In Search of Haruki Murakami: A Documentary Introduction to Japan’s Great Postmodernist Novelist

in Books, Literature | February 15th, 2012

Haru­ki Muraka­mi holds the titles of both the most pop­u­lar nov­el­ist in Japan and the most pop­u­lar Japan­ese nov­el­ist in the wider world. After pub­lish­ing Nor­we­gian Wood in 1987, a book often called “the Japan­ese Catch­er in the Rye,” Murakami’s noto­ri­ety explod­ed to such an extent that he felt forced out of his home­land, a coun­try whose tra­di­tion­al ways and — to his mind — con­formist mind­set nev­er sat right with him in the first place. Though he returned to Japan in the after­math of the Kobe earth­quake and the Tokyo under­ground gas attacks, he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cul­tures — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished Japan­ese lit­er­ary norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage in which peo­ple read nov­els.

I myself once spent a month doing noth­ing but read­ing Murakami’s work, and this BBC doc­u­men­tary Haru­ki Muraka­mi: In Search of this Elu­sive Writer makes a valiant attempt to cap­ture what about it could raise such a com­pul­sion. Rupert Edwards’ cam­era fol­lows vet­er­an pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob through Japan, from the mid­night Tokyo of After Hours to the snowed-in Hokkai­do of A Wild Sheep Chase, in a quest to find arti­facts of the supreme­ly famous yet media-shy novelist’s imag­i­nary world. Built around inter­views with fans and trans­la­tors but thick with such Murakami­ana as laid-back jazz stan­dards, grim school hall­ways, six­ties pop hits, women’s ears, vinyl records, marathon run­ners, and talk­ing cats, the broad­cast strives less to explain Murakami’s sub­stance than to sim­ply reflect it. If you find your curios­i­ty piqued by all the fuss over 1Q84, Murakami’s lat­est, you might watch it as some­thing of an aes­thet­ic primer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

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

Enroll in MIT’s First Free Certificate Course Today

in Education, MIT | February 14th, 2012

Note: You can now find through the fol­low­ing link a com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs), many offer­ing cer­tifi­cates.

In the wan­ing days of 2011, MIT announced MITx, a new e‑learning ini­tia­tive that will offer cer­tifi­cates (find a list of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es here) to stu­dents demon­strat­ing mas­tery of free MIT cours­es. The uni­ver­si­ty set a spring launch date for MITx, and they have now opened for enroll­ment the very first course. Taught by Anant Agar­w­al, Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics is an online adap­tion of MIT’s first under­grad­u­ate ana­log design course. Accord­ing the MITx web site, this pro­to­type course will run — free of charge — for stu­dents world­wide from March 5, 2012 through June 8, 2012. And stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their mas­tery of the mate­r­i­al and earn a cer­tifi­cate from MITx. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the course, or sim­ply enroll in Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics, today. Just click here.

Many oth­er engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

UPDATE:  MIT pro­fes­sor David Pritchard and his edu­ca­tion research group, RELATE are offer­ing an online MIT-lev­el course in Intro­duc­to­ry New­ton­ian Mechan­ics. The course is free and does not require a text­book.  Enroll­ment has just opened (it starts with an option­al pre­req­ui­sites test), and the course runs from March 1 — May 14, 2012.  Indi­vid­u­als who com­plete the course will receive a let­ter of com­ple­tion. This MIT course is unre­lat­ed to the MITx project men­tioned right above.

via Wired Cam­pus

William S. Burroughs on Saturday Night Live, 1981

in Literature, Television | February 14th, 2012

Let’s rewind the video­tape to Novem­ber 7, 1981. That’s when Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs made his first appear­ance on Amer­i­can nation­al tele­vi­sion. Appro­pri­ate­ly, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. Actress Lau­ren Hut­ton makes the intro­duc­tion, set­ting up Bur­roughs to read from Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964). You can watch the action above, which hap­pens to be the open­ing scene of Bur­roughs, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookn­er. The com­plete film is list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Movies Online (look under Doc­u­men­taries), along with a 1997 BBC doc­u­men­tary on the author. For more good video ded­i­cat­ed to Bur­roughs, don’t miss the fol­low­ing:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

