Updated Book Titles: Less Pretentious, More Accurate

in Comedy, Literature | April 11th, 2011

Over at OhNoThey­Did­n’t, you can find some alter­na­tive titles for some of the most famous books ever writ­ten — or, in ONDT’s own words, titles that are “more accu­rate and less pre­ten­tious” than the orig­i­nals.

Before click­ing over to the (slight­ly NFSW) whole col­lec­tion, test your high/low cul­tur­al agili­ty by try­ing to guess a few orig­i­nals from their updates:

1. My Dad is Cool­er Than Your Dad

2. Emo­tions Are For Poor Peo­ple

3. Shake­speare Minus the Good Writ­ing

4. Lik­able Rapists

5. White Peo­ple Ruin Every­thing

If you got all five right, nay, if you got any right, we’re count­ing on you for the Clue­less sequel.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Documentary Revisits the History of LSD

in Film, History, Video - Politics/Society | April 11th, 2011

A few years ago, we post­ed this 1978 inter­view with Tim­o­thy Leary, in which the charis­mat­ic LSD cham­pi­on, pris­on­er, and future Ron Paul sup­port­er speaks pas­sion­ate­ly about the ben­e­fits of tak­ing acid. But for a more bal­anced per­spec­tive on the con­tro­ver­sial drug, we rec­om­mend the 2002 film Hof­man­n’s Potion, by Cana­di­an film­mak­er Con­nie Lit­tle­feld.

Lit­tle­field struc­tures her nar­ra­tive chrono­log­i­cal­ly, begin­ning with Swiss sci­en­tist Albert Hof­man­n’s first syn­the­sis of the com­pound in 1938, and its ear­ly exper­i­men­tal use in the treat­ment of schiz­o­phren­ics and alco­holics. She then traces LSD’s rise to promi­nence when it became the drug of choice dur­ing the 60’s coun­ter­cul­ture, fol­lowed by the drug’s ulti­mate vil­i­fi­ca­tion and crim­i­nal­iza­tion.

The 56-minute doc­u­men­tary fea­tures new and archival footage of dis­cus­sions with Hof­mann, Aldous Hux­ley, Stanislav Grof, Abram Hof­fer and oth­er ear­ly fig­ures in the drug’s brief but tur­bu­lent his­to­ry. The inter­view with Leary’s Har­vard col­league Richard Alpert — now known as Ram Dass — at minute 43:37 is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, as is the film’s ulti­mate con­clu­sion that the cor­rect realm for eval­u­at­ing the val­ue of LSD is nei­ther med­ical nor recre­ation­al, but spir­i­tu­al.

After watch­ing the Lit­tle­field doc­u­men­tary, take a look at this dis­turb­ing 10-minute dis­cus­sion of Project MKULTRA, a decades-long CIA pro­gram which exposed Amer­i­can cit­i­zens to LSD and oth­er drugs for study, often with­out their knowl­edge or per­mis­sion.

Also worth a read, a new book by Don Lat­tin called The Har­vard Psy­che­del­ic Club: How Tim­o­thy Leary, Ram Dass, Hus­ton Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ush­ered in a New Age for Amer­i­ca.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Farewell Sidney Lumet, 1924–2011

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | April 9th, 2011

The clip above fea­tures Peter Finch’s explo­sive “mad as hell” speech from Sid­ney Lumet’s Net­work (1976). It is as rel­e­vant today as it was 35 years ago, if not more so — just like its direc­tor.

In this this recent inter­view, Mr. Lumet, who also brought us such clas­sics as 12 Angry Men, Ser­pi­co, The Ver­dict, and Dog Day After­noon, speaks about his lega­cy, his career, and the city that was the set­ting for so many of his great films. He died yes­ter­day of lym­phoma at his home in Man­hat­tan.

via NYT

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Star Wars the Musical: The Force is Strong in this One

in Film, Music | April 8th, 2011

In 1996, three Cal­i­for­nia 17-year-olds (who should have known bet­ter) chan­neled all of their mon­ey and pas­sion into stag­ing a rock opera based on Star Wars IV: A New Hope. They’d only sched­uled it for a three night run, but it played to a sold-out crowd and, accord­ing to Salon’s Drew Grant, earned the two great­est hon­ors a fan can hope for: A review in The New York Times and a cease and desist let­ter from George Lucas.

The whole thing is now final­ly online. Salon has gath­ered all six parts onto one page, and you can also watch it on vimeo. We have includ­ed Part 1 above…

via Salon

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Bubble Watch: Is China Next?

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | April 8th, 2011

Last month, Chi­na hit anoth­er major mile­stone. It passed Japan and became the sec­ond largest econ­o­my in the world, leav­ing only the US in its way. Give Chi­na a decade, maybe a lit­tle more, and it will inevitably surge into the lead. That’s the accept­ed nar­ra­tive.

But then we come across this: the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a mount­ing real estate bub­ble might derail Chi­na’s plans. This report from Aus­tralian pub­lic tele­vi­sion gives you a dis­turb­ing look at how the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has pumped vast amounts of cap­i­tal into fixed assets, like com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial real estate, to keep the coun­try’s econ­o­my grow­ing. And what they’re left with is what James Chanos (a hedge fund man­ag­er) has famous­ly described as “Dubai times one thou­sand.” Right now, there are an esti­mat­ed 64 mil­lion emp­ty apart­ments in Chi­na, and approx­i­mate­ly 30 bil­lion square feet of com­mer­cial real estate under con­struc­tion — equiv­a­lent to a five-by-five foot office cubi­cle for every man, woman and child in Chi­na. It’s one thing to read these facts, anoth­er thing to see what it all looks like. And that’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty you get above.

For a more pre­cise roadmap of what a Chi­nese crash might look like, you should spend some time with this piece in Cana­di­an Busi­ness mag­a­zine.

Billy Collins Poetry Brought to Animated Life

in Art, Literature, Poetry | April 7th, 2011

Who does­n’t love Bil­ly Collins, the for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate? The actor Bill Mur­ray reads his poet­ry at con­struc­tion sites. Adorable tod­dlers recite his poet­ry from mem­o­ry. And now artists have cre­at­ed ani­mat­ed videos that bring 11 Collins poems to life. You can find the ani­mat­ed ver­sion of “Budapest” above, and the remain­ing poems at Bil­ly Collins Action Poet­ry.

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cornell (1964)

in Physics, Video - Science | April 7th, 2011

We’re beam­ing you back to 1964. Richard Feyn­man, our favorite Bon­go-play­ing, Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist, reduces sci­ence to the barest essen­tials, to its most fun­da­men­tal truth. If a the­o­ry does­n’t square with exper­i­ment, it’s wrong. That holds true for clever the­o­ries, ele­gant the­o­ries, and all of the rest.

This clip is just a small out­take from a sev­en-part lec­ture series that Fey­man pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell in 1964, and the lec­tures are all now freely avail­able on the web thanks to Bill Gates. You can watch the full series on our site, or on a Mis­crosoft site, but be warned: if you choose the lat­ter, you’ll need to down­load Microsoft­’s Sil­verlight soft­ware to watch the lec­tures.

For more free physics lessons, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Feyn­man fans will also want to see this oth­er open project: The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly 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!

The Quadrocopter Opera

in Music, Technology | April 4th, 2011

Physics gets its own lit­tle opera. And you’ll nev­er look at quadro­copters, those ball jug­gling robots, in quite the same way. Nice work “Opera­man­da”…

via @chr1sa

The Ramones Live in 1978: 26 Songs in 54 Minutes

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | April 4th, 2011

Princes of New York punk, kings of CBG­B’s (take vir­tu­al tour here), and the only Amer­i­cans, then or now, who could pull off skin­ny jeans with impuni­ty, The Ramones were mas­ters of the short and sweet.  Here’s a record­ing of  a live 1978 set at the Pal­la­di­um in New York City: 26 songs, 54 min­utes, all set to clips from old sci-fi movies.

via NPR

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Shape of A Story: Writing Tips from Kurt Vonnegut

in Books, Literature, Writing | April 4th, 2011

A few years ago, Open Cul­ture read­ers list­ed Slaugh­ter­house Five as one of your top life-chang­ing books. But Kurt Von­negut was not only a great author. He was also an inspi­ra­tion for any­one who aspires to write fic­tion – see for exam­ple his 8 rules for writ­ing fic­tion, which starts with the so-obvi­ous-it’s-often-for­got­ten reminder nev­er to waste your read­er’s time.

In this video, Von­negut fol­lows his own advice and sketch­es some bril­liant blue­prints for envi­sion­ing the “shape” of a sto­ry, all in less than 4 min­utes and 37 sec­onds.

FYI. Orig­i­nal works by Von­negut appear in Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.