Isaac Hayes Performs Shaft Live, 1973

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 10th, 2008

We lost anoth­er good one:

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Live Streams of the Olympics

in Random | August 9th, 2008

A quick fyi, you can catch live streams of the Olympic Games via the web.

If you live in the US, you can watch at NBCOlympics.com,

If you live in the UK and Europe, you can get the stream at BBC TV Olympics

If you live on Chi­na’s Main­land, you can see the games at CCTVOlympics.com

And for Aus­tralian fans, watch here: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/
or https://www.abc.net.au/olympics/

via Actionooz

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Archaeologists Uncover Shakespeare’s First Theater

in Literature | August 6th, 2008

The BBC reports: “An archae­o­log­i­cal dig has recov­ered what is thought to be the remains of the the­atre where Shake­speare’s plays were first per­formed.” Get the rest of the big sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

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An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

in YouTube | August 5th, 2008

Michael Wesch, a pro­fes­sor of cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy, has become some­thing of an inter­net phe­nom­e­non, hav­ing pro­duced two won­der­ful videos that help demys­ti­fy the world of Web 2.0. (Def­i­nite­ly check them out here and here). Now he has a new video get­ting some play. Below you can watch a talk he recent­ly gave at The Library of Con­gress, where he uses video to dis­sect the new medi­as­cape that we’re liv­ing in, and how it’s chang­ing our rela­tion­ships … for bet­ter or for worse.

via John Bat­telle Search­blog

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It Happened One Night: Frank Capra’s 1934 Classic

in Film | August 4th, 2008

Today we present Frank Capra’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning com­e­dy from 1934, star­ring Clark Gable — It Hap­pened One Night. Grab some pop­corn. Dim the lights (even if you’re at work). And enjoy:

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John Gielgud’s Hamlet

in Literature | August 4th, 2008

Here we have John Giel­gud’s first record­ing of a scene from Ham­let, “record­ed short­ly after he became the youngest actor to take the lead in the play, in the 1929/30 Old Vic sea­son.” It’s the audio that you will want to focus on here, not the video, even though there’s some­thing a lit­tle amus­ing about the whole idea of watch­ing an old record turn on YouTube. How quaint.

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Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89; David Remnick Reflects

in Harvard, History, Literature | August 3rd, 2008

Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn, who chron­i­cled the abus­es of the Sovi­et regime and gained world­wide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhen­it­syn means to lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of Rus­sia, David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, had this to stay: “It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a writer whose affect on a soci­ety has been greater than Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn’s affect on the fate of Rus­sia  …” In the video post­ed below, Rem­nick elab­o­rates on Solzhen­it­syn’s con­tri­bu­tions, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Rem­nick won a Pulitzer dur­ing the 90s for his best­seller, Lenin’s Tomb.

(Note: you can read the lec­ture Solzhen­it­syn gave upon receiv­ing the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and lis­ten to his 1978 Har­vard grad­u­a­tion speech here.)

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The Ancient Origins of the Olympic Games (Two Free Lectures)

in History | July 31st, 2008

In antic­i­pa­tion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Bei­jing, The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has made avail­able two free lec­tures that sur­vey the ancient Greek ori­gins of the Olympics. Pre­sent­ed by Jere­my McIn­er­ney, a pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, these talks, each run­ning about 30 min­utes, bring you back to 776 BC, to the ancient Greeks, who com­pet­ed in order to demon­strate their alle­giance to the Home­r­ic ideals of hero­ism, hon­or and man­hood. You can lis­ten to Lec­ture 1 here (MP3 — MP4) and Lec­ture 2 here (MP3 — MP4) LINKS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF THE TEACHING COMPANY. And, as a quick fyi, you can down­load a com­plete MP3 course on Ancient Greece by the same pro­fes­sor. (It’s on sale for $35.) I’ve actu­al­ly lis­tened to it, and found it to be quite good.

For more good edi­fy­ing lec­tures, see our big col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

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Tsunami Surfing

in Random | July 31st, 2008

A lit­tle sum­mer ran­dom­ness. It’s actu­al­ly quite beau­ti­ful …

(And, no, I’m not sure if this is tech­ni­cal­ly a tsuna­mi.)

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Learning Arabic (and Other Languages) with YouTube

in Language Lessons | July 29th, 2008

YouTube’s Trendspot­ting Tues­day focused this past week on the grow­ing num­ber of videos that can teach you a for­eign lan­guage (for free, of course). Among the 12 video col­lec­tions fea­tured here, you’ll find ones that offer lessons in French, Span­ish, Mod­ern Greek, Latin, Japan­ese and Swahili, among oth­ers. They also high­light clips that demon­strate how to write Ara­bic. (Find the first clip below.) Straight­away, you’ll notice that these videos have a home brewed feel to them, and they’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly as sub­stan­tive as what you can get for free via pod­cast. (See our large For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion). But, at least when it comes to demon­strat­ing some­thing visu­al (such as how to write Ara­bic) they have their pur­pose.

(P.S. With the video below, I have no idea how much the “instruc­tor” actu­al­ly knows about Ara­bic. The point isn’t to pass this off as a defin­i­tive source of knowl­edge, but more to show how the video plat­form is being used.)

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The Randy Pausch Video You (Probably) Haven’t Seen

in Uncategorized | July 29th, 2008

By now, most every­one knows that Randy Pausch sad­ly died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer last week. And, if you have an inter­net pulse, you’re already acquaint­ed with his lec­ture that caught the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion last year: Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams. What you may not have seen is the short, six-minute speech Pausch made at Carnegie Mel­lon’s grad­u­a­tion in late May — a short two months ago. The phi­los­o­phy here remains the same. The pitch is just short­er and to the point. It’s added to our YouTube playlist. Here it goes:

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