The Gettysburg Address Animated

in History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | November 4th, 2010

On Novem­ber 19, 1863, Abra­ham Lin­coln deliv­ered one of the best-known speech­es in his­to­ry: The Get­tys­burg Address. To pay homage to it, design­er Adam Gault and illus­tra­tor Ste­fanie Augus­tine have ren­dered the immor­tal words in beau­ti­ful black-and-white typo­graph­ic ani­ma­tion that visu­al­ly cap­tures the essence of Lin­col­n’s words as they are spo­ken.

For more on The Get­tys­burg Address, the Library of Con­gress has a fas­ci­nat­ing exhi­bi­tion of mate­ri­als relat­ed to the address, includ­ing the ear­li­est known draft and a short video on how the speech came to be. And for anoth­er visu­al treat, we rec­om­mend Jack Lev­in’s Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg Address Illus­trat­ed — a poignant and pow­er­ful selec­tion of images which, cou­pled with Lin­col­n’s equal­ly poignant and pow­er­ful words, are bound to put a lump in your throat.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Louis CK Recite The Get­tys­burg Address, With Some Help from Jer­ry Sein­feld

Hear John­ny Cash Deliv­er Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg Address

Behold Charles Laughton Deliv­er­ing the Get­tys­burg Address in its Entire­ty in Rug­gles of Red Gap

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

Talking Literature with Great British Novelists

in Books, Literature | November 4th, 2010

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For decades, the BBC has inter­viewed leg­endary British nov­el­ists, ask­ing them how they cre­ate their mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, paint their evoca­tive set­tings with words, and devel­op plots that keep us turn­ing pages. Now, these audio inter­views appear online in a col­lec­tion called In Their  Own Words. The archive takes you back to 1937, to a con­ver­sa­tion with Vir­ginia Woolf, then moves you for­ward to inter­views with Aldous Hux­ley, JRR Tolkien, Doris Less­ing, Mar­tin Amis, VS Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie, to name just a few. These record­ings sit nice­ly along­side a giant archive of lit­er­ary inter­views recent­ly pub­lished online by The Paris Review. (More on that here.) So, if you want to get into the “how” of lit­er­a­ture, you can now tap instant­ly into the col­lec­tive wis­dom of the lit­er­ary greats.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

What A Glorious Space To Dwell

in Random | November 2nd, 2010

I can’t vouch for the claims being made in this “fun facts” song. (Nor do I know what’s up with the Jesus imagery.) But the video has some enter­tain­ment val­ue, if not some good triv­ia. So enjoy…

In Praise of Copying: Get Your Free Copy

in Books, e-books | November 2nd, 2010

Just a quick fyi: If you head over to the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press web site, you can grab a free copy of Mar­cus Boon’s new book, In Praise of Copy­ing, which makes the case that “copy­ing is an essen­tial part of being human, that the abil­i­ty to copy is wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion, and that, with­out rec­og­niz­ing how inte­gral copy­ing is to being human, we can­not under­stand our­selves or the world we live in.” Boon is a writer, jour­nal­ist and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture depart­ment at York Uni­ver­si­ty, Toron­to. You can down­load a free copy of his book in PDF for­mat straight from this link. (Note that the text is for­mal­ly released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.) Or you can always pur­chase a print­ed copy online.

P.S. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press is offer­ing up a free e‑book of its own: The Bour­geois Virtues (632 pages) by Deirdre N. McCloskey. Head here to get a copy.

iTunes U Introduces Free eBooks: Download Shakespeare’s Complete Works

in Apple, e-books, Literature | October 31st, 2010

Per­haps you’re accus­tomed to down­load­ing free lec­tures and cours­es on iTunes U. Now, you have a new option. Last week, Apple began intro­duc­ing free eBooks to its media col­lec­tion. And, to kick things off, they’re giv­ing users access to 18 free text­books spon­sored by Con­nex­ions (a Rice Uni­ver­si­ty project); a series of 100 ebooks pro­duced by the Open Uni­ver­si­ty, and then, cour­tesy of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, the com­plete col­lec­tion of Shake­speare’s plays from the First Folio of 1623.  You can down­load all of these texts in the open ePub for­mat. And if you have an iPad (or an iPhone with a copy of iBooks), they eas­i­ly sync to the device, and make for a great read­ing expe­ri­ence. But you’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to using the iPad. I was able to read the texts in ebook read­ers cre­at­ed by Stan­za and Barnes & Noble (the mak­er of the new col­or Nook). And, using this free online ser­vice and then fol­low­ing these gen­er­al direc­tions, I eas­i­ly con­vert­ed the ePub files to Ama­zon’s .mobi for­mat and uploaded them to my Kin­dle. The bot­tom line? You can expect iTunes U to become a handy resource for free ebooks as the ser­vice matures – one best suit­ed to the iPad, but cer­tain­ly not lim­it­ed to it. And, speak­ing of the iPad, you should give this sto­ry a read. “IPad Opens World to a Dis­abled Boy.” It’s a great way to start the week…

Note: If you want a sim­ple html ver­sion of Shake­speare’s col­lect­ed works, don’t miss MIT’s invalu­able web site.

