­ernism, he proves as no-non­sense yet dry­ly enter­tain­ing on film as he is on the page. Whether turn­ing our atten­tion toward spe­cial details of Braque and Picasso’s can­vass­es or zip­ping around in a 1900s road­ster, Hugh­es presents with the assur­ance of author­i­ty but not its intel­lec­tu­al over­reach, pulling you along to Fer­nand Léger, the Futur­ists, and Mar­cel Duchamp. And as a view­er of tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries, I’ve long trust­ed the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies as the form’s gold­en age. In this episode and beyond, The Shock of the New show­cas­es what the pro­duc­tions of that era did best: a moody elec­tron­ic score, archival clips cre­ative­ly used, and extend­ed sequences that give us time to real­ly look. (Voiceover work by Judi Dench and Mar­tin Jarvis doesn’t lose this chap­ter any points, either.)

The Shock of the New con­sists of the fol­low­ing episodes: “The Mechan­i­cal Par­adise,” “The Pow­ers That Be,” “The Land­scape of Plea­sure,” “Trou­ble in Utopia,” “The Thresh­old of Lib­er­ty,” “The View From the Edge,” “Cul­ture as Nature,” “The Future That Was”

You can watch them on YouTube.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Pow­er of Art: Renais­sance to Mod­ern

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

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

The First Images and Video Footage from Outer Space, 1946–1959

in Science, Video - Science | April 17th, 2012

In Octo­ber 1946, Amer­i­can sci­en­tists, work­ing in White Sands, New Mex­i­co, shot a V‑2 mis­sile 65 miles into the air. The mis­sile (orig­i­nal­ly designed by the Nazis dur­ing World War II) car­ried a 35-mil­lime­ter cam­era aloft that snapped an image every sec­ond and a half. When the mis­sile returned to Earth, the cam­era itself was demol­ished by the impact. But the film, pro­tect­ed by a steel cas­ing, remained unscathed, accord­ing to Air & Space Mag­a­zine. And when the sci­en­tists recov­ered the film, they wit­nessed some­thing nev­er seen by humans before — the first images of our plan­et tak­en from out­er space. As one sci­en­tist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to vis­i­tors from anoth­er plan­et com­ing in on a space ship.”

By the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force start­ed work­ing with a new line of mis­sile, the Thor mis­sile. And it made his­to­ry in May, 1959. Launched from Cape Canaver­al, the Thor Mis­sile Num­ber 187 car­ried a Gen­er­al Elec­tric-man­u­fac­tured “data cap­sule” and 16-mil­lime­ter cam­era in its nose cone. The flight last­ed 15 min­utes, cov­ered 1500 miles, and end­ed in the Atlantic Ocean. Accord­ing to the GE Film Cat­a­log, when the data cap­sule was recov­ered:

Gen­er­al Elec­tric sci­en­tists began the care­ful pro­cess­ing of the cap­sule’s con­tents. They were not long in find­ing the results they had hoped for—in the sub­dued light of a pho­to­graph­ic dark room, on a still-drip­ping strip of devel­oped motion pic­ture film, the eyes of man beheld for the first time the image of the earth as it appears from beyond the atmos­phere.

You can watch the his­toric video imme­di­ate­ly above.

To get more recent views of the Earth from out­er space, don’t miss these daz­zling videos:

• A Brief, Won­drous Tour of Earth (From Out­er Space)
• A Day on Earth (as Seen From Space)
• What an Astro­naut Sees from Space
• What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth

via It’s Okay to be Smart

Watch the German Expressionist Film, The Golem, with a Soundtrack by The Pixies’ Black Francis

in Film, Music | April 16th, 2012

As cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly savvy Open Cul­ture read­ers know, most films of the silent era have fall­en into the pub­lic domain, mak­ing them easy to watch on the inter­net. Sev­er­al of the choic­est have found their way into our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion can thus give them­selves an ear­ly-film edu­ca­tion that would have been unthink­ably con­ve­nient just twen­ty years ago, but the oppor­tu­ni­ties stretch out even fur­ther than that. Cer­tain enter­pris­ing musi­cians have seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-score these freely avail­able silents, revi­tal­iz­ing the era’s clunk­ers and mas­ter­pieces alike with son­ic styles that the com­posers of those days could nev­er have even imag­ined. Above, you’ll find one of Weimar Ger­many’s finest expres­sion­ist films, The Golem: How He Came Into the World, brought to life like the clay stat­ue of its title by a dri­ving, jan­gling, rock-oper­at­ic score cour­tesy of one Black Fran­cis.

If you’re unfa­mil­iar, Black Fran­cis, also know as Frank Black, fronts the rock band the Pix­ies. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with them, you prob­a­bly don’t tend to admit it in mixed com­pa­ny, since the com­bi­na­tion of their star­tling­ly wide­spread influ­ence (Kurt Cobain called “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” an attempt to “rip off the Pix­ies”) and endur­ing avoid­ance of the main­stream has earned them enor­mous rock-enthu­si­ast cred­i­bil­i­ty. Film geeks, for their part, prob­a­bly won’t give you a hard time about not hav­ing seen Paul Wegen­er’s the Golem tril­o­gy, since two of the three have been lost. Though it came out in 1920 as the third Golem film, How He Came Into the World, a pre­quel to both its pre­de­ces­sors, tells the ori­gin sto­ry of its title crea­ture of Jew­ish leg­end. Cre­at­ed to pro­tect the Cho­sen Peo­ple of 16th-cen­tu­ry Prague, the mute inhu­man colos­sus soon turns against his mak­ers. Watch what hap­pens, in a cul­tur­al three-for-one to begin your week, with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Karl Fre­und’s manip­u­la­tion of shad­ow and light (which he lat­er showed off in Metrop­o­lis and Drac­u­la), Black Fran­cis’ casu­al­ly com­plex rock mag­pie-ism, and the dis­tinc­tive sto­ry­telling sen­si­bil­i­ty that pro­duced the golem fable in the first place. (It’s avail­able on DVD here.)

The Golem, fea­tur­ing a sound­track by Black Fran­cis, has been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis: Uncut & Restored

Lost Films: Iden­ti­fy Miss­ing Cin­e­ma Through Crowd­sourc­ing

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

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

J.D. Salinger, Out for a Stroll: Reclusive Author of The Catcher in the Rye Caught on Film

in Literature | April 16th, 2012

As a pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­ment, this footage is only slight­ly less aston­ish­ing than the famed 1967 Pat­ter­son-Gim­lin film of a “Big­foot” traips­ing across a for­est clear­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

In this case the elu­sive crea­ture is none oth­er than J.D. Salinger. The footage appears to have been shot quite a few years before the writer’s death, at 91, in Jan­u­ary of 2010. The cap­tion on YouTube sim­ply says, “J.D. Salinger out for a stroll in Cor­nish, New Hamp­shire.” Salinger had lived a qui­et life in Cor­nish since 1953, two years after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Catch­er in the Rye. But as one com­men­ta­tor on YouTube wry­ly points out, the footage was prob­a­bly shot in anoth­er town just across the Con­necti­cut Riv­er from Cor­nish:

If you real­ly want me to tell you about it, this is like­ly Wind­sor, VT, judg­ing by all the pho­ny peo­ple and the park­ing meters and all. JD went there dai­ly for his mail and a bite to eat at the din­er. He was a mad­man that way. I know it’s corny and all, but that’s god­dam Wind­sor, across the riv­er from Cor­nish.

It’s true, Cor­nish has very few peo­ple and no park­ing meters. By all accounts Salinger lived a fair­ly nor­mal life there. If you trav­el up that way you’re like­ly to meet peo­ple who remem­ber see­ing him out and about before his health declined. After he died, a trick­le of anec­dotes start­ed to emerge. Their mun­dane­ness some­how makes them all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. For exam­ple, Yan­kee mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry, “J.D. Salinger’s Last Sup­per,” about the writer’s fondness–right up to the very end–for the Sat­ur­day-night roast beef din­ners at the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in Hart­land, Ver­mont. “Typ­i­cal­ly, he’d arrive an hour and a half ahead of the first seating–often to be first in line,” reports Jim Collins. “He’d sit qui­et­ly, writ­ing in a spi­ral-bound note­book. Most peo­ple around him were unaware of who he was; the vol­un­teers work­ing the sup­per treat­ed him like any oth­er guest and pro­tect­ed his pri­va­cy.” Spi­ral-bound note­book, eh? Hmm.

