Math on the Tube

in Math, YouTube | May 11th, 2009

Dur­ing the past cou­ple of days, fans from our Face­book page have rec­om­mend­ed two math videos for us. Here they go: “D” offers up a piece called “The New Math” (above), which talks, yes, about the rev­o­lu­tion in teach­ing math­e­mat­ics. As you’ll see, the piece breaks into com­ic song, and it all kind of has an Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restau­rant feel to it. A bit of a strange com­bo, to be sure.

Next up, Heather gives us Math­mati­cious (get it here), which is a math­e­mat­i­cal par­o­dy of Fer­gie’s “Fer­ga­li­cious,” although sad­ly or, maybe actu­al­ly hap­pi­ly, I’m not famil­iar with it. Snooty, snarky me…

‘Stanford Open Office Hours’ on Facebook

in Stanford | May 10th, 2009

Think back to the office hours you attend­ed in col­lege. Now put a Web 2.0 slant on it. On Face­book, Stan­ford fac­ul­ty mem­bers are now hold­ing pub­lic office hours. This week, you can watch an intro­duc­to­ry video (view here or below) by Philip Zim­bar­do, the psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor best known for the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment, which explains why good peo­ple can com­mit unthink­able acts. His more recent research does a 180 and looks at how ordi­nary peo­ple com­mit hero­ic acts. And, sep­a­rate­ly, he’s try­ing to under­stand how our atti­tudes toward time affect our over­all hap­pi­ness (more on that here). Once you watch the ini­tial video, you can pose ques­tions to Prof Zim­bar­do in the com­ment thread beneath the clip. (You can do this through Tues­day after­noon). In the com­ing days, Prof. Zim­bar­do will respond to your ques­tions in a fol­low-up video.

To par­tic­i­pate, you will need to join Face­book and become a “fan” of Stan­ford’s Face­book page, And you’ll per­haps want to read over the ground rules for the Open Office Hours. Last­ly, if you’re not a Fan of Open Cul­ture’s Face­book Page, it’s time to get on board.

Obama Does Stand Up Comedy

in Comedy, Current Affairs | May 10th, 2009

From last night’s White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. (Also get Wan­da Sykes’ standup appear­ance here. Rather fun­ny.)

These clips come from CSPAN’s YouTube Chan­nel, which is includ­ed in our Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tion

Jack Kerouac Meets William F. Buckley (1968)

in Literature | May 9th, 2009

Rewind the video­tape to 1968. Jack Ker­ouac, author of On the Road, appears (seem­ing­ly drunk) on William F. Buck­ley’s “Fir­ing Line.” As you’ll see, this meet­ing of the Beat and the father of mod­ern Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism is not exact­ly filled with sub­stance. But the clip has some his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty. You can find more Ker­ouac video and audio on the Dig­i­tal Beat web site.

via Boing­Bo­ing

The Fate of Nabokov’s Final, Unpublished Work

in Literature | May 8th, 2009

When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he was work­ing on a man­u­script called The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra. And he asked that it remain locked in a Swiss vault and nev­er pub­lished. His son, Dmitri, who also hap­pens to be his trans­la­tor and sur­viv­ing heir, is now won­der­ing what to do with “the most con­cen­trat­ed dis­til­la­tion of [my father’s] cre­ativ­i­ty.” To burn or not to burn? That’s Dmitri’s dilem­ma, and it gets explored in this piece by Slate.

Relat­ed Video Con­tent:

Nabokov Read­ing from Loli­ta

Nabokov on Loli­ta

100 Best iPhone Apps for Serious Self-Learners

in iPhone | May 7th, 2009

With a lit­tle luck, we’re going to be bring­ing you an Open Cul­ture iPhone app in the next cou­ple of months. In the mean­time, here’s a handy list of iPhone apps for “seri­ous self-learn­ers.” Let me give you a quick sam­ple of the apps you’ll find high­light­ed here: Aristotle’s com­plete works, The Oxford Dic­tio­nary of Lit­er­ary Terms, Lone­ly Plan­et Japan­ese Phrase­book., The World Fact­book ‘09, Taber’s Med­ical Dic­tio­nary, The Peter­son Field Guide to Back­yard Birds, and a lot more. Note, some of the apps are free, and oth­ers not.

PS: See Open Cul­ture’s new free app that gives you access to hun­dreds of free audio books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons and more.

Thanks Bryan for the tip on this one.

Did Gauguin Cut Off Van Gogh’s Ear?

in Art | May 6th, 2009

Curi­ous piece in the Tele­graph. It starts:

He is known as the tor­tured genius who cut off his own ear as he strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness after the break­down of his friend­ship with a fel­low artist. But a new study claims Vin­cent Van Gogh may have made up the sto­ry to pro­tect painter Paul Gau­guin who actu­al­ly lopped it off with a sword dur­ing an argu­ment…

Ge the full sto­ry here.

New Kindle Out, But Can You Read It at Night?

in Amazon Kindle, Apple | May 6th, 2009

Before you get dis­suad­ed by my orig­i­nal com­ments, please see my lat­est update down below.

