Bombing Warsaw … With Poems

in Art, Poetry | September 8th, 2010

Nazi Ger­many invad­ed Poland in 1939 and began a ter­ror bomb­ing cam­paign of War­saw, the nation’s capi­tol. In total, the Nazis dropped some 500 tons of high explo­sive bombs and 72 tons of incen­di­ary bombs on War­saw, begin­ning the planned destruc­tion of the city.

Now fast for­ward to 2009, and we wit­ness (above) War­saw under lit­er­ary assault. Last August, 100,000 poems writ­ten by Pol­ish and Chilean poets rained down on the city. The lit­er­ary strike came at the hands of Casagrande, a Chilean art col­lec­tive that has staged poet­ry bomb­ings of oth­er for­mer­ly bombed out cities. Dubrovnik, Guer­ni­ca, Berlin, etc. Need­less to say, the project marks a protest against war, a call for peace, and a cel­e­bra­tion of poet­ry. The Guardian has more on last mon­th’s poet­ry bomb­ing of Berlin here. H/T to MS…

Take it Easy: Sand Animation Splendor

in Art, Film | September 7th, 2010

It took Cesar Díaz Melén­dez three months, using only a cam­era, light table and sand, to pro­duce this sand ani­mat­ed film that serves as a video for the song, “No cor­ras tan­to,” which loose­ly trans­lates to “Take it Easy.” And, rather strik­ing­ly, Cesar made the film using no added effects or post pro­duc­tion. The Mak­ing of No cor­ras tan­to gives you a good look inside the pro­duc­tion process. Oth­er videos by the Madrid-based artist can be viewed here.

A quick PS: The song accom­pa­ny­ing the video was writ­ten by Cesar’s band, El Com­bolin­ga. Vis­it the band’s MySpace page.

Animated Noir: Key Lime Pie

in Film | September 2nd, 2010

Put sim­ply, you’ll prob­a­bly nev­er see a noir film quite like this. Key Lime Pie was direct­ed by Trevor Jimenez in 2007, and rec­om­mend­ed on Twit­ter by Joaquin Bald­win, a tal­ent­ed young ani­ma­tor fea­tured on Open Cul­ture some months ago. It runs a quick 3 and a half min­utes.

Seven Ages of the Body

in History | September 1st, 2010

This new video from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing archae­ol­o­gist John Robb, gives you a quick and visu­al­ly appeal­ing intro­duc­tion to how humans have under­stood some­thing we take for grant­ed – our own bod­ies. Cov­er­ing 10,000 years in six min­utes, Robb takes us from the “Ani­mal Body” and “Sex­u­al­ized Body” of the Mesolith­ic and Neolith­ic Ages, to the “Politi­cized Body” of the Clas­si­cal Age, “God’s Body” of the Mid­dle Ages, and final­ly “The Body as Machine,” the metaphor we have been liv­ing with since 1500. And we wrap up with the “Body Dig­i­tal,” the body of the future, and “Mul­ti­ple Bod­ies.” This video comes from the Cam­bridge Ideas series avail­able on Cam­bridge’s YouTube chan­nel.

America on the Brink

in Current Affairs | August 30th, 2010

David Ger­gen has served four dif­fer­ent Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (Nixon, Ford, Rea­gan, and Clin­ton), and he now heads the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Lead­er­ship at the Har­vard Kennedy School. Last month Ger­gen, known for being a mea­sured observ­er of pol­i­tics, spoke before the Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia and issued a very sober warn­ing: Amer­i­ca faces mon­u­men­tal prob­lems. But unfor­tu­nate­ly our capac­i­ty to address them has nev­er been so dimin­ished, and we’re this close to head­ing into a civ­i­liza­tion­al decline. Just what is lim­it­ing our abil­i­ty to han­dle these prob­lems? If you cut to the chase, it’s a mediocre gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans – politi­cians, busi­ness lead­ers, media moguls, cit­i­zens – habit­u­al­ly putting per­son­al inter­ests first and the greater good sec­ond. It’s not a pret­ty pic­ture, but Ger­gen sug­gests a few ways out of the woods. (Hint: edu­ca­tion counts here.) You can stream the talk here, grab it on iTunes, or lis­ten below. And if you think there’s noth­ing you can per­son­al­ly do to make this gen­er­a­tion a bet­ter one, I sug­gest you watch the last few min­utes of this Robert Sapol­sky video.

Earthrise, Then and Now

in Science | August 26th, 2010

On Decem­ber 24, 1968, astro­nauts aboard Apol­lo 8, mak­ing the first human trip around the moon, stum­bled upon a most beau­ti­ful scene – an “Earth­rise.” Almost 40 years lat­er (in 2007), Japan’s Kaguya satel­lite cap­tured footage of the same scene unfold­ing: an Earth­rise and also this time an Earth­set. If you click on the pre­ced­ing links, you will see some pret­ty won­der­ful still shots in HD.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom: The First Two Chapters

in Books, Literature | August 26th, 2010

Last week, Jonathan Franzen appeared on the cov­er of TIME mag­a­zine – the first time in a decade that a liv­ing nov­el­ist has graced the cov­er page. Authors only get there if they’re flirt­ing with great­ness (TIME’s piece is called “Jonathan Franzen: Great Amer­i­can Nov­el­ist”) and if they have a new nov­el com­ing out. Free­dom hits the book­stores next Tues­day, but you can get start­ed with the first two chap­ters right now. Good Neigh­bors and Agree­able both appear on The New York­er mag­a­zine web site.

Christopher Walken Reads Lady Gaga

in Film, Music | August 23rd, 2010

Last week, we caught Christo­pher Walken, the Oscar win­ning actor, host­ing an NYC talk radio show for a day. This week, we have him “cov­er­ing” Lady Gaga’s “Pok­er Face” in a fun­ny short minute. The Walken read­ing orig­i­nal­ly aired last year on the BBC’s Fri­day Night with Jonathan Ross. The clip comes to us via Jason Kot­tke.

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!

Where to Find Free Textbooks

in Books, e-books | August 22nd, 2010

Life­hack­er just ran a new fea­ture today “Five Best Places to Buy Cheap Text­books.” Cheap is good, no doubt. But free is even bet­ter. So we fig­ured why not take the wraps off of a new Open Cul­ture col­lec­tion: 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion.

This new and grow­ing col­lec­tion pulls togeth­er an assort­ment of free text­books avail­able online. The list is most­ly slant­ed toward sci­ence and math (that’s what is out there), and the texts are almost entire­ly writ­ten by col­lege pro­fes­sors or qual­i­fied high school teach­ers. In some instances, these texts were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in book for­mat, and now the authors have decid­ed to pub­lish them online. In oth­er cas­es, authors join­ing the “open text­book” move­ment (see Flat World Knowl­edge, CK-12, Cur­ri­ki, etc.) have pub­lished their works for the first time in elec­tron­ic for­mat, often under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. We will update the list con­tin­u­al­ly. But if you see good texts miss­ing, please feel free to ping us. You can access 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion here, and please for­ward the link to any young stu­dents or life­long learn­ers who might ben­e­fit…

P.S. This col­lec­tion will always appear in the top nav­i­ga­tion of the web site. Just look for “Text­books” in the top nav bar.

3 Year Old Recites Poem, “Litany,” by Billy Collins

in Poetry | August 20th, 2010

Three year olds can wreak hav­oc on a home, and the pre­co­cious ones can recite poet­ry too. Here we have a tod­dler recit­ing Bil­ly Collins’ poem “Litany” (find text here) and also some lines from Lord Alfred Ten­nyson (while dressed as Super­man, of course). It’s good fun, right up there with actor Bill Mur­ray read­ing Collins poet­ry at a con­struc­tion site in New York City…

via Neatora­ma