This is Your Brain on Sex and Religion: Experiments in Neuroscience

in Psychology, Science | December 6th, 2011

If you attend­ed the recent Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science con­fer­ence, you had the chance to see some unprece­dent­ed 3D imag­ing of the brain — images that showed the exact order in which wom­en’s brain regions (80 in total) are acti­vat­ed in the sequence lead­ing to an orgasm. For Bar­ry Komis­aruk (pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty), this imag­ing isn’t gra­tu­itous. The whole point is to demys­ti­fy how the brain expe­ri­ences plea­sure, some­thing that could even­tu­al­ly inform our under­stand­ing of addic­tion and depres­sion. Komis­aruk said:

It’s a beau­ti­ful sys­tem in which to study the brain’s con­nec­tiv­i­ty. We expect that this movie [above], a dynam­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the grad­ual buildup of brain activ­i­ty to a cli­max, fol­lowed by res­o­lu­tion, will facil­i­tate our under­stand­ing of patho­log­i­cal con­di­tions such as anor­gas­mia by empha­siz­ing where in the brain the sequen­tial process breaks down.

Mean­while, back at the neu­ro­science ranch, researchers are also using imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to observe the human brain in anoth­er state, the state where peo­ple expe­ri­ence mys­ti­cal awak­en­ings dur­ing prayer and med­i­ta­tion or oth­er spir­i­tu­al epipha­nies. Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can took a fair­ly deep look at this cut­ting-edge field sev­er­al years ago (read the full piece here), and now NPR has pro­duced a mul­ti­me­dia glimpse into the evolv­ing sci­ence of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The pre­sen­ta­tion (click here or the image above) com­bines audio, video, arti­cles, book excerpts, etc. and delves into the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is God a delu­sion cre­at­ed by brain chem­istry, or is brain chem­istry a nec­es­sary con­duit for peo­ple to reach God?

If you want to learn more about the brain and neu­ro­science, don’t miss the cours­es list­ed in the Psychology/Neuroscience sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Time and The Guardian have more on the first sto­ry above here and here.

Malcolm McLaren: The Quest for Authentic Creativity

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs | December 5th, 2011

In ear­ly Octo­ber of 2009, Mal­colm McLaren was near­ing death but did­n’t know it yet. He showed up at the 2009 Hand­held Learn­ing con­fer­ence feel­ing fatigued, but man­aged to deliv­er a provoca­tive and heart­felt speech titled, “Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s the Txt Pis­tols,” in which he reflects on his life grow­ing up in post-World War II Eng­land and express­es dis­may over the rise of what he called “karaoke cul­ture.”

“All pop­u­lar cul­ture today,” said McLaren, “goes to great lengths to pro­mote the idea that it’s cool to be stu­pid.” He cham­pi­oned instead the “messy process of cre­ativ­i­ty” in which strug­gle, fail­ure and the acqui­si­tion of skill and knowl­edge are val­ued above instant fame. You can watch the com­plete speech above. A few days after it was giv­en, McLaren went into the hos­pi­tal and learned that he had can­cer. He died six months lat­er, on April 8, 2010. The next day Hand­held Learn­ing founder Gra­ham Brown-Mar­tin  wrote:

The talk from Mal­colm at the Hand­held Learn­ing Con­fer­ence 2009 will, I believe, stand the test of time. The speech does­n’t elab­o­rate about the peri­od of the Sex Pis­tols, New York Dolls, Vivi­enne West­wood, his impact on design, fash­ion and music cul­ture and many oth­er impor­tant achieve­ments of Mal­colm’s life that will be report­ed in obit­u­ar­ies over the com­ing days. Instead and in keep­ing with the theme of the con­fer­ence, Mal­colm dis­cuss­es in his inim­itable style–his life, learn­ing, authen­tic­i­ty vs karaoke cul­ture and what we gain from the expe­ri­ence of fail­ure. Iron­i­cal­ly, fail­ure was some­thing Mal­colm nev­er achieved. The talk was any­thing but ordi­nary, it polarised our audi­ence and instant­ly trend­ed glob­al­ly on Twit­ter but what else would you expect?

via TED/Best of the Web

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in a 26 Minute Film

in Film | December 3rd, 2011

The great French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard, turns 81 years old today. And Woody Allen, the leg­endary comedic film­mak­er, turned 76 just two days ago. So what could be more per­fect than to serve up Godard­’s 1986 short film Meetin’ WA? What you get is Godard, one of the dri­ving forces behind La Nou­velle Vague, in con­ver­sa­tion with Woody Allen. Godard­’s trade­mark approach to film­mak­ing, the expect­ed dose of Woody Allen neu­roses — they’re all there, packed into 26 min­utes.