FYI. You can find more free eBooks in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

“A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

in Audio Books, Literature | October 31st, 2010

Pub­lished first in 1921, then again in 1944, Vir­ginia Woolf’s short sto­ry, “A Haunt­ed House,” runs a mere 692 words – which makes it a Hal­loween treat that is short and sweet. We give you an appro­pri­ate­ly somber read­ing of Woolf’s sto­ry above, with the accom­pa­ny­ing text here. Or you can find an mp3 ver­sion in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. H/T to Mike, and enjoy the day.

Introduction to Computer Science & Programming: Free Courses

in Education, Technology | October 28th, 2010

Nowa­days, any well-round­ed stu­dent must learn to mas­ter read­ing, writ­ing and math. And then add some­thing new to the mix: learn­ing to code. If you did­n’t learn to pro­gram soft­ware in school, not to wor­ry. Free mate­ri­als abound on the web, and we have made them easy to find. Above, you can start watch­ing the first lec­ture of an MIT course (Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming) that assumes no spe­cial knowl­edge of pro­gram­ming, and it sets out to teach you to think like a com­put­er sci­en­tist. (Find the full set of lec­tures on YouTube, iTunes and MIT’s web­site.) Or alter­na­tive­ly, you can spend time with anoth­er course – Inten­sive Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence Using C, PHP, and JavaScript – taught by David Malan at Har­vard Exten­sion. (Get it in mul­ti­ple for­mats here.) And then don’t for­get that Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty offers sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es, all found under the Stan­ford Engi­neer­ing Every­where umbrel­la.

Once you have a good foun­da­tion in place, you can move in a vari­ety of direc­tions. With­in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, we have list­ed 27 com­put­er sci­ence cours­es where you can learn all about oper­at­ing sys­tems, com­put­er graph­ics, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, build­ing web sites, design­ing iPhone apps and beyond. The cours­es are all free. They’re avail­able 24/7 on the web. You can get going any time…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Stan­ford Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es This Fall: Free World­wide

So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities?

in Comedy, Education | October 28th, 2010

So if you want the full case against get­ting a PhD in the human­i­ties, here you go. Every argu­ment the dis­il­lu­sioned aca­d­e­m­ic can pos­si­bly make now packed into one semi-com­ic video. If you’re in the human­i­ties, the litany of com­plaints, whether fair or not, will hard­ly be unfa­mil­iar to you.

Now on a more seri­ous note … Towards the end, the video ref­er­ences SUNY Albany’s recent deci­sion to shut­ter its French, Ital­ian, clas­sics, Russ­ian and the­ater pro­grams. That event that trig­gered a much-dis­cussed series of arti­cles by Stan­ley Fish in The New York Times. If you’re look­ing for some­thing that oper­ates on a slight­ly high­er intel­lec­tu­al plane, you might want to spend some time with “The Cri­sis of the Human­i­ties Offi­cial­ly Arrives: Part 1 and Part 2.” Also don’t miss some of the read­er com­ments. They bring a lot to the dis­cus­sion. Thanks Jason for send­ing our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to the PhD

Open Culture Goes Mobile: Your Feedback Requested

in Random | October 28th, 2010

A quick note for our read­ers: This week, we soft launched a new mobile web site for Open Cul­ture – one designed to give our read­ers the abil­i­ty to access Open Cul­ture con­tent with far greater ease on their smart­phones. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone (or any phone with an advanced web brows­er), you should be able to read our posts, watch videos, and lis­ten to audio much more clean­ly, no mat­ter where you are. Sim­ply pick up your phone, vis­it any page on openculture.com, and you will see what I mean.

This mobile site is still in “beta.” So if you expe­ri­ence any prob­lems, or have any feed­back, please send it our way. We want your input. And, if you don’t pre­fer the mobile site, you can always turn it off. Just scroll to the bot­tom of the mobile page and click “Switch to Stan­dard View.”

Final­ly, as you can imag­ine, this project required some time and expense. If you can com­fort­ably afford it, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion via Pay­Pal to sup­port this ini­tia­tive and oth­ers like it. And if you can’t swing it, that’s a‑okay. Maybe just tell a friend about the site (or about our Free iPhone app) and oth­er­wise enjoy the ride.

Thanks for any feed­back you might have, and hope you enjoy the mobile ver­sion of Open Cul­ture.

Stephen Fry Gets Animated about Language

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | October 27th, 2010

For a brief time in 2008, Stephen Fry, the pop­u­lar British author, writer and come­di­an, pro­duced a series of pod­casts – called “Pod­grams” – that drew on his writ­ings, speech­es and col­lec­tive thoughts. (Find them on RSS and iTunes here). Dur­ing one par­tic­u­lar episode, Fry med­i­tat­ed on lan­guage (the Eng­lish lan­guage & his own lan­guage) and a lit­tle on Barthes, Chom­sky, Pinker and even Eddie Izzard. Then Matthew Rogers took that med­i­ta­tion and ran with it, pro­duc­ing a “kinet­ic typog­ra­phy ani­ma­tion” that art­ful­ly illus­trates a six minute seg­ment of the longer talk. Watch it above, and if you’re cap­ti­vat­ed by what Fry has to say, don’t miss his pop­u­lar video, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.