As we men­tioned ear­li­er this week, Ama­zon unveiled its new Kin­dle this morn­ing in NYC. The Kin­dle DX ($489) fea­tures a large screen (9.7 inch­es mea­sured diag­o­nal­ly) and it’s intend­ed to make read­ing news­pa­pers, col­lege text­books and PDFs a more user-friend­ly expe­ri­ence. Plen­ty of news out­lets have pro­vid­ed cov­er­age of the unveil­ing: Engad­get, Giz­mo­do, Ars Tech­ni­ca, etc. And it’s most­ly pos­i­tive. But I’m left won­der­ing if the Kin­dle DX address­es the major prob­lem with Kin­dle 2 ($359). If you spend some time on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle dis­cus­sion forum, you’ll see that one of the longest threads (so far con­tain­ing 857 posts) is devot­ed to com­plaints about the Kindle’s light fonts and dark back­ground — a bad com­bo, espe­cial­ly when you try to read it at night. (Oth­ers have kvetched about it here.) I bought the Kin­dle 2, and real­ly loved it in many ways. But I could­n’t use it in low­er light con­di­tions. At night, the screen gets mud­dy, and the words don’t pop off of the page. And that’s a deal break­er for me. Mean­while, with the same light­ing, a tra­di­tion­al book reads per­fect­ly well.  The major prob­lem with the Kin­dle gets down to this: Users can’t real­ly cus­tomize the look & feel of the read­ing mate­r­i­al. Yes, you can increase and decrease the size of the fonts. But you can’t make the fonts dark­er (unless you know how to hack the darn thing). Nor can you make the back­ground lighter. This one-size-fits-all approach is what Guten­berg gave us in the 15th cen­tu­ry. (Sor­ry, don’t mean to knock on Guten­berg.) It should­n’t be what Ama­zon gives us for  $359 in 2009. Could you imag­ine Apple serv­ing this up? Hard­ly. And speak­ing of Apple, it may have its own e‑book read­er com­ing soon. Accord­ing to PC Mag­a­zine, Apple may be rolling out the iPad ($699), which could be an e‑book/internet read­er and media play­er all rolled into one. For now, I’m wait­ing to see what Apple brings to mar­ket and hop­ing that Ama­zon finds reli­gion. When they get the Kin­dle right, it will be great.

UPDATE: A year lat­er, a new Kin­dle is out (see Wifi ver­sion here, and 3G wire­less ver­sion here). The con­trast is notice­ably improved with this mod­el. But, even bet­ter, Ama­zon now sells (sep­a­rate­ly) a case that has a built in retractable light. Tak­en togeth­er, you can now read the Kin­dle fair­ly well at night, under pret­ty much any light con­di­tions. This Kin­dle I kept, and I’m a big­ger fan than before.

Bells in Russian Culture

in Literature | May 5th, 2009

As a for­mer Sovi­etol­o­gist (skills that today help me under­stand our pub­lic broad­cast­ing sys­tem), I read with excite­ment the New York­er’s arti­cle on the grand bells of Moscow’s Danilov Monastery and their return after 70-some years from the Unit­ed States to Rus­sia. Writ­ing in the April 27 issue, Har­vard grad Elif Batu­man notes how bells—not just these 18, weigh­ing 13 to 20 tons each—have played a piv­otal role in, among oth­er things, Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture: peal­ing moments before Raskolnikov’s epiphany of guilt; ring­ing out in War and Peace as Napoleon’s army entered Moscow; and ever-present in Boris Godunov. Some of the Danilov bells had rung at Gogol’s bur­ial in 1852. But after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, when the Sovi­ets shut­tered the Danilov Monastery (as almost all monas­ter­ies), shot most of the priests, and destroyed many of the great Russ­ian church­es, the bells were tak­en down and went silent. They were pre­served and brought to the Unit­ed States through the mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture of phil­an­thropist Charles Crane—an Amer­i­can busi­ness­man. Installed at Harvard’s Low­ell House through Crane’s con­nec­tions there, they rang on Sun­days and at the start of Har­vard foot­ball games for sev­er­al decades.

The sto­ry of the bells’ return to Moscow is best left to Batu­man to tell, but I start­ed won­der­ing how one should think of using sound in writ­ing pub­lished online—especially writ­ing about, well, bells. The New York­er’s pod­cast helps con­sid­er­ably, and a YouTube search for video and sound pro­duces clips from Russ­ian and Amer­i­can news orga­ni­za­tions and ama­teur cam­era­men. Mean­while, the ques­tion keeps ring­ing (pros­ti­tye menya!): where is the Flickr for sound?

Peter B. Kauf­man heads up Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion.

Jack Wakes Up: Get the First Three Chapters Here

in Books | May 5th, 2009

It start­ed as an audio pod­cast (iTunes — RSS Feed — MP3) and now it’s being released in print by Ran­dom House today. Seth Har­wood’s Jack Wakes Up is out, and you can read the first three chap­ters as a free pdf here. A cou­ple of weeks back, we fea­tured a short video show­ing how Har­wood has used web 2.0 (pod­casts, videos, etc.) to get his crime fic­tion in front of new audi­ences. If you’re a writer, no mat­ter what your age, you’ll want to see what Seth is doing here. It’s smart and let’s you take charge of your lit­er­ary career. In the mean­time, you can fol­low his enthu­si­as­tic book launch over on Twit­ter: @sethharwood. And we’re at @openculture, bring­ing even more bits of open cul­ture to the world.