So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities?

in Comedy, Education | October 28th, 2010

So if you want the full case against get­ting a PhD in the human­i­ties, here you go. Every argu­ment the dis­il­lu­sioned aca­d­e­m­ic can pos­si­bly make now packed into one semi-com­ic video. If you’re in the human­i­ties, the litany of com­plaints, whether fair or not, will hard­ly be unfa­mil­iar to you.

Now on a more seri­ous note … Towards the end, the video ref­er­ences SUNY Albany’s recent deci­sion to shut­ter its French, Ital­ian, clas­sics, Russ­ian and the­ater pro­grams. That event that trig­gered a much-dis­cussed series of arti­cles by Stan­ley Fish in The New York Times. If you’re look­ing for some­thing that oper­ates on a slight­ly high­er intel­lec­tu­al plane, you might want to spend some time with “The Cri­sis of the Human­i­ties Offi­cial­ly Arrives: Part 1 and Part 2.” Also don’t miss some of the read­er com­ments. They bring a lot to the dis­cus­sion. Thanks Jason for send­ing our way…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to the PhD

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

Open Culture Goes Mobile: Your Feedback Requested

in Random | October 28th, 2010

A quick note for our read­ers: This week, we soft launched a new mobile web site for Open Cul­ture – one designed to give our read­ers the abil­i­ty to access Open Cul­ture con­tent with far greater ease on their smart­phones. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone (or any phone with an advanced web brows­er), you should be able to read our posts, watch videos, and lis­ten to audio much more clean­ly, no mat­ter where you are. Sim­ply pick up your phone, vis­it any page on openculture.com, and you will see what I mean.

This mobile site is still in “beta.” So if you expe­ri­ence any prob­lems, or have any feed­back, please send it our way. We want your input. And, if you don’t pre­fer the mobile site, you can always turn it off. Just scroll to the bot­tom of the mobile page and click “Switch to Stan­dard View.”

Final­ly, as you can imag­ine, this project required some time and expense. If you can com­fort­ably afford it, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion via Pay­Pal to sup­port this ini­tia­tive and oth­ers like it. And if you can’t swing it, that’s a‑okay. Maybe just tell a friend about the site (or about our Free iPhone app) and oth­er­wise enjoy the ride.

Thanks for any feed­back you might have, and hope you enjoy the mobile ver­sion of Open Cul­ture.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Stephen Fry Gets Animated about Language

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | October 27th, 2010

For a brief time in 2008, Stephen Fry, the pop­u­lar British author, writer and come­di­an, pro­duced a series of pod­casts – called “Pod­grams” – that drew on his writ­ings, speech­es and col­lec­tive thoughts. (Find them on RSS and iTunes here). Dur­ing one par­tic­u­lar episode, Fry med­i­tat­ed on lan­guage (the Eng­lish lan­guage & his own lan­guage) and a lit­tle on Barthes, Chom­sky, Pinker and even Eddie Izzard. Then Matthew Rogers took that med­i­ta­tion and ran with it, pro­duc­ing a “kinet­ic typog­ra­phy ani­ma­tion” that art­ful­ly illus­trates a six minute seg­ment of the longer talk. Watch it above, and if you’re cap­ti­vat­ed by what Fry has to say, don’t miss his pop­u­lar video, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Best American Science Writing 2010: Free Essays

in Books, Science | October 27th, 2010

Jerome Groop­man, the New York­er staff writer and Har­vard med school prof, has edit­ed The Best Amer­i­can Sci­ence Writ­ing 2010 - a new col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er “the most cru­cial, thought-pro­vok­ing, and engag­ing sci­ence writ­ing” dur­ing the past 12 months. The 368 page book runs $10.19 online. But before you run out and buy it, let me say this: you can read many of the col­lect­ed essays online for free. The Truth About Grit by Jon­ah Lehrer; My Genome, My Self by Steven Pinker; Are We Still Evolv­ing? by Kath­leen McAu­li­ffe – they’re among 16 essays avail­able online, and they’re all includ­ed in a handy list pulled togeth­er by Metafil­ter. Mean­while, if you want to read these essays lat­er on (when you have some time to delve into longer arti­cles) give Instapa­per a try. As I’ve men­tioned before, it’s a great way to read texts in a clean for­mat on the iPad, iPhone, and Kin­dle.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Malcolm Gladwell: Taxes Were High and Life Was Just Fine

in Current Affairs, History | October 26th, 2010

Mal­colm Glad­well, the best­selling author of The Tip­ping Point, Blink, and Out­liers, has lost some friends late­ly among geeks (term used lov­ing­ly, if not self-ref­er­en­tial­ly) and con­ser­v­a­tives. First came the sug­ges­tion that Twit­ter has­n’t made human change agents obso­lete. We still need MLKs and Gand­his to change the world. And then, speak­ing at The New York­er Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this month, Glad­well had to remind us of an incon­ve­nient his­tor­i­cal fact. Dur­ing the Eisen­how­er pres­i­den­cy, tax­es on the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans peaked at 91% (more than dou­ble what they are today). And, even more galling, life in Amer­i­ca was just fine, even down­right good…

