Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncovered by AT&T: Watch Online

in Film, Technology | January 25th, 2012

Before Jim Hen­son joined Sesame Street in 1969, the great pup­peteer took on var­i­ous projects dur­ing the 60s, some­times cre­at­ing exper­i­men­tal films (for exam­ple, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short Time Piece), oth­er times pro­duc­ing primers on pup­pet mak­ing, and then pur­su­ing the occa­sion­al com­mer­cial project — like the one just uncov­ered by AT&T.

Back in 1963, Hen­son was asked to cre­ate a short film for a Bell Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sem­i­nar held in Chica­go. The con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers sent a three-page memo to Hen­son out­lin­ing the main themes of the con­fer­ence — one being the strange and some­times fraught rela­tion­ship between man and machine. Hen­son’s film only runs three min­utes, but it gets the mes­sage across … and then some.

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:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

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Cambridge Nights: Late Night TV-Style Show Takes Deep Look at Scientific Thinking

in MIT, Science, Video - Science | January 24th, 2012

Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts is one of the world’s great intel­lec­tu­al cross­roads. With Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty at one end of town and the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy at the oth­er, many of the most influ­en­tial thinkers of our time either work there or vis­it. That gave César Hidal­go an idea.

Hidal­go is a pro­fes­sor at M.I.T., where he stud­ies the rela­tion­ship between physics, net­work sci­ence and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Build­ing on his own inter­dis­ci­pli­nary curios­i­ty, Hidal­go thought it would be inter­est­ing to share a lit­tle of Cam­bridge’s intel­lec­tu­al wealth with the out­side world, so in Octo­ber he and the M.I.T. Media Lab launched a series of infor­mal Web inter­views called Cam­bridge Nights: Con­ver­sa­tions About a Life in Sci­ence.

Cam­bridge Nights is a lit­tle like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, if Leno talked about things like frac­tal geom­e­try in the meta­bol­ic the­o­ry of ecol­o­gy. That’s the sub­ject of the dis­cus­sion above fea­tur­ing the renowned physi­cist Geof­frey West, pro­fes­sor and past pres­i­dent of the San­ta Fe Insti­tute, who gives a fas­ci­nat­ing account of the uni­ver­sal scal­ing laws that per­vade all life, from sin­gle-celled organ­isms and com­plex species to whole ecosys­tems.

What sets Cam­bridge Nights apart from oth­er Web forums, like Big­Think, is that guests are under no pres­sure to com­press or “pop­u­lar­ize” their ideas. “We invite them because we want to hear what they have to say, and we want to give them the time to say it com­fort­ably,” writes Hidal­go. “There are many high-speed for­mats out there. Cam­bridge Nights is an alter­na­tive where thoughts can be devel­oped and reflect­ed upon with­out the need to rush.”

In the first sea­son, Hidal­go talks with six schol­ars from fields span­ning the nat­ur­al and social sci­ences, includ­ing physi­cist and net­work sci­en­tist Albert-Lás­zló Barabási, biol­o­gist Marc Vidal and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment expert Lant Pritch­ett. A num­ber of guests are already lined up for Sea­son Two, includ­ing exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker.

To view all six videos from Sea­son One, and to learn more about the project, vis­it the Cam­bridge Nights web­site.

Cours­es from MIT can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

via The New York Times

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Nine PAC Ads from Stephen Colbert Spoof U.S. Election System

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Politics | January 24th, 2012

When the Supreme Court, in its infi­nite wis­dom, decid­ed that cor­po­ra­tions enjoy the free speech rights of indi­vid­u­als, it took a bad cam­paign finance sys­tem and made it worse. Sud­den­ly, free-spend­ing PACs, rep­re­sent­ing pow­er­ful busi­ness inter­ests, could flood our cam­paign finance sys­tem with unprece­dent­ed amounts of mon­ey and dis­tort the way we elect lead­ers in the Unit­ed States. In the ear­ly days of the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion process, we’re already see­ing the results. Super PACs, some­times receiv­ing $5 mil­lion from one indi­vid­ual, are run­ning attack ads — lots of attack ads — in pri­ma­ry states. And the real del­uge has yet to come. Just wait until next fall.

What to do about the sanc­tioned dis­tor­tion of our polit­i­cal sys­tem? It’s hard to be opti­mistic when fix­ing the prob­lem would real­is­ti­cal­ly require a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. But that’s what Lawrence Lessig (Har­vard law pro­fes­sor and founder of Cre­ative Com­mons) is try­ing to do. Appear­ing at Google (see below), Lessig describes how spe­cial inter­ests cor­rupt our polit­i­cal sys­tem, and what we can do to stop it. But even Lessig will admit that it’s an uphill bat­tle.

