Bob Dylan at the White House

in Music | February 10th, 2010

Once they were part of the counter cul­ture. Now they’re get­ting the red car­pet treat­ment in the estab­lish­ment. (Not that I have a prob­lem with that!) Last night, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and oth­ers per­formed in the East Room of the White House. It was all part a pro­gram called “A Cel­e­bra­tion of Music from the Civ­il Rights Move­ment,” which will air on PBS on Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. ET. Above we have an audio record­ing of Dylan per­form­ing the time­less “The Times They Are A‑Changin.” You can also watch a sam­ple of the oth­er per­for­mances here.

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

in Philosophy | February 9th, 2010

Since the late 1990’s, Alain de Bot­ton has been break­ing down dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary ideas and see­ing how they apply to peo­ple’s every­day lives. He did this with his 1997 best­seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step fur­ther with his tele­vi­sion series called Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness. The episode above delves into Niet­zsche’s belief that hap­pi­ness only comes about with great effort and hard­ship. In the remain­ing five episodes, de Bot­ton gets into Socrates on self con­fi­dence, Seneca on anger, Epi­cu­rus on hap­pi­ness, Mon­taigne on self-esteem, and Schopen­hauer on love. Each episode runs about 25 min­utes. You can also find all six episodes neat­ly dis­played on one page here.

What Are You Staring At?

in Life | February 8th, 2010

You stare. You get stared at. It hap­pens count­less times every day. But have you ever pon­dered what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing here? Rose­marie Gar­land-Thom­son, a pro­fes­sor at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, has been giv­ing it some thought. You can get a quick intro­duc­tion above, and more exten­sive think­ing in her new book, Star­ing: How We Look. Thanks Nicole for send­ing this along…

The Physics of a Quarterback’s Pass

in Physics | February 7th, 2010

A lighter piece for Super Bowl Sun­day. Yes, this clip isn’t exact­ly heady. And, yes, it botch­es some facts (archers appar­ent­ly shoot from 70 meters, not 20 yards). But, nonethe­less, it gives you the basic physics of Drew Brees’ pass­ing game. Brees will be play­ing QB for the New Orleans Saints tonight, and, as you’ll see, his accu­ra­cy is remark­able. Hat tip to Mike.

via Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine’s Cos­mic Vari­ance blog

Learning Languages Online with The New York Times

in Language Lessons | February 5th, 2010

How can you learn for­eign lan­guages online? Last week, The New York Times out­lined a good num­ber of options for its read­ers. And, for days, the arti­cle remained one of the most wide­ly read pieces on the NYT site. Today, the paper issued a fol­lowup post, high­light­ing yet more ways to learn lan­guages dig­i­tal­ly. And hap­pi­ly our col­lec­tion, Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, got a small men­tion there. When tak­en togeth­er, these two pieces spell out the dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties fair­ly well. Some of the sites men­tioned include LiveMocha.com, BBC lan­guages, and Man­go Lan­guages.

The Beautiful Math of Coral & Crochet

in Math, Science, TED Talks | February 5th, 2010

Our read­er Gar­net sets the stage for this video: “Math­e­mati­cians have long declared that geo­met­ri­cal hyper­bol­ic space could not be mod­eled in the real world. Now it’s been done, through cro­chet! Watch TED video sci­ence writer Mar­garet Wertheim explain how the art of cro­chet emu­lates sea slugs cre­at­ing coral struc­tures in hyper­bol­ic space, using art to bring atten­tion to the dis­ap­pear­ance of coral through glob­al warm­ing.” You can get more infor­ma­tion about this pre­sen­ta­tion here. And, for more TED Talks, don’t for­get to check out this handy online spread­sheet.

An Open Invitation: Suggest & Contribute

in Random | February 3rd, 2010

Some­where dur­ing your day, you spot a great video, an enrich­ing audio lec­ture, or an excel­lent free ebook. And you think, that’s per­fect for Open Cul­ture. So you shoot us a quick note, and the next thing you know, your per­son­al dis­cov­ery is live on the site, being shared with thou­sands of like-mind­ed read­ers from across the globe — read­ers from Lon­don to New York, from Tehran to Ban­ga­lore, from Syd­ney to Sao Paulo and beyond. And our glob­al vil­lage is hap­py … and bet­ter off for it. Sounds good, right? We think so.

So here’s what we ask: When­ev­er you see a great piece of intel­li­gent media, please quick­ly send it our way. (We have a nice “Sug­gest a Link” but­ton on the upper right side of the site.) And, assum­ing it fits with Open Cul­ture’s gen­er­al mis­sion, we’ll share it with your fel­low read­ers, give you full cred­it, and thank you warm­ly. Look for­ward to your sug­ges­tions, and, if you haven’t already, please join us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

Virginia Woolf: Her Voice Recaptured

in Literature | February 2nd, 2010

Lis­ten up. The clip above fea­tures the only sur­viv­ing record­ing of Vir­ginia Woolf’s voice. It comes from a 1937 BBC radio broad­cast. The talk, enti­tled “Crafts­man­ship,” was part of a series called “Words Fail Me.” You can find a tran­script of the record­ed por­tion here. Thanks Kirstin for help­ing get this nugget out there.

via mhp­books

Bertrand Russell on the Existence of God & the Afterlife (1959)

in Philosophy, Religion | February 1st, 2010

Bertrand Rus­sell, the Nobel Prize-win­ning philoso­pher, math­e­mati­cian and peace activist, died 40 years ago today. And so, above, we rewind the video tape to 1959, to Rus­sell explain­ing why he does­n’t believe in God. This was a view­point that he oth­er­wise elab­o­rat­ed upon in his well-known lecture/essay, Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian. To be sure, some read­ers won’t share Rus­sel­l’s views on reli­gion. But don’t take umbrage. Just remem­ber, we offer media from across the divide too.

Update: Anoth­er read­er sent us a nice addi­tion to the video above. Here, you can lis­ten to a famous 1948 debate between Bertrand Rus­sell and Father Fred­er­ick C. Cople­ston, Jesuit Catholic priest and pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy. It was orig­i­nal­ly aired on the BBC.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

Bertrand Rus­sell Sends a Mes­sage to the Future

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

in Music | January 31st, 2010

Great find by Robert B., who cap­tions this clip: “the teenage Glenn Gould at his Cana­di­an home.” Gould is play­ing here J.S.Bach’s Par­ti­ta #2. Give this a minute to get going. It’s a pret­ty awe­some dis­play of Gould’s tal­ents. Thanks for shar­ing Robert…