Jack Nicholson Puts His Star Power Behind “Green” Cars, 1978

in Film, Science, Technology | September 16th, 2011

Long before any­one start­ed talk­ing about “green” or “sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” Jack Nichol­son put his mon­ey and star pow­er behind a new alter­na­tive ener­gy — solar-pow­ered hydro­gen. The year was 1978, and solar hydro­gen, a lim­it­less resource, promised to low­er ener­gy costs and pol­lu­tion lev­els, all at once. Fast for­ward 30+ years, and we know one thing: hydro­gen Chevys nev­er saw the light of day … until 2007.

This clip has been added to our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons, where you’ll find great artists and thinkers speak­ing in their own words, most­ly on video. The col­lec­tion includes footage of Tol­stoy and Twain and, of course, more con­tem­po­rary fig­ures.

Get more cul­tur­al nuggets dai­ly by fol­low­ing us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

Richard Dawkins Introduces His New Illustrated Book, The Magic of Reality

in Books, K-12, Science | September 16th, 2011

We told you about the book ear­li­er this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on Octo­ber 4th, The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty will be unlike any book writ­ten by Richard Dawkins before. It is illus­trat­ed for starters, and large­ly geared toward young and old read­ers alike. Per­fect, he says, for any­one 12 and up. When it comes to the struc­ture and gist of the book, Dawkins does a pret­ty good job of explain­ing things. So let’s let the video roll…

Note: If you’re will­ing to tweet about the book, you can view the first 24 pages of The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Dawkins on the Awe of Life & Sci­ence

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth His­to­ry in C Major”

The Sounds That Made Pop

in Music | September 15th, 2011

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the good folks at The Word assem­bled 40 Nois­es That Built Pop, a col­lec­tion of dis­tinc­tive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eye­brows to raise.” Some were orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in quite cal­cu­lat­ed ways. Oth­ers were hap­py acci­dents. Either way, the­ses sounds are now part of the pop tra­di­tion. We have high­light­ed four sounds that speak to us. But you should real­ly dive into and enjoy The Word’s col­lec­tion that was clear­ly put togeth­er with lov­ing care.

The Pow­er Chord from The Kinks: You Real­ly Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essen­tial build­ing block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at sub­stan­tial vol­ume on gui­tar and dis­tort­ed to taste. It’s also the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of the pok­er face; with just the two notes, it’s nei­ther a sun­ny-sound­ing major chord nor a gloomy minor… With­out the pow­er chord entire gen­res of met­al sim­ply would­n’t exist.”

Vinyl Scratch from Her­bie Han­cock: Rock­it (1983)
“Any DJ cue­ing up a record through one ear of a pair of head­phones will have heard the sound of scratch­ing, but it was­n’t until the ear­ly days of hip hop that it was incor­po­rat­ed into musi­cal per­for­mance… Grand­mas­ter Flash, Afri­ka Bam­baataa and Kool Herc became the pio­neers of “turntab­lism”, while Grand Mix­er DXT’s work on Rock­it pro­pelled the sound into the main­stream and trans­formed the DJ into an unlike­ly front­man.”

Hand­clap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a per­cus­sive sound, [the hand­clap has] been used by every­one from fla­men­co dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true call­ing. Lay­ered on top of the snare drum to empha­sise the sec­ond and fourth beats of the bar, its for­mi­da­ble “crack” can be heard through­out dis­co and funk, and has since been employed by any­one wish­ing to hint at a par­ty atmos­phere…”

Gui­tar Feed­back from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A clas­sic case of rock music tak­ing an unde­sir­able noise and mould­ing it to suit its own pur­pos­es. The rea­son for feed­back is sim­ple: the gui­tar pick­up “hears” itself being blast­ed out of a speak­er cab­i­net, process­es the sound and pass­es it to the speak­er: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more lib­er­ties were tak­en with feed­back; while there’s an unin­ten­tion­al burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Bea­t­les, the out­ro to The Who’s My Gen­er­a­tion uses the sound more cre­ative­ly.”

H/T Metafil­ter

And, on a total­ly unre­lat­ed note: Sun Ra and The Blues Project do Bat­man & Robin songs. Cour­tesy of the WFMU Blog Way­back Machine.

24 Hours of Reality: Learn About Our Climate Crisis in Real Time

in Science, Video - Science | September 14th, 2011

Two sci­en­tif­ic fields find them­selves under attack in the Unit­ed States. Evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy and cli­ma­tol­ogy. No mat­ter what the sci­ence shows, no mat­ter how great the evi­dence, evan­gel­i­cals dis­miss the whole idea of evo­lu­tion, and our free mar­ket dog­ma­tists, oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that “the busi­ness of Amer­i­ca is busi­ness,” reject con­clu­sions accept­ed by 98% of cli­mate sci­en­tists — that human activ­i­ties are warm­ing the plan­et. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to cli­mate change, we put dog­ma before sci­ence at our own per­il. And that’s why The Real­i­ty Cli­mate Project, led by Al Gore, is host­ing today and tomor­row an online pro­gram called 24 Hours of Real­i­ty. Here’s what it’s all about:

24 Pre­sen­ters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Lan­guages. 1 Mes­sage. 24 Hours of Real­i­ty is a world­wide event to broad­cast the real­i­ty of the cli­mate cri­sis. It will con­sist of a new mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion cre­at­ed by Al Gore and deliv­ered once per hour for 24 hours, rep­re­sent­ing every time zone around the globe. Each hour peo­ple liv­ing with the real­i­ty of cli­mate change will con­nect the dots between recent extreme weath­er events — includ­ing floods, droughts and storms — and the man­made pol­lu­tion that is chang­ing our cli­mate. We will offer a round-the-clock, round-the-globe snap­shot of the cli­mate cri­sis in real time. The deniers may have mil­lions of dol­lars to spend, but we have a pow­er­ful advan­tage. We have real­i­ty.

Click here to find the loca­tion — or loca­tions — where you would like to watch a pre­sen­ta­tion.

Atlas Shrugged Released as an iPad App

in iPad, Literature | September 14th, 2011

William F. Buck­ley famous­ly said that he flogged him­self to get through Atlas Shrugged, and now you can too in grand style. This week, Pen­guin released Ayn Rand’s polit­i­cal­ly-influ­en­tial nov­el as an iPad app. It will run you $14.99, but it brings togeth­er “the clas­sic, unabridged text and a trea­sury of rarely-seen archival mate­ri­als,” includ­ing orig­i­nal man­u­script pages, video of Rand’s talks, audio lec­tures elu­ci­dat­ing the book, a pho­to gallery, and the rest. And, oh hap­py day, the app lets you share quotes from Atlas Shrugged on Face­book and Twit­ter too.

If Atlas Shrugged isn’t your cup of tea, if you’re look­ing for a dif­fer­ent kind of med­i­ta­tion on free­dom, then Pen­guin might have some­thing else for you — the bible of the counter cul­ture, Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road, is now avail­able as an “ampli­fied” iPad app as well.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for a free angle here, you can always down­load these nov­els as free audio­books if you start a no-strings-attached free tri­al with Audible.com.

H/T Media Bistro

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

Ayn Rand Talks Athe­ism with Phil Don­ahue

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Tchaikovsky Puppet in Timelapse Film

in Animation, Music | September 12th, 2011

Lat­er this year, Bar­ry JC Purves will debut a pup­pet ani­ma­tion film that inter­prets the life and work of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the great Russ­ian com­pos­er. You can’t watch any final footage quite yet. But you can enjoy a time­lapse video that brings you inside the actu­al ani­ma­tion process. Here’s a quick descrip­tion of what you’re see­ing, as writ­ten by Joe Clarke, the camera/lighting man on the film.

Whilst work­ing on the film I shot this series of time-laps­es with the help of stu­dents. Instead of just leav­ing the cam­era to click away at set inter­vals, we man­u­al­ly took a frame in synch with the frames Bar­ry was tak­ing as he ani­mat­ed, show­ing the pup­pet mov­ing at his intend­ed 25fps, almost!

You can find some excel­lent still images of the Tchaikovsky pup­pet on Clarke’s web­site here. And don’t miss the actu­al voice of Tchaikovsky Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der cir­ca 1890 here.

via Neatora­ma

10 Free Lectures by “The Great Courses/Teaching Company” (in a Sea of Free Courses)

in Online Courses | September 12th, 2011

Note: The free lec­tures by The Great Cours­es have been tak­en offline. But no wor­ries, you can find over 33,000 hours of free lec­tures from top uni­ver­si­ties in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. They’ll keep you busy for years to come.

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!

Andy Warhol Quits Painting, Manages The Velvet Underground (1965)

in Art | September 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, Andy Warhol became an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty when he pro­duced his icon­ic Pop Art works — 32 Camp­bel­l’s Soup Cans, the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Dip­tych, Green Coca Cola Bot­tles and all of the rest. The provoca­tive artist had achieved more than 15 min­utes of fame — he coined that phrase too — and it was time for some­thing new.

In ’65, Warhol took a break from paint­ing, immersed him­self in film­mak­ing and mul­ti­me­dia projects, then threw his influ­ence behind the up-and-com­ing NYC band, The Vel­vet Under­ground. He became the band’s man­ag­er and “pro­duced” their first album, which meant design­ing the album cov­er and giv­ing the band mem­bers (Lou Reed, John Cale, Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, Mau­reen Tuck­er and Nico) the free­dom to make what­ev­er album they pleased. (Lou Reed has more on that here.) As Bri­an Eno lat­er put it, the album, The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico “only sold 10,000 copies, but every­one who bought it formed a band.” It was that influ­en­tial.

The clip above comes from the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters series, Andy Warhol — A Doc­u­men­tary Film and tells you more about Warhol’s patron­age of VU.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Andy Warhol Eats a Burg­er, and We Watch … and Watch

Sweet Jane: Then and Now

Spenser and Milton (Free Course)

in | September 9th, 2011

Taught by William Flesch at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, Spenser and Mil­ton are the two great­est non-dra­mat­ic Eng­lish poets of the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies, and they even rival Shake­speare.  Shake­speare read (and adopt­ed) Spenser; Mil­ton read and used Spenser as a way to think about poet­ic, aes­thet­ic, reli­gious and polit­i­cal issues in a non-Shake­speare­an way.  This course cov­ers all of Spenser’s great alle­gor­i­cal poem The Faerie Queene, and all of Mil­ton’s major poet­ry, includ­ing Par­adise Lost and Par­adise Regained. Any com­plete edi­tions of Spenser and Mil­ton will suf­fice.

1) Spenser: Book I of the Faerie Queene and the Spenser­ian stan­za: Audio

2) Alle­go­ry and char­ac­ter in Spenser: Audio

3) More on alle­go­ry and char­ac­ter, inner and out­er, with the exam­ples of Orgoglio and of Des­payre in Book I: Audio

4) Spenser: Book II: Spenser and cer­tain­ty.  Guy­on’s prig­gish­ness: Audio

5) Book II: Tem­per­ance and self-restraint.  The plea­sures of self-restraint.  Mirth and Mam­mon: Audio

6) Book II: The Bow­er of Blisse and the Love­ly Lay sung there: Audio

7) Book III: Why do Guy­on and Brit­o­mart (Tem­per­ance and Chasti­ty) fight?: Audio

8) Book III: Brit­o­mart and alle­go­ry: Audio

9) Book III: Alle­go­ry and human indi­vid­u­al­i­ty: Audio

10) Book III: Amoret, Belphoebe and what the House of Busir­ane is for: Audio

11) What it’s like to live in the Land of Faery; the Gar­den of Ado­nis: Audio

12) Mat­ter and Form in the Gar­den of Ado­nis: Audio

13) Book IV: Love and Friend­ship: Audio

14) Book IV: The Friend as Sec­ond Self: Audio

15) Book IV: Scu­d­amor at the Tem­ple of Venus: Audio

16) Book V: Vari­eties of Jus­tice: Audio

17) Books V and VI: The rela­tion of Jus­tice to Cour­tesy: Audio

18) Vari­ety and Uni­for­mi­ty in Books V and VI: Audio

19) Book VI as pas­toral: Audio

20) Last, best class on the Faerie Queene: Scopophil­ia and nar­ra­tive: Audio

21) Mil­ton: Lyci­das: Audio

22) Con­trasts and Debates in Mil­ton: Audio

23) Lyci­das and Comus: Audio

24) Comus, rape, and free­dom: Audio

25) Par­adise Lost and free­dom: Audio

26) Par­adise Lost: The mind is its own place.  The Lady from Comus and Satan: Audio

27) Par­adise Lost as anti-alle­gor­i­cal poem.  Invo­ca­tion to Book 3: Audio

28) Par­adise Lost: Who gets to judge God’s ways?: Audio

29) Par­adise Lost: Warn­ings and fail­ures to warn: Audio

30) Par­adise Lost: Prayer and Invo­ca­tion: Audio

31) Dreams, alle­gories, and oth­er minds in Mil­ton: Audio

32) Moral typolo­gies in Par­adise Lost: Audio

33) How humans think things through in Mil­ton: Audio

34) Temp­ta­tion in Par­adise Lost, Are­opagit­i­ca and Par­adise Regained: Audio

35) Last class: Sam­son and his blind­ness.  Clos­et dra­ma: Audio

Back to School: Free Resources for Lifelong Learners Everywhere

in Audio Books, e-books, Film, Online Courses | September 9th, 2011

With Labor Day behind us, it’s offi­cial­ly time to head back to school. That applies not just to kids, but to you. No mat­ter what your age, no mat­ter where you live, no mat­ter what your pri­or lev­el of edu­ca­tion, you can con­tin­ue deep­en­ing your knowl­edge in areas old and new. And it has nev­er been eas­i­er. All you need is a com­put­er or smart phone, an inter­net con­nec­tion, some free time, and our free edu­ca­tion­al media col­lec­tions. They’re avail­able 24/7 and con­stant­ly updat­ed:

Free Online Cours­es: Right now, you can down­load free cours­es (some in video, some in audio) cre­at­ed by some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties — Stan­ford, Oxford, Yale, Har­vard, UC Berke­ley, MIT and oth­ers. The cours­es cov­er pret­ty much every sub­ject — from phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry, to physics, com­put­er sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and psy­chol­o­gy. The col­lec­tion fea­tures about 400 cours­es in total. And while you can’t take these cours­es for cred­it, the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment offered by these lec­tures is end­less.

Free Text­books: Anoth­er tool for the life­long learn­er. This col­lec­tion brings togeth­er rough­ly 150 free text­books authored by pro­fes­sors (and some high school teach­ers) across the globe. The col­lec­tion will par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit those inter­est­ed in deep­en­ing their knowl­edge in eco­nom­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, physics and biol­o­gy.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Ours is an increas­ing­ly glob­al­ized world, and it cer­tain­ly pays to know more than one lan­guage. With the free audio lessons list­ed here, you can learn the basics of Span­ish, French and Ital­ian (the lan­guages tra­di­tion­al­ly taught in Amer­i­can schools). Or you can start bon­ing up on Man­darin, Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and oth­er lan­guages spo­ken by the new world pow­ers. Tak­en togeth­er, you can Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free.

Free Audio Books: This free col­lec­tion gives you the abil­i­ty to down­load audio ver­sions of impor­tant lit­er­ary works. Dur­ing your down­time, you can lis­ten to short sto­ries by Isaac Asi­mov, Ray­mond Carv­er, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick. Or you can set­tle into longer works by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Friedrich Niet­zsche and James Joyce.

Free eBooks: Once again, it’s free lit­er­ary works. But this time you can down­load e‑texts to your com­put­er or dig­i­tal read­er. Franz Kaf­ka, George Orwell, Gertrude Stein, Edgar Allan Poe, Mar­cel Proust and Kurt Von­negut. They’re all on the list. And so too are The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume series of endur­ing works.

Great Sci­ence Videos: This list pulls togeth­er some of our favorite sci­ence videos on the web. It fea­tures about 125 videos, cov­er­ing astron­o­my & space trav­el, physics, psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science, reli­gion, tech­nol­o­gy and beyond.

Intel­li­gent YouTube Sites: Have you ever want­ed to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube? This list will give you a start. It fea­tures over 100 YouTube chan­nels that deliv­er high qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. Along sim­i­lar lines, you may want to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent Video Sites. Same con­cept but applied to sites on the web.

Cul­tur­al Icons: If you’ve ever want­ed to see great thinkers, artists and writ­ers speak­ing on video in their own words, this list is for you. It has Borges and Bowie, Coltrane and Cop­po­la, Ayn Rand and Noam Chom­sky, Tol­stoy and Thomas Edi­son, among oth­ers. 275 cul­tur­al icons in total.

Free Movies Online: What bet­ter way to get a cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion than to watch some free cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces, includ­ing 15 films with Char­lie Chap­lin, 22 ear­ly films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, and a num­ber of Sovi­et clas­sics by Andrei Tarkovsky. The list of 400+ films goes on. And so does your cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion.…

Get more cul­tur­al nuggets dai­ly by fol­low­ing us on Face­book and Twit­ter.