Malcolm Gladwell: Taxes Were High and Life Was Just Fine

in Current Affairs, History | October 26th, 2010

Mal­colm Glad­well, the best­selling author of The Tip­ping Point, Blink, and Out­liers, has lost some friends late­ly among geeks (term used lov­ing­ly, if not self-ref­er­en­tial­ly) and con­ser­v­a­tives. First came the sug­ges­tion that Twit­ter has­n’t made human change agents obso­lete. We still need MLKs and Gand­his to change the world. And then, speak­ing at The New York­er Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this month, Glad­well had to remind us of an incon­ve­nient his­tor­i­cal fact. Dur­ing the Eisen­how­er pres­i­den­cy, tax­es on the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans peaked at 91% (more than dou­ble what they are today). And, even more galling, life in Amer­i­ca was just fine, even down­right good…

Thanks Mary for send­ing this our way. Always appre­ci­ate the good tips.

Art in “Augmented Reality” at The Getty Museum

in Art | October 26th, 2010

We’re get­ting clos­er to a world where you can ask: why go to a muse­um when it can come to you? This sum­mer, the Get­ty Muse­um used Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) tech­nol­o­gy to show­case one of the most com­plex objects in its col­lec­tion – The Augs­burg Dis­play Cab­i­net (or Kabi­nettschrank) built around 1630. As shown above, the AR tech­nol­o­gy lets remote users view art in 3D, using just their web cam and a piece of paper to con­trol the expe­ri­ence. You can watch the demo above, or bet­ter yet, test dri­ve the whole expe­ri­ence with the instruc­tions found here.

via @drszucker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zoom­ing into Ital­ian Mas­ter­pieces

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

OK Go & Kutiman: Live from the Guggenheim

in Art, Music, YouTube | October 21st, 2010

On Thurs­day night, the Guggen­heim Muse­um and YouTube unveiled the win­ners of a high­ly pub­li­cized video con­test, YouTube Play: A Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The con­test orig­i­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed 23,000 sub­mis­sions from 91 coun­tries, and, from there, Guggen­heim cura­tors culled a short­list of 125 videos. Then the big moment: 20 win­ners were select­ed dur­ing an awards cer­e­mo­ny held last night at the muse­um.

The cer­e­mo­ny itself fea­tured per­for­mances by artists who have made YouTube inte­gral to their art – above we have Kuti­man, the Israeli artist known for his moth­er of all funk remix, giv­ing the audi­ence some­thing rather dif­fer­ent: a live mashup of Brahms’ “Hun­gar­i­an Dance,” accom­pa­nied by the Non­ame ensem­ble from the Jul­liard School and YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orcher­stra play­ers. And to wrap things up OK Go, the unof­fi­cial kings of YouTube, per­formed ‘White Knuck­les’ and ‘This too Shall Pass.’ Keep a close eye on the YouTube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to the Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The win­ning videos will almost cer­tain­ly be com­ing online soon.

The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

in Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | October 21st, 2010

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

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!

Sir Ken Robinson: A Creative Education

in Creativity, Education | October 19th, 2010

Do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? Sir Ken Robin­son asked that ques­tion at the 2006 TED con­fer­ence. And the talk res­onat­ed wide­ly. His short pre­sen­ta­tion remains one of the most watched and “favor­it­ed” videos in TED’s large cat­a­logue of inspir­ing videos. Quite an accom­plish­ment.

Now, with the lat­est RSA video, Sir Ken returns to delve deep­er into this basic ques­tion. He asks, Why do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? And why is this prob­lem built into the mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem? And how can we bring a “par­a­digm” shift – one that will let schools fos­ter cre­ativ­i­ty at long last?

Run­ning 11 min­utes, the cre­ative­ly-ani­mat­ed video above (how fit­ting!) gives you some answers. But real­ize that the clip is an excerpt from a longer 52 minute lec­ture avail­able in its entire­ty here.

