Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space

in Video - Science | January 11th, 2012

We’ve shown you What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space and NASA’s 7 Minute Tour of the Earth from Space (in HD). Now comes new high res­o­lu­tion footage from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion that gives you a dra­mat­ic view of coast­lines and coun­tries around the world. Pro­duced by Space Rip, this clip will give you an extra­or­di­nary view of Eng­land, France, Italy, Egypt, Alge­ria, Tunisia, Greece, the island of Crete, Tai­wan, South Korea, Japan, the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argenti­na, and Cuba. Find this video housed in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. If you love space trav­el, astron­o­my, physics, neu­ro­science or tech­nol­o­gy, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to spend time rum­mag­ing through the col­lec­tion.

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Underground Cartoonist R. Crumb Introduces Us to His Rollicking Album Cover Designs

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | January 11th, 2012

Music and com­ic book art are the two pas­sions of Robert Crumb’s cre­ative life. In this video from W.W. Nor­ton, Crumb talks about his obses­sive inter­est in the old-time blues, folk and coun­try music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neu­ro­log­i­cal,” he says. “Some quirky types of ner­vous sys­tems are just attract­ed to that old music.”

As one of the pio­neers of the under­ground comix move­ment in the late 1960s, Crum­b’s work often relat­ed in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’ ” com­ic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, asked Crumb to design the cov­er of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.

Since then, Crumb has designed hun­dreds of album cov­ers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Com­plete Record Cov­er Col­lec­tion, brings togeth­er all the cov­ers and many relat­ed works. The book con­tains por­traits of famous artists like Robert John­son and Woody Guthrie, along with works fea­tur­ing obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also cov­ers and posters made for Crum­b’s own band, the Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders.

Crumb is a ban­jo and man­dolin play­er. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band. This video was direct­ed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appear­ances by him­self and his part­ner Eden Brow­er. The video fea­tures the fol­low­ing songs:

1. “Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
2. “Some of these Days” by Cab Cal­loway (1930)
3. “Lind­berg Hop” by the Mem­phis Jug Band (1928)
4. “Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Fam­i­ly (1930)
5. “Chasin’ Rain­bows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1976)
6. “Singing in the Bath­tub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1978)
7. “So Sor­ry Dear” by Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band, fea­tur­ing R. Crumb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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

in Animation, Art, Film | January 9th, 2012

In his 1997 book of draw­ings and verse, The Melan­choly Death of Oys­ter Boy & Oth­er Sto­ries, Tim Bur­ton imag­ines a bizarre menagerie of mis­fits with names like Tox­ic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cush­ion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes.

“Inspired by such child­hood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Bur­ton’s slim vol­ume exquis­ite­ly con­veys the pain of an ado­les­cent out­sider. Like his movies, the work man­ages to be both child­like and sophis­ti­cat­ed, blend­ing the inno­cent with the macabre.”

One of those ado­les­cent out­siders is Stain Boy, a strange kind of super­hero:

He can’t fly around tall build­ings,
or out­run a speed­ing train,
the only tal­ent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Some­times I know it both­ers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one abil­i­ty,
his dry clean­ing bill is sky-high.

In 2000, Bur­ton extend­ed Stain Boy’s adven­tures (and com­pressed his name into one word) with The World of Stain­boy, a series of short ani­ma­tions com­mis­sioned for the Inter­net by Shockwave.com. “For some sto­ries you have to wait for the right medi­um,” Bur­ton said at the time. “I think (the Inter­net’s) the per­fect forum to tell a sad lit­tle sto­ry like this one. Stain­boy is a char­ac­ter that does­n’t do much. He’s just per­fect for four-minute ani­ma­tions.”

Bur­ton cre­at­ed a series of sketch­es, water­col­ors and pas­tel-accent­ed gray-on-gray wash­es and brought them, along with a script and sto­ry­boards, to Flinch Stu­dio for trans­la­tion into Macro­me­dia Flash ani­ma­tion. Twen­ty-six episodes were planned, but only six were com­plet­ed. “Stain­boy was an exper­i­ment in devel­op­ing rev­enue streams for the Web,” writes Ali­son McMa­han in The Films of Tim Bur­ton: Ani­mat­ing Live Action in Con­tem­po­rary Hol­ly­wood, “but it did not suc­ceed, at least not finan­cial­ly.”