“The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Read by William S. Bur­roughs and Shot by Gus Van Sant

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs’ The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

via @BrainPicker

Peter Sellers Reads The Beatles’ “She Loves You” in 4 Different Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cockney, Irish & Upper Crust

in Film, Music | February 13th, 2012

Back in the late 1950s, George Mar­tin record­ed two albums with the late, great Peter Sell­ers. When Mar­tin start­ed work­ing with the Bea­t­les a few years lat­er, he put the actor in touch with the musi­cians, and they became fast friends. This rela­tion­ship paved the way for some good com­e­dy. As you might recall, Sell­ers made a cameo appear­ance on “The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney” in 1964, and read A Hard Day’s Night in a way that com­i­cal­ly recalls Lau­rence Olivier’s 1955 per­for­mance in Richard III. (Watch the spoof here.) And then, also dur­ing the mid 60s, Sell­ers record­ed a com­ic read­ing of She Loves You — once in the voice of Dr. Strangelove (above), again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents (both right below), and final­ly with an Irish twist (the last item). The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion.

Cock­ney

Upper Crust

Irish

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig

Famous Literary Characters Visualized with Police Composite Sketch Software

in Art, Books, Literature | February 10th, 2012

In his 1955 clas­sic, Loli­ta, Vladimir Nabokov described the facial fea­tures of his scan­dalous pro­tag­o­nist, Hum­bert Hum­bert, in small bits. When tak­en togeth­er, here’s what you get:

Gloomy good looks… Clean-cut jaw, mus­cu­lar hand, deep sonorous voice… broad shoul­ders … I was, and still am, despite mes mal­heurs, an excep­tion­al­ly hand­some male; slow-mov­ing, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seduc­tive cast of demeanor. Excep­tion­al viril­i­ty often reflects in the subject’s dis­playable fea­tures a sullen and con­gest­ed some­thing that per­tains to what he has to con­ceal. And this was my case… But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chest­ed Hum­bert Hum­bert, with thick black eye­brows… A cesspool­ful of rot­ting mon­sters behind his slow boy­ish smile… aging ape eyes… Humbert’s face might twitch with neu­ral­gia.

In a rather bril­liant move, Bri­an Joseph Davis has run these descrip­tions through law enforce­ment com­pos­ite sketch soft­ware and brought Hum­bert Hum­bert almost to life. (See above.) And he has done the same for a cast of oth­er lit­er­ary char­ac­ters on his Tum­blr, called The Com­pos­ites. Oth­er char­ac­ters get­ting the perp treat­ment include Emma Bovary (Gus­tave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary), Edward Rochester (Char­lotte Bron­të’s Jane Eyre), and Kei­th Tal­ent (Mar­tin Amis’ Lon­don Fields), among oth­ers. Find them all here. h/t Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov on Loli­ta: Just Anoth­er Great Love Sto­ry?

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Watch Breaking the Code, About the Life & Times of Alan Turing (1996)

in Current Affairs, Film, Math, Politics | February 10th, 2012

Updat­ed on Decem­ber 24, 2013: Yes­ter­day the British gov­ern­ment brought a sad chap­ter to a close when it final­ly issued a posthu­mous par­don to Alan Tur­ing, who was con­vict­ed in 1952 of break­ing laws that crim­i­nal­ized homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The post you see below was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary, 2012, when the ques­tion of Tur­ing being par­doned was still up for debate. The film fea­tured above is still very much worth your while.

This week the British gov­ern­ment final­ly par­doned Alan Tur­ing. One of the great­est math­e­mati­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Tur­ing laid the foun­da­tions for com­put­er sci­ence and played a key role in break­ing the Nazi Enig­ma code dur­ing World War II. In 1952 he was con­vict­ed of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. He killed him­self two years lat­er, after being chem­i­cal­ly cas­trat­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

On Mon­day, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Tom McNal­ly told the House of Lords that the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron stood by the deci­sion of ear­li­er gov­ern­ments to deny a par­don, not­ing that the pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter, Gor­don Brown, had already issued an “unequiv­o­cal posthu­mous apol­o­gy” to Tur­ing. McNal­ly was quot­ed  in the Guardian:

