Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree: The Animated Film Narrated by Shel Silverstein Himself (1973)

in Animation | February 23rd, 2023

Back in 1964, Shel Sil­ver­stein wrote The Giv­ing Tree, a wide­ly loved chil­dren’s book now trans­lat­ed into more than 30 lan­guages. It’s a sto­ry about the human con­di­tion, about giv­ing and receiv­ing, using and get­ting used, need­i­ness and greed­i­ness, although many fin­er points of the sto­ry are open to inter­pre­ta­tion. Today, we’re rewind­ing the video­tape to 1973, when Sil­ver­stein’s lit­tle book was turned into a 10-minute ani­mat­ed film. Sil­ver­stein nar­rates the sto­ry him­self and also plays the har­mon­i­ca.… which brings us to his musi­cal tal­ents. Don’t miss Sil­ver­stein, also a well-known song­writer, appear­ing on The John­ny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Sil­ver­stein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-edi­tor of the phi­los­o­phy blog/podcast The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life for send­ing these along.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Ani­mat­ed Sto­ries Writ­ten by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Oth­er Artists, Read by Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & More

Mau­rice Sendak Ani­mat­ed; James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Sendak’s Sto­ry “In The Night Kitchen”

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Gnome Chomsky: The Indispensable Ornament for the Thinking Person’s Garden

in Random | February 16th, 2023

Images via Just­SayG­nome

The Noam Chom­sky Gar­den Gnome. That’s right, I said it, the Noam Chom­sky Gar­den Gnome.

Over at justsaygnome.net, you can buy “Gnome Chom­sky the Gar­den Noam.” Here’s is how it’s gen­er­al­ly described:

Just over one foot in height, the ful­ly paint­ed Gnome Chom­sky the Gar­den Noam (Ver­sion II) stands relaxed and con­fi­dent in his classy gnome clothes, hat and glass­es. Equipped with a cou­ple books on an author­i­ta­tive pil­lar, he’s ready to give your gar­den or home a big infu­sion of insight­ful gnome polit­i­cal per­spec­tive. A sol­id foun­da­tion base com­plete with a carved title assures that Gar­den Noam will be well-bal­anced and helps inform any­one who may not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize him of the iden­ti­ty of this hand­some and schol­ar­ly gnome.

The gnome costs $228.00 paint­ed and $124 unpaint­ed (plus ship­ping). And if you’re inter­est­ed, you can also get Howard the Zinn Monk and BerGnome Sanders.

In putting this post togeth­er, I spot­ted an old com­ic bit that took the idea of a Noam Gar­den Gnome as its premise. You can watch it below.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: It’s “Basically High-Tech Plagiarism” and “a Way of Avoiding Learning”

in Education, Technology | February 10th, 2023

Chat­G­PT, the sys­tem that under­stands nat­ur­al lan­guage and responds in kind, has caused a sen­sa­tion since its launch less than three months ago. If you’ve tried it out, you’ll sure­ly have won­dered what it will soon rev­o­lu­tion­ize — or, as the case may be, what it will destroy. Among Chat­G­P­T’s first vic­tims, holds one now-com­mon view, will be a form of writ­ing that gen­er­a­tions have grown up prac­tic­ing through­out their edu­ca­tion. “The essay, in par­tic­u­lar the under­grad­u­ate essay, has been the cen­ter of human­is­tic ped­a­gogy for gen­er­a­tions,” writes Stephen Marche in The Atlantic. “It is the way we teach chil­dren how to research, think, and write. That entire tra­di­tion is about to be dis­rupt­ed from the ground up.”

If Chat­G­PT becomes able instan­ta­neous­ly to whip up a plau­si­ble-sound­ing aca­d­e­m­ic essay on any giv­en top­ic, what future could there be for the aca­d­e­m­ic essay itself? The host of YouTube chan­nel EduK­itchen puts more or less that very ques­tion to Noam Chom­sky — a thinker who can be relied upon for views on edu­ca­tion — in the new inter­view above. “For years there have been pro­grams that have helped pro­fes­sors detect pla­gia­rized essays,” Chom­sky says. “Now it’s going to be more dif­fi­cult, because it’s eas­i­er to pla­gia­rize. But that’s about the only con­tri­bu­tion to edu­ca­tion that I can think of.” He does admit that Chat­G­PT-style sys­tems “may have some val­ue for some­thing,” but “it’s not obvi­ous what.”

As the rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy now stands, Chom­sky sees the use of Chat­G­PT as “basi­cal­ly high-tech pla­gia­rism” and “a way of avoid­ing learn­ing.” He likens its rise to that of the smart­phone: many stu­dents “sit there hav­ing a chat with some­body on their iPhone. One way to deal with that is to ban iPhones; anoth­er way to do it is to make the class inter­est­ing.” That stu­dents instinc­tive­ly employ high tech­nol­o­gy to avoid learn­ing is “a sign that the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is fail­ing.” If it “has no appeal to stu­dents, does­n’t inter­est them, does­n’t chal­lenge them, does­n’t make them want to learn, they’ll find ways out,” just as he him­self did when he bor­rowed a friend’s notes to pass a dull col­lege chem­istry class with­out attend­ing it back in 1945.

After spend­ing most of his career teach­ing at MIT, Chom­sky retired in 2002 to become a full-time pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton’s Robert Zaret­sky, who still teach­es, recent­ly offered his own, grim­mer take on Chat­G­PT and edu­ca­tion. “The col­lege essay died years ago,” he argues. “It’s a mug’s game in which a stu­dent sends me an elec­tron­ic file that, when open, spills out a jum­ble of words that the sender pro­pounds to be a fin­ished paper” — to which, pre­sum­ably, the out­put of a machine-learn­ing sys­tem would actu­al­ly be far prefer­able. Most tech­no­log­i­cal “dis­rup­tions” leave both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive effects in their wake. If the col­lege essay is indeed unsal­vage­able, per­haps Chat­G­PT will final­ly bring about its replace­ment with some­thing more inter­est­ing.

Update: Chom­sky has co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times called “The False Promise of Chat­G­PT”. Find it here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Chat­G­PT Writes a Song in the Style of Nick Cave–and Nick Cave Calls it “a Grotesque Mock­ery of What It Is to Be Human”

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Thanks to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, You Can Now Chat with His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures: Shake­speare, Ein­stein, Austen, Socrates & More

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

LEGO Releases the Most Elaborate Lord of the Rings Set: A 6,167-Piece Rivendell

in Literature | February 10th, 2023

Many of us built our first LEGO mod­els in child­hood and, a few years there­after in ado­les­cence, read our first Lord of the Rings nov­el. We con­tin­ue to look fond­ly back on such for­ma­tive cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences in adult­hood, and indeed, some of us retain a gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the arti­facts them­selves well into mid­dle age.

It is toward that very inter­sec­tion of enthu­si­asm and means that LEGO has tar­get­ed its lat­est and largest Lord of the Rings-themed set: a 6,167-piece mod­el of the Riven­dell, the sanc­tu­ary locat­ed in the epony­mous Elvish val­ley, which is set to retail for $500 USD.

This new LEGO Riven­dell has room “for the entire Fel­low­ship to debate The One Ring, and the shards of a par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy sword,” writes The Verge’s Sean Hol­lis­ter, and it includes “tiled rooftops, imag­i­na­tive arch­es, and enough dis­tinct spaces to recre­ate mul­ti­ple scenes from the movies.”

This marks a con­sid­er­able improve­ment on the sets that came out at the time of Peter Jack­son’s Lord of the Rings movies in the ear­ly 2000s: Andrew Liszews­ki at Giz­mo­do notes that “the largest one was a 1,300+-piece recre­ation of the Bat­tle of Helm’s Deep that, by today’s LEGO stan­dards, was rel­a­tive­ly small. The col­lec­tion also includ­ed a tiny 243-piece recre­ation of the Coun­cil of Elrond, which, under­stand­ably, left LOTR fans dis­ap­point­ed.”

