Richard Feynman Plays the Bongos

in Science, Video - Science | March 6th, 2008

When he was­n’t busy hash­ing out the the­o­ry of quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, Nobel Prize win­ning physi­cist Richard Feyn­man was hit­ting the bon­gos and singing prais­es to orange juice. Watch him go. And find more vin­tage Feyn­man resources 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:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 6th, 2008

It may not qual­i­fy as cul­ture, but it’s fun­ny and rings awful­ly true … (Along sim­i­lar lines, you can get some good ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toons here and here.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Eat, Pray, Love @ Google

in Books | March 4th, 2008

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love has been on the New York Times best­seller list for 57 weeks. If you haven’t read it yet, then you may want to spend some time with Gilbert’s talk at Google. While her talk and read­ing did­n’t com­plete­ly strike a chord with me, it may well with you. So here you go (and, yes, we’ve added the video to our YouTube Playlist):

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

in Science | March 4th, 2008

Cour­tesy of Wired’s Blog, here are 10 videos dis­play­ing some rather cool chem­istry exper­i­ments at work. Below, we’ve post­ed one video that will let you answer a ques­tion that you’ve almost cer­tain­ly pon­dered for ages — can liq­uid nitro­gen neu­tral­ize molten iron? (For more videos along these lines, check out this site.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

A New Media Scholar’s Dilemma

in Literature, Media, MIT | March 2nd, 2008

For a grad­u­ate stu­dent in an Eng­lish Ph.D. pro­gram, one of the big mile­stones on the road to the dis­ser­ta­tion is the Oral Exam. In my case this involves five pro­fes­sors, a list of 60–80 books, and two hours in a (rhetor­i­cal­ly) smoke-filled room. Since I’m work­ing on con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture and new media, one of the chal­lenges I have to deal with is how to address nov­els, films, tele­vi­sion shows, video games and more as part of the same “list.” How does one put these things togeth­er? How can a video game be read as a text along­side Gravity’s Rain­bow or Brave New World?

One way to approach this ques­tion is to include the work of lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al crit­ics who are already look­ing at new and tra­di­tion­al media side by side. Fol­low­ing that line, I try to keep up with the aca­d­e­m­ic blog Grand Text Auto, which cov­ers “com­put­er nar­ra­tive, games, poet­ry and art.” One of its con­trib­u­tors, Noah Wardrip-Fru­in, is work­ing on a book about dig­i­tal fic­tions and com­put­er games that looks per­fect for my Orals list—and he’s pub­lish­ing it, chap­ter by chap­ter, on Grand Text Auto for blog-based peer review. It will come out next year with MIT Press, but for now, it’s a work in progress.

All fine so far—I could list it as “forth­com­ing” and direct my pro­fes­sors to the link. But what hap­pens when I start com­ment­ing on this book as I read it? What are we to do with the knowl­edge that this “text” will most like­ly change between now and next year? Does this item on my Orals list sig­ni­fy a draft of the book, the blog and its com­ments, or the expe­ri­ence of read­ing and writ­ing into the MS myself (includ­ing, per­haps, respons­es from the author)?

I find the dilem­ma par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing because it touch­es on a cen­tral con­flict in human­i­ties schol­ar­ship. Are we pas­sive observers of the lit­er­ary scene or active par­tic­i­pants in it? It’s a rare aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ic who thinks of call­ing up a poet to ask her what she meant in a par­tic­u­lar line, but that’s exact­ly the kind of con­nec­tion that our hyper-con­scious, dig­i­tal­ly medi­at­ed world offers up.

P.S. After all of this hand-wring­ing, it’s obvi­ous I’m not going to have time to read Noah’s book before I take my exam, so it’s off the list. But I can’t wait to dig in next month!

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods — Free Digital Copy

in Books | March 2nd, 2008

Harper­Collins has rolled out anoth­er free book — the New York Times best­seller Amer­i­can Gods by Neil Gaiman. You can read it for free here (or buy it here). For more free books by Harper­Collins, see our post from last week. And, as always, don’t for­get to see our col­lec­tion of free audio­books.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Cracking Tarantino

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | February 25th, 2008

“Taran­ti­no’s Mind,” an award win­ning short film from Brazil, decodes the fil­mog­ra­phy of Quentin Taran­ti­no, draw­ing con­nec­tions most Taran­ti­no fans might not have drawn them­selves. Act­ing in the film is Seu Jorge, a great Brazil­ian musi­cian (check this album out) who has gained recent fame in the US. The clip runs a good ten min­utes. The only down­sides are the small sub­ti­tles and lan­guage not suit­able for puri­tan­i­cal types. But we are in Taran­ti­no ter­ri­to­ry, so what could you real­ly expect? (The video below has been added to our YouTube Playlist.)

80 Years of Academy Award Winning Films in Posters

in Film | February 25th, 2008

Great poster col­lec­tion of Oscar win­ning films, from 1927 to this week. Check it out here.

via Kottke.org

Free Books from HarperCollins

in Books | February 23rd, 2008

As dis­cussed in this NY Times arti­cle, Harper­Collins has made a few of its books avail­able online for free. You can read them from start to fin­ish in dig­i­tal for­mat. But you can’t down­load them, and they’ll only be avail­able for a few more weeks. (Pre­sum­ably new books will be made avail­able in the future.) Here’s what you’ll cur­rent­ly find.

• The Witch of Por­to­bel­lo by Paulo Coel­ho
• The Unde­cid­ed Voter’s Guide to the Next Pres­i­dent: Who the Can­di­dates Are, Where They Come from, and How You Can Choose by Mark Halperin
• I Dream in Blue: Life, Death, and the New York Giants by Roger Direc­tor
  

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

For more free books, see our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and 45 Free Cut­ting-Edge Books … Cour­tesy of Cre­ative Com­mons

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

An Animated History of Evil

in Uncategorized | February 21st, 2008

This ani­mat­ed mock­u­men­tary traces the his­to­ry of evil from Ancient Greece until today. It’s been get­ting some play on the inter­net this week. And, if any­thing, you have to give it points for cre­ativ­i­ty. We’ve added it to our YouTube Playlist.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed