Free: Download Dan Brown’s Bestseller, The DaVinci Code, Until March 24

in Books, e-books | March 18th, 2013

I’ll be the first one to admit it, The DaVin­ci Code isn’t exact­ly an easy fit on a site that promis­es to talk about “the best cul­tur­al media” out there. But Dan Brown’s 2003 mys­tery nov­el has sold north of 80 mil­lion copies and now finds itself trans­lat­ed into 44 lan­guages. And the Lou­vre fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the book’s plot. That gives it some cul­tur­al cred, no? Okay, maybe not! Any­way, to cel­e­brate the 10th anniver­sary of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion, Dou­ble­day has decid­ed to give away copies of the best­seller through March 24, mak­ing the book avail­able as a free down­load on mul­ti­ple ebook plat­forms: Ama­zon, Apple iBook­store, Barnes & Noble, Google, Sony Read­er, and Kobo. Accord­ing to Gal­l­ey­cat, the down­load will include “the pro­logue and first chap­ter of Infer­no, Brown’s upcom­ing nov­el.”

Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a weight­i­er read, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks for the Kin­dle, iPad and Nook

H/T Medi­a­bistro

The Rise of Webcomics: PBS’ Off Book Series Explores the Emergence of New Popular Art Form

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | March 18th, 2013

I’m a paper loy­al­ist by age and incli­na­tion. I don’t begrudge those who do the bulk of their read­ing dig­i­tal­ly, I just pre­fer the famil­iar­i­ty and object-ness of the print­ed page. As a lover of comics and graph­ic nov­els, my brick and mor­tar needs are more than met by the com­par­a­tive wealth of indie shops and fes­ti­vals here in New York City, as well as its belea­guered pub­lic library sys­tem.

I could­n’t help notic­ing, though, that many of the new­er titles I favor got their start online. The pro­po­nents of the form who dis­cuss the Rise of Web­comics for PBS’ Off Book series make a com­pelling case for explor­ing that realm a bit more ful­some­ly.

Many artists who put their stuff up on the web ben­e­fit from the imme­di­a­cy of the act and the—theoretically—larger audi­ence. But pub­lish­ing in this for­mat also opens it up for Sam Brown and Andrew Hussie to cre­ate a large body of work based on read­er sug­ges­tions. Hussie takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti plat­form pos­si­bil­i­ties. Lucy Knis­ley, no stranger to edi­to­r­i­al refine­ment in a more tra­di­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion mod­el, gives her mon­sters of the id free rein online. And Nick Gure­witch’s Per­ry Bible Fel­low­ship (though he yanked a cou­ple of them offline to “make the book more spe­cial”) is the ves­sel into which his tor­rent of hilar­i­ous, dis­so­cia­tive ideas flows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Gold­en Age Comics

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

The Art of Illus­tra­tion: Four Illus­tra­tors Intro­duce You to the Awe-Inspir­ing State of Their Art

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite web­com­ic (until now the only one she read) remains Hyper­bole and a Half.

Are You Ready for the Return of Lost Species?: Stewart Brand on the Dawn of De-Extinction

in Biology, TED Talks | March 18th, 2013

The Earth is los­ing life forms at a dis­turb­ing rate. The biol­o­gist Edward O. Wil­son has esti­mat­ed that at least 27,000 species per year are dis­ap­pear­ing from our plan­et. That’s an aver­age of 74 species a day, or three every hour. Researchers warn that if we stay on this track, the Earth will enter its sixth mass extinc­tion–the first since the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

With ani­mal and plant habi­tats being crowd­ed out by a human pop­u­la­tion that has passed the 7 bil­lion mark and is grow­ing at a rate of 70 mil­lion peo­ple per year, sci­en­tists attempt­ing to stem the tide of extinc­tion have their work cut out for them. The vast major­i­ty of efforts, of course, are aimed at pre­serv­ing endan­gered species and mak­ing sure more species do not become endan­gered. But one man is spear­head­ing a bold project to actu­al­ly bring back species we have already lost.

