Open Culture

The End of Publishing. Or Is It?

Dan Colman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:55:07 +0000

Smart and hopeful. But you need to stick with it for a couple of minutes. A job well done…

The End of Publishing. Or Is It? is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Einstein in 60 Seconds (or 40 Hours)

Dan Colman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:05:15 +0000

BigThink asked Dr. Michio Kaku to sum up Einstein’s legacy in a nutshell. Above, you get his attempt in a quick minute. Obviously, this is just beginning to scratch the surface, and knowing you, you want to go deeper. So here you go: Leonard Susskind, a world famous physicist, offered a series of six courses for Stanford Continuing Studies, which traced the arc of modern physics. It goes from Newton to Black Holes. Naturally a tour of modern physics wouldn’t be complete without spending a good amount of time on Einstein, and that’s what Susskind does. One course (runs about 20 hours) is dedicated to Special Relativity (iTunes – YouTube) and the other focuses exclusively on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (iTunes - YouTube). This series of courses (all permanently found in the Physics section of our Free Online Course collection) has been enjoyed by viewers across the world, and we (at Stanford) have recently shipped CDs of the course to remote places with minimal bandwidth, including Nepal and Afghanistan. For more on how to learn physics online (for free, of course), see our post: Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction.

Einstein in 60 Seconds (or 40 Hours) is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Tony Judt, Leading Public Intellectual, Confronts ALS

Dan Colman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:11:07 +0000

During the past decade, Tony Judt emerged as one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He’s combative, often controversial (especially when talking about Israel), and sometimes disliked. But he’s taken seriously. And many have had nothing but sheer praise for his master work, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. The NYU historian had built up a career that many envied. But then things started going wrong … physically, not intellectually. In 2008, Judt was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. And he made his diagnosis widely known earlier this year, when he published an essay, “Night,” in The New York Review of Books. The article is short, but it brings you right inside his daily experience. He writes:

During the day I can at least request a scratch, an adjustment, a drink, or simply a gratuitous re-placement of my limbs—since enforced stillness for hours on end is not only physically uncomfortable but psychologically close to intolerable. It is not as though you lose the desire to stretch, to bend, to stand or lie or run or even exercise. But when the urge comes over you there is nothing—nothing—that you can do except seek some tiny substitute or else find a way to suppress the thought and the accompanying muscle memory.

But then comes the night. … If I allow a stray limb to be mis-placed, or fail to insist on having my midriff carefully aligned with legs and head, I shall suffer the agonies of the damned later in the night. I am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since—like the rest of me—they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed…and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts.

This experience hasn’t slowed down Judt a bit. In fact, quite the opposite, Judt has been ramping up his publications, proving even more prolific than before. (His latest book, Ill Fares the Land, will be published this week.) Judt’s battle with ALS and his sense of intellectual urgency get discussed in the latest edition of New York Magazine. (It’s a piece well worth reading.) Above we feature an interview with Judt posted by The Guardian in January.

Tony Judt, Leading Public Intellectual, Confronts ALS is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Julius Caesar Gets Clipped 2054 Years Ago Today

Dan Colman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:19:11 +0000

March 15th. It translates to the Ides of March on the Roman Calendar. And it’s the date when Julius Caesar was famously assassinated in 44 B.C. To mark the occasion (today is the Ides of March), we bring you a dramatic, six-minute clip of the assassination scene from the film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1953. The scene features Louis Calhern as Caesar, John Gielgud as Cassius and James Mason as Brutus. The film also stars Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, but we only get a fleeting glimpse of him in this scene as the plotters contrive to separate him from Caesar.

Note: You can download a free audio version of Shakespeare’s play thanks to Librivox, or get a free etext here. And if you have an iPhone, feel free to download a free app that includes all of Shakespeare plays.

Mike, one of our faithful readers, gets all of the cred for this one! Many thanks.

Julius Caesar Gets Clipped 2054 Years Ago Today is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The Greatest Film Scenes Ever Shot

Dan Colman — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:29:22 +0000

This weekend, The Guardian film critic and select filmmakers listed their favorite movie scenes of all time. It starts with the iconic shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho (above). No surprise there. And then what? The very long car chase from The French Connection, Robet DeNiro’s talking to the mirror scene in Taxi Driver, the memorable last minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, Brian DePalma’s “blood at the prom” scene in Carrie, and some other memorable ones.

The Greatest Film Scenes Ever Shot is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Iceland!

Dan Colman — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:14:47 +0000

via The Daily Dish

Iceland! is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

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Culture Tweets of the Week – March 13

Dan Colman — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:42:36 +0000

Guaranteed to make you smarter, or your money back. You can follow us on Twitter here. (Or become a Facebook fan.) Here they go:

RT @BoingBoing: Most beautiful bookstore – Buenos Aires’s Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid http://bit.ly/c5iapa
RT @Alyssa_Milano: Two new MIT classes focus on helping #Haiti: http://is.gd/aa43H (via @brainpicker)
RT @guardianculture: “Solar” by Ian McEwan http://bit.ly/dpqBAq
RT @kirstinbutler: View human history’s greatest hits in 3-D http://humanorigins.si.edu/ The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Initiative
RT @courosa: McLuhan interview from 1967 – http://bit.ly/HvVuv – much of this wisdom from 1967, while repeated , has yet to catch on.
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment in 1951: http://bit.ly/cEDEV5
RT @GuardianBooks: Google partners with Italy for groundbreaking book scanning deal http://bit.ly/dxVwE7
Looking for avant-garde film & video? Andy Warhol, Philip Glass, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet, etc. Visit @ubuweb http://bit.ly/amomfw
RT @philosophybites: Notes and links from the Tate Modern Classic Aesthetics course (Plato, then Hume) on www.artandallusion.com
RT @dylanschenker: Watch The Academy Award Winning Animated Short ‘Logorama’ Online http://bit.ly/9yUvQw
RT @freemusicarchiv: http://freemusicarchive.org now hosts over 18,000 free & legal mp3s curated by @wfmu @cbcradio3 @creativecommons & more
Chopin’s 1848 piano played for his 200th birthday: http://bit.ly/9zyhZR Thanks Leisha
Historian Tony Judt’s struggle with ALS (and his recent intellectual life) chronicled in New York Magazine. http://bit.ly/a8hT1W
Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World: http://bit.ly/bgyZay Presented originally via @Longnow
@ScottSigler “Who Needs You, Big Publishing? How Authors Can Own All Rights and Make More Money” http://bit.ly/diR2xV (via @sethharwood
RT @EliseBlackwell: Don DeLillo on Samuel Beckett: http://bit.ly/9GuwMg (via @RhysTranter)
RT @heoj: i love this article! Algebra in Wonderland http://nyti.ms/aaPH9w
Spoken Verse YouTube Channel – http://bit.ly/aRTRkn – added to our Smart YouTube collection: http://bit.ly/SouTb Thanks Ryan for the tip.

Culture Tweets of the Week – March 13 is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

A Day in the Life of New York City

Dan Colman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:12:37 +0000

My old home town in time lapse video. Thanks Ian for the excellent find. Have a good weekend all.

A Day in the Life of New York City is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Christopher Hitchens Revises the Ten Commandments

Dan Colman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:00:46 +0000

Christopher Hitchens — he’s an irritant to the left (a big defender of the bungled Iraq war) and to the right (an atheist who wrote the controversial bestseller God is Not Great). He’s an equal opportunity polemicist. Now, in the April edition of Vanity Fair, he’s back. This time, he’s deconstructing the Ten Commandments and offering his own updated set of commandments for our modern times. I’m normally not the biggest Hitchens fan. But, I’m on board with the gist of his guiding principles.

via @KirstinButler

Christopher Hitchens Revises the Ten Commandments is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Twilight Zone Radio: Download Free Episodes

Dan Colman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:12:17 +0000

The Twilight Zone aired between 1959 and 1964, and it became one of America’s iconic television shows. Although the program ended long ago, the show lives on today … on the radio. Airing on 200 stations across the US, Twilight Zone Radio dramatizes Rod Serling’s classic scripts for today’s radio audiences. And it does it with help of actor Stacy Keach, the show’s host, and celebrities (Jason Alexander, Ed Begley Jr., etc.) playing lead roles in the dramas. You can catch the show on the radio (find your local radio station here). Or, right now, you can download three free episodes of past shows. Each runs about 40 minutes, and, if you find yourself hungering for more, you can always purchase individual episodes from the Twilight Zone Radio archive for $1.95.

On a related note, be sure to see our previous post: Orson Welles Vintage Radio

Twilight Zone Radio: Download Free Episodes is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com