For great films (clas­sics, indies, noir, west­erns, etc.) don’t miss 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!

Philip Glass, Lou Reed Speak At Occupy Lincoln Center

in Current Affairs, Music | December 2nd, 2011

Last night, two Amer­i­can icons lent sup­port to the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment, speak­ing at a protest held out­side of Lin­coln Cen­ter in New York City.  After a per­for­mance of Satya­gra­ha at the Met, Philip Glass spoke to demon­stra­tors. Accord­ing to Alex Ross, the music crit­ic for the New York­er, Glass recit­ed the clos­ing lines of Satya­gra­ha (see around 3:00 minute mark in the video above), which come from the Bha­gavad Gita:

When right­eous­ness with­ers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take vis­i­ble shape, and move, a man among men, for the pro­tec­tion of good, thrust­ing back evil and set­ting virtue on her seat again.

He repeat­ed the say­ing sev­er­al times, and the “human micro­phone” ampli­fied the mes­sage for him.

Lou Reed was also in atten­dance and helped some­one crawl over a police bar­ri­cade at one point, then said: “I was born in Brook­lyn, and I’ve nev­er been more ashamed than to see the bar­ri­cades tonight. The police are our army. I want to be friends with them. And I wan­na occu­py Wall Street. I sup­port it.” A not-so-clear audio clip appears below:

via Gothamist and The Rest is Noise

More Occu­py Videos:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occu­py Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occu­py Wall Street

David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash at Occu­py Wall Street; Echoes of Wood­stock

The Denali Experiment: A Test of Human Limits

in Life | December 2nd, 2011

How does the say­ing go? It’s the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion, that counts?

The short film above, The Denali Exper­i­ment, doc­u­ments the gnarly expe­di­tion of some rock star skiers. Their goal? To sum­mit Denali, the high­est moun­tain peak in North Amer­i­ca, and then ski down its steep slopes. The beau­ti­ful­ly-shot film by Jim­my Chen focus­es almost entire­ly on the jour­ney up the moun­tain, a big 20,320 feet. For the skiers, the high alti­tude moun­taineer­ing was the hard part, the test of human lim­its. Not the trip down. Sit back and enjoy the jour­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Extreme Pho­tog­ra­phy: Shoot­ing Big Climbs at Yosemite

Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs: Browse Them or Own Them

in Art, Film | December 2nd, 2011

In 1945, a young Stan­ley Kubrick grad­u­at­ed from high school and almost imme­di­ate­ly start­ed work­ing for LOOK Mag­a­zine as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, becom­ing the youngest staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the magazine’s his­to­ry. It’s dur­ing this peri­od that Kubrick began to mas­ter his visu­al craft and pro­duced some stun­ning images. Now, more than 65 years lat­er, you can pur­chase … or sim­ply browse through … Kubrick­’s pho­to­graph­ic work for the first time.

Work­ing with cura­tors from the Muse­um of the City of New York, VandM.com has select­ed 25 images to show­case (out of a larg­er col­lec­tion of 10,000 images). Pho­tos include prize­fight­er Wal­ter Carti­er in the cor­ner between rounds; the ele­gant actress Bet­sy Von Fursten­berg read­ing in a win­dow; street scenes from New York City; and a young woman walk­ing down a steep set of stairs while car­ry­ing a pile of books, all rather pre­car­i­ous­ly.

You can browse the full col­lec­tion here, or vis­it anoth­er set of Kubrick images, all tak­en in Chica­go, here.

Relat­ed Kubrick Con­tent:

Mak­ing The Shin­ing

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange: Mal­colm McDow­ell Looks Back

A Brief Visual Introduction to Saul Bass’ Celebrated Title Designs

in Art, Film | December 1st, 2011

Title sequences begin and end every movie. They can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery.” And they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way, says the web site For­get the Films, Watch the Titles.

When it comes to title design, no one did it bet­ter than Saul Bass (1920–1996). Dur­ing his long career in Hol­ly­wood, Bass designed sequences for Otto Pre­minger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (full movie here), Scors­ese’s Good­fel­las and Cape Fear, Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus, and sev­er­al films by Alfred Hitch­cock. And that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face.

Cre­at­ed by Ian Albinson, the mon­tage above offers a brief visu­al his­to­ry of Bass’s most cel­e­brat­ed work, stitch­ing togeth­er designs from 25 films. (Find the full film list here.)  If this whets your appetite, you’ll want to check out the new­ly-pub­lished book Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design and this web site ded­i­cat­ed to Bass’s title design. And don’t miss our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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!

To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the BBC

in Math, Physics | November 29th, 2011

Infin­i­ty. It’s a puz­zling con­cept. Is it real, or a math­e­mat­i­cal fic­tion?

