William S. Burroughs Shoots Shakespeare

in Literature | June 7th, 2010

Even at the age of 81, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs was still resist­ing lit­er­ary con­ven­tion. This footage was shot in Lawrence, Kansas, just two years before his death in 1997.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

For Neda: The New HBO Documentary Now Online

in Current Affairs, Film | June 6th, 2010

Almost a year ago, the Green Rev­o­lu­tion was ignit­ed in Iran when Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics stole an elec­tion from Mir-Hos­sein Mousavi and his mil­lions of sup­port­ers. A young gen­er­a­tion, intent upon putting Mousavi in office, took to the streets en masse. Protests broke out across the nation … until the holy men decid­ed they had had enough. Ulti­mate­ly, bul­lets put an end to the nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment (at least for now), and the bru­tal­i­ty of the regime was cap­tured in mov­ing images watched world­wide: they showed us a young woman, Neda, get­ting indis­crim­i­nate­ly gunned down by a sniper, her eyes star­ing at us as she lay dying in the streets. Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new­ly released HBO doc­u­men­tary that intro­duces you to Neda Agha-Soltan and her life sto­ry. Writ­ten and direct­ed by the award win­ning film­mak­er Antony Thomas, the 70 minute film was cre­at­ed with a fair amount of risk, and it includes inter­views with Neda’s fam­i­ly in Iran. The Iran­ian regime, nat­u­ral­ly doing its best to stop cit­i­zens from see­ing the film, plans to release its own doc­u­men­tary, putting the offi­cial spin on the mur­der.

For Neda has been added to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can learn more about the film on the HBO web­site.

via 3quarksdaily. H/T to Mike.

John Wooden Defines True Success

in Life, TED Talks | June 5th, 2010

Back in 1934, John Wood­en start­ed flesh­ing out his def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess – some­thing that shaped his teach­ing and coach­ing for decades to come. His def­i­n­i­tion is not about pow­er, pres­tige, and mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions. It’s about some­thing more uplift­ing. Filmed back at the TED con­fer­ence in 2001, Wood­en elab­o­rates on this phi­los­o­phy hand­ed down by his father. RIP coach and teacher.

“Big Data” Comes to the Humanities

in Education, Technology | June 3rd, 2010

Fast for­ward a gen­er­a­tion, and you might hard­ly rec­og­nize the human­i­ties. Big data is here, and it’s allow­ing tech savvy stu­dents to take a whole new approach to “read­ing” texts. Using Google’s dig­i­tal library and oth­er tools pow­ered by high pow­er com­put­ing, stu­dents can now quan­ti­ta­tive­ly ana­lyze large bod­ies of lit­er­a­ture and draw new con­clu­sions about the evo­lu­tion of ideas, lan­guage, and cul­ture. (More on this here.) Some wor­ry that these “stat-hap­py quants” risk tak­ing “the human out of the human­i­ties.” Oth­ers (myself includ­ed) sus­pect that this approach could enliv­en the human­i­ties, allow­ing schol­ars to focus on new meth­ods and ques­tions. How “big data” is trans­form­ing the human­i­ties (and the sci­ences too) is the sub­ject of six arti­cles appear­ing in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion. Let me high­light them for you:

• Human­i­ties Go Google
• Crowd Sci­ence Reach­es New Heights
• The Spo­ken Word, Search­able for Schol­ar­ship
• Schol­ars Scale Up Music Stud­ies
• A Many-Sourced Map of the Gulf Oil Spill
• A Swarm of Vol­un­teers, a Hon­ey of an Idea

Hey Jude at The White House

in Music | June 3rd, 2010

Yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma award­ed the Gersh­win Prize For Pop­u­lar Song to Sir Paul McCart­ney. (Watch it here). Then, the good part. McCart­ney took to the stage and per­formed the Bea­t­les clas­sic Michelle (the ref­er­ence is obvi­ous), Eleanor Rig­by, and Hey Jude, dur­ing which he was joined by Jack White, Ste­vie Won­der, Dave Grohl and oth­ers. You can watch a small clip of that per­for­mance above. PBS will air the com­plete per­for­mance on July 28.

Relat­ed: 13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafal­gar Square

via Fuse­blog

Support the Creative Commons Catalyst Campaign

in Education | June 2nd, 2010

This is a cause you can all relate to: Cre­ative Com­mons is kick­ing off a cam­paign this week to raise mon­ey for its recent­ly-launched Cat­a­lyst Grants pro­gram. Put sim­ply, these grants will help “empow­er indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions every­where … to make knowl­edge eas­i­ly, freely, and legal­ly avail­able to every­one.” Grant sizes will range from $1,000 to $10,000, and they will be dis­trib­uted to seri­ous researchers, edu­ca­tors and inno­va­tors across the globe. The goal is to raise $100,000 this month. You can help make free edu­ca­tion (includ­ing open edu­ca­tion­al resources) avail­able world­wide by mak­ing a dona­tion here, or using the wid­get below.

Dangerous Knowledge

in Math | June 2nd, 2010

In this 90-minute BBC doc­u­men­tary, Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge, David Mal­one takes a close look at four math­e­mati­cians — Georg Can­tor, Lud­wig Boltz­mann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Tur­ing – whose think­ing pro­found­ly influ­enced mod­ern math­e­mat­ics but also drove them (or so the pro­gram argues) to insan­i­ty and even­tu­al­ly sui­cide. Can­tor gave us “set the­o­ry.” Boltz­mann made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions in the fields of sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and sta­tis­ti­cal ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Gödel is remem­bered for his incom­plete­ness the­o­rems. Tur­ing built on Gödel’s work and laid the foun­da­tion for com­put­er sci­ence. They all spent their dif­fi­cult final years in var­i­ous states of men­tal decline.

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!

Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show

in Film, Poetry | June 2nd, 2010

The poem is “If” by Rud­yard Kipling (1899). The scene is The John­ny Cash Show, 1970. Hard to beat this…

via @caitlinroper

The Beatles Complete on Ukulele

in Music | June 1st, 2010

You have to like the ambi­tion of this project. Roger Greenawalt and David Bar­ratt start­ed record­ing all 185 orig­i­nal Bea­t­les com­po­si­tions on the ukulele. They’re mak­ing a new song avail­able every week until July 31, 2012, the eve of the Lon­don Olympics. And, in each instance, they’re work­ing with dif­fer­ent accom­pa­ny­ing artists. As you’ll see, the styles and approach­es can vary wide­ly, and the ukulele sounds can be more or less pro­nounced. Just com­pare Black­bird and She Said She Said (two of my Bea­t­le faves) and you will see what I mean. To down­load the tracks, vis­it Roger and Dav­e’s web site, or load this feed to iTunes or your RSS read­er.

via metafil­ter

Bob Woodward: How Investigative Journalism Gets Done

in Media | June 1st, 2010

Work­ing for The Wash­ing­ton Post in 1972, Bob Wood­ward and Carl Bern­stein blew open the explo­sive Water­gate scan­dal – some­thing one news­pa­per exec called “maybe the sin­gle great­est report­ing effort of all time.” (The whole saga gets doc­u­ment­ed in All the Pres­i­den­t’s Men, avail­able in print and film.) Almost 40 years lat­er, Wood­ward still writes for the Post, and, even though he has pub­lished some clunk­ers since, he remains one of the most promi­nent inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists in the US. Above, Wood­ward describes how jour­nal­ists get their infor­ma­tion, how they risk blow­ing their sto­ries, and where jour­nal­ism might be head­ing in the dig­i­tal age.

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!