Animations of 6 Famous Thought Experiments

in Animation, Math, Physics, Video - Science | October 18th, 2011

The Open Uni­ver­si­ty strikes again. In June, they released The His­to­ry of Eng­lish, a series of wit­ty ani­mat­ed videos that cov­ered 1600 years of lin­guis­tic his­to­ry in ten min­utes. Now, they’re back with 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought, anoth­er ani­mat­ed sequence that high­lights six famous thought exper­i­ments. It all starts with Zeno’s ancient Para­dox of the Tor­toise and Achilles. (Watch above.) Then we head straight to the 20th cen­tu­ry, to five famous thought exper­i­ments in physics, math and com­put­er sci­ence.

The Grand­fa­ther Para­dox (time trav­el)

Chi­nese Room (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence)

Hilbert’s Infi­nite Hotel (the con­cept of infin­i­ty)

The Twin Para­dox (spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty)

Schrödinger’s Cat (quan­tum mechan­ics)

You can watch the full series on YouTube and iTunes.

Crossing El Camino del Rey, the Most Dangerous Hike in the World

in Random | October 17th, 2011

El Camini­to del Rey (The King’s Lit­tle Path), often abbre­vi­at­ed to El Camino del Rey, is a walk­way that winds its way along the walls of El Chor­ro, a gorge in south­ern Spain near the vil­lage of Álo­ra. It is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered one of the most dan­ger­ous hikes in the world. The con­struc­tion of the walk­way was fin­ished in 1905, and after King Alfon­so XIII crossed it in 1921, it became known by its cur­rent name. In recent decades, large parts of the con­crete rest­ing on steel rails have dete­ri­o­rat­ed so bad­ly that it has become a life-threat­en­ing endeav­or to tra­verse the camino. After sev­er­al fatal acci­dents, author­i­ties offi­cial­ly closed the path in 2000. But there are still dar­ing hik­ers who man­age to get around the bar­ri­ers and make their way across the gorge. The video above shows in impres­sive detail how dan­ger­ous the camino is.

If you feel an inner urge to walk the camino, there are two impor­tant things to keep in mind:

1. It real­ly is insane­ly dan­ger­ous. Mata­dor has some life-sav­ing tips if you want to trek the camino.
2. If you want to get the true camino expe­ri­ence, you have to hur­ry up. The walk­way will be restored for 9 mil­lion euros between 2011 and 2015.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: The Cheap Route has a first-per­son account and some fan­tas­tic pho­tos of a camino hike.

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.

John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Fairy Tale, “The False Grandmother,” in a Short Animated Film

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 17th, 2011

In 1956, Ita­lo Calvi­no, one of Italy’s finest post­war writ­ers, pub­lished Ital­ian Folk­tales, a series of 200 fairy tales based some­times loose­ly, some­times more strict­ly on sto­ries from a great folk tra­di­tion. When first pub­lished, The New York Times named Ital­ian Folk­tales one of the ten best books of the year, and, more than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, the sto­ries con­tin­ue to delight. Case in point: in 2007, John Tur­tur­ro, the star of numer­ous Coen broth­ers and Spike Lee films, began work­ing on Fiabe ital­iane, a play adapt­ed from Calvi­no’s col­lec­tion of fables. Last year, Tur­tur­ro’s play enjoyed a sold-out run in Turi­no.

The ani­mat­ed video above fea­tures Tur­tur­ro read­ing “The False Grand­moth­er,” Calvi­no’s rework­ing of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood. Kevin Ruelle illus­trat­ed the clip, which was pro­duced as part of Fly­p­me­di­a’s more exten­sive cov­er­age of Tur­tur­ro’s adap­ta­tion.

Calvi­no, who died far too young, would have cel­e­brat­ed his 88th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day.

Bonus: You can lis­ten to Jeanette Win­ter­son read Calvi­no’s short sto­ry, The Night, online here. The read­ing is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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:

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon

Invis­i­ble Cities Illus­trat­ed: Three Artists Paint Every City in Ita­lo Calvino’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser

in Film, Music | October 14th, 2011

In 1981, film pro­duc­er Bruce Rick­er had a chance encounter with direc­tor and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Chris­t­ian Black­wood on the streets of New York. Rick­er had just released a doc­u­men­tary on Kansas City jazz, called The Last of the Blue Dev­ils, and Black­wood told him that he too had done a lit­tle work on jazz. When Rick­er went to see the footage, he was stunned. The reels, he would lat­er say, were “just sit­ting there like the Dead Sea Scrolls of jazz.”

