Open Culture

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

Logorama: The Oscar Winning Animated Short Now Online

Dan Colman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:41:48 +0000

Note: Some language is NOT safe for work…

This past weekend, François Alaux and Herve de Crecy’s 17 minute film, Logorama, won the Oscar for the best Short Film (Animated). The plot comes basically boils down to this: “In a world made up entirely of trademarks and brand names, Michelin Man cops pursue a criminal Ronald McDonald.” Obviously, there is some commentary here on how corporations permeate American society. The film has been brought online by GarageTV. For more films, check out our collection of Free Movies Online.

via @dylanschenkler and theflickcast.com

Logorama: The Oscar Winning Animated Short Now Online is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Avant-Garde Media: The UbuWeb Collection

Dan Colman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:07:20 +0000

Fans of avant-garde art, take note. UbuWeb hosts a vast archive of online avant-garde media, and they’ve been doing it since 1996. The site features a large mp3 sound archive, alongside an extensive film/video collection where you’ll find some vintage clips. Take these items for example:

Four American Composers: Philip Glass – Peter Greenaway’s documentary from 1983 takes you inside the work of John Cage, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, & Robert Ashley. The clip here features the Glass segment.
Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man - This 47 minute documentary focuses on Argentina’s beloved author. As UBU writes, the documentary is a bit of everything — “part biography, part literary criticism, part hero-worship, part book reading, and part psychology.”
La villa Santo Sospir – Jean Cocteau, the French poet, novelist and dramatist, also shot a movie or two. Here’s his 35-minute color film from 1952…
Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit – A video diary of beat writer Allen Ginsberg’s final days before death, and the days following.
The Violence of the Image – Jean Baudrillard lectures at the European Graduate School.
Un Chant d’Amour – French writer Jean Genet’s only film from 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was banned and disowned by Genet later in his life, says UBU.
Warhol’s Cinema – A Mirror for the Sixties – A 64-minute documentary on Andy Warhol’s cinema of the sixties, made in association with The Factory, MOMA and the Whitney Museum of Art.

This is just a quick sample of what UBU has to offer. You can dig deeper into their avant-garde media collection here. As you’ll see, the video quality can be a little uneven. But if you can’t get to a real arts cinema, then this is not a bad fallback resource.

Avant-Garde Media: The UbuWeb Collection is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Making the Case Against Laptops … With Liquid Nitrogen

Dan Colman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:17:39 +0000

Professors are increasingly souring on students bringing their laptops to class. Some are banning them. (The Washington Post has more on that.) And some are banning them emphatically. Like the physics professor from the University of Oklahoma. (Watch the video above.) What’s the solution? Maybe this student has the right idea (said in jest).

Making the Case Against Laptops … With Liquid Nitrogen is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Getting Smart During Your Daily Commute

Dan Colman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:52:57 +0000

The average American spends a good 100 minutes per day commuting to and from work. (More on that here.) That amounts to about 433 hours per year! Now imagine using that time to learn something new — to read a great book, to take a class from a top university, to learn a new language. To make a sharper you. Below, we highlight our free audio resources that will maximize your drive time. Before getting started, make sure you have a big mp3 player and a way to listen to your mp3 player over your car speakers. Unless you commute by subway or bus, using earbuds is generally unsafe, and often illegal.

Free Resources:

Free Audio Books: What better way to spend your drive time than listening to some of the greatest books ever written? This page contains a vast number of free audio books, including works by Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and many more. You can download these classic books straight to your mp3 player, then listen as you drive.

Free Courses: This list brings together over 275 free courses from leading universities, including Stanford, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged courses range across all disciplines. As you drive, you can immerse yourself in free courses in history, physics, philosophy, psychology and beyond. All of these courses are available in audio.

Free Foreign Language Lessons: Perhaps learning a new language is high on your personal check list. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 37 languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin, English, Russian, Dutch, even Finnish and Esperanto. These lessons are all free and ready for your drive. You’ll start speaking that new language in no time.

Ideas & Culture Programs: In this audio collection, we have gathered some of the most intellectually stimulating programs, covering the worlds of thought, film, music, books, etc. These programs will keep you thinking and culturally up-to-date. Most programs feature new daily episodes.

Science Podcasts: Maybe you’re already steeped in the liberal arts and want to get more comfortable with the world of science. Here’s a good place to start. This page includes a long list of entertaining science programs. Neuroscience, astronomy, medicine, Einstein, National Geographic. They’re all here, waiting for you.

Open Culture iPhone App: A little something special for iPhone users. When you download our free iPhone app, you can take with you, wherever you go, the items listed above. Just connect to Wi-Fi (Apple says so), download as many audio files as you want, then take them on the road, and you’re good to go.

Paid Resources: We love all things free. You know that. But sometimes paid resources deliver the goods. Here are two paid resources that I frequently end up using during my travels.

The Teaching Company: This company travels across the U.S. and records great professors lecturing on great topics. Although you can purchase these polished courses in multiple formats — Video DVD, Audio CD, Audio Tape, etc., — I generally go for the courses produced in a downloadable mp3 format. They’re cheaper and more portable. What course am I listening to right now? The History of Ancient Egypt. Please note that the company often runs sales. So if you don’t see a course at a nice price, just give it some time and a good deal will usually come along. Be sure to keep a close eye on their “On Sale” page.

Audible.com: If you’re into contemporary books, then give Audible a visit. They have the widest collection of new books on the market, and they make it easy to download books to your mp3 player. In fact, they support iPod, iPhone, Blackberry and 500 other devices. Books can be bought a la carte, or through an annual subscription. If you start a 14 day free trial with Audible.com, you can download a free audio book of your choice. At the end of 14 days, you can decide whether to stick with the subscription plan or not. Regardless of your decision, you can keep the free audio book. It’s a no risk way of trying out Audible’s service.

This post was inspired by Lifehacker’s piece from earlier today: Top 10 Tips and Tools for Commuters.

Getting Smart During Your Daily Commute is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

GoodReads

Dan Colman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:48:11 +0000

A quick heads up for book lovers: Goodreads is a large social network for readers, with over 3,000,000 members who review, recommend and swap books. The site also features “book-give-aways” for its members. This month you can enter to win a free copy of If You Follow Me, a novel by Malena Watrous, a talented colleague of mine at Stanford. About the book one reviewer said: It’s “the kind of book you finish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling everyone you know that they have to read it.” The book is hitting the bookstore shelves today, and you can sign up to win a free copy until March 16.

PS Malena will be teaching an online writing course through Stanford Continuing Studies this spring. The course, called The Creative Writing Coach, is open to all. Meanwhile, we’re also piloting our first online humanities course, a philosophy course called Envisioning the Good Life. Watch the video introduction for the course here.

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

Great Theatre for Free

Dan Colman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:08:31 +0000

A quick public service announcement:

Beginning Saturday, March 13, L.A. Theatre Works Radio Theatre Series will air Fallen Angels by Noel Coward, starring Annette Bening, Harriet Harris, Judith Ivey, Joe Mantegna, John Rubinstein, and Kristoffer Tabori. The broadcast can be heard locally in Southern California on Saturday from 10 pm to midnight on 89.3 KPCC, and can also be streamed on demand at http://www.latw.org/.

LA Theatre Works stages numerous audio plays each year, featuring leading actors and actresses. You can access their other recent productions here: iTunes – Web Site

Great Theatre for Free is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

Lawrence Lessig: What Conservatives Can Teach Us About Free Culture

Dan Colman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:37:19 +0000

Here’s one of the first videos to emerge from this weekend’s indie TED conference in New York City. More videos will eventually be posted on the TEDxTalks YouTube Channel, which we’re adding to our Smart YouTube collection. In case you’re not familiar with him, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, has been a driving force behind the “free culture” movement and Creative Commons. This talks offers a quick introduction to his thinking … and his distinctive (and always engaging) manner of presentation.

Lawrence Lessig: What Conservatives Can Teach Us About Free Culture is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com

The Milky Way in Time-Lapse Video

Dan Colman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:57:53 +0000

This humbling footage of the Milky Way was filmed on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the same location that recently gave us footage of stars orbiting a black hole. This is, of course, not a coincidence. Mauna Kea hosts the world’s largest observatory for optical, infrared, and submillimeter astronomy. Thanks Robert for sending this our way.

via The Huffington Post

The Milky Way in Time-Lapse Video is a post from: Open Culture. Visit us at www.openculture.com