Tsunami Ripples Across Globe: Animated Video

in Science, Video - Science | March 11th, 2011

NOAA (The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion) has released an ani­mat­ed video show­ing the tsuna­mi orig­i­nat­ing off the coast of Japan, and then spread­ing across the Pacif­ic. Dra­mat­ic, to say the least.

Last year, NOAA also pro­duced an ani­ma­tion that visu­al­ized the tremors from the big Chilean quake as they worked their way across the globe. Catch it here.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

Live Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Coverage on Al Jazeera

in Current Affairs, Television | March 10th, 2011

A quick news bul­letin: Japan was struck by a mas­sive 8.9 earth­quake today, fol­lowed by some dev­as­tat­ing tsunamis (see clip below). Al Jazeera is pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age (in Eng­lish) on the web. Start watch­ing here. Or find anoth­er live stream from NHK in Japan. What’s more, The Wall Street Jour­nal has a live blog ded­i­cat­ed to the earth­quake, and Google has set up a peo­ple find­er for those liv­ing in the coun­try. Our best wish­es to the peo­ple of Japan…

Tsuna­mi:

Terrific Hand-Crafted Animation Puts the Novel, Going West, Into (Stop) Motion

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2011

Could­n’t let this one pass by…

Ander­sen M, a Lon­don design stu­dio, craft­ed a rather amaz­ing stop motion video to accom­pa­ny an excerpt from Mau­rice Gee’s nov­el, Going West. The short film was pro­duced on behalf of the New Zealand Book Coun­cil, and you can only imag­ine, as one of our read­ers points out, the crafts­man­ship, patience, and effort that went into the mak­ing this.

Thanks Dalel for send­ing this our way, and please don’t miss anoth­er one of our favorites: Books Savored in Stop Motion Film…

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:

DalíLinguistics

in Art, English Language | March 9th, 2011

In this hilar­i­ous con­ver­sa­tion, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the short-lived ECHO Mag­a­zine in 1960, Sal­vador Dalí tries to teach Irish-born actor Edward Mul­hare how to artic­u­late Eng­lish words in a more Dalían way. When this clip was record­ed, Mul­hare had already spent three years play­ing the role of Pro­fes­sor Hig­gins in the Broad­way ver­sion of My Fair Lady. And as you’ll recall, it was Hig­gins’ job to teach Eliza Doolit­tle, a Cock­ney flower girl, to speak as a prop­er Eng­lish lady. How suc­cess­ful­ly does Dali man­age to put some sur­re­al­ist cool into this rather con­ser­v­a­tive Eng­lish­man? You can lis­ten here to find out. And don’t for­get to catch Sal­vador Dalí’s clas­sic appear­ance on What’s my line?

MP3 via UbuWeb Sound.

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.

Dopamine Jackpot! Robert Sapolsky on the Science of Pleasure

in Biology, Science, Stanford | March 8th, 2011

Robert Sapol­sky, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, famous­ly focus­es his research on stress above all else. (Don’t miss his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.) The video above fea­tures Sapol­sky pre­sent­ing the Pritzk­er Lec­ture at the Cal­i­for­nia Acad­e­my of Sci­ences on Feb­ru­ary 15, 2011. The full lec­ture can be seen here. In this excerpt, Sapol­sky amus­ing­ly tells the audi­ence how mon­keys and humans com­mon­ly gen­er­ate the high­est lev­els of dopamine when plea­sure is antic­i­pat­ed, not when plea­sure is actu­al­ly expe­ri­enced. But humans, as opposed to mon­keys, can “keep those dopamine lev­els up for decades and decades wait­ing for the reward.” And for some, Sapol­sky adds, that per­ceived reward lies beyond this life – in the after­life. (Sapol­sky was raised in an ortho­dox Jew­ish fam­i­ly, but is an athe­ist now.) The Stan­ford pro­fes­sor talks about sim­i­lar issues (what sep­a­rates us from pri­mates) in anoth­er cap­ti­vat­ing talk, “What makes us human?”

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.

Ahead of Time: The Life & Times of Ruth Gruber

in Film, History, Video - Politics/Society | March 7th, 2011

Ahead of Time, a new doc­u­men­tary, tells the remark­able true sto­ry of Ruth Gru­ber. Born in Brook­lyn in 1911, Gru­ber became the youngest per­son in the world (let alone woman) to earn a Ph.D degree; she did so at the age of 20 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne, where she majored in Ger­man Phi­los­o­phy, Mod­ern Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, and Art His­to­ry.

While in Ger­many, Gru­ber wit­nessed Nazi ral­lies and lat­er returned to Amer­i­ca with an acute aware­ness of the dan­gers posed by Nazism. Begin­ning her career in jour­nal­ism, she returned to Ger­many on a secret mis­sion for the FDR admin­is­tra­tion and pho­tographed Holo­caust refugees. (You can see the pho­tos Gru­ber cap­tured in this post, and absolute­ly don’t miss the video inter­view with the 99-year-old Ruth at the bot­tom of that page). After the war, Gru­ber con­tin­ued work­ing as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent and pho­to­jour­nal­ist – a career that has spanned sev­en decades.

The short clip above offers a pre­view of Ahead of Time, which airs on Show­time tonight (Mon­day, March 7) at 5:30PM ET/PT, tomor­row (Tues­day, March 8) at 8PM ET/PT, and Fri­day, March 11 at 4PM ET/PT. For a com­plete list of Ahead of Time show­ings, see here. Ahead of Time promis­es to explain the long and incred­i­bly inspir­ing career of Ruth Gru­ber as a jour­nal­ist, lec­tur­er, author, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and human­i­tar­i­an. Don’t miss it!

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Spelling Counts…

in Comedy, English Language | March 4th, 2011

Today is Nation­al Gram­mar Day, and maybe it’s a stretch to lump spelling under gram­mar, but it’s casu­al Fri­day here on OC. So we leave you with this. Have a great week­end..

Great Cultural Icons Talk Civil Rights: James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte & Sidney Poitier (1963)

in History, Video - Politics/Society | March 4th, 2011

On the day of the his­toric “March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom” (August 28, 1963), known today as The Great March on Wash­ing­ton (watch it on YouTube in three parts), CBS aired a 30-minute round­table dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Har­ry Bela­fonte, Charl­ton Hes­ton, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sid­ney Poiti­er.

The whole seg­ment is fas­ci­nat­ing, even and per­haps espe­cial­ly because the speak­ers pur­sue their some­times diver­gent agen­das (Hes­ton speaks opti­misti­cal­ly about peace­ful dis­sent, Bran­do hopes the Civ­il Rights move­ment may lead to repa­ra­tions for Native Amer­i­cans, while Bela­fonte warns omi­nous­ly that the Unit­ed States has now reached a “point of no return”). But it may be Joseph Mankiewicz, the sharp-wit­ted writer/director of All About Eve, who pro­vides one of the dis­cus­sion’s pithi­est lines: “Free­dom, true free­dom,” he says, “is not giv­en by gov­ern­ments; it is tak­en by the peo­ple.”

For a very dif­fer­ent take on the events of the day, you can lis­ten to audio of the famous speech Mal­colm X deliv­ered a few months lat­er, “A Mes­sage to the Grass Roots,” in which he calls the march a “cir­cus,” and its black lead­ers “[Uncle] Toms.”

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!

Jay‑Z: The Evolution of My Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Shawn Carter – the MC, entre­pre­neur, and recent best-sell­ing author who is known to every­one but his moth­er as Jay‑Z  – proved with the 2010 pub­li­ca­tion of his mem­oir Decod­ed that he is not only one of hip-hop’s top artists, but also one of its top inter­preters.

In Decod­ed, Jay‑Z offers lit­tle in the way of new per­son­al details. He’s been telling that sto­ry in his raps for twen­ty years now – from his father­less child­hood in the projects, to his years deal­ing crack cocaine, to his star­dom, and final­ly to his cur­rent suc­cess as a busi­ness­man and cul­tur­al icon. And what­ev­er the 41-year-old has­n’t divulged yet, he may well have been advised by a lawyer to keep to him­self. Instead of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Decod­ed pro­vides some­thing much more valu­able, a thought­ful analy­sis of his own lyrics and the his­to­ry of his cho­sen art form. Jay‑Z  helps us under­stand that he and hip-hop are rough­ly the same age, and that their sto­ries are almost inter­change­able: When young Shawn Carter first fell in love with the sound of rhymes over beats in Brook­lyn in 1978, he was dis­cov­er­ing the new music just as the new music was dis­cov­er­ing itself.

Ran­dom House has just released an iPad appli­ca­tion of Decod­ed, adding about thir­ty min­utes of mul­ti-media con­tent, includ­ing the video above. You might also want to check out Jay-Z’s appear­ance on Char­lie Rose (on Youtube in 5 parts) and his recent inter­view on Fresh Air.

Visualizing WiFi Signals with Light

in Science, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | March 3rd, 2011

Have you ever won­dered what the WiFi sig­nal looks like around your office, school, or local café? In this video, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knut­sen, and Einar Sneve Mar­t­i­nussen show you the invis­i­ble. And they pulled this off by build­ing a WiFi mea­sur­ing rod, mea­sur­ing four meters in length, that can visu­al­ize WiFi sig­nals around Oslo, Nor­way with the help of long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see is how the WiFi sig­nals vary across the city. Away from res­i­den­tial build­ings, the drop-off in WiFi strength is steep. On the oth­er hand, the WiFi sig­nal is dense around com­mer­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic build­ings. The amaz­ing visu­al­iza­tion gives us a glimpse into the com­plex rela­tion­ships between WiFi net­works and the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments under­pin­ning them. For a deep­er read about this project, see this blog post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.