The “scrolls” were an inti­mate look into the life and music of Thelo­nious Monk, the leg­endary bebop pianist and com­pos­er. Black­wood and his broth­er, Michael, had received a com­mis­sion from West Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion in late 1967, and were grant­ed unprece­dent­ed access to Monk. They fol­lowed him around New York, Atlanta and Europe for six months. The result­ing ciné­ma vérité spe­cial aired only once, and was for­got­ten.

Excit­ed by what he saw, Rick­er sug­gest­ed to Black­wood that they use the footage as the nucle­us of a new doc­u­men­tary. They hoped to enlist Monk for the project, but the musi­cian was in fail­ing health and died ear­ly the next year. Even­tu­al­ly they brought Char­lotte Zwerin on board as direc­tor and Clint East­wood on as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er. New scenes were shot fea­tur­ing inter­views with musi­cians, friends and fam­i­ly, along with con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­ta­tions of Monk’s music by Bar­ry Har­ris and Tom­my Flana­gan. Thelo­nious Monk: Straight, No Chas­er was released in 1988 to rave reviews.

“The film’s late-60’s por­tions, which doc­u­ment a Euro­pean tour and also catch Monk play­ing in clubs and in record­ing ses­sions, are some of the most valu­able jazz sequences ever shot,” writes Stephen Hold­en in The New York Times. “Close­ups of Monk’s hands on the key­board reveal a tech­nique that was unusu­al­ly tense, spiky and aggres­sive. Oth­er scenes show him explain­ing his com­po­si­tions and chord struc­tures, giv­ing instruc­tions in terse, bare­ly intel­li­gi­ble growls that even his fel­low musi­cians found dif­fi­cult to inter­pret.”

Monk’s man­ner­isms tend­ed to block peo­ple from appre­ci­at­ing the ele­gance and sophis­ti­ca­tion of his com­po­si­tions. As Rob Van der Bliek writes in his intro­duc­tion to The Thelo­nious Monk Read­er, “Monk’s image–his on-stage pirou­ettes, pac­ing, danc­ing, flat-hand­ed play­ing, floun­der­ing foot­work, mum­bling speech, nod­ding off or lay­ing out, his goa­tee, glass­es, and hats–was very much a part of his allure, although com­bined with an idio­syn­crat­ic piano tech­nique it may have ini­tial­ly done more harm than good for his recep­tion by the crit­ics.”

By now, Monk’s place in the jazz pan­theon is secure. Thelo­nious Monk: Straight, No Chas­er is a fas­ci­nat­ing por­trait of a tru­ly orig­i­nal artist. The one-hour, 30-minute film is shown above, and can also be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via Metafil­ter

Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musician Featured in a 1965 Documentary

in Film, Literature, Poetry | October 14th, 2011

Look what the vin­tage video gods have deliv­ered today. Filmed in 1965, the black and white doc­u­men­tary Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen intro­duces view­ers to a young Leonard Cohen. Then only 30 years old (and look­ing a lit­tle like Dustin Hoff­man), Cohen had already estab­lished him­self as a poet and nov­el­ist. But his leg­endary career as a singer-song­writer was just bare­ly get­ting under­way. The 44 minute doc­u­men­tary all takes place in his home­town of Mon­tre­al, the city to which Cohen con­tin­u­al­ly returns “to renew his neu­rot­ic affil­i­a­tions” with fam­i­ly and old friends.

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you will also find Lian Lunson’s 2005 doc­u­men­tary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, a fas­ci­nat­ing ret­ro­spec­tive of Cohen’s life and work that fea­tures trib­ute per­for­mances by famous artists, includ­ing Beth Orton, Nick Cave, Martha and Rufus Wain­wright, and U2.

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!

Paul Simon, Then and Now: Celebrating His 70th Birthday

in Music | October 13th, 2011

“Time Hur­ries on,” sings Paul Simon in this ear­ly Simon and Gar­funkel per­for­mance, “and the leaves that are green turn to brown.” The clip is from a 1966 Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­gram, “Twien.”  The duo were per­form­ing songs from their sec­ond album, Sounds of Silence. “The Leaves That Are Green” is one you don’t hear much these days, per­haps because the song’s author has, like the leaves of Octo­ber, most cer­tain­ly changed.

Today is Simon’s 70th birth­day. He was born into a fam­i­ly of Jew­ish immi­grants on Octo­ber 13, 1941 in Newark, New Jer­sey. His father was a bassist and band­leader, and his moth­er, a school teacher, was also trained in music. The fam­i­ly soon moved to Queens, New York, where Simon would meet anoth­er kid in the neigh­bor­hood, Art Gar­funkel. The two shared a pas­sion for music, and before long Simon was writ­ing songs for them to sing around the neigh­bor­hood. They released their first record, “Hey, School­girl,” while still in high school.The song made it to num­ber 49 on the pop charts.