The Stain­boy char­ac­ter was res­ur­rect­ed briefly in late 2010, when Bur­ton invit­ed fans to com­pose a new Stain­boy adven­ture in brief install­ments via Twit­ter. Bur­ton pieced togeth­er a sto­ry using the best tweets. (You can read the final result here.) Mean­while, the orig­i­nal Web ani­ma­tions have con­tin­ued to attract a fol­low­ing. You can watch the com­plete six-part series below in HD. As you will see, some episodes intro­duce new char­ac­ters — Stare Girl, Tox­ic Boy, Bowl­ing Ball Head and the rest:

Episode 1: Stare Girl

Episode 2: Tox­ic Boy

Episode 3: Bowl­ing Ball Head

Episode 4: Robot Boy

Episode 5: Match­stick Girl

Episode 6: The Ori­gin of Stain­boy

You can find the Stain­boy videos on our list of Free Online Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Harry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape (Circa 1920)

in History | January 9th, 2012

Har­ry Hou­di­ni (né Erik Weisz) emi­grat­ed from Hun­gary to the Unit­ed States as a young­ster, set­tling first in Wis­con­sin, then lat­er in New York City. Cap­ti­vat­ed by mag­ic from an ear­ly age, Hou­di­ni (1874–1926) began per­form­ing small-time mag­ic shows and exper­i­ment­ing with escape acts, even­tu­al­ly hon­ing his abil­i­ty to escape from hand­cuffs. Then he nev­er looked back:

Arriv­ing in a new town, Hou­di­ni would claim the abil­i­ty to escape from any hand­cuffs pro­vid­ed by the local police. His easy escapes pro­vid­ed excel­lent pub­lic­i­ty for his shows. Hou­di­ni offered $100 to any­one who pro­vid­ed hand­cuffs from which he could not escape, but he nev­er had to pay. Through his increas­ing­ly com­plex escapes and his shrewd use of pub­lic­i­ty, Hou­di­ni became a head­lin­er on the vaude­ville cir­cuit, play­ing in cities across the coun­try. Not sat­is­fied with that low lev­el of fame, how­ev­er, Hou­di­ni decid­ed to gam­ble by tak­ing his act to Europe.

When he returned from Europe, Hou­di­ni per­formed increas­ing­ly high-pro­file stunts — e.g., free­ing him­self from chains after jump­ing into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, escap­ing from a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square, break­ing out of a prison cell that held the assas­sin of Pres­i­dent James Garfield. Today, we have Hou­di­ni per­form­ing a more straight­for­ward escape — from a sim­ple chair and rope. Below, in an image appear­ing in Ladies’ Home Jour­nal (1918), Hou­di­ni tells you a lit­tle about how he made his great rope escape. He offers more details here. The video above was shot cir­ca 1920.

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:

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Inven­tor of a Wear­able Para­chute Takes a Fly­ing Leap Off of the Eif­fel Tow­er in 1912, and It Doesn’t End Well

Dave Brubeck Gets an Uplifting Musical Surprise from a Young Violinist in Moscow (1997)

in Music | January 9th, 2012

Decem­ber 2, 1997. Exact­ly ten years after his first vis­it to Moscow, jazz leg­end Dave Brubeck returned to per­form before the fac­ul­ty and stu­dents of the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. Dur­ing his con­cert, an audi­ence mem­ber asked him to impro­vise on the old Russ­ian sea shan­ty “Ej, Uhnem.” About two min­utes into the impro­vi­sa­tion, a young vio­lin­ist rose from his seat and start­ed to play along. You just have to love Dav­e’s sur­prised look at 2:09.

This young man turned out to be a stu­dent at the con­ser­va­to­ry. His name is Denis Kolobov and he is now a vio­lin­ist of inter­na­tion­al renown. Denis must have mus­tered up all of his courage to cut into the per­for­mance of one of the great jazz pianists. But the day before, French jazz vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li had died in Paris and Denis decid­ed to hon­or Grap­pel­li’s mem­o­ry in this way. What a great idea!

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show

in Film, Television | January 8th, 2012

Ear­li­er this week, we brought you Audrey Hepburn’s Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953). Next up, we have Katharine Hep­burn appear­ing on the very 70s set of The Dick Cavett Show. In case you’re won­der­ing, the two Hep­burns were only dis­tant­ly relat­ed. Accord­ing to Salon, they shared one com­mon ances­tor, James Hep­burn, Earl of Both­well, the third hus­band of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Any­way, here’s the back­sto­ry on the Cavett inter­view that aired on Sep­tem­ber 14, 1973:

Hep­burn rarely grant­ed inter­views, and when she did, she want­ed them under her terms. When she agreed to appear on the Dick Cavett Show they went in the stu­dio a day ear­ly so she could get the feel of things. They end­ed up doing the inter­view right then and there, with­out an audi­ence.

Watch a clip of the actu­al inter­view here.

In the past, we have fea­tured Cavet­t’s inter­views with Ing­mar Bergman, Woody Allen, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and George Har­ri­son. And don’t for­get this feud between Nor­man Mail­er and Gore Vidal. Through Ama­zon, you can also pur­chase high­lights of con­ver­sa­tions with Mar­lon Bran­do, Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Grou­cho Marx, Kirk Dou­glas, Bette Davis, and oth­ers. h/t Peter Kauf­man

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Watch A Brief History of Time, Errol Morris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawking

in Astronomy, Film, Physics | January 7th, 2012

Bril­liant but unmo­ti­vat­ed, Stephen Hawk­ing was a 21-year-old PhD stu­dent at Cam­bridge when he first noticed some­thing was wrong. He was falling down a lot, and drop­ping things. He went into the hos­pi­tal for tests, and learned he had amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis, or ALS. The doc­tors told him he would grad­u­al­ly lose con­trol of every mus­cle in his body.

“My dreams at that time were rather dis­turbed,” Hawk­ing said. “Before my con­di­tion had been diag­nosed, I had been very bored with life. There had not seemed to be any­thing worth doing. But short­ly after I came out of hos­pi­tal, I dreamt that I was going to be exe­cut­ed. I sud­den­ly real­ized that there were a lot of worth­while things I could do if I were reprieved.”

The doc­tors gave the young man two and a half years to live. That was in ear­ly 1963. Over the next half cen­tu­ry, Hawk­ing defied all odds and went on to become one of the most cel­e­brat­ed sci­en­tists of the era, mak­ing major con­tri­bu­tions to quan­tum cos­mol­o­gy and the under­stand­ing of black holes. Along the way, the wheel­chair-bound Hawk­ing became a cul­tur­al icon, a sym­bol of dis­em­bod­ied intel­lect and indomitable spir­it.

This com­ing Sun­day, 49 years after his grim diag­no­sis, Hawk­ing will turn 70. A sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence in his hon­or got under­way today at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge’s Cen­tre for The­o­ret­i­cal Cos­mol­o­gy, and will cul­mi­nate on Sun­day with a pub­lic sym­po­sium, “The State of the Uni­verse,” fea­tur­ing some of the world’s great­est astronomers and physi­cists, includ­ing Mar­tin Rees, Kip Thorne and Saul Perl­mut­ter. You can watch live stream­ing video of the events at the offi­cial web­site.

To help cel­e­brate, we present Errol Mor­ris’s 1992 film of A Brief His­to­ry of Time (above), Hawk­ing’s best­selling book.  Mor­ris weaves biog­ra­phy in with the sci­ence, inter­view­ing mem­bers of Hawk­ing’s family–his moth­er, sis­ter and aunt–along with friends and col­leagues, includ­ing Roger Pen­rose, Den­nis Scia­ma and John Archibald Wheel­er.

A Brief His­to­ry of Time was Mor­ris’s first film as a direc­tor-for-hire (he was recruit­ed by Steven Spiel­berg for Amblin Enter­tain­ment), which cre­at­ed some dif­fi­cul­ties, but Mor­ris was pleased with the out­come. He lat­er said, “It’s actu­al­ly one of the most beau­ti­ful films I ever shot.” The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ing and the Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­er’s Tro­phy at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val.

In 1992 Mor­ris told the New York Times Mag­a­zine that A Brief His­to­ry of Time was “less cere­bral and more mov­ing” than any­thing he had worked on before. “This feel­ing of time, of aging, of mor­tal­i­ty com­bined with this search for the most basic and deep ques­tions about the world around us and our­selves,” Mor­ris said, “is pret­ty per­sua­sive stuff.” Find it list­ed in our Free Movies Online col­lec­tion, with­in the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion.

Remembering Eve Arnold, Pioneering Photojournalist

in Art, Media | January 6th, 2012

Eve Arnold, one of the pio­neer­ing women of pho­to­jour­nal­ism, died Wednes­day at the age of 99.

