Who Is the World’s Most Typical Person?

in Current Affairs, Life | March 15th, 2011

In a world of 7 bil­lion peo­ple, who is the most “typ­i­cal”? That’s the ques­tion Nation­al Geo­graph­ic asks (and answers) in a visu­al­ly engag­ing video that kicks off a year-long look at glob­al pop­u­la­tion issues. Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s web­site now hosts a fea­ture arti­cle that pref­aces the series and also an accom­pa­ny­ing pho­to gallery.

On a rather relat­ed note, we’re all watch­ing the news in Japan go from bad to worse. First an earth­quake. Then a tsuna­mi. Now a poten­tial nuclear dis­taster. If you want to give a hand, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to the Japan­ese relief effort. Char­i­ty­Nav­i­ga­tor will help you eval­u­ate spe­cif­ic char­i­ties oper­at­ing in Japan and avoid scams. A decent place to begin…

via Brain Pick­ings

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Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein Live at a Cinema Near You

in Literature, Theatre | March 14th, 2011

Here’s the trail­er for the play Franken­stein, which opens in Lon­don at the Nation­al The­ater this Thurs­day. Two intrigu­ing points: 1.) This pro­duc­tion is helmed by Dan­ny Boyle, the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor behind Slum­dog Mil­ion­aire, 127 Hours, and the appro­pri­ate­ly ter­ri­fy­ing zom­bie movie 28 Days Lat­er. 2.) Boyle’s Franken­stein is part of the Nation­al The­ater Live pro­gram – now in its sec­ond sea­son – and will be simul­cast live in hun­dreds of movie the­aters all over the world. There are 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing venues in Cal­i­for­nia alone – click here to find out if there’s one near you.

For a pre-screen­ing refresh­er, you can down­load Mary Shel­ley’s clas­sic nov­el for free at Project Guten­berg, or as a free audio­book at Lib­riVox. And what­ev­er you do, don’t miss this video of the gor­geous 1934 illus­trat­ed edi­tion, with wood­cuts by the Amer­i­can artist Lynd Ward.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franken­stein Hits the Sil­ver Screen (1910)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Teens Ponder Meaning of Contemporary Art

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | March 14th, 2011

In 2009, Tate Liv­er­pool dis­played four works of con­tem­po­rary art in dif­fer­ent loca­tions around the city. Acclaimed film direc­tor Mike Fig­gis was asked to turn the reac­tions of Liv­er­poodlians to these sculp­tures into short films. The video above shows teenagers dis­cussing Jeff Koon­s’s “Three Ball Total Equi­lib­ri­um Tank.” Anoth­er short film cap­tures the views of stu­dents when one of Dan Flav­in’s instal­la­tions called “Unti­tled” was dis­played at their school for one day.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Harvard Thinks Big

in Harvard, TED Talks | March 14th, 2011

10 Har­vard pro­fes­sors. 10 fas­ci­nat­ing ideas. 10 min­utes each. That was the gist of Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-esque event held on Feb­ru­ary 11th. Now fast for­ward sev­er­al weeks, and the talks all appear online for free. Find them on YouTube, iTunes, or Har­vard’s ded­i­cat­ed web site.

Of all the 10 talks, we decid­ed to fea­ture one: Daniel Gilbert, a psych pro­fes­sor known for his book Stum­bling On Hap­pi­ness, presents a talk called “It’s the End of the World as We Know it, and I Feel Fine.” (Yes, a nod to R.E.M.) And it tries to make sense of a baf­fling ques­tion. Our plan­et is on the brink of an eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe and we’re calm­ly sit­ting here watch­ing videos. Humans have thrived because we take threats seri­ous­ly. But why not this one?

Oth­er speak­ers at the event include Steven Pinker, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Wrang­ham, and Elaine Scar­ry – some well known Har­vard names. One fig­ure not present was Michael Sandel. But here we have his TED Talk from 2010: The Lost Art of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Debate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

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Floor of Kilauea Volcano Crater Collapses Before Your Eyes

in Video - Science | March 13th, 2011

Nature shows its force once again, this time in Hawaii. Last week­end, the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey detect­ed unusu­al activ­i­ty at the Kilauea vol­cano. And, with­in min­utes, the floor of the Pu’u O’o crater began to col­lapse. It’s all cap­tured in the short video above. The Wash­ing­ton Post has a lit­tle more on the sto­ry…

via @pourmecoffee

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Inception Redone in 60 Seconds

in Art, Film | March 12th, 2011

As Car­toon Brew explains it: “Wolf­gang Mat­zl remade Incep­tion with vin­tage paper cut-outs, shot frame-by-frame on his dig­i­tal cam­era, for the Done In 60 Sec­onds com­pe­ti­tion (where entrants recre­ate a movie in no more than a minute). His film was one of the 10 final­ists in Berlin, Ger­many.” You can watch oth­er short­list­ed films here…

via Boing Boing

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Bobby McFerrin Shows the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2011

The jazz vocal­ist and ten-time Gram­my win­ner Bob­by McFer­rin turns 61 today. To cel­e­brate, we’re post­ing this clip from the 2009 World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val, in which McFer­rin leads an impromp­tu audi­ence sing-a-long in order to demon­strate the pow­er of the pen­ta­ton­ic scale. We bet you’ve nev­er seen music the­o­ry taught quite like this.

McFer­rin, by the way, is shar­ing the stage with sev­er­al sci­en­tists, includ­ing Daniel Lev­itin, McGill pro­fes­sor and author of the book This is Your Brain on Music. If this clip hap­pens to awak­en your inner croon­er instead of your inner neu­ro­sci­en­tist, you can also check out a short singing les­son with McFer­rin on Qtv.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Alain de Botton: The Glass of Life is Half Empty

in Philosophy | March 11th, 2011

Here are a few basic truths: life is essen­tial­ly mean­ing­less; your hard work won’t dic­tate where your life goes; you will be struck down by death; and your loved ones and your achieve­ments will whith­er and turn to dust. A grim way to look at things per­haps. But a long line of philoso­phers, start­ing with the Sto­ics, have seen wis­dom in tak­ing a dim view. As Alain de Bot­ton points out, a pes­simistic out­look reduces our expec­ta­tions, our envy, our dis­ap­point­ment, and it cre­ates room for emo­tion­al upside and health­i­er life deci­sions. The talk (which fea­tures a sing-along to Elton John at the 29 minute mark) runs 38 wis­dom-filled min­utes, and it’s pre­sent­ed online by The School of Life, a Lon­don-based insti­tu­tion co-found­ed by de Bot­ton in 2008. A big thanks to Miguel for send­ing this our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness (also by Alain de Bot­ton)

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Tsunami Ripples Across Globe: Animated Video

in Science, Video - Science | March 11th, 2011

NOAA (The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion) has released an ani­mat­ed video show­ing the tsuna­mi orig­i­nat­ing off the coast of Japan, and then spread­ing across the Pacif­ic. Dra­mat­ic, to say the least.

Last year, NOAA also pro­duced an ani­ma­tion that visu­al­ized the tremors from the big Chilean quake as they worked their way across the globe. Catch it here.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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Live Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Coverage on Al Jazeera

in Current Affairs, Television | March 10th, 2011

A quick news bul­letin: Japan was struck by a mas­sive 8.9 earth­quake today, fol­lowed by some dev­as­tat­ing tsunamis (see clip below). Al Jazeera is pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age (in Eng­lish) on the web. Start watch­ing here. Or find anoth­er live stream from NHK in Japan. What’s more, The Wall Street Jour­nal has a live blog ded­i­cat­ed to the earth­quake, and Google has set up a peo­ple find­er for those liv­ing in the coun­try. Our best wish­es to the peo­ple of Japan…

Tsuna­mi:

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Terrific Hand-Crafted Animation Puts the Novel, Going West, Into (Stop) Motion

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2011

Could­n’t let this one pass by…

Ander­sen M, a Lon­don design stu­dio, craft­ed a rather amaz­ing stop motion video to accom­pa­ny an excerpt from Mau­rice Gee’s nov­el, Going West. The short film was pro­duced on behalf of the New Zealand Book Coun­cil, and you can only imag­ine, as one of our read­ers points out, the crafts­man­ship, patience, and effort that went into the mak­ing this.

Thanks Dalel for send­ing this our way, and please don’t miss anoth­er one of our favorites: Books Savored in Stop Motion Film…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

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