A Trip to the Moon (1902): The First Great Sci-Fi Film

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | January 19th, 2011

A year before the Wright broth­ers launched the first air­plane flight in 1903, Georges Méliès, a French film­mak­er with already 400 films to his cred­it, direct­ed a film that visu­al­ized a much big­ger human ambi­tion – land­ing a space­craft on the moon. Loose­ly based on works by Jules Vernes (From the Earth to the Moon) and H. G. Wells (The First Men in the Moon), A Trip to the Moon (Le voy­age dans la lune) invent­ed one of our favorite cin­e­mat­ic gen­res – the sci­ence fic­tion film. Today, many film crit­ics con­sid­er Méliès’ short film an endur­ing clas­sic. The Vil­lage Voice ranked it #84 on its list of the 100 Best Films of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly rec­og­nize the icon­ic shot at the 4:44 mark.

Méliès’s body of work, which goes well beyond this land­mark film, has been recent­ly col­lect­ed into a new box set. Georges Méliès: First Wiz­ard of Cin­e­ma (1896–1913) puts 173 rare and redis­cov­ered films onto a 5 disc, 13-hour col­lec­tion.

A Trip to the Moon has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can also down­load a ver­sion at the Inter­net Archive.

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 First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle(1896)

Watch After the Ball, the 1897 “Adult” Film by Pio­neer­ing Direc­tor Georges Méliès (Almost NSFW)

Watch the First Russ­ian Sci­ence Fic­tion Film, Aeli­ta: Queen of Mars (1924)

Big Thinkers on Wikipedia’s 10th Anniversary

in Wikipedia | January 18th, 2011

Wikipedia just turned 10 this week­end. And, to mark the occa­sion, The Atlantic asked ten “All-Star Thinkers” respond to a sim­ple ques­tion: “What do you think about Wikipedia?” The respons­es? Well, they express the usu­al range of opin­ions, from appre­ci­a­tion to some­thing approach­ing dis­dain. Take for exam­ple the two excerpts below:

Yochai Ben­kler, pro­fes­sor, Har­vard Law School: That’s the biggest gift that Wikipedia has giv­en to us — a vision of prac­ti­cal utopia. What gift can we best give back? Per­haps it is just this, to rec­og­nize the trans­for­ma­tive role that thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als have played for all of us in how we can imag­ine our lives togeth­er as pro­duc­tive, engaged, social beings.

Jonathan Lethem, nov­el­ist, Pomona pro­fes­sor: With all respect to the noble vol­un­teer army, I call it death by pedantry. Ques­tion: had­n’t we more or less come to under­stand that no piece of extend­ed descrip­tion of real­i­ty is free of agen­das or ide­olo­gies? This lie, which any Ency­clo­pe­dia implic­it­ly tells, is cubed by the infi­nite regress of Wikipedia tin­ker­ing-unto-medi­oc­rity.

Oth­er con­trib­u­tors include Clay Shirky, NYU jour­nal­ism prof Jay Rosen, and Mari­ette DiChristi­na (edi­tor-in-chief, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can). Get the full list here.

Winter in Yosemite National Park

in Art | January 17th, 2011

Hen­ry Jun Wah Lee cap­tured this beau­ti­ful scene over the 2011 New Year week­end when a win­ter storm drift­ed into Yosemite Nation­al Park (California/Nevada). You will def­i­nite­ly want to check out his col­lec­tion videos on Vimeo, which includes more scenes from Yosemite, Joshua Tree and beyond…

via @zeitonline_vid

MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

in History, Life | January 17th, 2011

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. deliv­ered his last speech, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as his “I’ve Been to the Moun­tain­top” speech, in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee on April 3, 1968. The next day, he would be assas­si­nat­ed. The full address (Part 1 & Part 2) ranges wide­ly. It sweeps through Euro­pean and Amer­i­can his­to­ry, even­tu­al­ly bring­ing us into 1960s Amer­i­ca, a moment fraught with ten­sion, when African-Amer­i­cans were fight­ing for equal rights at home, and a divi­sive Viet­nam War dragged on abroad. Trac­ing the impor­tant moments of the civ­il rights move­ment, the speech ends (high­light­ed above) with Mr. King prophet­i­cal­ly fore­see­ing his own death (see the Life gallery of his last day), but know­ing that his per­son­al sac­ri­fice had cre­at­ed some­thing bul­lets could nev­er stop. A great Amer­i­can and world cit­i­zen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Have a Dream

What Would MLK Say About the USA Today?

