Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture: Text Here

in Literature | December 8th, 2009

A quick note: Her­ta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, deliv­ered her lec­ture in Stock­holm yes­ter­day. You can now read the full text online; the video should be com­ing soon.

My grand­fa­ther had been a sol­dier in the First World War. He knew what he was talk­ing about when he said, often and embit­tered, in ref­er­ence to his son Matz: When the flags start to flut­ter, com­mon sense slides right into the trum­pet. This warn­ing also applied to the fol­low­ing dic­ta­tor­ship, which I expe­ri­enced. Every day you could see the com­mon sense of the prof­i­teers, both big and lit­tle, slid­ing right into the trum­pet. The trum­pet I decid­ed not to blow.

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Would You Pay $3.99 for a Short Story?

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | December 7th, 2009

The Atlantic Month­ly and Amazon/Kindle are hop­ing so…

PS Note that the “Best­sellers in Kin­dle” (look in the right col­umn of linked page) all cur­rent­ly cost $0.00.

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The World’s Smallest Writing Ever. Going Subatomic at Stanford.

in Science, Stanford | December 7th, 2009

Vis­it Stan­ford’s YouTube Chan­nel here.

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Learning, Memory and the Brain: A Primer

in Science | December 6th, 2009

The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has post­ed online a free video lec­ture that focus­es on what hap­pens in our brain when we learn — some­thing that should pique the inter­est of pret­ty much any read­er here. (Just what hap­pens with those synaps­es when you come here every day?) The lec­ture (watch here) comes from a larg­er course called Under­stand­ing the Brain and is pre­sent­ed by Jeanette Nor­den, a pro­fes­sor in Cell and Devel­op­men­tal Biol­o­gy at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty.

Side Note: The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is also offer­ing free access to anoth­er lec­ture (this one in audio) that sur­veys the “Mas­ter­pieces of Clas­si­cal Hol­i­day Music,” includ­ing Bach’s Christ­mas Ora­to­rio of 1734, Handel’s Mes­si­ah of 1741; and Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er Suite of 1892. Lis­ten or down­load here.

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Google to Provide Virtual Tours of 19 World Heritage Sites

in Google, History | December 5th, 2009

On Fri­day, I men­tioned that you can now vis­it the Roman ruins at Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles via Google Street View. What I did­n’t real­ize is that this looks to be part of a larg­er ini­tia­tive, a larg­er attempt to pro­vide dig­i­tal tours of impor­tant world her­itage sites. Accord­ing to this UNESCO announce­ment, 19 his­tor­i­cal sites will be includ­ed, and I’ve list­ed them below. The video above offers more details.

“Spain: San­ti­a­go de Com­postela (Old Town); Old Town of Cáceres; His­toric Walled Town of Cuen­ca; Old City of Sala­man­ca; Old Town of Ávi­la with its Extra-Muros Church­es; Old Town of Segovia and its Aque­duct; His­toric City of Tole­do France: Palace and Park of Ver­sailles; Paris, Banks of the Seine Italy: Archae­o­log­i­cal Areas of Pom­pei, Her­cu­la­neum and Torre Annun­zi­a­ta; His­toric Cen­tre of Siena; His­toric Cen­tre of Urbino; His­toric Cen­tre of San Gimignano Nether­lands: Mill Net­work at Kinderdijk-Elshout Czech Repub­lic: Holy Trin­i­ty Col­umn in Olo­mouc; His­toric Cen­tre of Český Krumlov; His­toric Cen­tre of Prague Unit­ed King­dom: Stone­henge, Ave­bury and Asso­ci­at­ed Sites; Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens, Kew”

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Visit Pompeii (also Stonehenge & Versailles) with Google Street View

in Google, History | December 4th, 2009

pompeiigoogleThe sto­ry of Pom­peii is well known. Back in 79 AD, Mount Vesu­vius erupt­ed and cov­ered the neigh­bor­ing Roman city with 60 feet of ash over the course of two days. The city was wiped out and then entombed for cen­turies, until archae­ol­o­gists start­ed unearthing the ruins in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, offer­ing the mod­ern world an amaz­ing win­dow into the fin­er details of ancient Roman life. (Just for the record, dig­ging con­tin­ues there today, and I even got to do some this past sum­mer.) Today, Google is help­ing deep­en the mod­ern con­nec­tion to the ancient world. Using Google Street view, you can tour Pom­peii in 3D from the com­fort of your own home. To begin walk­ing through the ancient city, just click here.

As a side note, this isn’t the first time Google has used Street View in such a way. You can also find tours of Stone­henge and Louis XIV’s Ver­sailles. Plus, you can also use Google Earth, anoth­er Google pro­gram, to tour the ancient city of Rome.

Final­ly, to dig deep­er into ancient his­to­ry, I’d rec­om­mend look­ing through our pre­vi­ous post, Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free. This will point you to some of the best free cours­es avail­able on the web.

via Mash­able and the Nation­al Post

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U. Michigan iPhone Orchestra

in Music | December 4th, 2009

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan now offers a course designed to help stu­dents turn their iPhones into musi­cal instru­ments. The video above shows footage from one of their prac­tice ses­sions held in Novem­ber. A final con­cert will be held on Decem­ber 9. You can read more about this project here. Also see Stan­ford stu­dents play­ing the iPhone here.

via TUAW.com

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Magnetic Fields Made Visible

in Science | December 3rd, 2009

What do nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fields look like? This extra­or­di­nary footage from NASA’s Space Sci­ences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UC Berke­ley) gives you a glimpse and reveals their “chaot­ic, ever-chang­ing geome­tries.”

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Behavioral Economics and Underwater Mortgages

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | December 3rd, 2009

What if peo­ple behaved like banks? Or, more pre­cise­ly, what if indi­vid­u­als hold­ing “under­wa­ter” mort­gages stopped fol­low­ing the social norms of ‘per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty’ and ‘promise-keep­ing’ and instead act­ed like cap­i­tal­ist play­ers in a free mar­ket? Most would dump their sink­ing mort­gages and walk away. That’s the find­ing of Brent White, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, who has pub­lished a new paper called “Under­wa­ter and Not Walk­ing Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Man­age­ment of the Hous­ing Cri­sis.” (PDF) The bot­tom line is that home­own­ers and banks play by two dif­fer­ent sets of rules. Main Street accepts the “emo­tion­al con­straints … active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, the finan­cial indus­try,” and they hold the bag. Wall Street acts in its own self inter­est and gets a fresh start. The only thing they have in com­mon these days are (you guessed it) guns.

Just for the record: I’m not advo­cat­ing a posi­tion here, and I don’t hold an under­wa­ter mort­gage…

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10 Power Tools for Lifelong Learners

in Most Popular | December 2nd, 2009

Every now and then, we like to remind read­ers of the audio/video resources that Open Cul­ture makes avail­able to life­long learn­ers. These col­lec­tions are all free, and can be down­loaded to your com­put­ers and mp3 play­ers. When you add it all togeth­er, you will find thou­sands of hours of free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent here from qual­i­ty sources. If you have a chance, please
  • Free Audio Books:  This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing many clas­sic works of fic­tion, non-fic­tion, and poet­ry. Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, James Joyce, Kaf­ka, Shake­speare, Orwell and much more. You can down­load them all straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, then lis­ten any time. (On a relat­ed note, you might want to see our list of Life-Chang­ing Books, accord­ing to our read­ers.)
  • Free Cours­es from Major Uni­ver­si­ties: This list brings togeth­er over 250 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. The­ses full-fledged cours­es range across the human­i­ties, social sci­ences, and sci­ences, includ­ing com­put­er sci­ence. The page is a gold mine for life­long learn­ers.
  • Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages: Cen­tral­ized in one place are free lessons that will teach you 37 lan­guages. Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Japan­ese, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish and Esperan­to — they’re all free and portable.
  • Free eBooks: Here’s a new col­lec­tion that fea­tures over 100 Free eBooks, most of them clas­sics, that you can access on your PC, smart phone (includ­ing iPhone), and Kin­dle.
  • Ideas & Cul­ture Programs/Podcasts:  In this one col­lec­tion, we have gath­ered togeth­er some of the most intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pro­grams avail­able via pod­cast. The pro­grams will keep you think­ing and cul­tur­al­ly up-to-date, as will our col­lec­tion of sci­ence pod­casts. All can be down­loaded straight to your mp3 play­er.
  • The Best Intel­li­gent Video Sites: Where can you go to find intel­li­gent video? We have list­ed 46 web sites that fea­ture a steady stream of intel­li­gent con­tent: doc­u­men­taries, lec­tures, edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming and much more.
  • Smart YouTube Col­lec­tions: It’s hard to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube. But we have done it. Here you will find upwards of 100 YouTube chan­nels that reg­u­lar­ly serve up smart video con­tent.
  • Our YouTube Picks: Over the past few years, we have fea­tured sev­er­al hun­dred YouTube videos on Open Cul­ture. And some of the best ones we have brought togeth­er in our own YouTube chan­nel. You can sub­scribe to this col­lec­tion and watch new videos as we add them.
  • Great Clas­sic Movies: Our new movie col­lec­tion fea­tures land­mark films for the stu­dent of cin­e­ma. Here, you’ll find numer­ous Chap­lin films from the silent era, 12 Alfred Hitch­cock films, and many oth­er great works from the 1920s, 30, 40s and 50s. You’ll even find some great con­tem­po­rary films as well. Many of the great Amer­i­can direc­tors are rep­re­sent­ed here.
  • Open Cul­ture iPhone App: A lit­tle some­thing spe­cial for iPhone users. When you down­load our free iPhone app, you can take with you, wher­ev­er you go, many of the items list­ed above. Free Audio Books, Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Music and Sci­ence Pod­casts, etc. Give it a try and tell a friend. Note, that per Apple’s require­ments, you will need access to Wi-Fi.

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Elvis Mitchell Talks “Bad Lieutenant” with Werner Herzog

in Film | December 2nd, 2009

Wern­er Her­zog, one of Ger­many’s finest liv­ing direc­tors, has a new film out, The Bad Lieu­tenant (watch trail­ers here), which has a loose rela­tion­ship with Abel Fer­rara’s own Bad Lieu­tenant from 1992. The new film, star­ring Nico­las Cage and Eva Mendes, gets reviewed by A.O. Scott in the New York Times. And now a for­mer Times film crit­ic, Elvis Mitchell, sits down with Her­zog and talks about his “anar­chist” noir film set in New Orleans. The inter­view was aired by KCRW in LA and can be down­loaded in sev­er­al for­mats here, or streamed right below. And, film fans, don’t for­get to check out our new col­lec­tion of free movies online. (It now includes about 120 indi­vid­ual films, and lists 35 sites where you can watch free movies online.)

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