David Carradine: Rewind the Videotape

in Television | June 4th, 2009

As many may now know, David Car­ra­dine was found dead this morn­ing in Thai­land. Above, we fea­ture him act­ing in the pop­u­lar 1970’s tele­vi­sion series Kung Fu. “In this clip from the pilot episode of Kung Fu, Caine (David Car­ra­dine) is dis­cussing life with a fel­low expa­tri­ate. Their dis­cus­sion touch­es on the uni­ty of oppo­sites, which is sym­bol­ised in Tao­ism as the yin-yang. The yin-yang is the most impor­tant con­cept in Tao­ism.” The Guardian has also assem­bled a nice col­lec­tion of clips trac­ing Car­radine’s act­ing career. Find it here.

Is Gay the New Black?

in Current Affairs | June 3rd, 2009

Michael Eric Dyson, the George­town soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, talks here about how civ­il rights move­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly built upon one oth­er. MLK took pieces from Gand­hi, and the gay rights move­ment is now draw­ing on the black civ­il rights move­ment of the 60s. The clip runs about 7 min­utes, and you can watch the full video here. You can also watch anoth­er Dyson speech, “No Dreams Deferred?: Black Aspi­ra­tions from Mar­tin Luther King Jr. to Jay‑Z.”

via The Huff­in­g­ton Post

TED To China: An Inside View

in Language Lessons, Media, TED Talks | June 1st, 2009

Today, we’re fea­tur­ing a guest piece by Tony Yet, a Chi­nese stu­dent, who is help­ing lead an effort to bring TEDTalks to Chi­na. This is part of a larg­er TED Open Trans­la­tion Project, which wants to move  TEDTalks “beyond the Eng­lish-speak­ing world by offer­ing sub­ti­tles, time-cod­ed tran­scripts and the abil­i­ty for any talk to be trans­lat­ed by vol­un­teers world­wide.” Tony speaks very elo­quent­ly about how he got involved with this project and what he hopes to achieve, and how the con­nec­tions between East and West can hope­ful­ly become clos­er. Take it away Tony and check out his web site TED­toChi­na…

I have been watch­ing TEDTalks for near­ly three years. I orig­i­nal­ly found them by serendip­i­ty on iTunes. The very first few talks (notably from Al Gore, David Pogue and Sir Ken Robin­son) grabbed me like a mag­net, and I could­n’t resist watch­ing them again and again. There were quite a few sen­tences and phras­es in each of these talks that fell on a deaf ear for me, as I could­n’t quite under­stand some slang Eng­lish. I worked with the TED videos at home with a com­put­er and a note­book. And yes, I’ve got to admit that I am tak­ing each TED screen­ing as a valu­able learn­ing expe­ri­ence, and they did help me in broad­en­ing my hori­zons and enrich­ing my under­stand­ing of the world.

Then, in the sum­mer of 2008, I decid­ed that mere­ly watch­ing was not enough, at least not enough in com­ing to a full under­stand­ing of the talks, as many of the mean­ings are hid­den in the seman­tics. Thus I embarked upon a project to trans­late TEDTalks into Chi­nese. I start­ed with some famil­iar ones, like Erin McK­ean’s talk on redefin­ing dic­tio­nar­ies, and Alex Stef­fen’s talk on a bright green future. It proved to be a mind-enrich­ing expe­ri­ence. Before mak­ing any attempt to trans­late a talk, I would probe into the depth of the back­ground of the speak­er and rel­e­vant con­cepts and ideas. This was a great learn­ing process. It helped me build up a clear pic­ture of the talk and its sig­nif­i­cance, and also reshape my under­stand­ing of many ideas across the whole spec­trum of arts and sci­ence.

As I was push­ing for­ward with my endeav­or, I found that it would be bet­ter if we can have more peo­ple join­ing in this joy­ful jour­ney of intel­lec­tu­al min­ing through trans­la­tion. So I post­ed the mes­sage on a com­mu­ni­ty web­site for trans­la­tors. Then it start­ed to get kicked off. Peo­ple jumped in the boat and offered help. It was a most grat­i­fy­ing expe­ri­ence to know that your efforts in spread­ing the idea of TED gen­er­at­ed so much ener­gy and so rich a wel­com­ing response. (more…)

John Hodgman@Google

in Comedy, Google | May 31st, 2009

He appears in the well-known Mac v. PC com­mer­cials, on The Dai­ly Show and occa­sion­al­ly on This Amer­i­can Life. John Hodg­man is kind of every­where these days, and now, pro­mot­ing his new book, More Infor­ma­tion Than You Require, he hits the stage at Google and gives the crowd an off­beat hour talk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Slant on the Mac v Pc Ads

Christopher Hitchens Gets Waterboarded

in Current Affairs | May 28th, 2009

If you’re won­der­ing what the much-dis­cussed water­board­ing expe­ri­ence is all about, you can watch it in real time. Above, the pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, Christo­pher Hitchens, goes through the real deal. Although often known for tak­ing left-wing posi­tions, Hitchens sup­port­ed aggres­sive action in the Mid­dle East and par­tic­u­lar­ly the war in Iraq. Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a round­ed response, you can also watch a con­ser­v­a­tive radio show host endure the “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­nique” as well.

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!

The Art of Trashing the Classics

in Books, Film | May 27th, 2009

From the Freako­nom­ics blog:

We’ve writ­ten before about the occa­sion­al hyper-crit­i­cal com­ments on cer­tain blogs, but such com­ments are like valen­tines com­pared to what some Amazon.com cus­tomers heap upon The Rolling Stones, The God­fa­ther, The Diary of Anne Frank, and oth­er stan­dards. The Cynical‑C blog lists the most caus­tic of these every day.

Technology Is Amazing, Nobody Is Happy…

in Comedy, Technology, Web/Tech | May 26th, 2009

A good clip that comes from Alec Couros’s 80+ Videos for Tech & Media Lit­er­a­cy. It fea­tures come­di­an Louis C.K. offer­ing his fun­ny thoughts on how our gen­er­a­tion han­dles new tech­nol­o­gy. We’ve added it to our YouTube Favorites.

Masterpieces of Western Art

in Art | May 25th, 2009

“Mas­ter­pieces of West­ern Art” has been a degree require­ment at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty since 1947. The long-estab­lished  course is not your tra­di­tion­al his­tor­i­cal sur­vey. Rather, it focus­es on a select num­ber of artists and mon­u­ments, with the larg­er goal of help­ing stu­dents think crit­i­cal­ly about art. Over on iTunes, you can find some videos from the course. They cov­er the Amiens Cathe­dral, Raphael, Michelan­ge­lo, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter. These videos aren’t in lec­ture for­mat. Instead, they’re per­haps bet­ter described as visu­al tours. Although the clips don’t real­ly form a coher­ent whole, there are cer­tain­ly some good nuggets here. For 200 free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, see our big list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Art­Bab­ble: The New Des­ti­na­tion for Art Videos

The Gates of Hell

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

World Dig­i­tal Library

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

80+ Videos for Tech & Media Literacy

in Web/Tech | May 24th, 2009

Alec Couros, a pro­fes­sor of edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and media at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Regi­na, spends his days (among oth­er things) help­ing new teach­ers become tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and media lit­er­ate. And he runs a well-estab­lished blog — Open Think­ing — that helps teach­ers stay ahead of the tech­nol­o­gy curve. Last week, he pulled togeth­er a very handy col­lec­tion of videos that touch on tech­nol­o­gy and media lit­er­a­cy. Most of the videos are infor­ma­tive. Some are down­right enter­tain­ing. Either way, it’s a col­lec­tion well worth perus­ing. Last­ly, I should say that Alec is one of the more dynam­ic Twit­ter­ers that I’ve come across. So give him a fol­low, and you can also find us on Twit­ter here (and Face­book as well).

For those in the US, have a good Memo­r­i­al Day. For all oth­ers, have a good day, and I’ll see you tomor­row.

How I Sold My Book by Giving It Away

in Audio Books, Books, Most Popular | May 23rd, 2009

Today we’re fea­tur­ing a piece by Seth Har­wood, an inno­v­a­tive crime fic­tion writer who has used the tools of Web 2.0 to launch his writ­ing career. Below, he gives you an inside look at how he went from pod­cast­ing his books to land­ing a book deal with Ran­dom House. If you want to learn more about how writ­ers will increas­ing­ly build their careers, be sure to give this a read. Take it away Seth…

Before it ever hit print, my debut nov­el JACK WAKES UP was a free seri­al­ized audio­book.  And giv­ing my crime fic­tion away for free turned out to be the key to becom­ing a pub­lished author—that last piece of the puz­zle that eludes so many aspir­ing writ­ers. 

How did it work? Well, I got my MFA from a pres­ti­gious writ­ers’ work­shop.  I got a dozen sto­ries placed in lit­er­ary jour­nals.  In short, I was doing all the things “they” (the lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment) tell you you have to do in order to become a suc­cess­ful author.  And it wasn’t work­ing.  Agents were say­ing nice things about my crime fic­tion, but weren’t will­ing to take me on as a client.  Even­tu­al­ly I start­ed look­ing for anoth­er way to dri­ve my own career and put my work in front of peo­ple. Hav­ing had a lit­tle suc­cess with a pub­lished sto­ry online—my friends could read it and I was hear­ing from strangers who liked it, two things that had nev­er hap­pened with the dozen sto­ries I’d slaved to pub­lish in lit­er­ary journals—I could see that the web was the way to do this. But I couldn’t imag­ine any­one read­ing a nov­el online, or even on his or her com­put­er. I did have an iPod though, and didn’t I lis­ten to it all the time in the car and at the gym? Wasn’t I tak­ing out books on CD from my local library for my dri­ve to work? Sure I was. So when a friend showed me how he’d been using his iPod and a thing called pod­cast­ing to get free audio­books from an unknown author named Scott Sigler, I knew I had to fig­ure out how this was done.

Turns out that mak­ing MP3 files costs noth­ing. Dis­trib­ut­ing them costs me less than $10 a month, no mat­ter how many episodes go out. Each week, I release a free episode—usually a cou­ple of chapters—to thou­sands of sub­scribers. You can think of this as a throw­back to two old forms of crime dis­tri­b­u­tion: either the pulp mag­a­zines or the old-time radio plays that intro­duced detec­tive adven­tures to ear­ly lis­ten­ers on the radio. (more…)