You can see an in-depth review of the new Riven­dell set in the video just above from LEGO Youtu­ber Brick­sie. He has a great deal of praise for the details of its com­po­nents, yet what­ev­er resources LEGO can put toward an offi­cial con­sumer prod­uct, they can hard­ly match the pow­er of sheer fan obses­sion.

If you want to expe­ri­ence a tru­ly faith­ful re-cre­ation of Riven­dell in the medi­um of LEGO, you’ll have to attend a con­ven­tion with Alice Finch and David Frank, builders of an elab­o­rate mod­el that includes no few­er than 200,000 bricks: a sprawl­ing mon­u­ment to the kind of qua­si-reli­gious (and some­times life­long) devo­tion inspired by both the imag­i­na­tion of Tolkien and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of LEGO.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained in 10 Min­utes, in Two Illus­trat­ed Videos

Hokusai’s Icon­ic Print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa Recre­at­ed with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

The Vin­cent van Gogh Star­ry Night LEGO Set Is Now Avail­able: It’s Cre­at­ed in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with MoMA

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a LEGO Pro­fes­sor­ship

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Vinyl Records Are Made

in Music, Technology | February 10th, 2023

The vinyl record–we’ve shown you how they were made way back in 1937, and also in 1956. But how about nowa­days, dur­ing the renais­sance of vinyl? Above, Wired vis­its Jack White’s Third Man Records vinyl press­ing plant in Detroit, Michi­gan to “find out exact­ly what goes into the cre­ation of a vinyl record; from cut­ting and press­ing to mak­ing sure they sound great.” If you’re in the Detroit area, you can take a tour of Third Man Records’ press­ing plant. Get more info here.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How Old School Records Were Made, From Start to Fin­ish: A 1937 Video Fea­tur­ing Duke Elling­ton

Bohemian Rhapsody Played on the Largest Pipe Organ in the World

in Music | February 8th, 2023

Back in 2016, we showed you Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” get­ting played on a 1905 fair­ground organ. But now we’re step­ping it up a lev­el, and let­ting you behold this: organ­ist Joshua Stafford per­form­ing the same Queen clas­sic on a Mid­mer-Losh pipe organ. Built with 33,112 pipes, it’s appar­ent­ly the “largest pipe organ ever con­struct­ed, the largest musi­cal instru­ment ever con­struct­ed, and the loud­est musi­cal instru­ment ever con­struct­ed.” You can find it in the Main Audi­to­ri­um of the Board­walk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ. Enjoy.

h/t Allie

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent

1905 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

Behold the Sea Organ: The Mas­sive Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cal Instru­ment That Makes Music with the Sea

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

Vintage Book & Record Covers Come to Life in a Mesmerizing Animated Video

in Animation, Books, Music | February 7th, 2023

Back in April 2020, ani­ma­tor Hen­ning M. Led­er­er launched his “Books & Sleeves” project where he turns abstract geo­met­ric pat­terns, all fea­tured on vin­tage book and record cov­ers, into mes­mer­iz­ing mov­ing images. Above, you can watch the sec­ond install­ment of the project, which does­n’t dis­ap­point.

In the past, we’ve also fea­tured more of Lederer’s cre­ative work–from his ani­ma­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry min­i­mal­ist book cov­ers and vin­tage psy­chol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy books, to his ani­ma­tion of a 1926 lith­o­graph that famous­ly por­trays the human body as a mod­ern fac­to­ry. Be sure to give them all a watch.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Vin­tage Book & Record Cov­ers Brought to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­mat­ed Video

“Man as Indus­tri­al Palace,” the 1926 Lith­o­graph Depict­ing the Human Body as a Mod­ern Fac­to­ry, Comes to Life in a New Ani­ma­tion

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Captain, Once Invented a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

in Physics, Sports | February 3rd, 2023

We know that Neil deGrasse Tyson was some­thing of a wun­derkind dur­ing his high school years. If you’re an OC reg­u­lar, you’ve read all about how Carl Sagan per­son­al­ly recruit­ed Tyson to study with him at Cor­nell. Deft­ly, polite­ly, the young Tyson declined and went to Har­vard.

There’s per­haps anoth­er side of the pre­co­cious Tyson you might not know as much about. The ath­let­ic side. While a stu­dent at The Bronx High School of Sci­ence, Tyson (class of 1976) wore bas­ket­ball sneak­ers belong­ing to the Knick­’s Walt “Clyde” Fra­zier. He ran an impres­sive 4:25 mile. And he cap­tained the school’s wrestling team, dur­ing which time he con­jured up a new-fan­gled wrestling move. In pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, Ric Flair had the dread­ed Fig­ure Four Leg Lock, and Jim­my Snu­ka, a dev­as­tat­ing Super­fly Splash. Tyson? He had the feared “Dou­ble Tidal Lock.” He explains and demon­strates the physics-based move in the video below, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Ulti­mate War­rior, Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestler & Philoso­pher, Cre­at­ed a Glos­sary of World Philoso­phies

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School

The Rise & Fall of Roman Civilization: Every Year Shown in a Timelapse Map Animation (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

in History, Maps | February 1st, 2023

The Youtu­ber “Emper­or­Tiger­star” spe­cial­izes in doc­u­ment­ing the unfold­ing of world his­tor­i­cal events by stitch­ing togeth­er hun­dreds of maps into time­lapse films. In years past, we’ve fea­tured his “map ani­ma­tions” of the U.S. Civ­il War (1861–1865), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II (1939–1945). Today, we’re high­light­ing a more ambi­tious project, an attempt to visu­al­ly doc­u­ment the rise and fall of the Romans. The video cov­ers 2,000 years of his­to­ry, in just ten min­utes.

Mov­ing from 753 BC  to 1479 AD, the ani­mat­ed map shows Rome’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al bound­aries chang­ing as the Roman King­dom morphs into the Roman Repub­lic and lat­er the Roman Empire. Then the grav­i­ty of his­to­ry takes over and we expe­ri­ence the grad­ual decline of Roman civ­i­liza­tion. We see the bifur­ca­tion that splits the Empire into West­ern and East­ern (Byzan­tine) parts, until only a lit­tle piece remains.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The Splen­did Book Design of the 1946 Edi­tion of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (or East Roman Empire): An Ani­mat­ed Time­line Cov­er­ing 1,100 Years of His­to­ry

Liam Neeson Stars as Raymond Chandler’s Legendary Detective Philip Marlowe: Watch the Trailer for the New Film

in Film, Literature | January 26th, 2023

Behold the new trail­er for Mar­lowe, a new film direct­ed by Neil Jor­dan. As the title sug­gests, the film cen­ters around Philip Mar­lowe, the gumshoe detec­tive that Ray­mond Chan­dler first unveiled in The Big Sleep in 1939. Between then and now, Mar­lowe has been por­trayed in films by Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Robert Mitchum, Elliott Gould, and James Gar­ner. Now, Liam Nee­son takes his turn. Here’s how the pro­duc­ers pitch the film:

MARLOWE, a grip­ping noir crime thriller set in late 1930’s Los Ange­les, cen­ters around a street-wise, down on his luck detec­tive; Philip Mar­lowe, played by Liam Nee­son, who is hired to find the ex-lover of a glam­orous heiress (Diane Kruger), daugh­ter of a well-known movie star (Jes­si­ca Lange). The dis­ap­pear­ance unearths a web of lies, and soon Mar­lowe is involved in a dan­ger­ous, dead­ly inves­ti­ga­tion where every­one involved has some­thing to hide.

Mar­lowe arrives in the­aters on Feb­ru­ary 15.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

Hear Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Fleming–Two Mas­ters of Suspense–Talk with One Anoth­er in Rare 1958 Audio

Ray­mond Chandler’s 36 Great Unused Titles: From “The Man With the Shred­ded Ear,” to “Quick, Hide the Body”

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

via Boing­Bo­ing