Aris­to­tle believed infin­i­ty could only be poten­tial, nev­er actu­al. To speak of an actu­al infin­i­ty, he argued, is to fall into log­i­cal con­tra­dic­tion: “The infi­nite turns out to be the con­trary of what it is said to be,” Aris­to­tle wrote in the Physics. “It is not what has noth­ing out­side it that is infi­nite, but what always has some­thing out­side it.”

Aris­totle’s log­ic rest­ed on com­mon sense: the belief that the whole is always greater than the part. But in the late 19th Cen­tu­ry, Georg Can­tor and Richard Dedekind turned com­mon sense upside down by demon­strat­ing that the part can be equal to the whole. Can­tor went on to show that there are many orders of infinity–indeed, an infin­i­ty of infini­ties.

But what rela­tion does the Pla­ton­ic realm of pure math­e­mat­ics have to the phys­i­cal world? Physics is an empir­i­cal sci­ence, but that has­n’t stopped the­o­rists from imag­in­ing the mind-bog­gling con­se­quences of an infi­nite uni­verse. To Infin­i­ty and Beyond, a one-hour BBC Hori­zon spe­cial fea­tur­ing inter­views with lead­ing math­e­mati­cians and physi­cists, is an enter­tain­ing explo­ration of a sub­ject which, by def­i­n­i­tion, you won’t be able to wrap your mind around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge: 4 Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cians & Their Drift to Insan­i­ty

Futur­ist Arthur C. Clarke on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Stanford Launching 14 Free Online Courses in January/February: Enroll Today

in Online Courses, Stanford | November 28th, 2011

Two weeks ago, we men­tioned that Stan­ford will be rolling out sev­en new cours­es in its exper­i­ment with online learn­ing. Fast for­ward to today, and yet anoth­er sev­en cours­es have been added to the win­ter line­up, bring­ing the total to 14.

Imme­di­ate­ly below, you’ll find the lat­est addi­tions. All of these cours­es fea­ture inter­ac­tive video clips; short quizzes that pro­vide instant feed­back; the abil­i­ty to pose high val­ue ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; and feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance in the class.

Cours­es start in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. Enroll today for free. And, if some­thing does­n’t pique your inter­est below, don’t miss our big list of 400 Free Online Cours­es.

New­ly added:

Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship
Mak­ing Green Build­ings
Anato­my
Infor­ma­tion The­o­ry
Design and Analy­sis of Algo­rithms I
The Lean Launch­pad
Cryp­tog­ra­phy

Orig­i­nal­ly men­tioned:

Com­put­er Sci­ence 101
Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing for SaaS
Human Com­put­er Intere­ac­tion
Nat­ur­al Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing
Game The­o­ry
Prob­a­bilis­tic Graph­i­cal Mod­els
Machine Learn­ing

More Free Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Yale Rolls Out 10 New Cours­es – All Free

MIT Intro­duces Com­plete Cours­es to Open­Course­Ware Project

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisenstein & Other Russian Greats

in Film | November 28th, 2011

Dur­ing the past two years, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky have qui­et­ly come online, giv­ing view­ers the chance to encounter the Sovi­et direc­tor’s great body of work. If you’re not famil­iar with Tarkovsky, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Ing­mar Bergman con­sid­ered him his favorite direc­tor, and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa once said, “Every cut from his films is a mar­velous image in itself.” The list of avail­able films now includes:

• Ivan’s Child­hood — Web — Buy DVD (1962)
• Solaris — Part 1 — Part 2 — Buy DVD (1972)
• The Mir­ror  — Web — Buy DVD (1975)
• Stalk­er — Web — Buy DVD (1979)

(Note: If you access the films via YouTube, be sure to click “CC” at the bot­tom of the videos to access the sub­ti­tles.)

You can thank Mos­film, the old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, if not Europe, for bring­ing these films to the web. If you head to Mos­film’s YouTube Chan­nel, you can watch more than 50 Russ­ian clas­sics, includ­ing Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 adap­ta­tion of Tol­stoy’s War & Peace, a film that Roger Ebert called “the defin­i­tive epic of all time.” In a con­ces­sion to West­ern cap­i­tal­ism, each film is pre­ced­ed by a short com­mer­cial, prov­ing yet again that there’s no such thing as a tru­ly free lunch.

Final­ly, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Movies Online, which fea­tures six films by Sergei Eisen­stein, Rus­si­a’s pio­neer­ing film­mak­er and film the­o­rist: Strike, Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Romance Sen­ti­men­tale, Octo­ber: Ten Days That Shook the World, Old and New and Alexan­der Nevsky. They’re all there.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive