Abbey Road: Then and Now

in Music | December 9th, 2010

This was too good to pass up. This week’s cel­e­bra­tion of John Lennon’s life unearthed a price­less pic­ture of The Bea­t­les prepar­ing to take their icon­ic walk across Abbey Road. One detail worth point­ing out: Sir Paul has yet to kick off his shoes.

Although tak­en back in 1969, tourists still flock to the same cross­walk today, hop­ing to snap a quick imi­ta­tive pho­to before a car races by. You can watch the some­times hair-rais­ing action on this great live web­cam pro­vid­ed by Abbey Road Stu­dios. There’s obvi­ous­ly more to see dur­ing day­light hours in the UK. Thanks to Kot­tke for flag­ging this…

Bea­t­les Box Sale: Just a heads up. We noticed that Amazon.com has deeply dis­count­ed the remas­tered Bea­t­les Box Sets. The Stereo Box Set now goes for $126.32 for 14 discs, and the Mono Box Set runs $129.99 for 12 discs. Respec­tive­ly, that’s 51% and 57% off list price, and it’s right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son…

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Where Horror Film Began: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

in Film | December 9th, 2010

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In ear­ly 1920, Robert Wiene pre­miered in Berlin his silent film The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari. Ever since, crit­ics have lav­ished praise upon Cali­gari, call­ing it a mod­el of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film, the great­est hor­ror film of ear­ly cin­e­ma, and an impor­tant influ­ence on direc­tors lat­er work­ing in the film noir tra­di­tion. And, what’s more (spoil­er alert), Wiene’s film intro­duced the ‘twist end­ing’ to cin­e­ma. Today, you can watch this ground­break­ing film in its entire­ty above, down­load it from the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies. Thanks to Melis­sa for the good find…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franken­stein Hits the Sil­ver Screen (1910)

How The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari Invent­ed Psy­cho­log­i­cal Hor­ror Film & Brought Expres­sion­ism to the Screen (1920)

From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Look at How Cin­e­ma Laid the Foun­da­tion for Tyran­ny in Weimar Ger­many

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Philosophy with John Searle: Three Free Courses

in Philosophy, UC Berkeley | December 8th, 2010

You can’t dab­ble in the world of phi­los­o­phy very long with­out encoun­ter­ing John Sear­le. One of Amer­i­ca’s most respect­ed philoso­phers, Sear­le did impor­tant work on “speech act” the­o­ry dur­ing the 1960s, then lat­er turned to con­scious­ness and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, out of which came his famous “Chi­nese room” thought exper­i­ment. Sear­le has taught phi­los­o­phy at UC-Berke­ley since 1959, and, until recent­ly, his cours­es were only avail­able to matric­u­lat­ed stu­dents. But this fall semes­ter, the good folks at Berke­ley record­ed three cours­es taught by Sear­le, and made them avail­able online. We have added them to the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. Or, you can sim­ply access the cours­es below, using your com­put­er or your smart phone.

  • Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage — iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Mind - iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
  • Phi­los­o­phy of Soci­ety — iTunes — John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley

Note: All of these cours­es can also be accessed on YouTube (in audio for­mat) using this big playlist.

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Howard Cosell Breaks the News: John Lennon is Dead (1980)

in History, Media, Music | December 8th, 2010

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, Amer­i­ca’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio the night the music died. Howard Cosell inter­viewed John Lennon on Mon­day Night Foot­ball back in 1974. Revis­it the short con­ver­sa­tion right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon Sings Bud­dy Hol­ly

John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Short Film with John Lennon

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Thought of You: The Film & Behind the Scenes

in Art, Film | December 7th, 2010

Ryan Wood­ward has worked on the art direc­tion of many big name Hol­ly­wood films – Iron­man 2, Spi­der­man 2 & 3, The Iron Giant, the list goes on. But he had an idea for a short ani­mat­ed film, a love sto­ry expressed through dance, and it led to a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with dance chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Kori Waka­mat­su. This short, behind-the-scenes film doc­u­ments their artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion, reveal­ing every­thing that went into mak­ing Thought of You, the 2D ani­mat­ed film fea­tured above.

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Saul Bellow Reads from Humboldt’s Gift (1988)

in Literature | December 7th, 2010

The 92nd Street Y, a cul­tur­al pil­lar of New York City, has released from its audio archive anoth­er lit­tle gem – Saul Bel­low read­ing from his 1975 nov­el Hum­boldt’s Gift, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion and con­tributed to Bel­low’s Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture.

Bel­low’s read­ing (access it via iTunes, RSS, or the mp3 play­er below) runs 11 min­utes, and it sits nice­ly along­side two oth­er 92nd Street Y record­ings – Tru­man Capote read­ing from Break­fast at Tiffany’s (1963) and William Car­los Williams read­ing select­ed poems in 1954. We fea­tured both items in our pop­u­lar post, 45 Great Cul­tur­al Icons Revis­it­ed.

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Aurora Borealis over Norway in HD

in Art, Science | December 6th, 2010

Tor Even Mathisen shot these three min­utes of time­lapse beau­ty with a Canon EOS 5D mark II. Equal­ly beau­ti­ful is this still-frame shot. Many thanks to @Eugenephoto for send­ing this our way…

Bea­t­les Box Sale: Just a heads up. We noticed that Amazon.com has deeply dis­count­ed the remas­tered Bea­t­les Box Sets. The Stereo Box Set now goes for $126.32 for 14 discs, and the Mono Box Set runs $129.99 for 12 discs. Respec­tive­ly, that’s 51% and 57% off list price, and it’s right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son…

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Introducing the New Google eBookstore (with Free Classics)

in Books, e-books, Google | December 6th, 2010

This morn­ing, Google offi­cial­ly opened up the new Google eBook­store, which gives con­sumers access to three mil­lion ebooks, includ­ing many free clas­sics. Tak­ing a page out of Ama­zon’s play­book, Google now lets you pur­chase books at com­pet­i­tive ebook prices and read them across mul­ti­ple plat­forms – mean­ing you can start read­ing a nov­el on your com­put­er’s web brows­er, then seam­less­ly switch to the iPad, Kin­dle, or smart­phone. And the con­tent will stay in sync, all in the cloud. (Get instruc­tions and apps here.) Anoth­er plus: you’re not forced to buy books from just Google. The new book­store is open to inde­pen­dent book­sellers and retail part­ners, which gives these small­er play­ers a chance to play (and per­haps even thrive) in the ebook mar­ket. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the new book­store on the Google Books blog, and don’t miss our Free eBooks col­lec­tion, which comes packed with many clas­sics.

Note: the Google eBook­store is cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed to the US mar­ket.

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Jazz Legend Dave Brubeck Celebrates His 90th Today

in Music | December 5th, 2010

Last year, Dave Brubeck­’s jazz stan­dard, Take Five, turned 50 years old. (Watch his 1961 per­for­mance above.) And, today, the artist cel­e­brates his 90th birth­day. Through­out his 80s, Brubeck con­tin­ued to per­form across the US  (we have him play­ing Take Five at the Mon­tre­al Jazz Fes­ti­val just last year) and onward he plans to go — although his tour­ing was recent­ly halt­ed by pace­mak­er surgery. To com­mem­o­rate his birth­day, Turn­er Clas­sic Movies will pre­miere tonight In His Own Sweet Way, a doc­u­men­tary revis­it­ing Brubeck­’s life and music. And NPR’s Fresh Air has re-aired a 1999 inter­view where (in addi­tion to his music) Brubeck talks about his ear­ly days on a Cal­i­for­nia cat­tle ranch, and his first love: rodeo rop­ing. The con­ver­sa­tion runs 34 min­utes. You can lis­ten right here.

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200 Countries & 200 Years in 4 Minutes, Presented by Hans Rosling

in History, Math | December 3rd, 2010

Hans Rosling, a pro­fes­sor of glob­al health at Swe­den’s Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute, focus­es on ‘dis­pelling com­mon myths about the so-called devel­op­ing world’ (as his TED bio well notes). And he has estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion for pre­sent­ing data in extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive ways. Just watch the video above, an out­take from the BBC show “The Joy of Stats”). In four min­utes, Rosling visu­al­ly traces the health of 200 coun­tries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, and we end up with a lit­tle rea­son for opti­mism. Great stuff… Thanks to @Sheerly for flag­ging this.

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3D Rome Was Built in a Day

in Uncategorized | December 2nd, 2010

Com­put­er sci­en­tists at UNC-Chapel Hill and col­leagues at the Swiss uni­ver­si­ty, ETH-Zurich, have cre­at­ed an algo­rithm that search­es through mil­lions of pho­tos on Flickr, then uses them to build a 3D mod­el of land­marks and geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. Case in point, the video above. Accord­ing to The Dai­ly Tar Heel, “researchers demon­strat­ed the tech­nique by using 3 mil­lion images of Rome to recon­struct the city’s pri­ma­ry land­marks. A sin­gle PC processed the images in less than 24 hours. Land­marks in Berlin were recon­struct­ed in the same man­ner.” Not bad for a day’s work…

via Read­WriteWeb

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