Stew­art Brand first came to noto­ri­ety in the 1960s, as one of Ken Kesey’s Mer­ry Pranksters and as the cre­ator of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log. In 1996 he co-found­ed the Long Now Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing long-term think­ing in our accel­er­at­ing cul­ture, with its “patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span.” One of Brand’s pet projects at Long Now is Revive & Restore, a pro­gram to coor­di­nate genet­ic research into bring­ing back present­ly extinct species. Brand spoke about the project (see above) on Feb­ru­ary 27 at a TED con­fer­ence in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia.

Revive & Restore’s first project is to bring back the pas­sen­ger pigeon, a bird that died off in 1914 but was once so abun­dant that migra­to­ry flocks in North Amer­i­ca would dark­en the sky. The pas­sen­ger pigeon was cho­sen as the ini­tial project because it is bet­ter-known than many extinct species and because the bird’s DNA (tak­en from muse­um spec­i­mens) has already been sequenced. But Brand promis­es that the pas­sen­ger pigeon is only the begin­ning. “The fact is,” he says, “humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. We have the abil­i­ty now, and maybe the moral oblig­a­tion, to repair some of the dam­age.”

Pas­sen­ger Pigeon (Ectopistes migra­to­rius) by John James Audubon, 1824. Water­col­or, pas­tel, graphite, gouache, black chalk and black ink on paper. The image depicts a behav­ior known as “billing,” in which one bird shares food by regur­gi­tat­ing it into the bill of anoth­er. The male, with it’s more col­or­ful plumage, is shown stand­ing on the low­er branch, with the female up above.

The Life and Controversial Work of Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe Profiled in 1988 Documentary

in Photography, Television | March 18th, 2013

In March 1988, the BBC’s Are­na turned its lens toward pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. The tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series had already spent well over a decade cul­ti­vat­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for cov­er­ing every­thing—Super­man, Philip K. Dick, the fall­en Sovi­et empire, the Ford Cortina—but some view­ers must still have felt a bit star­tled by the choice of such a con­tro­ver­sial artist, let alone by how mild and non-threat­en­ing he ulti­mate­ly seems. Map­plethor­pe had made his name both in por­trai­ture, espe­cial­ly of musi­cians, and in high­ly charged erot­ic imagery. This lat­ter cur­rent in his work, did not, of course, please every­body. By the time the Are­na pro­file aired, Map­plethor­pe, suf­fer­ing from AIDS, would have only one year of life remain­ing, with the worst of the high-pro­file bat­tles over his artis­tic val­ue and/or “obscen­i­ty” still to come.

Though wary of extin­guish­ing the mys­tery of his pho­tographs by say­ing too much about them, Map­plethor­pe does reveal what sounds like an impor­tant ele­ment of his moti­va­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of the obscen­i­ty charges: “I want­ed to retain the for­bid­den feel­ing of pornog­ra­phy and make an art state­ment, to make some­thing unique­ly my own.” We see the man at work, and we hear a good deal more from him in an on-cam­era inter­view. Nov­el­ist Edmund White appears to pro­vide con­text and com­men­tary, as do sev­er­al of the peo­ple Map­plethor­pe pho­tographed, both those who sought fame and those who oth­er­wise avoid­ed it. Cov­er­ing Map­plethor­pe’s life as much as it does his work, the broad­cast nat­u­ral­ly includes a con­ver­sa­tion with Pat­ti Smith, not­ed rock­er and per­haps the pho­tog­ra­pher’s clos­est friend. For ide­al sup­ple­men­tary read­ing, have a look at Smith’s Map­plethor­pe-cen­tric mem­oir Just Kids, about which we’ve post­ed before.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

10 Free Stories by George Saunders, Author of Tenth of December, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

in e-books, Literature | March 18th, 2013

For writ­ers and seri­ous read­ers, George Saun­ders is any­thing but a new­com­er. Saun­ders pub­lished his first short sto­ry with The New York­er back in 1992, and his new sto­ries have reg­u­lar­ly debuted in the mag­a­zine’s Fic­tion sec­tion ever since. Over the years, he has gained the rep­u­ta­tion of being a “writer’s writer,” with authors like Tobias Wolff say­ing about Saun­ders: “He’s been one of the lumi­nous spots of our lit­er­a­ture for the past 20 years.” But despite his lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments, and despite win­ning the pres­ti­gious MacArthur award in 2006, George Saun­ders nev­er quite became a house­hold name until Jan­u­ary 6 of this year. On that day, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle with the title, “George Saun­ders Has Writ­ten the Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” a pret­ty bold dec­la­ra­tion giv­en that 2013 still had 359 days to go. Since then, Saun­ders has found him­self in the lime­light talk­ing about Tenth of Decem­ber, his new­ly-pub­lished col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. You can watch him give a read­ing at Google above, or make appear­ances on the PBS News Hour and The Col­bert Report.

If you’re not famil­iar with Saun­ders’ writ­ing, then we have you cov­ered. Below we’ve col­lect­ed 10 sto­ries by the author, all free to read online. Even bet­ter, the list fea­tures three sto­ries from Tenth of Decem­ber, includ­ing the sto­ry after which the book takes its name. All sto­ries from the new col­lec­tion have an aster­isk next to the title.

• The Sem­pli­ca-Girl Diaries * — New York­er, Octo­ber 2012
• Tenth of Decem­ber * — New York­er, Octo­ber 2011
• The Red Bow  — Esquire, April 2009
• Pup­py * — New York­er, May 2007
• Comm­Comm — New York­er, August 2005
• Bohemi­ans — New York­er, Jan­u­ary 2004
• Adams — New York­er, August 2004
• Jon — New York­er, Jan­u­ary 2003
• Sea Oak — Barcelona Review, 2000
• A Lack of Order in the Float­ing Object Room — North­west Review, 1986

Relat­ed Con­tent

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

The Zen Wisdom of Alan Watts Animated by the Creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone

in Animation, Life, Religion | March 17th, 2013

Alan Watts began pop­u­lar­iz­ing the teach­ings of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, and Tao­ism in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1950s. He taught at the Acad­e­my of Asian Stud­ies in San Fran­cis­co, wrote Way of Zen and oth­er best­selling books, gave talks on the radio (lis­ten here), and devel­oped TV pro­grams intro­duc­ing Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion. Don’t miss his 1960 TV pro­gram called “The Silent Mind.”

Watts died almost 40 years ago, but his lega­cy remains alive, part­ly thanks to his son, part­ly thanks to vin­tage videos cap­tured on YouTube, and part­ly thanks to peo­ple like Trey Park­er and Matt Stone — that’s right, the cre­ators of South Park. There’s not much infor­ma­tion known about them, but some­where back in 2007, Park­er and Stone pro­duced videos that ani­mat­ed (audio) lec­tures giv­en by Watts many moons ago. The top­ics deal with music, life, and philo­soph­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty types. Mean­while, the aes­thet­ic is dis­tinct­ly South Parkean, minus the out­ra­geous pot­ty humor, of course. The project is an old favorite of ours and today we decid­ed to bring it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

“The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet” by Robert Thur­man, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Added to the Phi­los­o­phy Sec­tion of our list of Free Online Cours­es

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

A Gallery of Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs: Iconic Moments Briefly Animated

in Animation, Film, Technology, Web/Tech | March 16th, 2013

Type “stu­pid ani­mat­ed gif”—or words to that effect—into your pre­ferred search engine and you’ll be reward­ed with an abun­dance of ger­mane mate­r­i­al.

Mean­while a search on “ani­mat­ed gif of Stan­ley Kubrick rolling in his grave” fails to yield any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.

Pity. I guess we’ll just have to imag­ine how the late per­fec­tion­ist and cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor would have react­ed to a gallery of his most icon­ic images, down­loaded and doc­tored into infi­nite­ly loop­ing, min­i­mal­ly ani­mat­ed snip­pets.

Per­haps I pre­sume. Per­haps he’d be pray­ing for some­one to rean­i­mate him, so he could haunt the realm of the late night cha­t­rooms, his every obser­va­tion and opin­ion punc­tu­at­ed with a lan­guid Sue Lyons lift­ing her head in Loli­ta, or a dia­bol­i­cal Clock­work Orange toast.

Admit­ted­ly, the longer one watch­es George C Scot­t’s Gen­er­al Turgid­son work­ing over a mouth­ful of gum, or Jack Nichol­son act­ing four kinds of crazy, the more tempt­ing it is to put togeth­er a cin­ema­graph of one’s own. That’s the high fly­ing term assigned to the form by artist Kevin Burg and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Beck who alleged­ly invent­ed (and lat­er trade­marked) it while cov­er­ing New York Fash­ion Week. To quote super­mod­el Coco Rocha, as they do on their web­site, “it’s more than a pho­to but not quite a video.”

Be fore­warned that it’s not a project for the Pho­to­shop new­bie. Maybe the instruc­tion­al video below just makes it seem so.  (Though if you’re look­ing for an instruc­tion­al video on how not to make an instruc­tion­al video, this is very instruc­tion­al indeed. If not, stick with a more straight for­ward, non-film-based how to. Stan­ley Kubrick, this guy ain’t.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cin­ema­graph: A Haunt­ing Photo/Video Hybrid

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Ayun Hal­l­i­day rec­om­mends Stan­ley Kubrick­’s “Paths of Glo­ry” in its orig­i­nal form.

Peter Gabriel and Genesis Live on Belgian TV in 1972: The Full Show

in Music | March 15th, 2013

Here’s a rare treat for fans of ear­ly 70s pro­gres­sive rock: Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis togeth­er at the begin­ning of the band’s clas­sic peri­od, per­form­ing live on the Bel­gian TV show Pop Shop in March of 1972. The half-hour film cap­tures the group a lit­tle more than a year after Phil Collins and Steve Hack­ett joined, and before Gabriel start­ed dress­ing up in out­landish cos­tumes. The line­up includes Gabriel on flute, tam­bourine and lead vocals, Collins on drums and back­ing vocals, Hack­ett on lead gui­tar, Tony Banks on key­boards and rhythm gui­tar, and Michael Ruther­ford on bass and rhythm gui­tar. Here’s the setlist:

1. “The Foun­tain of Salmacis”
2. “Twi­light Ale­house”
3. “The Musi­cal Box”
4. “The Return of the Giant Hog­weed”

The songs are all from the 1971 album Nurs­ery Cryme, except “Twi­light Ale­house,” which the group had been per­form­ing live since 1970 but would­n’t release on an album until 1998, when the song was includ­ed in the boxed set Gen­e­sis Archive 1967–75. Gabriel co-found­ed Gen­e­sis in 1967 and left the band in 1975. Collins then took over on lead vocals.

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:

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

Kei­th Moon, Drum­mer of The Who, Pass­es Out at 1973 Con­cert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

BBC Radio Adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere Begins Saturday: A Preview

in Radio | March 15th, 2013

Amer­i­can radio dra­mas, once the pride of the medi­um, died out soon after the rise of tele­vi­sion. But U.S. lis­ten­ers in search of con­tin­ued dra­mat­ic inno­va­tion over the air­waves need only turn their ears toward the oth­er side of the Atlantic, where the BBC has kept the craft in stur­dy work­ing order. This Sat­ur­day, March 16, brings the debut of a much-antic­i­pat­ed BBC Radio 4 series adapt­ed from the work of a British sto­ry­teller with inter-gen­er­a­tional, inter­na­tion­al appeal, and a hybrid fan­tas­ti­cal-real­ist sen­si­bil­i­ty all his own. The writer? Neil Gaiman. The dra­ma? Nev­er­where. Astute fans will know that Gaiman craft­ed this “urban fan­ta­sy” series first as a tele­vi­sion series, and then as a nov­el. It went on to become a com­ic book, then a stage pro­duc­tion and now, adapt­ed by Dirk Mag­gs, a radio play. Has the man’s work tran­scend­ed all lim­its of form?

When Nev­er­where begins, non‑U.K. res­i­dents can lis­ten on the BBC’s site here. At the moment, it offers a slew of pre­view clips to give you a fla­vor of just how Gaiman’s mate­r­i­al sounds as inter­pret­ed by cast includ­ing James McAvoy, Natal­ie Dormer, Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, and Christo­pher Lee. With just music, sound effects, and the voic­es of these for­mi­da­ble thes­pi­ans, the BBC’s experts will tell Gaiman’s sto­ry of two Lon­dons: “Lon­don Above,” the one we all know and some of us love, and “Lon­don Below,” the city’s under­ground par­al­lel inhab­it­ed by the grotesque, the flam­boy­ant, the anachro­nis­tic, or—depending on your feel­ings about Lon­don Above—the more grotesque, the more flam­boy­ant, and the more anachro­nis­tic. Hear what hap­pens between these two visions of Lon­don with Nev­er­where’s first, hour-long episode on Sat­ur­day and its sub­se­quent five half-hour episodes from Mon­day, March 18 onward. All episodes will stay avail­able on demand until March 29. You can read more details on the BBC Radio 4 Nev­er­where about page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Launch­es New Crowd­sourced Sto­ry­telling Project (Spon­sored by the New Black­Ber­ry)

The BBC Presents a New Drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s 1984, with Christo­pher Eccle­ston as Win­ston Smith

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Creative Commons Announces “School of Open” with Courses to Focus on Digital Openness

in Education, Law, Online Courses, Wikipedia | March 15th, 2013

Just in time to cel­e­brate Open Edu­ca­tion Week, here comes a new ini­tia­tive, the School of Open, a learn­ing envi­ron­ment focused on increas­ing our under­stand­ing of “open­ness” and the ben­e­fits it brings to cre­ativ­i­ty and edu­ca­tion in the dig­i­tal age.

Devel­oped by the col­lab­o­ra­tive edu­ca­tion plat­form Peer to Peer Uni­ver­si­ty (P2PU) with orga­ni­za­tion­al sup­port from Cre­ative Com­mons, the School of Open aims to spread under­stand­ing of the pow­er of this brave new world through free online class­es.

We hear about it all the time: Uni­ver­sal access to research, edu­ca­tion and culture—all good things, with­out a doubt—made pos­si­ble by things like open source soft­ware, open edu­ca­tion­al resources and the like.

But what are these var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved?

School of Open has rolled the con­ver­sa­tion back to square one so that under­stand­ing the basics is easy. Through a list of new cours­es cre­at­ed by users and experts, peo­ple can learn more about what “open­ness” means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone cours­es on copy­right, writ­ing for Wikipedia, the col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment of open sci­ence, and the process behind mak­ing open video.

These free cours­es start March 18 (sign up by click­ing the “start course” but­ton by Sun­day, March 17):

• Copy­right 4 Edu­ca­tors (US)
• Copy­right 4 Edu­ca­tors (AUS)
• Cre­ative Com­mons for K‑12 Edu­ca­tors
• Writ­ing Wikipedia Arti­cles: The Basics and Beyond

These free cours­es are open for you to take at any time:

• Get a CC license. Put it on your web­site
• Open Sci­ence: An Intro­duc­tion
• Open data for GLAMs
• Intro to Open­ness in Edu­ca­tion
• A Look at Open Video
• Con­tribut­ing to Wiki­me­dia Com­mons
• Open Detec­tive

The approach at P2PU encour­ages peo­ple to work togeth­er, assess one another’s work, and pro­vide con­struc­tive feed­back. It’s a great place to learn how to design your own course, because the design process is bro­ken down step-by-step, and course con­tent is vet­ted by users and P2PU staff. The tuto­r­i­al shows you how the process works.

P2PU is also a place to learn more about what is open con­tent and what is not. Par­tic­i­pants in the ongo­ing course Open Detec­tive learn to iden­ti­fy open source media and then demon­strate mas­tery by mak­ing some­thing of their own using only open con­tent. What if you’re real­ly, real­ly proud of the resource you cre­ate in Open Detec­tive? Take it to the next lev­el and get a Cre­ative Com­mons license to make your work avail­able with­out giv­ing up full copy­right. You guessed it, there’s a course for that too.

Open Edu­ca­tion Week is in full swing (through Mon­day the 18^th). There’s a full sched­ule of webi­na­rs to check out, includ­ing dis­cus­sions about the impli­ca­tions of open access for polit­i­cal struc­tures like the World Bank, and the impact of open, glob­al teach­ing in Syr­ia.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Total Noob to Learn­ing Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Cours­es Hold Your Hand

700 Free Online Cours­es

A Meta List of MOOCs

What Entered the Pub­lic Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site at .