The Evolution of Religions: A Talk by Jared Diamond

A good find by Kottke.org…

Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed), offers a lec­ture at USC where he gets into the uni­ver­sal attrib­ut­es of reli­gions and their under­ly­ing adap­tive value/social pur­pose. The talk runs about 41 min­utes, fol­lowed by a long Q&A ses­sion.

For those look­ing for more aca­d­e­m­ic lec­tures, I should remind you of the recent launch of YouTube EDU and Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, plus our large col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

via @kottkedotorg

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YouTube Launches Library of Congress Channel (and Thomas Edison’s Boxing Cat)

The Library of Con­gress has just set up shop on YouTube. On this new chan­nel, you’ll find some new and vin­tage footage. Above, we’re direct­ing your atten­tion to a clip called “Box­ing Cats.” It’s from 1894 and was pro­duced by Thomas Edis­on’s Black Maria film stu­dio in West Orange, New Jer­sey. In no way do I con­done cat cock­fights, but this is some intrigu­ing his­tor­i­cal footage. And who knew that there was a lit­tle bit of Steve Mar­tin in Thomas Edi­son? I’ve added the Library of Con­gress Chan­nel to our page, Intel­li­gent YouTube: The Best Smart Video Col­lec­tions.

The Talking Heads at CBGB’s (and a Virtual Tour of the Joint)

CBG­B’s was a long­time mec­ca of the New York music scene, a venue that helped launch the Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Blondie, and the Talk­ing Heads onto the nation­al stage. And then it closed in 2006. If you nev­er vis­it­ed the club on Bow­ery and Bleeck­er Streets, you can still take a pret­ty vivid vir­tu­al tour. It starts in the bath­room and you then can wind your way through the rest of the joint. Above, we’ve post­ed some vin­tage footage of the Talk­ing Heads per­form­ing “Psy­cho Killer” at CBG­B’s, some­where back in the mid-70s.

via Metafil­ter

More New Dylan

Last week, Bob Dylan released for a lim­it­ed time a free mp3  (“Beyond Here Lies Noth­in”) from his upcom­ing album, Togeth­er Through Life. Over at Newsweek, you’ll now find anoth­er cut being streamed —  â€śFeel A Change Comin’ On.” Head on over and have a lis­ten.

via Stere­ogum

Women in Film

Eggman913 on YouTube has a pret­ty neat schtick. He takes artis­tic images, then morphs them togeth­er in pret­ty cre­ative ways.  The piece above plays with images of famous actress­es from dif­fer­ent moments in Amer­i­can film his­to­ry. Eggman913 has also cre­at­ed a mon­tage called Women in Art, which we’ve fea­tured here before. (It has only 9.2 mil­lion views on YouTube.) Then there are pieces that have fun with the art of Picas­so and Mon­et, plus a com­pan­ion clip called Men in Film. The actress­es shown in the video above include:  

Mary Pick­ford, Lil­lian Gish, Glo­ria Swan­son, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Nor­ma Shear­er, Ruth Chat­ter­ton, Jean Har­low, Katharine Hep­burn, Car­ole Lom­bard, Bette Davis, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Gar­son, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hay­worth, Gene Tier­ney, Olivia de Hav­il­land, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Craw­ford, Gin­ger Rogers, Loret­ta Young, Deb­o­rah Kerr, Judy Gar­land, Anne Bax­ter, Lau­ren Bacall, Susan Hay­ward, Ava Gard­ner, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Grace Kel­ly, Lana Turn­er, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hep­burn, Dorothy Dan­dridge, Shirley MacLaine, Natal­ie Wood, Rita Moreno, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bar­dot, Sophia Loren, Ann Mar­gret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tues­day Weld, Jane Fon­da, Julie Christie, Faye Dun­away, Cather­ine Deneuve, Jacque­line Bis­set, Can­dice Bergen, Isabel­la Rosselli­ni, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Saran­don, Jes­si­ca Lange, Michelle Pfeif­fer, Sigour­ney Weaver, Kath­leen Turn­er, Hol­ly Hunter, Jodie Fos­ter, Angela Bas­sett, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, San­dra Bul­lock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kid­man, Cather­ine Zeta-Jones, Angeli­na Jolie, Char­l­ize Theron, Reese With­er­spoon, Halle Berry.

Stanford Teaches You to Develop iPhone Apps (Free)

A quick heads up: Stan­ford has just launched a free soft­ware devel­op­ment course for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The lec­tures will be rolled out on iTunes first, and even­tu­al­ly they will be post­ed on YouTube as well. You can get the first lec­ture on iTunes here. This 10 week com­put­er sci­ence course is offi­cial­ly called iPhone Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming. Watch for new lec­tures to be post­ed week­ly. You’ll be learn­ing to devel­op iPhone apps in no time.

You can find this course housed under the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.

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The Original Spider-Man TV Series Now Online

A light (and, for me, nos­tal­gic) way to ease into the week­end…

Over at Marvel.com, they’re stream­ing episodes from the orig­i­nal Spi­der-Man TV series that hit the air­waves back in 1967. A new episode will be post­ed every Thurs­day. Above, you’ll find Episode 1, and see where it all began.

The Rothko Panoramic Tour: A New Way to See Art

This real­ly caught my eye…

If you did­n’t make it to the Mark Rothko exhi­bi­tion at the Tate Mod­ern (and chances are you did­n’t), then you can still see it vir­tu­al­ly. As you’ll see, the Tate Mod­ern has cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic web site that lets you take a panoram­ic tour of the Rothko col­lec­tion. Once you enter the tour here, you should switch into full screen mode (look toward the bot­tom of screen), then use the arrows and your mouse to move around. You can move from room to room, and zoom in on var­i­ous paint­ings. Quite the way to see an exhi­bi­tion if you can’t make a long jour­ney.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.