A quick PS: Wired UK recent­ly asked the big ques­tion: “What inno­va­tion would most improve edu­ca­tion in the next decade?” You will find suc­cinct answers by Ken Robin­son, Chris Ander­son (head of TED), yours tru­ly and sev­er­al oth­ers here.

David Lynch Talks Meditation with Paul McCartney

in Film, Music, Psychology | October 18th, 2010

David Lynch has been prac­tic­ing Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion for decades, and, last year, he inter­viewed anoth­er long­time TM prac­ti­tion­er – Sir Paul McCart­ney. The inter­view (find Part 1 above and Part 2 here) turned quick­ly to The Bea­t­les, their involve­ment with the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi (guru of the TM move­ment), and their famous trip to his ashram in Rishikesh (India) in Feb­ru­ary 1968. There, among oth­er things, they wrote 48 songs – many of which con­tributed to The White Album – before hav­ing a falling out with the guru and leav­ing town.

The film­mak­er sat down with McCart­ney before a ben­e­fit con­cert staged by The David Lynch Foun­da­tion in April 2009. Lynch’s orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides schol­ar­ships to schools so that stu­dents can learn TM. Both Paul and Ringo per­formed at ben­e­fit that night…

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!

Mickey Mouse Discovers Conspiracy Against Glenn Beck

in Art, Comedy | October 14th, 2010

Ear­li­er this month, Jonathan McIn­tosh released a par­o­dy car­toon called “Don­ald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck,” which art­ful­ly remixed 50 clas­sic Dis­ney car­toons from the 1930s to 1960s. And now comes the inevitable remixed response: “Mick­ey Mouse Dis­cov­ers the Gov­ern­ment Car­toon Con­spir­a­cy Against Glenn Beck.” The video ups the ante in a quick 1:26.

Prague Monument Doubles as Artist’s Canvas

in Art, History | October 14th, 2010

The Astro­nom­i­cal Clock Tow­er, sit­u­at­ed in Prague’s Old Town Square, just cel­e­brat­ed its 600th anniver­sary. And to help mark the occa­sion, artists pro­ject­ed visu­als map­pings onto the facade – ones that illu­mi­nat­ed the his­to­ry and sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance of the tow­er for the crowd. These light shows are get­ting a lit­tle en vogue. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty recent­ly punc­tu­at­ed its 800th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion by turn­ing its build­ings into a can­vas. And Ukraine marked its inde­pen­dence this year with a light show of its own.

via Boing­Bo­ing and losti­na­su­per­mar­ket

The Best American Essays 2010: The Free Route

in Books | October 14th, 2010

The Best Amer­i­can Essays, 2010, edit­ed by Christo­pher Hitchens, has now hit the stands. The 300-page col­lec­tion runs $10.47 online. How­ev­er, know this: You can read most of the essays online for free. These essays were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on web­sites of major Amer­i­can jour­nals & mag­a­zines, and there they still remain. Some notable men­tions include The Mur­der of Leo Tol­stoy: A Foren­sic Inves­ti­ga­tion by Elif Batu­man, How Ein­stein Divid­ed Amer­i­ca’s Jews by Wal­ter Isaac­son, On John Updike by Ian McE­wan, My Genome, My Self by Steven Pinker, and Guy Walks into a Bar by David Sedaris. Metafil­ter has pulled togeth­er a full list of avail­able texts. Kudos to them. And if you want to read these essays lat­er on (when you actu­al­ly have some time) give Instapa­per a try.  It’s a won­der­ful way to read texts in a clean for­mat on the iPad, iPhone, and Kin­dle. The trusty web brows­er is always an option too.

The World is Full of Interesting Things…

in Random | October 13th, 2010

A note­wor­thy men­tion: The World is Full of Inter­est­ing Things packs togeth­er 106 works from the “cre­ative inter­net” into one Google slideshow. It’s a visu­al grab bag of images, videos, mashups, apps and oth­er items that have cap­tured the col­lec­tive online imag­i­na­tion. The diverse col­lec­tion is more eas­i­ly expe­ri­enced than explained. So start flip­ping through and see what we mean here.

via @KarenTempler and Kot­tke