Wide­ly known for her pho­tographs of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and oth­er celebri­ties, Arnold just as often pho­tographed the poor and the unknown. “I don’t see any­body as either ordi­nary or extra­or­di­nary,” she told the BBC in 1990. “I see them sim­ply as peo­ple in front of my lens.”

Born Eve Cohen in Philadel­phia on April 21, 1912, she was one of nine chil­dren of Ukrain­ian immi­grant par­ents. When she was 28 years old she gave up plans to become a doc­tor after a boyfriend gave her a cam­era. She stud­ied pho­tog­ra­phy for a brief time under Alex­ey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research before going out on her own and find­ing her style.

“I did­n’t work in a stu­dio, I did­n’t light any­thing,” Arnold would lat­er say. “I found a way of work­ing which pleased me because I did­n’t have to fright­en peo­ple with heavy equip­ment. It was that lit­tle black box and me.”

A series of pho­tographs Arnold took of fash­ion shows in Harlem attract­ed the atten­tion of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, one of the founders of Mag­num Pho­tos, and she was invit­ed to con­tribute to the agency. In 1957 Arnold became the first woman pho­tog­ra­ph­er to join Mag­num as a full mem­ber. She worked often for Life and lat­er, after mov­ing to Eng­land in 1961, for The Sun­day Times Mag­a­zine, trav­el­ing to places like Afghanistan, South Africa, Mon­go­lia and Cuba while always main­tain­ing a per­son­al point of view. In her 1976 book, The Unre­touched Woman, Arnold wrote:

Themes recur again and again in my work. I have been poor and I want­ed to doc­u­ment pover­ty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics and I want­ed to know how it affect­ed our lives; I am a woman and I want­ed to know about women.

Arnold pub­lished 15 books in her life­time, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award-win­ning In Chi­na. In 2003 she was award­ed the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elis­a­beth II, whom she had once pho­tographed. In the 2007 book Mag­num Mag­num, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Elliott Erwitt summed things up:

Eve Arnold’s lega­cy is as var­ied as it is fas­ci­nat­ing. It is hard to fath­om how one per­son­’s work can be so diverse. I cov­ers the hum­blest to the most exalt­ed, the mean­est to the kind­est, and every­thing in between. The sub­jects are all there in Eve Arnold’s pho­tographs and they are treat­ed with intel­li­gence, con­sid­er­a­tion and sym­pa­thy. Most impor­tant is Eve’s abil­i­ty to visu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate her con­cerns direct­ly, with­out fan­fare or pre­tense, in the best human­is­tic tra­di­tion.

Eve Arnold on the set of Beck­ett, 1963, by Robert Penn.                                       (© Copy­right Eve Arnold/Magnum Pho­tos)

Ancient Greek Punishments: The Retro Video Game

in Video Games | January 5th, 2012

When you have a sense of humor and some free time, this is what you can come up with: Let’s Play Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ment!

This amus­ing lit­tle cre­ation lets users play vin­tage-style video games based on Ancient Greek mythol­o­gy. You’re asked to tog­gle the “G” and “H” keys as rapid­ly as you can … until you real­ize some­thing: the games, like the pun­ish­ments met­ed out in Greek mythol­o­gy, have no end. They go on for eter­ni­ty.

The Theoi Greek Mythol­o­gy inter­net ency­clo­pe­dia will tell you more about the suf­fer­ing of Sisy­phus, Prometheus and oth­ers.

Ready for more retro-cul­tur­al video games? Here you go:

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

The Long Lost Video Game of Paris Review Edi­tor George Plimp­ton?

via Metafil­ter

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

in Audio Books, Radio | January 4th, 2012

Per­mit us to stay on our recent sci-fi tan­gent just a tad bit longer.…

Between 1951 and 1953, Isaac Asi­mov pub­lished three books that formed the now leg­endary Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. Many con­sid­ered it a mas­ter­work in sci­ence fic­tion, and that view became offi­cial doc­trine in 1966 when the tril­o­gy received a spe­cial Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, notably beat­ing out Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. (Don’t miss the vin­tage Tolkien doc­u­men­tary we fea­tured yes­ter­day.)

Even­tu­al­ly, the BBC decid­ed to adapt Asi­mov’s tril­o­gy to the radio, dra­ma­tiz­ing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Years lat­er, you can buy the radio dra­ma on iTunes for $9.99. Or your can stream it on Spo­ti­fy (above) or via the Inter­net Archive below.

More Free Sci-Fi & Fan­ta­sy:

Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis for Free

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries