It’s 5:46 A.M. and Paris Is Under Water

in Art, Film | October 3rd, 2011

Thanks to the cre­ative work of Olivi­er Cam­pagne & Vivien Balzi, you can see Paris look­ing a lit­tle like Venice does in the win­ter — mer­ci­ful­ly freed from crowds and often under water. For more great per­spec­tives on Paris and Venice, don’t miss:

Le Fla­neur: Time Lapse Video of Paris With­out the Peo­ple

Paris Under­ground

How Venice Works

Venezia in Sum­mer

H/T Roger Ebert

Jacques Derrida Deconstructs American Attitudes

in Philosophy | October 3rd, 2011

Jacques Der­ri­da, the founder of Decon­struc­tion, was some­thing of an aca­d­e­m­ic rock star dur­ing his day. He packed audi­to­ri­ums when­ev­er and wher­ev­er he spoke. Films were made about him. And a gen­er­a­tion of aca­d­e­mics churned out Der­ridean decon­struc­tions of lit­er­ary texts. All of this made Der­ri­da’s star rise ever high­er. But whether it did much good for Comp Lit, French and Eng­lish pro­grams across the US, that’s anoth­er sto­ry.

But we digress from the main point here. Our friend­ly French philoso­pher spent a fair amount of time teach­ing in the US and got acquaint­ed with Amer­i­can atti­tudes. Some­times, he says, we can be manip­u­la­tive and util­i­tar­i­an. What exact­ly do you mean Mr. Der­ri­da? Can you please elab­o­rate? Of course, he does above.

Note: If you aren’t quite clear on what decon­struc­tion is all about, you can watch two lec­tures devot­ed to the sub­ject (here and here) from Yale’s course on Lit­er­ary The­o­ry. Enti­tled “Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture,” this course, taught by Paul Fry, is list­ed in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Pro­vides Free Cliffs Notes

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Learn 40 Lan­guages (includ­ing French) for Free

Italy’s Youngest Led Head

in Music, Poetry | October 1st, 2011

If you liked Fri­day’s post, Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir, then you’ll have a lit­tle fun with this. A short­er ver­sion with sub­ti­tles appears here.

For more moments of cul­tur­al pre­co­cious­ness, don’t miss 3 year old Samuel Chelp­ka recit­ing Bil­ly Collins’ poem “Litany,” and 3 year old Jonathan chan­nel­ing the spir­it of Her­bert von Kara­jan while con­duct­ing the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th. H/T @MatthiasRascher

Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book, and we’ll keep point­ing you to free cul­tur­al good­ies dai­ly…

Salvador Dali Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (1958)

in Art, Television | September 29th, 2011

Before he became a fix­ture on 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own short-lived TV show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957–58), which let Amer­i­cans get an up-close and per­son­al view of some leg­endary fig­ures — Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, Adlai Steven­son, Hen­ry Kissinger, and Glo­ria Swan­son.

Then let’s also add Sal­vador Dali to the list. In 1958, Wal­lace tried to demys­ti­fy “the enig­ma that is Sal­vador Dali,” and it did­n’t go ter­ri­bly well. It turns out that sur­re­al­ist painters give sur­re­al answers to con­ven­tion­al inter­view ques­tions too. Pret­ty quick­ly, Wal­lace capit­u­lates and says, “I must con­fess, you lost me halfway through.” Hap­pi­ly for us, the video makes for some good view­ing more than 50 years lat­er.

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 Sal­vador Dali Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Sal­vador Dali Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

Six Ideas That Set the West Apart from the Rest (And Why It’s All Over Now Baby Blue)

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | September 28th, 2011

We’re tack­ling anoth­er big ques­tion today with the help of Har­vard eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son. And the ques­tion goes like this: Why has the West cre­at­ed so much pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty over the past sev­er­al cen­turies, when the rest of the world did not? For Fer­gu­son, the “great diver­gence” can be explained by six big ideas, or what he calls killer apps for the ben­e­fit of his technophile TED audi­ence:

1. Com­pe­ti­tion
2. The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion
3. Prop­er­ty Rights
4. Mod­ern Med­i­cine
5. The Con­sumer Soci­ety
6. Work Eth­ic

These apps, it turns out, are open source. Any­one can down­load and use them. And that’s pre­cise­ly what Asia has done. The great diver­gence is over (baby blue)…

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

in Physics | September 28th, 2011

In 2009, Richard Dawkins invit­ed Lawrence Krauss, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, to talk about some big enchi­la­da ques­tions. What is our cur­rent pic­ture of the uni­verse? When did the uni­verse begin? What came before it? How could some­thing come from noth­ing? And what will hap­pen to the uni­verse in the future?

Krauss takes us back to the foun­da­tion­al work of Ein­stein and Hub­ble, then moves us through impor­tant break­throughs in mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, ones that have helped us unrav­el some of these big ques­tions. Give Pro­fes­sor Krauss 53 min­utes, and he’ll give you the uni­verse … and a few jokes along the way.

This talk appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. And you can down­load many free Physics cours­es from our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

Stephen King Reads from His Upcoming Sequel to The Shining

in Books | September 27th, 2011

Late last week, Stephen King treat­ed an audi­ence at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty to a 10-minute read­ing from his upcom­ing book Dr. Sleep . It’s not just any oth­er book. It’s the sequel to The Shin­ing, his 1977 thriller that Stan­ley Kubrick fam­mous­ly adapt­ed to film. (Don’t miss Mak­ing the Shin­ing here.)

King first start­ed talk­ing about a sequel in 2009, and now we’re get­ting our first taste of what’s to come. At long last, you will know what hap­pened to Dan­ny Tor­rance.

The read­ing appears above, and King talks some more about the unfin­ished sequel below.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

How Paulo Coelho Started Pirating His Own Books (And Where You Can Find them)

in Books, e-books, Literature | September 27th, 2011

Get ready for it. This week, Knopf will release Paulo Coel­ho’s lat­est nov­el, Aleph. And we’re tak­ing bets on three ques­tions. How many copies will be legal­ly sold? (The Alchemist has sold more than 65 mil­lion copies.) How many copies will be pirat­ed and giv­en away? And to what extent will the cir­cu­la­tion of ille­gal copies actu­al­ly ben­e­fit legit sales?

In recent years, Coel­ho has become some­thing of a will­ing con­spir­a­tor in the pirat­ing of his own work. Some­times he links on his own blog to pirat­ed copies float­ing around the web. Oth­er times he makes the texts avail­able (in mul­ti­ple lan­guages) in a nice share­able wid­get.

Coel­ho explains how his adven­tures in self-pirat­ing got under­way in a Q&A appear­ing in yes­ter­day’s New York Times.

Q. You’ve also had suc­cess dis­trib­ut­ing your work free. You’re famous for post­ing pirat­ed ver­sion of your books online, a very unortho­dox move for an author.

A. I saw the first pirat­ed edi­tion of one of my books, so I said I’m going to post it online. There was a dif­fi­cult moment in Rus­sia; they didn’t have much paper. I put this first copy online and I sold, in the first year, 10,000 copies there. And in the sec­ond year it jumped to 100,000 copies. So I said, “It is work­ing.” Then I start­ed putting oth­er books online, know­ing that if peo­ple read a lit­tle bit and they like it, they are going to buy the book. My sales were grow­ing and grow­ing, and one day I was at a high-tech con­fer­ence, and I made it pub­lic.

Q. Weren’t you afraid of mak­ing your pub­lish­er angry?

A. I was afraid, of course. But it was too late. When I returned to my place, the first phone call was from my pub­lish­er in the U.S. She said, “We have a prob­lem.”

Q. You’re refer­ring to Jane Fried­man, who was then the very pow­er­ful chief exec­u­tive of Harper­Collins?

A. Yes, Jane. She’s tough. So I got this call from her, and I said, “Jane, what do you want me to do?” So she said, let’s do it offi­cial­ly, delib­er­ate­ly. Thanks to her my life in the U.S. changed.

The rest of the inter­view con­tin­ues here. And, in the mean­time, you can find sev­er­al Coel­ho books cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Resolution)

in Google, History, Religion | September 26th, 2011

Thanks to Google and the Israel Muse­um in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your brows­er and start tak­ing a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient bib­li­cal texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten between the third and first cen­turies BCE, and they con­sti­tute the old­est known pieces of the Hebrew Bible. Since 1965, they have been on dis­play in Jerusalem. But no mat­ter where you live, you can view five dig­i­tized Dead Sea Scrolls, each pho­tographed at a res­o­lu­tion of 1,200 megapix­els. That’s rough­ly 200 times greater than your aver­age cam­era.

To learn more about The Dead Sea Scrolls, watch this free lec­ture from The Great Cours­es: “Reveal­ing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World”  pre­sent­ed by Gary A. Rends­burg, Rut­gers. (Get more free lec­tures by The Great Cours­es here.)

And, to put all of this con­text, please vis­it this free course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty: Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) by Chris­tine Hayes. You will find it list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

via Offi­cial Google Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

The Great Dr. Fox Lecture: A Vintage Academic Hoax (1970)

in Psychology | September 26th, 2011

Back in 1970, three psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sors pulled off a hoax that dou­bled as med­ical research. They brought Dr. Myron L. Fox, “an author­i­ty on the appli­ca­tion of math­e­mat­ics to human behav­ior,” to a con­fer­ence near Lake Tahoe and let him talk about “Math­e­mat­i­cal Game The­o­ry as Applied to Physi­cian Edu­ca­tion.” Lit­tle did the audi­ence know that Fox was­n’t actu­al­ly a researcher or schol­ar. He was actu­al­ly an actor who had played parts in Hogan’s Heroes and Bat­man. And he was giv­en a gib­ber­ish-filled script to learn only the day before. Nonethe­less, the edu­ca­tors in the crowd ate up his mean­ing­less talk, and it allowed the researchers to draw the con­clu­sion that “style was more influ­en­tial than con­tent in pro­vid­ing learn­er sat­is­fac­tion.” A nice way of say­ing that jar­gon and cant can some­times take you a long way in the acad­e­my — in the human­i­ties and sci­ences alike. More back­sto­ry here. H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment on YouTube

Carl Gus­tav Jung Talks About Death

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion