The Milky Way Over Texas. The Aurora Borealis over Norway. December’s winter solstice lunar eclipse. Last week’s blizzard. What beauty can’t be captured in time lapse photography? Perhaps ten years of human life and development? Not so. No if the parents religiously take a photo a day. Then, voila, human growth in time lapse…
via DerrenBrown
In the late 1870s, Thomas Edison, America’s prolific inventor, perfected the phonograph and captured a very early recording of the human voice – his own voice reciting the still popular nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb. (Get mp3 here.) Later, the Edison cylinder also recorded for posterity Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, etc.) talking with other musicians in a light moment.
The Edison cylinder was actually preceded by another sound-recording device, the phonautograph, invented by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1857. Not long ago, scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory extracted a recording not heard in 150 years, a voice singing the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.”
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Back in 1964, Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree, a widely loved children’s book now translated into more than 30 languages. It’s a story about the human condition, about giving and receiving, using and getting used, neediness and greediness, although many finer points of the story are open to interpretation. Today, we’re rewinding the videotape to 1973, when Silverstein’s little book was turned into a 10 minute animated film (now added to our free movie collection). Silverstein narrates the story himself and also plays the harmonica.… which brings us to his musical talents. Don’t miss Silverstein, also a well known songwriter, appearing on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970, and the two singing “A Boy Named Sue.” Silverstein wrote the song, and Cash made it famous. Thanks to Mark, co-editor of the philosophy blog/podcast The Partially Examined Life for sending these along.
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Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video
Studs Terkel Interviews Bob Dylan, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove
A few days ago, we gave you Neil Gaiman’s dark animated Christmas poem. Now, it’s time for his entirely upbeat New Year’s Benediction, which has some perfect words for anyone with a creative urging. This short video was recorded in 2010 at Symphony Hall in Boston. Best wishes to all…
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Neil Gaiman Gives Graduates 10 Essential Tips for Working in the Arts
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That’s it. We’re putting a wrap on 2010. We’ll hit the ground running again on Monday. But, until then, we leave you with a handy list of our favorite and most popular posts from 2010, all ordered in a rather random way. If you crave a little more Open Culture goodies, you can always browse through our complete archive here, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and RSS. Hope you have a safe, happy and prosperous New Year!
More to come Monday…
As the year winds to a close, Big Think has pulled together a list of their Most Popular Videos of 2010. Perhaps the biggest thinker on the list is Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist, who issues a stark warning. “Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.” Population growth, limited resources, climate change – these pressures could drive the human race into extinction within two centuries, and possibly even one. That makes space – planets beyond our own – the next great frontier.
Earlier this year, Leandro Copperfield spent days re-watching the films of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. Then, using 500+ scenes from 17 movies, he developed a montage tribute called Tarantino vs Coen Brothers, which nicely complements his other short tribute, Kubrick vs Scorsese. Now comes something a little different – a montage celebrating the films of Pixar Animation Studios. This mashup brings together moments from 11 Pixar films made between 1995 and 2010, starting with Toy Story, moving to Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc and The Incredibles, and ending with Toy Story 3. The Young Turks, Louis Armstrong, Randy Newman and Peter Garbriel power the soundtrack…
Denis Dutton – the founder of Arts & Letters Daily and philosophy professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand – passed away today. He was 66 years old. In 2009, he wrote his most recent book, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Above, we have Dutton speaking at TED, elaborating on these themes in a great little talk called “A Darwinian Theory of Beauty.”
Where was this when I needed it 30 years ago? Two students at Rowan University, Zachary Grady and Joe Ridgeway, have constructed a robotic arm that can solve the Rubik’s Cube in 15 seconds. As The New Scientist explains, the “system uses a camera to capture how the cube is scrambled and sends the images to a computer. It determines the pattern on each face and algorithms are used to solve the cube. The solution is then translated to the arm’s pneumatics and motors.” For more brilliant robot tricks, you can watch robots shoot archery, lead the Detroit Symphony orchestra, and even make ethical decisions…
No doubt about it, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 ranks as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries. One slab of stone deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and demystified the history of Ancient Egypt. Now, we had a window into the real history of Ancient Egypt, not the imagined one. The story behind the Rosetta Stone gets nicely told here by Beth Harris (Director of Digital Learning at MoMA) and Steven Zucker (chair of History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute), as part of their series of Smarthistory videos. The British Museum, which houses the famous artifact, has more on the Rosetta Stone.
For centuries, humanity has been utterly transfixed by the cosmos, with generations of astronomers, philosophers and everyday ponderers striving to better understand the grand capsule of our existence. And yet to this day, some of the most basic, fundamental qualities of the universe remain a mystery. How Large is the Universe? is a fascinating 20-minute documentary by Thomas Lucas and Dave Brody exploring the universe’s immense scale of distance and time.
“Recent precision measurements gathered by the Hubble space telescope and other instruments have brought a consensus that the universe dates back 13.7 billion years. Its radius, then, is the distance a beam of light would have traveled in that time – 13.7 billion light years. That works out to about 1.3 quadrillion kilometers. In fact, it’s even bigger – much bigger. How it got so large, so fast, was until recently a deep mystery.”
For more on the subject, see these five fascinating ways to grasp the size and scale of the universe.
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine and DesignObserver, and spends a great deal of time on Twitter.
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