Tweets of the Week (2/13)

in Twitter | February 13th, 2010

Why let good tweets (and re-tweets) go to waste? Each week, we’re going to list some of the cul­tur­al good­ies that appeared in our Twit­ter stream. You can start fol­low­ing Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter here.

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Picasso Painting on Glass

in Art | February 12th, 2010

A deeply mem­o­rable scene. Picas­so at his home in Val­lau­ris, paint­ing on glass with a cam­era rolling on the oth­er side. The scene is an out­take from Vis­ite à Picas­so (A Vis­it with Picas­so), a 1950 film by Bel­gian film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts. The full film, run­ning 20 min­utes, can be watched in its entire­ty on Vimeo (or right below). You can find this film in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. For good mea­sure, we have also added an excerpt from the 1956 film Le Mys­tere Picas­so, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot, oth­er­wise known for Les dia­boliques (1955). The film is avail­able on YouTube in two parts: Part 1 — Part 2.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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Hyperspace to Berlin, Watch Metropolis Live

in Uncategorized | February 12th, 2010

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Restored ‘Metropolis’ to Stream Live on Friday

in Film | February 11th, 2010

Clas­sic film buffs take note. Roger Ebert writes:

The eager­ly await­ed restored ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s silent clas­sic “Metrop­o­lis” will steam live on the inter­net on Fri­day Feb. 12. In Amer­i­ca, it can be see in the after­noon. It’s said that near­ly an hour of footage, long thought to be lost, has been added. The footage was dis­cov­ered in a film archive in Buenos Aires.… It will be streamed via web­sites in both Ger­man and France. The actu­al film is sched­uled to start play­ing at 1:40 PM CST, Chica­go time.”

The French site stream­ing the film can be found here, and the Ger­man site here.

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A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

in Art, Comedy, History | February 11th, 2010

This imag­i­na­tive bit was a stu­den­t’s final project for an art course. The flip­book, made entire­ly out of biro pens, was cre­at­ed with 2100 pages of draw­ings and took about 3 weeks to devel­op. Need­less to say, the stu­dent got an A.

Thanks to @kirstinbutler for flag­ging this one.

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10,000 Galaxies in 3D

in Science | February 10th, 2010

In 2004, the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope cap­tured 10,000 galax­ies in an image that’s now called the Ultra Deep Field. It’s our deep­est look into the uni­verse. The video above ani­mates the Deep Field image and puts it into 3D. No need to read more. Just watch.

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Why You Share

in Life, Media, Psychology | February 10th, 2010

A team of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia spent a good six months study­ing The New York Times list of most-e-mailed arti­cles, hop­ing to fig­ure out what arti­cles get shared, and why. And here’s what they essen­tial­ly found:

Peo­ple pre­ferred e‑mailing arti­cles with pos­i­tive rather than neg­a­tive themes, and they liked to send long arti­cles on intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing top­ics… Per­haps most of all, read­ers want­ed to share arti­cles that inspired awe, an emo­tion that the researchers inves­ti­gat­ed after notic­ing how many sci­ence arti­cles made the list.

This goes a long way toward explain­ing why 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple have watched The Known Uni­verse since mid Decem­ber. And, as Bill Rankin right­ly sug­gest­ed to me, it says some­thing good about online cul­ture, and what makes Open Cul­ture work as a site. Each day, we try to give you a lit­tle awe and chal­lenge. And for our next post: 10,000 Galax­ies in 3D.

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Bob Dylan at the White House

in Music | February 10th, 2010

Once they were part of the counter cul­ture. Now they’re get­ting the red car­pet treat­ment in the estab­lish­ment. (Not that I have a prob­lem with that!) Last night, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and oth­ers per­formed in the East Room of the White House. It was all part a pro­gram called “A Cel­e­bra­tion of Music from the Civ­il Rights Move­ment,” which will air on PBS on Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. ET. Above we have an audio record­ing of Dylan per­form­ing the time­less “The Times They Are A‑Changin.” You can also watch a sam­ple of the oth­er per­for­mances here.

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Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

in Philosophy | February 9th, 2010

Since the late 1990’s, Alain de Bot­ton has been break­ing down dif­fi­cult philo­soph­i­cal and lit­er­ary ideas and see­ing how they apply to peo­ple’s every­day lives. He did this with his 1997 best­seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step fur­ther with his tele­vi­sion series called Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness. The episode above delves into Niet­zsche’s belief that hap­pi­ness only comes about with great effort and hard­ship. In the remain­ing five episodes, de Bot­ton gets into Socrates on self con­fi­dence, Seneca on anger, Epi­cu­rus on hap­pi­ness, Mon­taigne on self-esteem, and Schopen­hauer on love. Each episode runs about 25 min­utes. You can also find all six episodes neat­ly dis­played on one page here.

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Time Travel with Google Earth

in Google, History | February 8th, 2010

Google Earth­’s his­tor­i­cal imagery fea­ture now includes aer­i­al footage of the after­math of World War II, allow­ing users to com­pre­hend the extent of post-war destruc­tion by com­par­ing pho­tos of cities as they are today to those of bombed out cities imme­di­ate­ly after the war.

Here’s War­saw in 1935, dev­as­tat­ed in 1943, and restored today. You can click here to see the pic­tures in a big­ger size.

For more imagery, includ­ing pic­tures of Stuttgart, Naples and Lyon, see the Google Earth blog.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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What Are You Staring At?

in Life | February 8th, 2010

You stare. You get stared at. It hap­pens count­less times every day. But have you ever pon­dered what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing here? Rose­marie Gar­land-Thom­son, a pro­fes­sor at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, has been giv­ing it some thought. You can get a quick intro­duc­tion above, and more exten­sive think­ing in her new book, Star­ing: How We Look. Thanks Nicole for send­ing this along…

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