Anoth­er anec­dote is from writer Nicholas Carr, who tells a sto­ry on his blog about a sur­prise encounter he had with Salinger when he was an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent at Dart­mouth Col­lege, which is locat­ed in Hanover, just up the val­ley from Cor­nish. Carr was work­ing behind the cir­cu­la­tion desk at the col­lege library one sum­mer when “a tall, slen­der, slight­ly stooped man” walked in. He remem­bers his boss whis­per­ing, “That’s J.D. Salinger”:

Holy crap, I thought. I just saw J.D. Salinger.

About ten min­utes lat­er Salinger sud­den­ly reap­peared at the desk, hold­ing a dol­lar bill. I went over to him, and he said he need­ed change for the Xerox machine. I took his dol­lar and gave him four quar­ters.

That’s my claim to fame: I gave J.D. Salinger change for a buck.

Pho­to­copies, eh? What was that old guy up to?

Isaac Asimov Imagines Learning in the Electronic Age … and Gets It Quite Right (1989)

in Literature, Online Courses, Sci Fi | April 16th, 2012

In times past, we’ve seen Arthur C. Clarke, the great sci-fi writer, gaze into the future and fore­see our real­i­ty in a most uncan­ny way. Just watch him pre­dict our dig­i­tal­ly-con­nect­ed world in 1964, and then PC com­put­ers, e‑banking and telecom­mut­ing in 1974.

Now it’s time to see whether Isaac Asi­mov, anoth­er sci-fi leg­end, pos­sessed the same pow­ers of pre­science. Above, we’re high­light­ing the sec­ond part of an inter­view taped in 1989. It fea­tures Asi­mov and a younger Bill Moy­ers talk­ing about edu­ca­tion and sci­en­tif­ic progress, and it does­n’t take long for Asi­mov to start describ­ing the rev­o­lu­tion in learn­ing we’re see­ing unfold today. Imag­ine a world where com­put­ers, inter­net con­nec­tions and web­sites let peo­ple learn when they want, wher­ev­er they want, and how they want. Sud­den­ly tech­nol­o­gy democ­ra­tizes edu­ca­tion and empow­ers peo­ple of all ages, and, before too long, “Every­one can have a teacher in the form of access to the gath­ered knowl­edge of the human species.” That’s the world we’re com­ing into, espe­cial­ly dur­ing recent months, thanks to Google, open­course­ware, new-fan­gled MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), the Khan Acad­e­my, and even sites like our own. (Have you seen our lists of 450 Free Cours­es? 300 Free eBooks? 150 Free Text­books? 400 Free Audio Books, etc?). Yes, 23 years ago, Asi­mov pret­ty much knew exact­ly where we would be today, and then some.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Paul McCartney Shoots New Music Video with Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp

in Film, Music | April 14th, 2012

Paul McCart­ney gave his new album, Kiss­es on the Bot­tom, a lit­tle plug last night when he pre­miered in L.A. a “self-direct­ed video” for his new song, ‘My Valen­tine’. Shot on a 35mm cam­era by Oscar-win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Wal­ly Pfis­ter (Memen­to, Incep­tion, etc.), the black & white video fea­tures Natal­ie Port­man and John­ny Depp “each trans­lat­ing the lyrics of the song into sign lan­guage…”  and John­ny play­ing some solos on the gui­tar. Sir Paul shot the two stars sep­a­rate­ly (watch below) before bring­ing them togeth­er into his final clip. McCart­ney’s web site has more details on the film.

Natal­ie Port­man

John­ny Depp

The Works of H.P. Lovecraft: Text, Audio and Now Graphic Novel

in Books, Sci Fi | April 13th, 2012

If you ask Stephen King, he’ll tell you that H.P. Love­craft was “the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s great­est prac­ti­tion­er of the clas­sic hor­ror tale.” And Joyce Car­ol Oates will read­i­ly admit that Love­craft had “an incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence on suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions of writ­ers of hor­ror fic­tion.” In these mod­ern times, you can revis­it Love­craft’s clas­sic hor­ror tales by down­load­ing his works in text or audio. (See below.) Or, you can revis­it his cos­mic hor­ror tales by pick­ing up The Love­craft Anthol­o­gy, a new graph­ic nov­el series that brings Love­craft’s writ­ings to “vivid and malev­o­lent life.” The video above gives you a pre­view of what the series has to offer. It fea­tures an ani­ma­tion of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” Love­craft’s famous pulp sto­ry from 1926.

Texts (from our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks)

• Books by Love­craft sort­ed by title — Web

Audio (from our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

The Col­lect­ed Pub­lic Domain Works of H. P. Love­craft – Free Stream