Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)

in Music | July 7th, 2010

Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jim­my Page appears on a BBC chil­dren’s tal­ent show to play some skif­fle. Mix­ing togeth­er strands of Amer­i­can blues, jazz, coun­try and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK dur­ing the 1950s. Lon­nie Done­gan got the craze going. And it was­n’t long before John Lennon formed his own skif­fle band – The Quar­ry Men (pho­to here) … lat­er to become The Bea­t­les. Head­ing into the 60s, a matur­ing Jim­my Page took his music in entire­ly new direc­tions, which brings us to our post last week: The Strange Tale of Dazed and Con­fused.

Video via Laugh­ingSquid

The Strange Tale of “Dazed and Confused”

in Music | July 2nd, 2010

The wheels of jus­tice turn slow­ly…

Jim­my Page per­formed “Dazed and Con­fused” with The Yard­birds back in 1968, then immor­tal­ized the song with his next band, Led Zep­pelin, while also giv­ing him­self full writ­ing cred­it. For almost 42 years, this has­n’t sat par­tic­u­lar­ly well with Jake Holmes, an Amer­i­can folk singer, who first wrote and record­ed “Dazed and Con­fused” in 1967. Now he has filed suit (see PDF of com­plaint here) and wants Page to make amends. Some mon­ey and half a writ­ing cred­it. You can watch the vin­tage Led Zep­pelin ver­sion above and lis­ten to Holmes’ orig­i­nal ver­sion below. The Led Zep ver­sion was cer­tain­ly changed in ways, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties are assured­ly there…

National Film Board of Canada Launches Free iPad App

in Film, iPad, iPhone | June 30th, 2010

A quick heads up: Today the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da released a free iPad app (down­load it here), pro­vid­ing users free access to thou­sands of doc­u­men­taries, ani­mat­ed films and trail­ers. All films (includ­ing some in 3‑D) can be streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G wire­less net­works. And you can even down­load and watch a film offline for up to 48 hours. If you don’t have an iPad, nev­er fear.  The NFB also makes these films avail­able via a free iPhone app and, of course, its web site too.

For more free films, see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online…

Animated Aurora Borealis from Orbit

in Science | June 30th, 2010

While work­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, Astro­naut Don Pet­tit cre­at­ed this remark­able video of the auro­ra bore­alis (oth­er­wise known as The North­ern Lights). How? By stitch­ing togeth­er a large sequence of still images that he took from space. It makes for some good view­ing…

Clay Shirky: How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World?

in Books, Media, TED Talks | June 29th, 2010

Clay Shirky’s book tour col­lid­ed with the TED con­fer­ence in Cannes ear­li­er this month, and what you get is a crisp, 13-minute pre­cis of the argu­ments in Shirky’s new book, Cog­ni­tive Sur­plus: Cre­ativ­i­ty and Gen­eros­i­ty in a Con­nect­ed Age. The big ques­tion after watch­ing Shirky’s piece: How can Open Cul­ture draw on the col­lec­tive “cog­ni­tive sur­plus” of our read­ers and deliv­er a more pow­er­ful site to learn­ers world­wide? A lot of it comes down to design/architecture. But what would a re-archi­tect­ed Open Cul­ture site look like? If you have some thoughts, please take a few min­utes to send them our way. Who knows, your think­ing might inspire a whole new approach here.

To delve fur­ther into Shirky’s think­ing, you can lis­ten to his extend­ed inter­view last week on KQED’s Forum, my favorite morn­ing talk show in San Fran­cis­co. Down­load here, or stream below.

Document the World’s Story on 10.10.10.

in Current Affairs, Film | June 28th, 2010

Aspir­ing (or even casu­al) film­mak­ers, get ready for One Day on Earth. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, thou­sands of peo­ple world­wide will shoot film and pro­duce a crowd­sourced doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing “the diver­si­ty, con­flict, tragedy, and tri­umph that can occur in one 24-hour peri­od on Earth.” You’re invit­ed to take part in poten­tial­ly the largest glob­al media event ever. The video above spells out the con­cept, and you can learn how to take part here.

Daniel Pink: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

in Business, Economics, Psychology | June 23rd, 2010

RSA offers up anoth­er ani­mat­ed video explain­ing what makes us tick. This time, they’re fea­tur­ing a lec­ture by Daniel Pink, the best­selling author of Dri­ve: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us. Revis­it­ing research also found in Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty, Pink dri­ves home the point that tra­di­tion­al moti­va­tion schemes – name­ly, bonus­es – rarely achieve their intend­ed results. In fact, the big­ger the bonus, the big­ger the decline in per­for­mance. Or so stud­ies show again and again. So what does moti­vate us? The desire to be self-direct­ed. The will to mas­ter some­thing. The hope to make a con­tri­bu­tion. It’s all what Pink calls “the pur­pose motive,” and it’s the stuff that keeps this site mov­ing along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dan Ariely on the Irra­tional­i­ty of Bonus­es

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time

via Fora.TV

We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot

in Life, Science | June 23rd, 2010

Let Carl Sagan put every­thing – and I mean every­thing – in per­spec­tive for you …

(And see his relat­ed book, The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)

Thanks Zoran for send­ing!!

Bruce Lee Auditions for The Green Hornet (1964)

in Television | June 22nd, 2010

Here’s where the leg­end of Bruce Lee all began (at least for Amer­i­can audi­ences). Back in 1964, Lee, only 24 years old, was invit­ed to audi­tion for The Green Hor­net. And he nailed it, land­ing a star­ring role on the short-lived ABC tele­vi­sion series. Dur­ing these eight vin­tage min­utes, Lee gives you, the view­er, the the­o­ry and prac­tice of kung fu. It’s all rather enjoy­able to watch, unless you’re the slow-reflexed man shar­ing the stage with him. The real action begins at the 4:05 minute mark.

Thanks to Maria Popo­va, aka @BrainPicker, for giv­ing us a heads up on this…

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 Meta Summer Reading List

in Books | June 22nd, 2010

Now time for some beach wor­thy books… Fla­vor­wire has pulled togeth­er a meta col­lec­tion of sum­mer read­ing lists, aggre­gat­ing books rec­om­mend­ed by The New York Times, NPR, UC Berke­ley, Details, Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library and sev­en oth­er sources. Some­where in this mix you’ll find that per­fect read.

Try Audi­ble Now and Get A FREE Audio­book! Details here.