Stephen Colbert & Louis CK Recite The Gettysburg Address, With Some Help from Jerry Seinfeld

in Comedy, History, Politics | November 19th, 2013

On a Thurs­day after­noon in Novem­ber of 1863, Edward Everett took to the stage in Get­tys­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, to deliv­er the main address at the Con­se­cra­tion Cer­e­mo­ny of the Nation­al Ceme­tery. Everett was a politi­cian who had served as both a clas­sics pro­fes­sor and pres­i­dent of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, and was also a renowned ora­tor. His address to the 15,000-strong crowd began on the fol­low­ing grandil­o­quent note, which Everett pro­ceed­ed to hold for two hours:

“Stand­ing beneath this serene sky, over­look­ing these broad fields now repos­ing from the labors of the wan­ing year, the mighty Alleghe­nies dim­ly tow­er­ing before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hes­i­ta­tion that I raise my poor voice to break the elo­quent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be per­formed; grant me, I pray you, your indul­gence and your sym­pa­thy.”

Despite this wave of lofty sen­ti­ment, Everett’s speech was over­shad­owed by the 278-word for­mu­la­tion that would for­ev­er com­mem­o­rate that day, deliv­ered by Abra­ham Lin­coln.

Unlike Everett’s remarks, Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg address (whose five ver­sions can be found here) has shown lit­tle wear since its deliv­ery on Novem­ber 19, exact­ly 150 years ago. While there is some evi­dence to sug­gest that the audi­ence was ini­tial­ly non­plussed by the speech’s sim­ple lan­guage and strik­ing brevi­ty, today Lincoln’s words are con­sid­ered to be among the most fine­ly wrought rhetoric in the West­ern canon: they remain acces­si­ble to all, yet seam­less­ly entwine the thread of equal­i­ty that ran so clear­ly through the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence with the idea of the war being essen­tial to the preser­va­tion of the Union. One can­not help but sus­pect that hon­est Abe failed to grasp the impact that his pithy ora­tion would have; Everett’s sub­se­quent com­ments to the Pres­i­dent, how­ev­er, pre­fig­ured the speech’s his­tor­i­cal arc:

“I should be glad if I could flat­ter myself that I came as near to the cen­tral idea of the occa­sion, in two hours, as you did in two min­utes.”

In hon­or of the 150^th anniver­sary of Lincoln’s deliv­ery of the Get­tys­burg address, doc­u­men­tar­i­an Ken Burns has embarked on a project called Learn The Address in an attempt to get Amer­i­cans to record their recita­tions of the speech. In the mashup below, Burns pro­vides footage of politi­cians, enter­tain­ers, and jour­nal­ists giv­ing their ren­di­tions. We’ve also includ­ed some of our favorites, includ­ing Stephen Colbert’s high­ly com­i­cal mono­logue (top) and Jer­ry Sein­feld explain­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the address to Louis CK, right above.

For more ver­sions of Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg address, includ­ing those by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Conan O’Brien, and Bill O’Reil­ly, head to Ken Burn’s Learn The Address site.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Exchange An Extraordinary Series of Letters

in Current Affairs, Music, Philosophy, Politics | November 19th, 2013

Miss­ing for almost a month, impris­oned Pussy Riot mem­ber Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va has been report­ed by her hus­band as recov­er­ing in a Siber­ian hos­pi­tal from issues relat­ed to her hunger strike. As The Guardian reports, Tolokon­niko­va didn’t only resist by refus­ing to eat, she also kept up a live­ly cor­re­spon­dence with Sloven­ian the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek while endur­ing report­ed abuse at the penal colony in Mor­dovia where she had been sen­tenced. It seems from the edit­ed cor­re­spon­dence pub­lished by The Guardian that Žižek began the con­ver­sa­tion in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. “All hearts were beat­ing for you” he writes, until “it became clear that you reject­ed glob­al cap­i­tal­ism.” In a lat­er, April 16 reply, Tolokon­niko­va explains exact­ly what Pussy Riot rejects:

As a child I want­ed to go into adver­tis­ing. I had a love affair with the adver­tis­ing indus­try. And this is why I am in a posi­tion to judge its mer­its. The anti-hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures and rhi­zomes of late cap­i­tal­ism are its suc­cess­ful ad cam­paign. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism has to man­i­fest itself as flex­i­ble and even eccen­tric. Every­thing is geared towards grip­ping the emo­tion of the con­sumer. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism seeks to assure us that it oper­ates accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of free cre­ativ­i­ty, end­less devel­op­ment and diver­si­ty. It gloss­es over its oth­er side in order to hide the real­i­ty that mil­lions of peo­ple are enslaved by an all-pow­er­ful and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sta­ble norm of pro­duc­tion. We want to reveal this lie.

Read the full pub­lished exchange at The Guardian’s site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Russ­ian Punk Band, Sen­tenced to Two Years in Prison for Derid­ing Putin, Releas­es New Sin­gle

Slavoj Žižek Demys­ti­fies the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Big Aha, the Latest Novel by Cyberpunk Writer Rudy Rucker, is Now Out and Free Online

in e-books, Sci Fi | November 18th, 2013

A quick note: Rudy Ruck­er, one of the founders of the cyber­punk move­ment, put him­self on the lit­er­ary map with the Prize-Win­ning Ware Tetral­o­gy. In the spir­it of open­ness, Ruck­er has long made the Tetral­o­gy freely avail­able online. Now comes his lat­est work, The Big Aha, which you can read online in an illus­trat­ed for­mat at right this very moment. Released just days ago, the nov­el (also avail­able in ebook and paper­back for­mats) was fund­ed by 331 back­ers through a Kick­starter cam­paign launched ear­li­er this year. For more free sci-fi, please see our rich 2012 post: Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Futuria Fan­ta­sia: The Sci­ence Fic­tion Fanzine Ray Brad­bury Pub­lished as a Teenag­er

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

500 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Cantos,” Some of the Great Poetic Works of the 20th Century

in Poetry | November 18th, 2013

No stu­dent of mod­ernism, no lover of mod­ern poet­ry, can avoid Ezra Pound, or the prob­lem that is Ezra Pound. Although a noto­ri­ous and enthu­si­as­tic boost­er of Mussolini’s Ital­ian state dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Pound’s influ­ence over the shape and char­ac­ter of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry always seems to trump his regret­table, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing, pol­i­tics. T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, H.D.—all are deeply indebt­ed to Pound. His attempts to bridge East­ern and West­ern aes­thet­ics are pro­found, and his own poet­ry, informed by his devo­tion to Chi­nese poet­ics and immer­sion in the Euro­pean canon, com­pris­es an often bril­liant, gen­er­al­ly intim­i­dat­ing body of work.

Over the course of five decades, dur­ing each of Pounds’ var­i­ous phases—as lit­er­ary impre­sario, lan­guage schol­ar, edi­tor, and deeply con­tro­ver­sial weirdo—he was hard at work on what became known as The Can­tos, a long, loose­ly con­nect­ed series of poet­ic chap­ters in Eng­lish, Chi­nese, Ital­ian that were pub­lished at var­i­ous times in var­i­ous forms. Pound’s tra­vails as the author of this long and exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult series may be the reward of a fool and his fol­ly (as his col­leagues thought) or the rocky, lone­ly path of genius, unap­pre­ci­at­ed in its time. I’m not sure I would rec­om­mend him as the lat­ter, but I’ve often found not only his pol­i­tics, but also his delib­er­ate obscu­ri­ty a stum­bling block. And yet, there may be no sub­sti­tute for hear­ing poet­ry read aloud, some­times best by its author, who knows every nuance. At the top, hear Pound read “Can­to I,” built of clas­si­cal mod­els on Anglo-Sax­on scaf­fold­ing. Direct­ly above, Pound reads from a chap­ter pub­lished almost ten years lat­er. His voice is more ragged and qua­ver­ing, and he rails against usury, a theme close to his often anti-Semit­ic eco­nom­ic the­o­ries. You can hear dozens more record­ings of Pound, made from 1939 to the year of his death, 1972, at the Penn Sound archive. And also over at UBUweb.

You can find more read­ings of clas­sic poems in the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. Oth­er works by Pound can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ernest Hem­ing­way Writes of His Fas­cist Friend Ezra Pound: “He Deserves Pun­ish­ment and Dis­grace” (1943)

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Read­ing of His Ear­ly Poem, ‘Ses­ti­na: Altaforte’

Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni Talks and Reads Poet­ry with Ezra Pound (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Houdini Escape From a Strait Jacket, Then See How He Did It (Circa 1917)

in History, Life | November 18th, 2013

Claus­tro­phobes, take cau­tion, and for pity’s sake, don’t try this at home!

Should such warn­ings leave you unde­terred, PBS has step-by-step instruc­tions for per­form­ing Hou­dini’s strait jack­et escape. Well, almost step-by-step. Derived from the mas­ter’s own 1909 Hand­cuff Secrets, the direc­tions are both vague and hor­ri­fy­ing in their speci­fici­ty, falling some­where between assem­bling an Ikea book­shelf and 127 Hours.

In need of more guid­ance? Have a look below at the how-to Hou­di­ni shared with Ladies Home Jour­nal in 1918. (He also gave advice to gen­teel, post-WWI female read­ers on how to escape rope bondage.)

For a more man­age­able trick, imag­ine your­self a face in the crowd, gaz­ing upward at the strug­gling magi­cian, with­out tex­ting, tweet­ing, or Insta­gram­ming. Sheer open-mouthed amaze­ment is a trick we see pre­cious lit­tle of these days.

Our best guess is that the video above was shot around 1917.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s lat­est feat is direct­ing 16 home­schooled teens in Yeast Nation, the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal. See it in New York City this week. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Everything That’s Wrong With Back To The Future in 8 Minutes

in Film | November 18th, 2013

There’s noth­ing real­ly wrong with Back to the Future. Crit­ics loved Robert Zemeck­is’ sci-fi com­e­dy when it first came out in 1985. (Roger Ebert likened it to a great Frank Capra film.) And it still delights old and new view­ers almost 30 years lat­er. But, like every film, Back to the Future has its minor flaws. The web site/YouTube chan­nel Cin­e­ma Sins is “ded­i­cat­ed to point­ing out all the sins [they] can find in movies, some big and some small. Some … down­right micro­scop­ic.” And that’s what you get here. A break­down of every lit­tle prob­lem and incon­sis­ten­cy in Zemeck­is’ film. For­tu­nate­ly, the folks behind Cin­e­ma Sins don’t take them­selves too seri­ous­ly. Nor do they con­sid­er them­selves beyond reproach. Heck, this sum­mer they pro­duced Every­thing Wrong With Cin­e­ma Sins In 3 Min­utes Or Less. You can watch it 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!

David Bowie Appears in the “Director’s Cut” of a New Louis Vuitton Ad, Nods to Labyrinth

in Art, Design, Film, Television | November 17th, 2013

Look­ing like a haute cou­ture treat­ment of “As the World Falls Down” from Labyrinth, by way of Peter Jackson’s Beau­ti­ful Crea­tures, the “Director’s Cut” of this Louis Vuit­ton ad above, titled “L’Invitation au Voy­age,” is pret­ty stun­ning. Bowie lip syncs “I’d Rather be High,” a stand out from his lat­est, The Next Day, and looks near­ly as mag­net­ic as his Gob­lin King did almost thir­ty years ago. He’s def­i­nite­ly still got it on screen, mak­ing me pine for anoth­er Bowie-led fea­ture-length fan­ta­sy (but not a Labyrinth remake).

The mak­ing-of reel above might also be of inter­est, although at under two min­utes, the tech­no mon­tage doesn’t offer much insight into the elab­o­rate design of the short. Of more inter­est for fans of fash­ion, design, and film may be this blog post (in Chi­nese), which fea­tures some gor­geous pro­duc­tion stills and sto­ry­boards, like the one below. The short’s direc­tor, Romain Gavras, pre­vi­ous­ly made the video for Kanye West and Jay Z’s “No Church in the Wild,” so he’s def­i­nite­ly got an eye for spec­ta­cle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie’s New Video for ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’ With Til­da Swin­ton

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Take a Virtual Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

in Photography, Technology, Travel | November 16th, 2013

There’s some­thing inher­ent­ly ridicu­lous about Google’s Street View cars.

Their roof-mount­ed 15-lens Trekker cam­eras con­stant­ly blun­der across less-than-dig­ni­fied scenes whilst trawl­ing the roads on behalf of Google Maps (a ser­vice that is for­ev­er linked in my mind to Lazy Sun­day, the pre­pos­ter­ous rap video star­ring come­di­ans Andy Sam­berg and Chris Par­nell.)

The cars them­selves are total­ly goofy-look­ing. I would imag­ine that spot­ting one in real life is some­thing akin to a Wein­er­mo­bile sight­ing. No won­der the pro­duc­ers of Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment arranged for George Michael Bluth, the hap­less inno­cent played by Michael Cera, to dri­ve one in the series’ fourth sea­son.

I have a hunch that the Street View Trekker’s back­pack mod­el will ulti­mate­ly prove less mock­able than its four-wheeled coun­ter­part. It can go where cars can’t, con­fer­ring an extreme sports vibe despite the big, ball-shaped cam­era appa­ra­tus stick­ing up. A lim­it­ed pilot pro­gram has been recruit­ing vol­un­teers to wear the back­pack in such locales as Bul­gar­ia, Indone­sia, and South Africa. The Philip­pines is anoth­er des­ti­na­tion where vol­un­teers are sought, and all kid­ding aside, it would be riv­et­ing to see how this tech­nol­o­gy might doc­u­ment the dev­as­ta­tion in Tacloban.

For now, the non-auto­mo­tive Street View’s great­est tri­umph lies in record­ing the canals and cob­bled walk­ways of Venice, Italy, a feat impos­si­ble to pull off in a car. To accom­plish this, a team of back­pack­ers logged over 375 miles on foot and by boat. Their efforts pro­vide tourists with prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion in a for­mat to which they’ve no doubt grown accus­tomed, as well as pre­sent­ing arm­chair trav­el­ers with plen­ty of non-dis­ap­point­ing eye can­dy.

Cyber vis­i­tors can choose to tra­verse the Float­ing City much as actu­al vis­i­tors can — on foot, by vaporet­ta or by gon­do­la. (I’d advise mak­ing a trip to the bath­room even if you’re not actu­al­ly leav­ing home. At the very least turn the sound down — the pad­dling nois­es accom­pa­ny­ing the last option could cause a Pavlov­ian blad­der response.)

In addi­tion to the Street View and stan­dard map, you can explore using a sepia-toned map from the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, that dates back to 1838.

A love­ly escape, all in all. Let us hope it nev­er opens to traf­fic.

You can start your tour here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Venice Works: A Short Film

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late, The Zinesters Guide to NYC and sev­er­al oth­er books. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple: A Free Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Hans Bethe

in Online Courses, Physics | November 15th, 2013

An émi­gré from Nazi Ger­many, Hans Bethe joined Cor­nel­l’s physics depart­ment back in 1935. There, he built a remark­able career for him­self. A nuclear physi­cist, Bethe made key con­tri­bu­tions to the Man­hat­tan Project dur­ing World War II. After the war, he brought stel­lar young physi­cists like Richard Feyn­man from Los Alam­os to Itha­ca and turned Cor­nel­l’s physics depart­ment into a top-notch pro­gram. In 1967, he won the Nobel Prize for “his ground­break­ing work on the the­o­ry of ener­gy pro­duc­tion in stars.”

As a trib­ute to Bethe, Cor­nell now hosts a web site called Quan­tum Physics Made Rel­a­tive­ly Sim­ple, where you can watch three lec­tures pre­sent­ed by Bethe in 1999. They’re a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the usu­al lec­tures you encounter online. In these videos, Bethe is 93 years old, old­er than your aver­age prof. And he presents the lec­tures not in a Cor­nell class­room, but at the Kendal of Itha­ca retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty, which gives them a cer­tain charm. You can watch them here:

Lec­ture 1: Here Bethe “intro­duces quan­tum the­o­ry as ‘the most impor­tant dis­cov­ery of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’ and shows that quan­tum the­o­ry gave us ‘under­stand­ing and tech­nol­o­gy.’ He cites com­put­ers as a dra­mat­ic real­iza­tion of applied quan­tum physics.”

Lec­ture 2: “By the 1920s, physi­cists were dri­ving to syn­the­size ear­ly quan­tum ideas into a con­sis­tent the­o­ry. In Lec­ture 2, Pro­fes­sor Bethe relates the excit­ing the­o­ret­i­cal and exper­i­men­tal break­throughs that led to mod­ern quan­tum mechan­ics.”

Lec­ture 3:  In the last lec­ture, “Pro­fes­sor Bethe recalls work on the inter­pre­ta­tion of the wave func­tion, the Heisen­berg Uncer­tain­ty Prin­ci­ple, and the Pauli Exclu­sion Prin­ci­ple. He shows how quan­tum the­o­ry forced dis­cus­sion of issues such as deter­min­ism, phys­i­cal observ­ables, and action-at-a-dis­tance.”

You can watch an intro­duc­tion to the lec­ture series here. You can also find Bethe’s lec­tures list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

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

Leonard Susskind Teach­es You “The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum” for Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics

Listen to a New Album Featuring Tom Waits Songs in Hebrew (2013)

in Music | November 15th, 2013

Tom Waits is a rare breed of per­former, hav­ing attained vast com­mer­cial suc­cess with­out hav­ing had to pan­der to a mass audi­ence. His gruff voice—the vocal equiv­a­lent of too many late nights, strong scotch, and a pack-an-hour habit—has become the hall­mark of a sort of grimy, out­sider cool favored by Jim Jar­musch and John Lurie. His career, which has spanned four decades and includes the­atre, film, and the icon­ic inter­view that inspired the char­ac­ter of The Jok­er in The Dark Knight, is the envy of most musi­cians. It was only fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing his prodi­gious out­put, that Waits would become the sub­ject of a cov­er album. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it comes with a twist—it’s in Hebrew.

Heeb Mag­a­zine recent­ly post­ed a link to “Shir­im Meshu­mashim” (“Used Songs”), pro­duc­er Guy Hajjaj’s four-year project where Israeli musi­cians recre­ate Tom Waits’ back cat­a­log. The 22-song album draws wide­ly from Waits’ career, includ­ing songs from clas­sic albums such as Rain­dogs (1985) as well as the more recent Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bas­tards (2006) and Glit­ter and Doom Live (2009). While more zeal­ous fans will undoubt­ed­ly claim that Waits’ orig­i­nal deliv­ery can nev­er be matched, those with an open mind will like­ly find a num­ber of gems. Some of our favorites include “Clap Hands,” ide­al­ly suit­ed to Hebrew’s harsh, grav­el­ly sounds, and the lighter, yet unmis­tak­ably Waits-writ­ten, “Dirt in The Ground.”

You can stream the album above, or buy the album (down­load­able on a pay-what-you-wish basis) here.

Via Heeb Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

The Black Rid­er: A The­atri­cal Pro­duc­tion by Tom Waits, William S. Bur­roughs & Robert Wil­son (1990)

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.