Over the next half cen­tu­ry, both with Gar­funkel and on his own, Simon would con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vent him­self, absorb­ing a wide range of influ­ences while hold­ing tight to a song­writer’s com­mit­ment to craft. The New York Times, in its pro­file of Simon, sums it up this way:

His music stays restrained, ever taste­ful. He sings gen­tly in his own metic­u­lous pro­duc­tions, and his songs can share radio for­mats with the most sooth­ing soft-rock. But the thread run­ning through Mr. Simon’s songs is estrange­ment. From “I Am a Rock” to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” to “You Can Call Me Al” to the cranky reflec­tions on his 2006 album “Sur­prise,” he has sung about being alien­at­ed, mis­placed, rest­less, dis­il­lu­sioned. Moments of solace or sat­is­fac­tion are far out­num­bered by mis­giv­ings and regrets. The mate­r­i­al com­forts that he rec­og­nizes are his–as a wealthy man, as a pop suc­cess, as an Amer­i­can in a wider world–don’t bring him peace of mind. Nei­ther does the finicky crafts­man­ship that has always marked his music.

You can hear that rest­less­ness and alien­ation in the fol­low­ing track from his new stu­dio album, So Beau­ti­ful or So What, where we find the 70-year-old play­ful­ly con­tem­plat­ing “The After­life”:

An Introduction to Cosmology by Sean Carroll

in Astronomy, Physics | October 13th, 2011

Note: Although you can no longer find these videos on YouTube, you can find them avail­able on this CERN web­site.

Sean Car­roll, a physics pro­fes­sor at Cal­tech, has a knack for mak­ing sci­ence pub­licly acces­si­ble. He writes reg­u­lar­ly for the blog Cos­mic Vari­ance, and you have per­haps seen him on the His­to­ry Chan­nel, Sci­ence Chan­nel, or The Col­bert Report. Yes­ter­day, he announced that five lec­tures he gave at CERN now appear online, and it all begins with an Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy, or the ori­gin and struc­ture of the uni­verse. Then come lec­tures on Dark Mat­ter, Dark Ener­gy, Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics and the Ear­ly Uni­verse, and Infla­tion and Beyond. The lec­tures (all nice­ly pack­aged togeth­er at Cos­mic Vari­ance) will appear in the Physics Sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online. You may also want to vis­it two relat­ed videos recent­ly fea­tured on OC:

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

The Nobel Prize: Saul Perl­mut­ter & the Accel­er­at­ing Expan­sion of the Uni­verse

Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

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:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

Sir Ian McKellen Reads Manual for Changing Tires in Dramatic Voice

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2011

Sir Ian McK­ellen shows why he has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award not once, but two times. The actor (Lord of the Rings, King Lear) reads a tire repair man­u­al in dra­mat­ic voice  … and, of course, pulls it off — shades of Peter Sell­ers per­form­ing The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an mode and Richard Drey­fuss giv­ing a dra­mat­ic read­ing of the iTunes End-user license agree­ment. And, oh, let us not for­get Christo­pher Walken’s hilar­i­ous read­ing of Lady Gaga’s Pok­er Face.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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!

Ian McK­ellen Stars in King Lear

Sir Ian McK­ellen Puts on a Daz­zling One-Man Shake­speare Show

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occupy Wall Street

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | October 12th, 2011

Joseph Stiglitz teach­es at the Colum­bia Busi­ness School and Columbi­a’s Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics and, of course, won the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics in 2001.

The mon­ey quote from his appear­ance had less to do with eco­nom­ics per se and more with democ­ra­cy: “We have too many reg­u­la­tions stop­ping democ­ra­cy, and not enough reg­u­la­tions stop­ping Wall Street from mis­be­hav­ing.” No bull­horns, are you seri­ous?

You prob­a­bly know Lawrence Lessig because of his work found­ing Cre­ative Com­mons and pro­mot­ing “Free Cul­ture.” (Watch his final speech on Free Cul­ture here.) Sev­er­al years ago, Lessig moved from Stan­ford to Har­vard, where he took up a new focus — gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion. That’s what he grap­ples with in his new book, Repub­lic, Lost and this relat­ed video. Giv­en Lessig’s focus on how cor­po­rate mon­ey cor­rupts our polit­i­cal sys­tem, it’s not sur­pris­ing that he would have some­thing to say about the poten­tial of the Wall Street protests.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occu­py Wall Street