When a Volcano Erupts Beneath the Ice

in Video - Science | January 25th, 2009

I’m not sure that it’s quite as intrigu­ing as what hap­pens when waves freeze in New­found­land, but it’s still pret­ty neat.

1000 Novels Everyone Must Read

in Books | January 24th, 2009

What are the 1000 best nov­els? The Guardian thinks it knows. This list was put togeth­er by The Guardian’s review team and a pan­el of experts. As you’ll see, the defin­i­tive list is help­ful­ly sub­di­vid­ed into themes: love, crime, com­e­dy, fam­i­ly and self, state of the nation, sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, war and trav­el.

On that note, I should also high­light a col­lec­tion of Life-Chang­ing Books put togeth­er by our read­ers. You’ll find many good reads here as well.

In Honor of Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat

in Music | January 23rd, 2009

At least in my mind, Aretha Franklin stole the show on Tues­day. It’s hard to top her singing My Coun­try, ‘Tis of Thee — the beau­ty of the voice, the obvi­ous poignant sym­bol­ism of the moment, and then her hat. Yes, the hat that has cap­tured the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. Just days lat­er, we have a Face­book group ded­i­cat­ed to her head­wear, and now on Flickr a series of pho­tos that cre­ative­ly super­im­pose the Franklin hat on oth­er celebri­ties, Col­bert and Bull­win­kle includ­ed.

Malcolm Gladwell: What We Can Learn from Spaghetti Sauce

in Psychology, TED Talks | January 21st, 2009

Speak­ing at the TED con­fer­ence in 2007, Mal­colm Glad­well (author of The Tip­ping Point, Blink, and now Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess) intro­duces you to the food indus­try’s pur­suit of the per­fect spaghet­ti sauce, which ulti­mate­ly tells you some­thing essen­tial about human choice and hap­pi­ness.

Obama’s Inauguration and Address

in Current Affairs | January 21st, 2009

If you did­n’t see how the inau­gu­ra­tion of the 44th Amer­i­can pres­i­dent went down, here it goes.

Presidential Inauguration Videos & Text

in History | January 20th, 2009

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Here you’ll find 22 inau­gu­ra­tion speech­es, start­ing with McKin­ley’s 1901 address. There’s some great footage in this series of videos.

Along sim­i­lar lines, The New York Times has post­ed an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that cov­ers every inau­gur­al address. You can read the full text of each speech, and see which words and ideas were most wide­ly used with­in each text. It’s a quick way to see what issues mat­tered most dur­ing a giv­en his­tor­i­cal moment. Start with George Wash­ing­ton’s address here.

Last­ly, let me leave you with this. FDR’s 1933 address, which helped Amer­i­ca move with a lit­tle more con­fi­dence through anoth­er dif­fi­cult time. It’s the speech that gives us “There’s noth­ing to fear but fear itself,” a kind of pre­lude to “Yes we can.” Here’s to new begin­nings.

Foreign Policy: The 10 Top Stories You Missed in 2008

in Current Affairs | January 19th, 2009

In 2008, our atten­tion was most­ly focused on the long Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and the dra­mat­ic crash of the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem. These two sto­ries over­shad­owed many oth­er impor­tant ones. And so For­eign Pol­i­cy has put togeth­er a col­lec­tion of the most over­looked for­eign affairs sto­ries of ’08. Rus­si­a’s move into Africa, the begin­ning of a new Dar­fur, solar pan­els emit­ting green­house gas­es — these sto­ries and more get cov­ered here.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity: Now Live on YouTube and iTunes

in Online Courses, Physics, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | January 15th, 2009

This week, Stan­ford has start­ed to roll out a new course, Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing physics minds, this course is the fourth of a six-part sequence — Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum — that traces the devel­op­ment of mod­ern physics, mov­ing from New­ton to Black Holes. As the title sug­gests, this course (which runs 20 hours in total) focus­es square­ly on the ground­break­ing work of Albert Ein­stein. And, it’s undoubt­ed­ly a plus that the course was pre­sent­ed in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that it’s tai­lored to smart non-spe­cial­ists like you. You can watch the first lec­ture on iTunes here, or YouTube below. The remain­ing lec­tures will be rolled out on a week­ly basis. If you would like to watch the longer sequence of cours­es, I have pro­vid­ed a com­plete list of links here. Enjoy.

Leonard Bernstein Conducting Shostakovich’s Fifth with Some YouTube Comments Sprinkled on Top

in Music | January 14th, 2009

Imag­ine you’re surf­ing YouTube and come across a clip of Leonard Bern­stein con­duct­ing Shostakovich’s Fifth. It looks and sounds great. Now imag­ine that you lay­er on top a series of YouTube com­ments that accom­pa­ny the video. Sud­den­ly things get a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and bizarre. This piece comes from the YouTube Com­men­tary Project devel­oped by Artists Space, which we’ve added to our col­lec­tion, YouTube Edu­ca­tion: 80 Intel­li­gent Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube. 

PS The YouTube com­ments are rat­ed R, not PG. So watch this clip in the com­pa­ny of an appro­pri­ate audi­ence.

 via Kot­tke via The Rest is Noise

“Stand By Me” Sung By Musicians Around the World

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 13th, 2009

What hap­pens when you take Ben King’s 1961 hit, Stand By Me, and then trav­el around the world, hav­ing dif­fer­ent inter­na­tion­al artists offer their own inter­pre­ta­tions, and final­ly you stitch them all togeth­er in one seam­less tune?  The clip below starts in Cal­i­for­nia, moves to New Orleans, then heads off to Ams­ter­dam, France, Brazil, Moscow, Venezuala, South Africa and beyond. And I’m will­ing to bet that you’ll like how it turns out.  The clip comes from the doc­u­men­tary, “Play­ing For Change: Peace Through Music.” Thanks Jil­lian for the heads up on this one, and, you guessed it, this one’s added to our YouTube Favorites.

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!