A posthu­mous par­don was not con­sid­ered appro­pri­ate as Alan Tur­ing was prop­er­ly con­vict­ed of what at the time was a crim­i­nal offense. He would have known that his offense was against the law and that he would be pros­e­cut­ed. It is trag­ic that Alan Tur­ing was con­vict­ed of an offense which now seems both cru­el and absurd–particularly poignant giv­en his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort. How­ev­er, the law at the time required a pros­e­cu­tion and, as such, long-stand­ing pol­i­cy has been to accept that such con­vic­tions took place and, rather than try­ing to alter the his­tor­i­cal con­text and to put right what can­not be put right, ensure instead that we nev­er again return to those times.

The deci­sion came as a dis­ap­point­ment to thou­sands of peo­ple around the world who had peti­tioned for a for­mal par­don dur­ing the cen­te­nary year of Tur­ing’s birth. The Guardian also quot­ed an email sent by Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cian Den­nis Hejhal to a British col­league:

i see that the House of Lords reject­ed the par­don Feb 6 on what are for­mal grounds.

if law is X on date D, and you know­ing­ly break law X on date D, then you can­not be par­doned (no mat­ter how wrong or flawed law X is).

the real rea­son is OBVIOUS. they do not want thou­sands of old men say­ing par­don us too.

Efforts to obtain a par­don for Tur­ing are con­tin­u­ing. British cit­i­zens and UK res­i­dents can still sign the peti­tion.

To learn more about Tur­ing’s life, you can watch the 1996 BBC film Break­ing the Code (above, in its entire­ty), fea­tur­ing Derek Jaco­bi as Tur­ing and Nobel Prize-win­ning play­wright Harold Pin­ter as the mys­te­ri­ous “Man from the Min­istry.” Direct­ed by Her­bert Wise, the film is based on a 1986 play by Hugh White­more, which in turn was based on Andrew Hodge’s 1983 book Alan Tur­ing: The Enig­ma.

Break­ing the Code moves back and forth between two time frames and two very dif­fer­ent codes: one mil­i­tary, the oth­er social. The film runs 91 min­utes, and has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

14 Years of US Weather in 33 Minutes, Set to Beethoven

in Random | February 9th, 2012

There’s con­den­sa­tion in the air. You can feel it.

This video packs 14 years of Unit­ed States weath­er (1997 — 2011) into 33 min­utes, pre­sent­ing a total of 120,900 indi­vid­ual frames, each spaced one hour apart. And they’re all set to Beethoven’s Piano Con­cer­to No. 5 in E flat Major. If you want to get right to the dra­ma, we rec­om­mend jump­ing to the cli­mac­tic 27th minute. H/T Devour.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Chilean Earth­quake Waves Shown in Ani­ma­tion

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

Neil Young on the Travesty of MP3s

in Music, Technology | February 8th, 2012

Neil Young made head­lines last week when he appeared at the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “D: Dive Into Media” con­fer­ence and voiced his dis­ap­proval of the way music is being heard these days. “We live in a dig­i­tal age,” Young said, “and unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s degrad­ing our music, not improv­ing it.”

Young is deeply dis­sat­is­fied with the sound qual­i­ty of com­pressed MP3 dig­i­tal files, which he said car­ry only five per­cent of the data from the orig­i­nal vinyl or mas­ter record­ings. “It’s not that dig­i­tal is bad or infe­ri­or,” he told the Jour­nal’s Walt Moss­berg and Peter Kaf­ka. “It’s that the way it’s being used is not suf­fi­cient to trans­fer the depth of the art.”

The full 32-minute inter­view is now avail­able online, and can be seen above. Through­out the dis­cus­sion, Young’s com­mit­ment to his cause is clear. “My goal,” he said, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Film, Literature | February 7th, 2012

Today is the 200th birth­day of Charles Dick­ens. He was born in Portsmouth, Eng­land on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1812, the sec­ond of eight chil­dren. When he was 12 years old his father was sent to debtors’ prison, along with most of his fam­i­ly, and Charles went to live with a friend of the fam­i­ly, an impov­er­ished old lady. He was forced to quit school and work in a black­ing fac­to­ry, where he past­ed labels on jars of shoe pol­ish.

Dick­ens nev­er for­got those ear­ly trau­mas. He incor­po­rat­ed his expe­ri­ences and obser­va­tions of social injus­tice into his works, includ­ing David Cop­per­field, Oliv­er Twist and A Christ­mas Car­ol. (Find free nov­els below.) He was the most pop­u­lar writer of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, a vir­tu­al rock star in the days before record­ed music and movies. His sto­ries, pub­lished seri­al­ly in mag­a­zines, were eager­ly await­ed by the pub­lic. Most have remained in print ever since.

The Dick­ens bicen­te­nary is being cel­e­brat­ed with spe­cial events around the world, includ­ing a wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny this morn­ing at Poets’ Cor­ner in West­min­ster Abbey, where actor and film­mak­er Ralph Fiennes, author Claire Toma­lin, and two of Dick­en­s’s descen­dants are sched­uled to give read­ings. For a list­ing of events today and through­out the year, go to Dickens2012.org. Also take a look at the short ret­ro­spec­tive of Dick­ens-inspired movies (above) from the British Film Insti­tute.

To help cel­e­brate, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the best Dick­ens mate­r­i­al from across the Web:

Films (see our com­plete list of Free Movies):

• Oliv­er Twist: Anoth­er clas­sic by David Lean, this 1948 film stars John Howard Davies as Oliv­er and Alec Guin­ness as Fagin. In 1999 it was ranked 46th on the BFI’s list of the top 100 British films of all time.
• A Tale of Two Cities: The 1958 film by Ralph Thomas, star­ring Dirk Bog­a­rde as Syd­ney Car­ton and Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette. The film was shot in France’s Loire Val­ley, with sev­er­al thou­sand U.S. sol­diers, post­ed in near­by Orleans, cast as extras.
• A Christ­mas Car­ol: George C. Scott gives an excel­lent per­for­mance as Ebenez­er Scrooge in this crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 1984 film direct­ed by Clive Don­ner. It pre­miered in Amer­i­ca on CBS tele­vi­sion, and was released the­atri­cal­ly in Great Britain.
• David Cop­per­field: A 2000 U.S.-Irish tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion star­ring Hugh Dan­cy as David Cop­per­field, Michael Richards as Wilkins Micaw­ber and Sal­ly Field as Bet­sey Trot­wood.
• The Pick­wick Papers: A 1952 film, adapt­ed and direct­ed by Noel Lan­g­ley and star­ring James Hayter as Samuel Pick­wick.

eBooks (see our com­plete list of Free eBooks)

• A Christ­mas Car­ol – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats — Kin­dle
• A Tale of Two Cities – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Bleak House – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• David Cop­per­field – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Great Expec­ta­tions – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Hard Times – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Mys­tery of Edwin Drood – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Oliv­er Twist – Down­load Mul­ti­ple For­mats

Audio Books (see our com­plete list of Free Audio Books)

• A Christ­mas Car­ol – Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• A Tale of Two Cities — Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• A Col­lec­tion of Christ­mas Sto­ries — Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Bleak House – Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• David Cop­per­field – Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Great Expec­ta­tions – Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Hard Times – Mul­ti­ple For­mats
• Oliv­er Twist – Mul­ti­ple For­mats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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

in Stanford | February 7th, 2012

What is a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion? And how can it help you live a more authen­tic and pur­pose­ful life? They are time­ly and time­less ques­tions that get answered by The Art of Liv­ing, a team-taught course pre­sent­ed to Stan­ford fresh­men. The first lec­ture (above) address­es these ques­tions head on. And the remain­der of the course (17 videos) puts the ini­tial think­ing into prac­tice, using great works of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy to explore what it means to live a well-lived life. Socrates, Pla­to, Shake­speare, Kierkegaard, Niet­zsche, and Toni Mor­ri­son all guide the way. Taught by Lanier Ander­son, Ken­neth Tay­lor and Joshua Landy, the Stan­ford course puts you in a posi­tion to address “fun­da­men­tal and endur­ing ques­tions about what it means to be human.” Whether you work in busi­ness, sci­ence or the arts, you will get some­thing big out of the class.

You can find The Art of Liv­ing in its entire­ty here. Or find the course list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy Sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.