Thanks Mary for send­ing this our way. Always appre­ci­ate the good tips.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

Art in “Augmented Reality” at The Getty Museum

in Art | October 26th, 2010

We’re get­ting clos­er to a world where you can ask: why go to a muse­um when it can come to you? This sum­mer, the Get­ty Muse­um used Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) tech­nol­o­gy to show­case one of the most com­plex objects in its col­lec­tion – The Augs­burg Dis­play Cab­i­net (or Kabi­nettschrank) built around 1630. As shown above, the AR tech­nol­o­gy lets remote users view art in 3D, using just their web cam and a piece of paper to con­trol the expe­ri­ence. You can watch the demo above, or bet­ter yet, test dri­ve the whole expe­ri­ence with the instruc­tions found here.

via @drszucker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zoom­ing into Ital­ian Mas­ter­pieces

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Shakespeare in the Original Voice

in Literature, Theatre | October 26th, 2010

This fall, Paul Meier, a the­atre pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas, is work­ing with stu­dents to stage the first-ever Amer­i­can ren­di­tion of a Shake­speare play – A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream – in its orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion. As The His­to­ry Blog writes, there have only been “three oth­er pro­duc­tions of orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion (OP) Shake­speare before this one, 2 at The Globe the­ater in Lon­don, and 1 at Cam­bridge in the 1950s.” But this dif­fi­cult project became pos­si­ble when Meier and his stu­dents start­ed work­ing with David Crys­tal, a lin­guis­tics schol­ar who wrote Pro­nounc­ing Shake­speare (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press) in 2005. Pri­or to the KU pro­duc­tion, Crys­tal con­sult­ed on a pro­duc­tion of Romeo and Juli­et at the Globe the­atre on London’s South Bank (men­tioned above), and you can lis­ten to audio clips tak­en from that Eng­lish per­for­mance right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like

Shake­speare Free on the iPhone

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Milky Way in 360 Degrees

in Science | October 25th, 2010

Stéphane Guis­ard trav­eled to the Paranal obser­va­to­ry, sit­u­at­ed in Chile’s remote Ata­ca­ma desert, in search of the “dark­est sky.” The result? Some amaz­ing zoomable, fish­eye images that reveal the dark­est of dark skies (includ­ing a glimpse of the Gegen­schein). And then also this “byprod­uct”: a 360 degree panoram­ic view of the Milky Way that lies on the dark sky hori­zon. You can view Los Cie­los de Chile here.

Please note that the page can take a lit­tle time to load. But once you’re there, you can tog­gle around the images and con­trol the views.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Free Movies: Watch the Classics & Gems Online

in Film | October 24th, 2010

Almost a year ago, we start­ed scour­ing the web for free movies — for films worth your pre­cious time. We start­ed with 75, and now we’re above 200. What will you find on the ever-grow­ing list of Free Movies Online? Films by Orson Welles, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Alfred Hitch­cock, Stan­ley Kubrick, David Lynch, Bri­an DePal­ma, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, Fritz Lang, Elia Kazan, Howard Hawks, Ida Lupino, Ken Loach, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Bil­ly Wilder, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. The list cov­ers many dif­fer­ent gen­res (come­dies, film noir, indies, doc­u­men­taries, short and ani­mat­ed films, even some note­wor­thy B movies) and spans the entire his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, mov­ing from ear­ly silent films to con­tem­po­rary movies. It also fea­tures bril­liant per­for­mances by major actress­es and actors — too many to name right here. For copy­right rea­sons, there’s gen­er­al­ly a heavy empha­sis on the clas­sics. If you have time to spare, check out the full col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. And if we’re miss­ing any good ones, please feel free to send us your tips or add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Office Meets the Twilight Zone

in Comedy, Film | October 22nd, 2010

‘The Black Hole’ runs two min­utes. Be sure to hang with it until the end. H/T @ellmcgirt

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Nikon Small World Photography: The Winners

in Art | October 22nd, 2010

The Nikon Inter­na­tion­al Small World Com­pe­ti­tion first began in 1974 as a “means to rec­og­nize and applaud the efforts of those involved with pho­tog­ra­phy through the light micro­scope.” A good 36 years lat­er, Nikon named the win­ners of the 2010 com­pe­ti­tion, which means we can take anoth­er artis­tic look inside the world of small things, get­ting down to the very micro lev­el of ani­mals, plants and min­er­als. Above, you’re look­ing at an image of glial cells in the cere­bel­lum mag­ni­fied 400 times. This image and 28 oth­ers appear in the always excel­lent The Big Pic­ture sec­tion of the Boston Globe. Also vis­it a gallery of images on the Nikon site. Thanks to @wesalwan for send­ing our way.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast