On the Lighter Side: Re-Thinking Classic Films

in Film | August 29th, 2008

End­ing the week on a lighter note …

A backer of indie film fes­ti­vals, Volk­swa­gen presents “See Film Dif­fer­ent­ly” — a series of videos that fea­ture amus­ing re-inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sic movies. Here, you’ll find new takes on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Die Hard, and Mary Pop­pins. Below, we’ve fea­tured anoth­er (some­what racy) bit and added it to our YouTube Playlist.

via Slash­film

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Knock $100 Off Amazon’s Kindle

in Uncategorized | August 28th, 2008

Nice find by Kottke.org. If you’re will­ing to sign up for an Ama­zon cred­it card (with no annu­al fee), you can get a $100 rebate on the Kin­dle, Ama­zon’s fast-sell­ing e‑book read­er. This brings the price down to $259. And, as Kot­tke warns, you should always read the fine print. You can get more info here, and buy the Kin­dle here.

An Animated History of Evil

in Uncategorized | August 26th, 2008

This ani­mat­ed mock­u­men­tary traces the his­to­ry of evil from Ancient Greece until today. While I would­n’t make the video part of a stan­dard high school cur­ricu­lum, I give it points for cre­ativ­i­ty. We’ve added it to our YouTube Playlist.

Download a Free Copy of Cory Doctorow’s Bestseller, Little Brother

in Books | August 21st, 2008

Here’s a good item that came out of yes­ter­day’s book give­away — Ben­jamin L called our atten­tion to the fact that you can down­load a free copy of Lit­tle Broth­er, the new nov­el by Cory Doc­torow, who writes for the pop­u­lar Boing­Bo­ing blog and has con­sis­tent­ly backed the whole idea of “open cul­ture.” Released in late April, the nov­el spent six weeks on the NY Times best­seller list, and, as Ben­jamin notes, the main themes of tech­nol­o­gy and free­dom are very rel­e­vant to the read­ers of our own blog. As you will see, the offi­cial down­loads come in sev­er­al for­mats: Plain text, HTML, and PDF. But, you can also snag copies in oth­er ver­sions that fans have put togeth­er. Take for exam­ple a ver­sion that you can read on an iPhone, or one that you can access via a Sony e‑Reader. You can find all for­mats here, or buy the book in print (which I did) here.

As a last note, I want to thank every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the book give­away. I was real­ly pleased with your con­tri­bu­tions (you have good taste) and wish that I had more books to give away. In the next day, I will con­tact those first ten con­trib­u­tors, and next week I will post all of your pieces of open cul­ture. Many thanks to all. And, any time that you want to rec­om­mend a good piece of media for the ben­e­fit of your fel­low read­ers, don’t hes­i­tate to do so.

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Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Diving at the ’36 Games

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | August 12th, 2008

Pro­duced at the request of the Inter­na­tion­al Olympics Com­mit­tee (and not at the behest of the Nazi pro­pa­gan­da machine), Leni Riefen­stahl’s 1938 doc­u­men­tary, Olympia, is con­sid­ered one of the more impor­tant sports doc­u­men­taries of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Below, we have post­ed a well known sequence that recalls the div­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the ’36 Berlin Games.

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Top Ten Psychology Videos

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | August 11th, 2008

Psy­ch­Cen­tral has post­ed its list of the ten best psy­chol­o­gy videos avail­able on the web. Below, we have post­ed links to the videos them­selves. But if you want a quick descrip­tion of each clip, then def­i­nite­ly read through the orig­i­nal post. Thanks to Kottke.org for bring­ing this to light.

1. An Unqui­et Mind: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on Man­ic-Depres­sive Ill­ness

2. The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment

3. My Stroke of Insight

4. The Para­dox of Choice

5. Trapped: Men­tal Ill­ness in America’s Pris­ons

6. Teen Brain

7. Depres­sion: Out of the Shad­ows

8. Thin

9. I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help: Research on Poor Insight and How We Can Help

10. The Psy­chol­o­gy of Glob­al Warm­ing

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Isaac Hayes Performs Shaft Live, 1973

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 10th, 2008

We lost anoth­er good one:

Live Streams of the Olympics

in Random | August 9th, 2008

A quick fyi, you can catch live streams of the Olympic Games via the web.

If you live in the US, you can watch at NBCOlympics.com,

If you live in the UK and Europe, you can get the stream at BBC TV Olympics

If you live on Chi­na’s Main­land, you can see the games at CCTVOlympics.com

And for Aus­tralian fans, watch here: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/
or https://www.abc.net.au/olympics/

via Actionooz

It Happened One Night: Frank Capra’s 1934 Classic

in Film | August 4th, 2008

Today we present Frank Capra’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning com­e­dy from 1934, star­ring Clark Gable — It Hap­pened One Night. Grab some pop­corn. Dim the lights (even if you’re at work). And enjoy:

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Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89; David Remnick Reflects

in Harvard, History, Literature | August 3rd, 2008

Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn, who chron­i­cled the abus­es of the Sovi­et regime and gained world­wide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhen­it­syn means to lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of Rus­sia, David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, had this to stay: “It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a writer whose affect on a soci­ety has been greater than Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn’s affect on the fate of Rus­sia  …” In the video post­ed below, Rem­nick elab­o­rates on Solzhen­it­syn’s con­tri­bu­tions, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Rem­nick won a Pulitzer dur­ing the 90s for his best­seller, Lenin’s Tomb.

(Note: you can read the lec­ture Solzhen­it­syn gave upon receiv­ing the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and lis­ten to his 1978 Har­vard grad­u­a­tion speech here.)

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