70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

in Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | July 11th, 2008

Smart video col­lec­tions keep appear­ing on YouTube. But rather anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of its par­ent com­pa­ny (Google), YouTube unfor­tu­nate­ly makes these col­lec­tions dif­fi­cult to find. So we’ve decid­ed to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its. There are about 70 col­lec­tions in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re miss­ing any­thing good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them. You can find the com­plete list below the jump.

Also, feel free to check out our YouTube playlist.

Gen­er­al

• @GoogleTalks
  • Google has lots of famous vis­i­tors speak­ing at its head­quar­ters, and they’re all record­ed and neat­ly pre­sent­ed here.
• Al Jazeera Eng­lish
  • The Mid­dle East­ern news ser­vice, which has gen­er­at­ed its share of con­tro­ver­sy, now airs broad­casts in Eng­lish and presents them here.
• Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al
  • The lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion brings you var­i­ous videos out­lin­ing human rights con­cerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve con­di­tions.
• BBC
  • A series of videos pro­mot­ing pro­grams com­ing out of Britain’s main media out­let. Unfor­tu­nate­ly many of these videos are short and not entire­ly sub­stan­tive. A missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• BBC World­wide
  • Dit­to.
• Big Think
  • This col­lec­tion brings you videos fea­tur­ing some of today’s lead­ing thinkers, movers and shak­ers.
• Boing­Bo­ingTV
  • These videos are brought to you by the mak­ers of the very pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog.
• Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • A fair­ly rich line­up of videos explor­ing the col­lec­tions at Brook­lyn’s main art muse­um.
• Char­lie Rose
  • PBS inter­view­er Char­lie Rose presents seg­ments of his night­ly inter­views.
• Cit­i­zen Tube
  • YouTube’s own chan­nel presents videos deal­ing with the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and the 2008 elec­tion.
• Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um
  • A good num­ber of videos that delve into com­put­ers, net­work­ing, and semi­con­duc­tors.
• Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions
  • A resource designed to pro­vide insight into the com­plex inter­na­tion­al issues chal­leng­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers and cit­i­zens alike. (more…)

The First Unintended Horror Film (1895)

in Film | July 9th, 2008

A con­tri­bu­tion (which we always wel­come) from one of our read­ers in Roma­nia:

“The broth­ers Auguste and Louis Lumière cre­at­ed the first pub­licly shown movies, the first doc­u­men­taries and, with this 50-sec­ond film shot at a Provence rail­way sta­tion, the first hor­ror pic­ture. It is said that as Paris audi­ences watched the train chug toward the screen, they believed it was about to crash out of the frame and into the audi­to­ri­um, and ran out scream­ing. True or not, the sto­ry indi­cates the pow­er the medi­um would wield over its audi­ence.

The 50-sec­ond silent film [L’Ar­rivée D’un Train En Gare De La Cio­tat] cap­tures the entry of a steam loco­mo­tive into the train sta­tion in the French coastal town of la Cio­tat. Like most of the oth­er ear­ly Lumière films, L’Ar­rivée d’un train con­sists of a sin­gle, unedit­ed ‘view’ illus­trat­ing an aspect of every­day life.”

“L’Ar­rivée D’un Train En Gare De La Cio­tat” appears in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

Architecture in Motion

in Art, Random, Video - Arts & Culture | July 7th, 2008

When com­plet­ed in Dubai, this “dynam­ic build­ing” designed by David Fish­er will be in con­stant motion, always chang­ing its shape, and also gen­er­ate its own elec­tric ener­gy. You can reserve your apart­ment today, or wait for sim­i­lar build­ings to get erect­ed in Moscow and New York. The whole con­cept feels a bit Las Vegas-esque. But who knows, maybe this is the wave of the future. To see what I’m talk­ing about, watch the video below and get more info here.

Sub­scribe to our feed

Fourth of July Factoid

in History | July 4th, 2008

With­out Thomas Jef­fer­son and John Adams, Amer­i­cans would­n’t have the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Rather strange­ly, both men died on the same day, exact­ly fifty years after the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion — July 4, 1826.

Stephen Colbert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses

in Comedy, Literature, Uncategorized | July 2nd, 2008

Every June 16 is Blooms­day, which com­mem­o­rates Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio here). In Dublin and around the world, cel­e­bra­tions usu­al­ly include a read­ing of Joyce’s clas­sic. This year, in New York City, one high-pro­file event fea­tured Stephen Col­bert read­ing the part of Leopold Bloom, the char­ac­ter around which the sprawl­ing nov­el turns. You can lis­ten to Col­bert read here and here. Enjoy, and I will catch you back here after the hol­i­day week­end.

Sub­scribe to our feed

Seymour Hersh Reveals Covert Operations In Iran

in Current Affairs | July 1st, 2008

A quick fyi: Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Her­sch has a new piece in The New York­er detail­ing “a major esca­la­tion of covert oper­a­tions against Iran.” The plans draft­ed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and fund­ed by Con­gress brings the US anoth­er step clos­er to a mil­i­tary strike against Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, and such a strike becomes all the more like­ly, Hirsch believes, if Oba­ma wins the Novem­ber elec­tion. (Why? Because Oba­ma favors hav­ing direct talks rather than using pre­emp­tive force.) You can find an accom­pa­ny­ing audio inter­view with Her­sch here. He also appeared yes­ter­day on NPR’s Fresh Air and elab­o­rat­ed on all of this. You can lis­ten here: Stream — iTunes — Feed.

Down­load 250 Free Online Cours­es here

Sub­scribe to our feed

Superstring Theory Explained Dynamically

in Science, Video - Science | June 26th, 2008

“In clear, non­tech­ni­cal lan­guage, string the­o­rist Bri­an Greene explains how our under­stand­ing of the uni­verse has evolved from Ein­stein’s notions of grav­i­ty and space-time to super­string the­o­ry, where minus­cule strands of ener­gy vibrat­ing in 11 dimen­sions cre­ate every par­ti­cle and force in the uni­verse.” If you want to get deep­er into Greene’s work on string the­o­ry, I would rec­om­mend refer­ring back to this pre­vi­ous post.

This dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tion was made at the TED con­fer­ence. (PS You may also want to see Boing­Bo­ing’s new post: Top 10 TedTalks.)

Sub­scribe to our feed

The Gas Mileage Illusion (and the Future of Electric Cars)

in Business, Science, Video - Science | June 26th, 2008

Giv­en the sud­den nation­al obses­sion with the price of oil & gas, it seems worth flag­ging this bit of video put togeth­er by two pro­fes­sors from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Some may find their per­spec­tive on gas mileage rather obvi­ous, oth­ers not. Either way, it can’t hurt to get their point across.

Sep­a­rate­ly, here’s a quick piece on the state of elec­tric cars and when they may be ready for prime time. You’ll learn here about the Tes­la Road­ster, a high-per­for­mance elec­tric sports car, that goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 sec­onds and gets the equiv­a­lent of 256 miles per gal­lon. Pret­ty impres­sive, even if it costs $109k.

Sub­scribe to our feed

Great Literature in Three Lines or Less

in Literature | June 25th, 2008

Here’s 1984, Moby Dick, Par­adise Lost, The Great Gats­by and oth­er clas­sics boiled down to three lines, cour­tesy of McSweeny’s.

Salman Rushdie’s Book Tour Rolls Through Google

in Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | June 24th, 2008

Salman Rushdie’s lat­est book, The Enchantress of Flo­rence: A Nov­el, has hit the streets. And it comes just three years after his last one, Shal­i­mar the Clown, which makes him a good deal more pro­lif­ic than many of his con­tem­po­raries. (A piece in The Guardian — The Great Amer­i­can Pause — notes that many cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ists have been pub­lish­ing books a bit more leisure­ly, often once every 10, 12 or even 20 years.) Dur­ing his book tour last week, Rushdie trav­eled to Google’s HQ, where, among oth­er things, he talked about how he used Google and oth­er online tools to do the his­tor­i­cal research for The Enchantress of Flo­rence. The talk runs a good 70 min­utes, and it takes you through the process that brought his work from con­cept to real­i­ty. Watch the video below.

Want to know how to add YouTube videos to your iPod? Then check out our piece: 10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get.

Sub­scribe to our feed