A Guide to E‑Books (and 100 E‑Text Classics)

in e-books | February 12th, 2009

A quick fyi: Mark Glaser at PBS’s Medi­aShift has just pub­lished a handy guide to e‑books. It cov­ers the his­to­ry of e‑books, the com­pet­ing e‑book read­ers, the pros and cons of work­ing with e‑books, what Google and Apple are now doing in this space, and more. Good stuff.

Sep­a­rate­ly, I also want­ed to flag a col­lec­tion that fea­tures e‑texts of 100 major lit­er­ary clas­sics. You’ll find it over at universitiesandcolleges.org.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains What Would Happen If You Fell into a Black Hole

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | February 11th, 2009

Per­haps you’ve pon­dered your own mor­tal­i­ty. But have you ever imag­ined per­ish­ing as you fall into a black hole? Prob­a­bly not. But if you’re intrigued by this admit­ted­ly unlike­ly sce­nario, then watch the clip above. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astro­physi­cist who heads up the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, breaks down the scene for you step-by-step and in a fair­ly humor­ous way. This talk is based on his well-reviewed book, Death by Black Hole: And Oth­er Cos­mic Quan­daries.

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!

Our Rapidly Changing Digital World

in Current Affairs, Technology | February 11th, 2009

In case you need­ed a reminder, we’re no longer liv­ing in your grand­fa­ther’s world. This video makes that plain­ly clear. Every­thing is chang­ing in a blink, and edu­ca­tion offers you and your kids the best way to nav­i­gate it all. Don’t take it for grant­ed.

via The Dig­i­tal­Blur. Thanks Jil­lian for the tip on this one.

Remem­ber to catch us on Twit­ter.

Culture on Twitter

in | February 10th, 2009

• Open Cul­ture: The best cul­tur­al & edu­ca­tion­al media on the web.… if we can humbly say so.
• BBC: Offi­cial BBC Twit­ter Account
• Big Think: A glob­al forum con­nect­ing peo­ple and ideas.
• Boing Boing: A direc­to­ry of won­der­ful things, includ­ing some great cul­tur­al bits.
• ccLearn: Access to qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion for every­one, every­where, at any time. A divi­sion of Cre­ative Com­mons.
• Com­posers’ Forum: For clas­si­cal music fans, a feed that con­nects com­posers and com­mu­ni­ties.
• ForaTV: Bril­liant Ideas for Dis­course and Debate.
• Freako­nom­ics: The book Freako­nom­ics has sold 3 mil­lion copies world­wide. This blog, begun in 2005, is meant to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going.
• FSG Books: Every­thing com­ing out of Far­rar, Straus, and Giroux Books.
• Futur­iz­ing Books:  What book pub­lish­ers are doing–and not doing–to stick around.
• Harper­Stu­dio: an exper­i­men­tal imprint at Harper­Collins hop­ing to change the future of pub­lish­ing.
• Harpers: An Amer­i­can gen­er­al inter­est mag­a­zine pub­lished from 1850.
• Har­vard Press: Pub­lish­es non­fic­tion in the human­i­ties, social sci­ences, and sci­ences.
• Inter­net Archive: A non-prof­it found­ed to build an Inter­net library, offer­ing per­ma­nent access to his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions exist­ing in dig­i­tal for­mat.
• Kottke.org: From the weblog about the lib­er­al arts 2.0 edit­ed by Jason Kot­tke since March 1998.
• LA Times Books: Lit­er­ary news & reviews from the Los Ange­les Times Jack­et Copy blog & Books sec­tion.
• Large­Heart­ed­Boy: From the excel­lent music blog the fea­tures lots of free mp3s.
• Lib­rivox: Free pub­lic domain audio­books
• Maud New­ton: Occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics and rants.
• Met­Mu­se­um: The big art muse­um in NYC.
• MoMA: anoth­er big one in NYC.
• PBS Media Shift: Tracks how new media—from weblogs to pod­casts to cit­i­zen journalism—are chang­ing soci­ety and cul­ture.
• Neil Gaiman: Writer of Star­dust, Good Omens, Amer­i­can Gods, Anan­si Boys, etc.
• New York Times Arts: Arts and Enter­tain­ment News from NYTimes.com/Arts
• New York Times Books: Recent Crit­ics’ Picks, News and Author Inter­views by the Writ­ers and Blog­gers of NYTimes.com/Books
• PBS Media Shift: Track how new media—from weblogs to pod­casts to cit­i­zen journalism—are chang­ing soci­ety and cul­ture.
• Ready Steady Book: An inde­pen­dent book review web­site devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.
• Research Channel: Remark­able speak­ers, researchers and schol­ars present rev­o­lu­tion­ary thoughts and dis­cov­er­ies on ResearchChan­nel.
• Sun­dance: This is the offi­cial feed from the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, hit­ting Park City, Utah each Jan­u­ary.
• Tate: A fam­i­ly of four art gal­leries in the UK: Tate Britain, Tate Mod­ern, Tate Liv­er­pool and Tate St Ives.
• TED Talks: The offi­cial feed of TEDTalks: Ideas worth spread­ing — new TEDTalks and news.
• The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion: The lead­ing news source for high­er edu­ca­tion.
• The Econ­o­mist: Offi­cial Twit­ter site for The Econ­o­mist. Fol­low for new arti­cle and event post­ings, debate updates, inter­views and web­site devel­op­ments.
• The Library of Con­gress: The largest library in the world, with mil­lions of books, record­ings, pho­tographs, maps and man­u­scripts in our col­lec­tions.
• The New York­er: The New York­er is a week­ly mag­a­zine with a mix of report­ing of pol­i­tics and cul­ture, humor and car­toons, fic­tion and poet­ry, and reviews and crit­i­cism.
• The New York Review of Books: The pre­mier lit­er­ary-intel­lec­tu­al mag­a­zine in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
• The Sci­ence Chan­nel: Offers updates, net­work exclu­sives & break­ing sci­ence & tech news.
• This Amer­i­can Life: Fol­low the great NPR radio show.
• UChica­go Press: Pub­lish­ing fine books and jour­nals since 1891.
• Utne Read­er: The best of the alter­na­tive press.
• Wired: Cov­er­age of cur­rent and future trends in tech­nol­o­gy, and how they are shap­ing busi­ness, enter­tain­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sci­ence, pol­i­tics…

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creative Genius

in Creativity, TED Talks | February 9th, 2009

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talked at last week’s TED Con­fer­ence about writ­ers, their “genius,” and the expec­ta­tions that we place on it. I know that Gilbert — or at least her last book — has a lot of fans. And that’s why I’m post­ing this here. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not so much a fan. She just does­n’t do it for me. But that’s just me … and so hope­ful­ly this work for you.

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2009

This week marks the 50th anniver­sary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talk­ing about the 1959 air­plane crash that cut short the bud­ding lives and careers of Bud­dy Hol­ly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bop­per” Richard­son. In ’59, Bud­dy Hol­ly’s musi­cal career was just get­ting start­ed, but his influ­ence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all cov­ered Hol­ly songs dur­ing their ear­ly careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon mov­ing from a Lead Bel­ly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a lit­tle Bud­dy Hol­ly med­ley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peg­gy Sue.” (The Bea­t­les’ take on “Words of Love” can be lis­tened to here as well.) Enjoy.

Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone

in Books, e-books, Literature | February 5th, 2009

Wow. Point your mobile web brows­er to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. Accord­ing to The Globe and Mail, Google is mak­ing 500,000 books, most from the pub­lic domain, freely avail­able to you. And if you live in the US, the num­ber will reach 1.5 mil­lion. The col­lec­tion includes works by Charles Dick­ens, Jane Austen, Shake­speare, Mil­ton and more. (You can also find many sim­i­lar texts in our col­lec­tion of free audio books.) I test­ed Google’s mobile books on the iPhone, and it looks real­ly good. Hope­ful­ly things will work well on your mobile device as well.

via Maud New­ton’s Twit­ter Feed

get Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here.

The Future of Human Health TED-Style

in Science, Stanford, Video - Science | February 4th, 2009

This week the 2009 TED Con­fer­ence is kick­ing into full gear, and it’s get­ting live blogged by Boing­Bo­ing through­out the week. See for exam­ple here, here and here. If you’re famil­iar with the TED for­mat, you’ll know that the goal is to take influ­en­tial thinkers and have them deliv­er the “talk of their lives” in 18 crisp min­utes or less. It’s a good mod­el, and it’s one that Stan­ford used dur­ing the fall when it deliv­ered a short course called: “The Future of Human Health: Sev­en Very Short Talks That Will Blow Your Mind.” In the lec­ture post­ed above, Jen­nifer Ray­mond talks about what changes in our brains when we learn and remem­ber, and how our under­stand­ing of these process­es (and of specif­i­cal­ly neur­al cir­cuits) can even­tu­al­ly lead to treat­ments for learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, demen­tia and Alzheimer’s. You can find the com­plete list of short talks on YouTube and iTunes as well.

Faulkner and Delillo Writing for Sports Illustrated

in Literature | February 4th, 2009

A good find by the LA Times Books Blog that we picked up on Twit­ter: Some­where back in the Sports Illus­trat­ed archive, you’ll find William Faulkn­er writ­ing in 1955 about see­ing his first hock­ey game (the Rangers v. the Mon­tre­al Cana­di­ens at Madi­son Square Gar­den). And then we have Don Delil­lo doing his own piece in 1972, well before he wrote his first big nov­els. Both pieces, by the way, are col­lect­ed in the 2004 book, Fifty Years of Great Writ­ing.

Can YouTube Save the Nuns?

in Religion, YouTube | February 4th, 2009

Giv­en that we were talk­ing about the his­tor­i­cal Jesus yes­ter­day, this piece in the Utne Read­er caught my eye …

What hap­pens when you’re run­ning a 14th cen­tu­ry con­vent in South­ern Spain that’s near­ly broke? You could call up Jake and Elwood. Or, if you’re Moth­er Isabel and you run the show, you put a video on YouTube enti­tled “Why not be a bare­foot Carmelite?” And then you let every­one see the nuns doing their thing — nuns read­ing, nuns pray­ing, nuns bak­ing and nuns sewing. So far the video has about 30,000 views, which is not huge by YouTube stan­dards and it may not be enough to save the nuns. But the way I fig­ure it, if we can bail out the Wall Street bun­glers, then why not the nuns?