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Inferno Inspired Galileo’s Physics

in History, Literature, Physics | January 17th, 2011

This com­ing fall, Mark Peter­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege, will pub­lish a new book where he makes a rather curi­ous argu­ment: Back in 1588, a young Galileo pre­sent­ed two lec­tures before the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my. And there he laid the ground­work for his the­o­ret­i­cal physics when he called into ques­tion the accept­ed mea­sure­ments of Dan­te’s hell (as depict­ed in the Infer­no, the great epic poem from 1314). Did debates over a poem fig­ure into the unfold­ing of The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion? The Boston Globe digs deep­er into the ques­tion with the video above and a longer arti­cle 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:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Sto­ry of Physics Ani­mat­ed in 4 Min­utes: From Galileo and New­ton, to Ein­stein

How to See the World Like Malcolm Gladwell

in Media | January 12th, 2011

This ques­tion ran through my mind just yes­ter­day. No, not how does Mal­colm Glad­well see the world? But, rather, what does it feel like to inhab­it the mind of peo­ple who think and see the world in entire­ly dif­fer­ent ways? The ques­tion can be a big exis­ten­tial thought exper­i­ment. Or, it turns out, it can be the impulse guid­ing Mal­colm Glad­well’s var­ied, often unex­pect­ed, and usu­al­ly best­selling inquiries.

Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming in Conversation (1958)

in Books, Literature | January 12th, 2011

We take you back to 1958 when Ian Flem­ing, cre­ator of the great spy­mas­ter char­ac­ter James Bond, meets up with Ray­mond Chan­dler, Amer­i­ca’s fore­most writer of hard-boiled detec­tive fic­tion. The two authors, who read and admired each oth­er’s work, sat down for drinks one day and got down to talk­ing about vil­lains (real and imag­ined) and their icon­ic lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. The BBC cap­tured it all on audio (above). You can also find a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion on page 30 of this PDF. The con­ver­sa­tion, which has a free flow­ing qual­i­ty to it, runs 25 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe: The Radio Episodes

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

James Bond in Drag For Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day

NASA: The Frontier Is Everywhere

in Astronomy, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Reid Gow­er writes: “NASA is the most fas­ci­nat­ing, adven­tur­ous, epic insti­tu­tion ever devised by human beings …” but “none of their bril­liant sci­en­tists appear to know how to con­nect with the social media crowd.” Strange giv­en that “NASA is an insti­tu­tion whose fund­ing direct­ly depends on how the pub­lic views them.” Tak­ing mat­ters into his own hands, Gow­er has pro­duced a lit­tle mar­ket­ing gift for NASA: The Fron­tier is Every­where, a video mod­eled after Michael Marantz’s beau­ti­ful short film, Earth: The Pale Blue Dot, which also fea­tures the voice of Carl Sagan – some­one who under­stood the impor­tance of pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence…

P.S. NASA isn’t exact­ly inept on the mar­ket­ing front. We should remind you of two pret­ty cool and recent NASA pro­duc­tions:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

via Zadi.TV

The Impossible Motion Contraption

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Every year, The New Sci­en­tist spon­sors an illu­sion con­test, and, above, we have the win­ner of the 2010 edi­tion: A con­trap­tion cre­at­ed by Kou­kichi Sug­i­hara (Mei­ji Insti­tute for Advanced Study of Math­e­mat­i­cal Sci­ences, Japan) that appears to defy grav­i­ty, allow­ing wood­en balls to roll up slopes. But, in actu­al fact “the ori­en­ta­tions of the slopes are per­ceived oppo­site­ly, and hence the descend­ing motion is mis­in­ter­pret­ed as ascend­ing motion.” You can now make sub­mis­sions to the 2011 edi­tion.

Oxford English Dictionary Free

in e-books | January 10th, 2011

Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick men­tion. The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, oth­er­wise known sim­ply as the OED, can be accessed for free until Feb­ru­ary 5. This gives you access to 600,000 words, 3 mil­lion quo­ta­tions, over 1000 years of Eng­lish. In brief, the author­i­ty on the Eng­lish lan­guage. To access the dic­tio­nary, sim­ply login with trynewoed as both the user­name and pass­word.

Note: Kaplan Pub­lish­ing has extend­ed its free ebook offer until Jan­u­ary 17. If you know any­one get­ting ready to take the SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc., then please send them to this page for more infor­ma­tion.

via Kot­tke