Denis Dutton (RIP) Talks Beauty @ TED

in Life, Philosophy, TED Talks | December 28th, 2010

Denis Dut­ton – the founder of Arts & Let­ters Dai­ly and phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury in Christchurch, New Zealand – passed away today. He was 66 years old. In 2009, he wrote his most recent book, The Art Instinct: Beau­ty, Plea­sure, and Human Evo­lu­tion. Above, we have Dut­ton speak­ing at TED, elab­o­rat­ing on these themes in a great lit­tle talk called “A Dar­win­ian The­o­ry of Beau­ty.”

Robot Masters Rubik’s Cube in 15 Seconds

in Technology | December 27th, 2010

Where was this when I need­ed it 30 years ago? Two stu­dents at Rowan Uni­ver­si­ty, Zachary Grady and Joe Ridge­way, have con­struct­ed a robot­ic arm that can solve the Rubik’s Cube in 15 sec­onds. As The New Sci­en­tist explains, the “sys­tem uses a cam­era to cap­ture how the cube is scram­bled and sends the images to a com­put­er. It deter­mines the pat­tern on each face and algo­rithms are used to solve the cube. The solu­tion is then trans­lat­ed to the arm’s pneu­mat­ics and motors.” For more bril­liant robot tricks, you can watch robots shoot archery, lead the Detroit Sym­pho­ny orches­tra, and even make eth­i­cal deci­sions…

The Rosetta Stone: A Quick Primer

in Art | December 27th, 2010

No doubt about it, the dis­cov­ery of the Roset­ta Stone in 1799 ranks as one of the great­est archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies. One slab of stone deci­phered Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs and demys­ti­fied the his­to­ry of Ancient Egypt. Now, we had a win­dow into the real his­to­ry of Ancient Egypt, not the imag­ined one. The sto­ry behind the Roset­ta Stone gets nice­ly told here by Beth Har­ris (Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Learn­ing at MoMA) and Steven Zuck­er (chair of His­to­ry of Art and Design at Pratt Insti­tute), as part of their series of Smarthis­to­ry videos. The British Muse­um, which hous­es the famous arti­fact, has more on the Roset­ta Stone.

How Large is the Universe?

in Film, Physics, Science, Video - Science | December 27th, 2010

For cen­turies, human­i­ty has been utter­ly trans­fixed by the cos­mos, with gen­er­a­tions of astronomers, philoso­phers and every­day pon­der­ers striv­ing to bet­ter under­stand the grand cap­sule of our exis­tence. And yet to this day, some of the most basic, fun­da­men­tal qual­i­ties of the uni­verse remain a mys­tery. How Large is the Uni­verse? is a fas­ci­nat­ing 20-minute doc­u­men­tary by Thomas Lucas and Dave Brody explor­ing the uni­verse’s immense scale of dis­tance and time.

“Recent pre­ci­sion mea­sure­ments gath­ered by the Hub­ble space tele­scope and oth­er instru­ments have brought a con­sen­sus that the uni­verse dates back 13.7 bil­lion years. Its radius, then, is the dis­tance a beam of light would have trav­eled in that time – 13.7 bil­lion light years. That works out to about 1.3 quadrillion kilo­me­ters. In fact, it’s even big­ger – much big­ger. How it got so large, so fast, was until recent­ly a deep mys­tery.”

For more on the sub­ject, see these five fas­ci­nat­ing ways to grasp the size and scale of the uni­verse.

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

The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Claymation Christmas Film

in Film, Literature | December 25th, 2010

Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs wrote and nar­rat­ed a 21 minute clay­ma­tion Christ­mas film. And, as you can well imag­ine, it’s not your nor­mal hap­py Christ­mas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christ­mas – is all about Dan­ny the Car­wiper, a junkie, who spends Christ­mas Day try­ing to score a fix. Even­tu­al­ly he finds the Christ­mas spir­it when he shares some mor­phine with a young man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones, giv­ing him the “immac­u­late fix.” There you have it. This film pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, or you can buy it on Ama­zon here. via @UBUWeb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Naked Lunch, His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el

Sir David Frost Interviews Julian Assange Upon Release from Jail

in Current Affairs | December 23rd, 2010

Let me pref­ace things by say­ing this will like­ly be our last Wik­iLeaks post for a while. Don’t want to slip into Wik­iLeaks overkill. With that said…

Yes­ter­day, Sir David Frost land­ed the first tele­vi­sion inter­view with Julian Assange since his release from a Lon­don jail. The 24 minute inter­view aired on Al Jazeera Eng­lish (where Frost hosts a show called Frost Over the World) and pret­ty quick­ly they dive into some impor­tant ques­tions: Do gov­ern­ments have the right to keep state secrets? And do media orga­ni­za­tions have the right to divulge such secrets? Assum­ing so, where (if any­where) must jour­nal­ists draw the line? Why has Wik­iLeaks recent­ly tak­en aim at the Unit­ed States? Is it fair to char­ac­ter­ize Wik­iLeaks as an anar­chic orga­ni­za­tion? The list of ques­tions goes on, includ­ing ones delv­ing into Assange’s legal prob­lems. Thanks for @eacion for the heads up on this one…

Shaq Conducts The Boston Pops: A Little Christmas Delight

in Music | December 22nd, 2010

This Mon­day, the great Shaquille O’Neal, now play­ing for the Boston Celtics, made his con­duct­ing debut, lead­ing the Boston Pops Orches­tra and Tan­gle­wood Fes­ti­val Cho­rus at the Hol­i­day Pops Con­cert. You’ll imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize the tunes: the Christ­mas stan­dard, “Sleigh Ride,” lead­ing into Queen’s pow­er bal­lad “We Are the Cham­pi­ons.”

via Moth­er Jones

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse in Time Lapse Video

in Current Affairs, Science | December 21st, 2010

When was the last time the lunar eclipse and win­ter sol­stice coin­cid­ed? The U.S. Naval Obser­va­to­ry says 1638; Starhawk, a promi­nent Wic­can, puts it at 1544. Need­less to say, these coin­cid­ing events are a rar­i­ty. So, in case you missed it, we have a nice time lapse video shot by William Castle­man in Gainesville, Flori­da. Castel­man also pro­duced this fine gem: The Milky Way Over Texas.

via @6oz

WikiRebels: New Documentary Tells the WikiLeaks‎ Story

in Current Affairs | December 18th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, Swe­den’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion ser­vice, SVT (akin to PBS and the BBC), released a one hour doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the his­to­ry of Wik­iLeaks, start­ing with its ear­ly leaks of Sci­en­tol­ogy doc­u­ments and end­ing with its recent release of Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic cables. Since July, SVT reporters have fol­lowed Wik­iLeaks, trav­el­ing near and far to inter­view Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange and oth­er top mem­bers of the whistle­blow­ing orga­ni­za­tion, some of who have since left the embat­tled inter­net site. All in all, a decent intro­duc­tion to Wik­ileaks and its con­tro­ver­sial mis­sion. Thanks to @eacion for the heads up…

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!

Google Visualizes Words & Culture

in Google, History, Literature | December 16th, 2010

Since 2004, Google has dig­i­tized more than 15 mil­lion books, most­ly to build its Google Books ser­vice. But yes­ter­day Google Labs released a nice lit­tle spin­off prod­uct, the Ngram View­er, that pro­vides a win­dow into how we have his­tor­i­cal­ly used words, and what these usages say about our cul­ture.

This new visu­al­iza­tion tool lets you map out the usage of a giv­en word, or series of words, over a 200 year peri­od (1800 — 2008). For exam­ple, the Ngram View­er shows us that we think less about  “war” these days, as com­pared to the 1940s and 1960s, and more about “ter­ror­ism.” (Click the links to “war” and “ter­ror­ism” and you will see what I mean.) Sim­i­lar­ly, the Eng­lish speak­ing world has recent­ly renewed its love affair with the dog vis-a-vis cats. And if you invest­ed in sal­sa and bailed on ketchup in 1980, you would be a pret­ty wealthy per­son right now.

Over­all, the Ngram data­base con­tains rough­ly 5.2 mil­lion books (a sub­set of the larg­er Google Books data­base), with some 500 bil­lion words, and it fea­tures texts in Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Russ­ian, and Span­ish. Get more details here.

via @webacion and @eugenephoto

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the New Google eBook­store (with Free Clas­sics)