Smile or Die: The Perils of Positive Psychology

in Psychology | June 8th, 2010

Pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy is a dis­ci­pline tai­lor made for Amer­i­can cul­ture. Our cul­tur­al DNA inclines us towards opti­mism and pos­i­tive think­ing. These days we’ll even send pos­i­tive vibes your way, and what can be wrong with that? If you ask Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, the author of the best­selling book Nick­el and Dimed, she’ll tell you what’s the prob­lem in 10 ani­mat­ed min­utes. Like the Philip Zim­bar­do video we fea­tured last week (The Secret Pow­ers of Time), this clip comes from the RSA YouTube Chan­nel, which we’ve now added to our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube chan­nels.

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Plato’s Cave Allegory Brought to Life with Claymation

in Film, Philosophy | June 8th, 2010

In Book VII of The Repub­lic, Pla­to paints a dark scene for read­ers. Imag­ine pris­on­ers shack­led in a cave, their heads chained in such a way they can’t look out into the world itself. They can only see manip­u­lat­ed shad­ows on walls, and that’s about all. Known as the “alle­go­ry of the cave,” this pas­sage lets Pla­to offer com­men­tary about the nature of real­i­ty and human under­stand­ing. In an episode of Phi­los­o­phy Bites, Simon Black­burn (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty) talks with Nigel War­bur­ton and David Edmonds about what Pla­to real­ly wants to say here. And, above, some clever artists pro­vide an award-win­ning ani­ma­tion of the cave scene using noth­ing oth­er than clay. Big thanks to Eren at Fil­mAn­nex for send­ing this one our way.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

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William S. Burroughs Shoots Shakespeare

in Literature | June 7th, 2010

Even at the age of 81, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs was still resist­ing lit­er­ary con­ven­tion. This footage was shot in Lawrence, Kansas, just two years before his death in 1997.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

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For Neda: The New HBO Documentary Now Online

in Current Affairs, Film | June 6th, 2010

Almost a year ago, the Green Rev­o­lu­tion was ignit­ed in Iran when Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics stole an elec­tion from Mir-Hos­sein Mousavi and his mil­lions of sup­port­ers. A young gen­er­a­tion, intent upon putting Mousavi in office, took to the streets en masse. Protests broke out across the nation … until the holy men decid­ed they had had enough. Ulti­mate­ly, bul­lets put an end to the nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment (at least for now), and the bru­tal­i­ty of the regime was cap­tured in mov­ing images watched world­wide: they showed us a young woman, Neda, get­ting indis­crim­i­nate­ly gunned down by a sniper, her eyes star­ing at us as she lay dying in the streets. Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new­ly released HBO doc­u­men­tary that intro­duces you to Neda Agha-Soltan and her life sto­ry. Writ­ten and direct­ed by the award win­ning film­mak­er Antony Thomas, the 70 minute film was cre­at­ed with a fair amount of risk, and it includes inter­views with Neda’s fam­i­ly in Iran. The Iran­ian regime, nat­u­ral­ly doing its best to stop cit­i­zens from see­ing the film, plans to release its own doc­u­men­tary, putting the offi­cial spin on the mur­der.

For Neda has been added to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can learn more about the film on the HBO web­site.

via 3quarksdaily. H/T to Mike.

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John Wooden Defines True Success

in Life, TED Talks | June 5th, 2010

Back in 1934, John Wood­en start­ed flesh­ing out his def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess – some­thing that shaped his teach­ing and coach­ing for decades to come. His def­i­n­i­tion is not about pow­er, pres­tige, and mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions. It’s about some­thing more uplift­ing. Filmed back at the TED con­fer­ence in 2001, Wood­en elab­o­rates on this phi­los­o­phy hand­ed down by his father. RIP coach and teacher.

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The Secret Powers of Time

in Psychology | June 3rd, 2010

Philip Zim­bar­do, a long­time Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, is per­haps most well known for the famous Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment con­duct­ed in 1971. But, more recent­ly, he pub­lished a book called The Time Para­dox (2008) that makes some pret­ty intrigu­ing argu­ments about how our atti­tudes toward time, often uncon­scious ones, can strong­ly shape our per­son­al­i­ties and the kind of lives we lead. The video above takes one of Zim­bar­do’s lec­tures about the Time Para­dox and syncs it with some ani­mat­ed draw­ings. Great find by Yann. Feel free to send tips our way. Just click here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Birds in the Oil

in Current Affairs, Life | June 3rd, 2010

So far, the BP oil spill has remained fair­ly abstract. We’ve seen it depict­ed in graphs and satel­lite images. Now we get to see it right up close. These pho­tos show in bru­tal detail exact­ly what’s hap­pen­ing to the wildlife in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. Con­sid­er the pho­tos a very quick glimpse into the larg­er envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter caused by this spill. Spread these pic­tures far and wide. BP does­n’t deserve to keep this mess a dis­tant idea.

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“Big Data” Comes to the Humanities

in Education, Technology | June 3rd, 2010

Fast for­ward a gen­er­a­tion, and you might hard­ly rec­og­nize the human­i­ties. Big data is here, and it’s allow­ing tech savvy stu­dents to take a whole new approach to “read­ing” texts. Using Google’s dig­i­tal library and oth­er tools pow­ered by high pow­er com­put­ing, stu­dents can now quan­ti­ta­tive­ly ana­lyze large bod­ies of lit­er­a­ture and draw new con­clu­sions about the evo­lu­tion of ideas, lan­guage, and cul­ture. (More on this here.) Some wor­ry that these “stat-hap­py quants” risk tak­ing “the human out of the human­i­ties.” Oth­ers (myself includ­ed) sus­pect that this approach could enliv­en the human­i­ties, allow­ing schol­ars to focus on new meth­ods and ques­tions. How “big data” is trans­form­ing the human­i­ties (and the sci­ences too) is the sub­ject of six arti­cles appear­ing in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion. Let me high­light them for you:

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Hey Jude at The White House

in Music | June 3rd, 2010

Yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma award­ed the Gersh­win Prize For Pop­u­lar Song to Sir Paul McCart­ney. (Watch it here). Then, the good part. McCart­ney took to the stage and per­formed the Bea­t­les clas­sic Michelle (the ref­er­ence is obvi­ous), Eleanor Rig­by, and Hey Jude, dur­ing which he was joined by Jack White, Ste­vie Won­der, Dave Grohl and oth­ers. You can watch a small clip of that per­for­mance above. PBS will air the com­plete per­for­mance on July 28.

Relat­ed: 13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafal­gar Square

via Fuse­blog

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Traveling Denim: The Global Fade

in Film | June 2nd, 2010

A four minute film, fea­tur­ing an Amer­i­can pair of Levis trav­el­ing the globe for two years, all shot by a Japan­ese direc­tor Takayu­ki Akachi. Nice find by Ian in El Sal­vador or … is it now Brazil?

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Support the Creative Commons Catalyst Campaign

in Education | June 2nd, 2010

This is a cause you can all relate to: Cre­ative Com­mons is kick­ing off a cam­paign this week to raise mon­ey for its recent­ly-launched Cat­a­lyst Grants pro­gram. Put sim­ply, these grants will help “empow­er indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions every­where … to make knowl­edge eas­i­ly, freely, and legal­ly avail­able to every­one.” Grant sizes will range from $1,000 to $10,000, and they will be dis­trib­uted to seri­ous researchers, edu­ca­tors and inno­va­tors across the globe. The goal is to raise $100,000 this month. You can help make free edu­ca­tion (includ­ing open edu­ca­tion­al resources) avail­able world­wide by mak­ing a dona­tion here, or using the wid­get below.

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