That leaves us with the next best solu­tion: turn a joke of an elec­tion sys­tem into a good joke. Enter Stephen Col­bert. The come­di­an has cre­at­ed his own Super PAC (run by Jon Stew­art) that comes com­plete with its own TV ads. The par­o­dy above — an attack ad on attack ads — makes its point pret­ty effec­tive­ly. You can watch eight more Col­bert PAC com­mer­cials here, and make a dona­tion to his PAC here. And, if you’re feel­ing gen­er­ous, you can show your sup­port for Open Cul­ture here.

Break­ing News: Stephen Col­bert ends qua­si-pres­i­den­tial cam­paign

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James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

in Film | January 24th, 2012

The James Bond movie fran­chise began in 1962, with the release of Dr. No, star­ring a young Sean Con­nery. (Watch the orig­i­nal trail­er here.) And it did­n’t take long for the pro­duc­ers, Albert R. Broc­coli and Har­ry Saltz­man, to real­ize that they were onto some­thing. Speak­ing in 1965, Broc­coli and Saltz­man (above) spec­u­lat­ed that they had cre­at­ed “a mod­ern mythol­o­gy,” the Super­man of their age, and a long-last­ing “enter­tain­ment trend.” How right they were.

Fifty years have passed since audi­ences saw the first Bond movie. Sev­en actors have played James Bond in 22 films. And the next movie, Sky­fall, will hit the­aters in Novem­ber, with Daniel Craig play­ing the lead role. This marks a cause for cel­e­bra­tion (or at least a chance for Hol­ly­wood to ring the reg­is­ter). In the very near future, you can buy the com­plete James Bond Film Col­lec­tion (22 titles in total) on Blu-ray for $199.99, which works out to $9 per film and that does­n’t fac­tor in 130 hours of bonus mate­r­i­al. The clip below will pitch you on the Blu-ray release that can be pre-ordered here. If you’re look­ing for free James Bond media, don’t miss Ian Flem­ing (the cre­ator of the James Bond lit­er­ary char­ac­ter) in con­ver­sa­tion with Ray­mond Chan­dler in 1958 here.

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Leonard Cohen’s New Album, Old Ideas: Stream It for Free Online

in Music | January 24th, 2012

Fans of Leonard Cohen, you’ve wait­ed patient­ly. Sev­en long years. Now it’s final­ly here. Cohen’s new album Old Ideas offi­cial­ly hits the streets next week. But it’s now stream­ing online for free cour­tesy of NPR. It will only last a lim­it­ed time. So set­tle in now and lis­ten to the ten tracks, which as Guardian crit­ic Kit­ty Empire puts it, are not about “death, betray­al and God, juicy as these are,” but rather “the stuff that has made Cohen indis­pens­able for six decades: desire, regret, suf­fer­ing, mis­an­thropy, love, hope, and ham­ming it up.”

The poet­ic lines of the first track, “Going Home,” have been pub­lished in The New York­er. You can pre-order the album here. H/T @opedr

More Leonard Cohen Videos & Movies:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen (1971 Doc­u­men­tary)

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Watch the Film

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Global Warming: A Free Course from UChicago Explains Climate Change

in Science, Video - Science | January 23rd, 2012

Two weeks ago, we fea­tured Har­vard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lec­tures pre­sent­ed by Har­vard experts, each focus­ing on the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. One thing Har­vard Thinks Green did­n’t offer was a primer on cli­mate change itself, a good sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion of the under­ly­ing prob­lem. Enter Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube), a 23-lec­ture course pre­sent­ed by David Archer, a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of The Geo­phys­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. The first half of the class explains cli­mate physics and how the cli­mate works; the sec­ond half shows how human activ­i­ty and ever-increas­ing car­bon lev­els dis­rupt the equi­lib­ri­um of the envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a very uncer­tain future for gen­er­a­tions to come. The first, short lec­ture above out­lines the scope of the class.

Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UChica­go in Fall 2009, Archer’s course was geared to non-sci­ence majors and taught in con­junc­tion with his text­book, Glob­al Warm­ing: Under­stand­ing the Fore­cast, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Ama­zon here. Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube) is now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

Prof. Bri­an Cox Has a Mad­den­ing Con­ver­sa­tion with a Cli­mate Sci­ence-Deny­ing Politi­cian

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Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | January 23rd, 2012

In 2009, Brook­lyn-based Web devel­op­er Casey Pugh was look­ing for a new way to explore the poten­tial of crowd-sourc­ing when he hit upon an idea of galac­tic pro­por­tions. He took the orig­i­nal 1977 Star Wars film (lat­er known as Episode IV: A New Hope in the chrono­log­i­cal­ly ordered six-part series) and chopped it into 15-sec­ond pieces, invit­ing fans from around the world to choose a piece and re-cre­ate it in what­ev­er medi­um they liked: live-action, pup­petry, ani­ma­tion, you name it. Three years and one Emmy Award lat­er, Pugh and his team have put the best pieces togeth­er and (with the bless­ing of Star Wars cre­ator George Lucas) released the fin­ished film, Star Wars Uncut: The Direc­tor’s Cut. It runs a fun two hours and five min­utes. You can watch the com­plete movie above and learn more on the offi­cial web­site.

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 Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

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Michel Foucault: Free Lectures on Truth, Discourse & The Self (UC Berkeley, 1980–1983)

in Philosophy | January 23rd, 2012

Image by Nemo­main, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Michel Fou­cault (1926–1984) was an enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial French philoso­pher who wrote, among oth­er things, his­tor­i­cal analy­ses of psy­chi­a­try, med­i­cine, the prison sys­tem, and the func­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty in social orga­ni­za­tions. He spent some time dur­ing the last years of his life at UC Berke­ley, deliv­er­ing sev­er­al lec­tures in Eng­lish. And hap­pi­ly they were record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty:

These last lec­tures are also avail­able on YouTube (in audio for­mat).

One of Fou­cault’s more con­tro­ver­sial and mem­o­rable books was Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish (1977), which traced the tran­si­tion from the 18th cen­tu­ry use of pub­lic tor­ture and exe­cu­tion to–less than 50 years later–the preva­lence of much more sub­tle uses of pow­er, with a focus on incar­cer­a­tion, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, pre­ven­tion, and sur­veil­lance.

Here he is in 1983 com­ment­ing on that book (thanks for the link to Seth Paskin). The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast recent­ly dis­cussed the book with Katharine McIn­tyre, doc­tor­al can­di­date at Colum­bia. Fou­cault’s image of the panop­ti­con well cap­tures mod­ern pri­va­cy con­cerns in the elec­tron­ic age.

Final­ly, we leave you with a School­house Rock-style pre­sen­ta­tion of Fou­cault’s book The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Vol­ume 1 and some vin­tage video of Fou­cault’s 1971 debate with Noam Chom­sky. Fou­cault’s lec­tures have been added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Lacan, Aca­d­e­m­ic Rock Star, Gives a Pub­lic Lec­ture, 1972

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (Part of Our List of 875 Free Cours­es Online)

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Yosemite National Park in All of Its Time-Lapse Splendor

in Video - Arts & Culture | January 23rd, 2012

This video shows Yosemite Nation­al Park in all of its glo­ry. Watch as dark­ness descends over Half Dome after a gor­geous sun­set. Then, look­ing to the heav­ens, we observe the bril­liant sky and the mil­lions of stars vis­i­ble. It’s Yosemite like you’ve nev­er seen it before.

The video was cre­at­ed by Shel­don Neill and Col­in Dele­han­ty, who share an inter­est in time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy and found each oth­er via Vimeo. The result, after numer­ous vis­its to Yosemite, was this com­plet­ed project. All time-laps­es were shot on the Canon 5D Mark II with a vari­ety of Canon L and Zeiss CP.2 lens­es. The music accom­pa­ny­ing the video is “Out­ro” from the new album Hur­ry Up, We’re Dream­ing by elec­tron­ic band M83.

One of the scenes from this video is of El Cap­i­tan, a ver­ti­cal rock for­ma­tion that’s twice the height of the Empire State Build­ing. Wall: The Jour­ney Up tells the hero­ic sto­ry of Steve Wampler’s quest to become the first per­son with Cere­bral Pal­sy to climb El Cap­i­tan. The inspir­ing video/film trail­er is worth watch­ing.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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An Animated Tour of Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations

in Animation, Architecture | January 21st, 2012

Falling­wa­ter was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935. Con­struc­tion began a year lat­er and was even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed in 1939. Many con­sid­er Falling­wa­ter one of Wright’s finest cre­ations. Hence why Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine count­ed it as one of the 28 Places to See Before You Die. Now, thanks to the mini movie above, you can watch the build­ing of Falling­wa­ter take place right before your eyes, and then take a tour of the house. It’s all done in com­put­er graph­ics and runs 4+ min­utes. And, as one read­er tells us, the “video is as real as it gets.” You can learn more about the film and the house at this web site.

For more Frank Lloyd Wright, you’ll also want to vis­it the R.W. Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion, a gas sta­tion designed by the famous archi­tect in the 1930s. We’ll take you on a vir­tu­al tour right here.

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A Robot That Flies with the Grace of a Bird: A Great TED Flight

in Science | January 20th, 2012

The dream of flight fired the imag­i­na­tion of Leonard da Vin­ci in the ear­ly six­teenth cen­tu­ry. In design­ing his famous fly­ing machines, the painter, sculp­tor, archi­tect, math­e­mati­cian, engi­neer, inven­tor, anatomist  — ah heck, let’s just call him a Renais­sance man — close­ly stud­ied the mechan­ics of birds in flight, not­ing the ele­gant ways in which they turn and glide. Cen­turies lat­er the Wright Broth­ers got us off the ground, but nev­er with equal grace. It has tak­en a long time, but final­ly engi­neers at the Ger­man com­pa­ny, Fes­to, have found a way to mechan­i­cal­ly repro­duce the beau­ty of birds in flight. They call their robot the Smart­Bird, and they showed it off last year at TED.

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