50 Famous Scientists & Academics Speak About God: Part II

in Religion, Science, Video - Science | August 15th, 2011

Last month, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing many Nobel prize win­ners, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. And boy did it gen­er­ate some debate. (Watch the video and read the com­ments here.) Now comes Part II, which fea­tures George Lakoff, Richard Dawkins, Simon Schaf­fer, Patri­cia Church­land, and Michio Kaku, among oth­ers. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) You can find this video, along with the first video in the series, in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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Bed Peace Revisits John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Vietnam Protests: Watch the Documentary Online

in Film, History | August 13th, 2011

Briefly not­ed: Yoko Ono has post­ed on YouTube a 70 minute doc­u­men­tary that revis­its John and Yoko’s famous 1969 Bed-Ins, which amount­ed to a peace­ful protest against the Viet­nam War. The film has been added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Below, you can find Yoko’s let­ter to view­ers and a sum­ma­ry of the film.

Dear Friends,

In 1969, John and I were so naïve to think that doing the Bed-In would help change the world.
Well, it might have. But at the time, we did­n’t know.

It was good that we filmed it, though.
The film is pow­er­ful now.
What we said then could have been said now.

In fact, there are things that we said then in the film, which may give some encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion to the activists of today. Good luck to us all.

Let’s remem­ber WAR IS OVER if we want it.
It’s up to us, and nobody else.
John would have want­ed to say that.

Love, yoko

Yoko Ono Lennon
Lon­don, UK
August 2011

Film Syn­op­sis

1969 was the year that John & Yoko inten­si­fied their long run­ning cam­paign for World Peace. They approached the task with the same entre­pre­neur­ial exper­tise as an adver­tis­ing agency sell­ing a brand of soap pow­der to the mass­es. John & Yoko’s prod­uct how­ev­er was PEACE, not soft soap, and they were deter­mined to use any slo­gan, event and gim­mick in order to per­suade the World to buy it.

BED PEACE (direct­ed by Yoko & John and filmed by Nic Know­land) is a doc­u­ment of the Mon­tre­al events and fea­tures John & Yoko in con­ver­sa­tion with, amongst oth­ers, The World Press, satirist Al Capp, activist Dick Gre­go­ry, come­di­an Tom­my Smoth­ers, pro­test­ers at Berke­ley’s Peo­ple’s Park, Rab­bi Abra­ham L. Fein­berg, quilt­mak­er Chris­tine Kemp, psy­chol­o­gists Tim­o­thy Leary & Rose­mary Leary, CFOX DJs Charles P. Rod­ney Chan­dler & Roger Scott, pro­duc­er André Per­ry, jour­nal­ist Ritchie York, DJ & Pro­mot­er Mur­ray The K, film­mak­er Jonas Mekas, pub­li­cist Derek Tay­lor & per­son­al assis­tant Antho­ny Faw­cett.

Young Terry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Animation

in Animation, Art, Comedy, Film | August 12th, 2011

Put aside 14 min­utes and Ter­ry Gilliam, the leg­endary Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor, will show you how to make your own cutout ani­ma­tions. Gilliam start­ed out his career as an ani­ma­tor, then moved to Eng­land and joined up with Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. For years, he worked as the group’s ani­ma­tor, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es.

If you’ve nev­er tak­en a good look at his work, you will want to spend some time with The Mir­a­cle of Flight from 1974, or this ani­mat­ed sequence, Sto­ry Time, from 1968.

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:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin on Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed

Marlon Brando Screen Tests for Rebel Without A Cause (1947)

in Film | August 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1940s, Warn­er Broth­ers bought the rights to Robert Lind­ner’s book, Rebel With­out a Cause: The Hyp­no­analy­sis of a Crim­i­nal Psy­chopath, and began turn­ing it into a film. A par­tial script was writ­ten, and a 23-year old Mar­lon Bran­do was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For what­ev­er rea­son, the stu­dio aban­doned the orig­i­nal project, and even­tu­al­ly revived it eight years lat­er with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause appears here.

Down the road, you can find the Bran­do clip in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons, which fea­tures great thinkers and artists appear­ing in orig­i­nal video & audio. Tol­stoy, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, they’re all part of the mix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

The James Dean Sto­ry by Robert Alt­man (Com­plete Film)

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen­test for East of Eden

Planet of the Apes: A Species Misunderstood

in Film, Video - Science | August 12th, 2011

The Plan­et of the Apes film fran­chise began back in 1968, and it enjoyed a good run dur­ing the 1970s. Now Hol­ly­wood hopes to reboot the series with the release of Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes, a new film star­ring James Fran­co, Frei­da Pin­to, John Lith­gow and Andy Serkis. You don’t need to watch the film to get the gist of the plot: Chimps pow­ered by a genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered retro­virus go wild and start tak­ing over the world. Watch the trail­er and see for your­self.

At Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, Thomas Gille­spie, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Pub­lic Health and Bio­di­ver­si­ty Con­ser­va­tion, has turned the block­buster release into a good teach­ing moment. In this five minute video, Gille­spie dis­cuss­es the real char­ac­ter­is­tics of this often mis­un­der­stood species, cov­er­ing every­thing from their real tem­pera­ment to their breed­ing habits and com­mon social struc­tures. Take a look and get the real­i­ty behind the fic­tion.

The Moon Up Close, in HD

in Astronomy, Video - Science | August 11th, 2011

For the past two years, NASA’s Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) has been orbit­ing the Moon, gath­er­ing data that will help astro­nauts pre­pare for long-dura­tion expe­di­tions to the lunar sur­face, and even­tu­al­ly push fur­ther into the “infi­nite fron­tier of space.” (Read more about the big pic­ture plan here.)

As part of this mis­sion, the LRO has trav­eled approx­i­mate­ly 50 kilo­me­ters (31 miles) above the Moon, cre­at­ing a 3‑D map of the lunar sur­face. And now we’re receiv­ing images that show us the Moon in unprece­dent­ed detail and focus. The val­leys. The craters. The des­o­late sur­face. They’re all there, as nev­er seen before, in HD.

This strik­ing clip oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Crater Lake Under the Stars

in Art | August 11th, 2011

Ben Canales took a trip to Crater Lake to shoot the stars, sac­ri­fic­ing mon­ey and per­son­al rela­tion­ships along the way. But he’s not com­plain­ing. The results are just painful­ly pret­ty…

Pachelbel’s Music Box Canon

in Music | August 10th, 2011

Johann Pachel­bel (1653 — 1706) wrote his Canon in D major in the late 17th cen­tu­ry, then it dis­ap­peared for a good 300 years. It did­n’t mount a come­back until Arthur Fiedler first record­ed the Canon in 1940, and until the Jean-François Pail­lard Cham­ber Orches­tra pop­u­lar­ized the piece with two famous record­ings (lis­ten here). Now the Canon is every­where. You hear it at wed­dings, of course. It finds its way into Bea­t­les’ tracks. It goes fan­tas­ti­cal­ly viral on YouTube. (This leg­endary clip has 91 mil­lion views.) And now it gets cranked out of music box­es.

This video arranged by Vi Hart has a nice way of strip­ping things down and remind­ing us what a canon is fun­da­men­tal­ly about. Along very sim­i­lar lines, you will want to check out this clip show­ing how a Bach Canon Works. It’s pret­ty amaz­ing.

via Metafil­ter

Harry Partch’s Kooky Orchestra of DIY Musical Instruments

in History, Music, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | August 9th, 2011

Com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor Har­ry Partch (1901–1974) is one of the pio­neers of 20th-cen­tu­ry exper­i­men­tal instru­men­ta­tion, known for writ­ing and play­ing music on incred­i­ble cus­tom-made instru­ments like the Boo II and the Quad­ran­gu­laris Rever­sum, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for many of today’s most cre­ative exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ments.

In this Uni­ver­sal News­reel footage from the 1950s, Partch con­ducts a stu­dent music per­for­mance on his instru­ments, built with insights from atom­ic research and Partch’s 30-year obses­sion with find­ing the elu­sive tones that exist between the tones of a reg­u­lar piano. The set­ting is Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, CA. The unortho­dox orches­tra per­forms music tuned to the 43-tone scale Partch invent­ed, rather than the usu­al 12-tone, even though indi­vid­ual instru­ments can only play sub­sets of the scale.

For more on Partch’s genius and sem­i­nal inno­va­tion, see his excel­lent 1949 med­i­ta­tion, Gen­e­sis of a Music: An Account of a Cre­ative Work, its Roots, and its Ful­fill­ments.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

Pendulum Waves as Kinetic Art

in Physics, Video - Science | August 9th, 2011

This Har­vard-pro­duced video has gone viral, and then some, hav­ing clocked more than 3,000,000 views. We’ve watched the pen­du­lum balls swirl, mov­ing almost impos­si­bly from pat­tern to pat­tern, and we’ve remained daz­zled all along. But the mechan­ics behind this chore­o­graphed action haven’t real­ly been brought to the fore. So let’s turn to Har­vard’s web site to under­stand how this kinet­ic art works:

The peri­od of one com­plete cycle of the dance is 60 sec­onds. The length of the longest pen­du­lum has been adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes 51 oscil­la­tions in this 60 sec­ond peri­od. The length of each suc­ces­sive short­er pen­du­lum is care­ful­ly adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes one addi­tion­al oscil­la­tion in this peri­od. Thus, the 15th pen­du­lum (short­est) under­goes 65 oscil­la­tions. When all 15 pen­du­lums are start­ed togeth­er, they quick­ly fall out of sync—their rel­a­tive phas­es con­tin­u­ous­ly change because of their dif­fer­ent peri­ods of oscil­la­tion. How­ev­er, after 60 sec­onds they will all have exe­cut­ed an inte­gral num­ber of oscil­la­tions and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

We’re adding this clip to our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. You’ll also find a good num­ber of Physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.