Remembrance of German Things Past

From Berlin, two ini­tia­tives from the Deutsche Kinemathek/Museum for Film and Tele­vi­sion.

The first is a col­lec­tion of pri­vate pho­tos and home movies of the Berlin Wall, its even­tu­al col­lapse, and the reuni­fi­ca­tion that fol­lowed. It’s a time­ly col­lec­tion, espe­cial­ly giv­en that the 20th anniver­sary of the Wal­l’s fall is com­ing in Novem­ber. Not only do the images and films encour­age the view­er to reflect on free­dom, but the items found in the col­lec­tion are open to tag­ging, most car­ry Cre­ative Com­mons licens­es, and the online exhib­it is built on inno­v­a­tive open source soft­ware from Col­lec­tive Access. Some of the most pop­u­lar images in the col­lec­tion can be found here.

The sec­ond is a new por­tal that the Kine­math­ek has built with Aus­tri­an, Czech, and French part­ners list­ing infor­ma­tion about more than 3,500 films–including clas­sics from Char­lie Chap­lin and Frank Capra–that were pre­sumed to be lost for­ev­er. The Ger­mans have seed­ed the list with infor­ma­tion about the 37 most sought-after Ger­man films, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al from Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and F.W. Mur­nau. All that’s miss­ing is a poster with a pic­ture: “Have you seen this film?”

Peter B. Kauf­man comes to us from Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion.

Malcolm Gladwell on the Beatles — Prodigies or Not?

The last sen­tence is the clinch­er…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

From The Inter­net Archive: “Record­ed here is the com­plete, orig­i­nal sto­ry The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton as penned by Fitzger­ald in the ear­ly 1920s, pub­lished orig­i­nal­ly in Col­liers and final­ly col­lect­ed in the pop­u­lar Tales of the Jazz Age.” You can down­load and lis­ten to this Fitzger­ald sto­ry here. Mul­ti­ple for­mats are avail­able. We’ve also  added this work to our Free Audio Book col­lec­tion, along with some oth­er good works: Niko­lai Gogol’s The Over­coat, Walt Whit­man’s Song of Myself and Oth­er Poems, and Lu Xun’s “A Mad­man’s Diary.

Shakespeare on the iPhone

Last week, we flagged for you a list called the 100 Best iPhone Apps for Seri­ous Self-Learn­ers. What the list missed is anoth­er nice app that puts the com­plete works of Shake­speare on your iPhone. And, the best part, it’s all free. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy func­tion­al­i­ty: you can search the text by key­word and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app auto­mat­i­cal­ly remem­bers the last page you read. Not bad. And, again, you can find the Bard app here.

Math on the Tube

Dur­ing the past cou­ple of days, fans from our Face­book page have rec­om­mend­ed two math videos for us. Here they go: “D” offers up a piece called “The New Math” (above), which talks, yes, about the rev­o­lu­tion in teach­ing math­e­mat­ics. As you’ll see, the piece breaks into com­ic song, and it all kind of has an Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restau­rant feel to it. A bit of a strange com­bo, to be sure.

Next up, Heather gives us Math­mati­cious (get it here), which is a math­e­mat­i­cal par­o­dy of Fer­gie’s “Fer­ga­li­cious,” although sad­ly or, maybe actu­al­ly hap­pi­ly, I’m not famil­iar with it. Snooty, snarky me…

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‘Stanford Open Office Hours’ on Facebook

Think back to the office hours you attend­ed in col­lege. Now put a Web 2.0 slant on it. On Face­book, Stan­ford fac­ul­ty mem­bers are now hold­ing pub­lic office hours. This week, you can watch an intro­duc­to­ry video (view here or below) by Philip Zim­bar­do, the psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor best known for the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment, which explains why good peo­ple can com­mit unthink­able acts. His more recent research does a 180 and looks at how ordi­nary peo­ple com­mit hero­ic acts. And, sep­a­rate­ly, he’s try­ing to under­stand how our atti­tudes toward time affect our over­all hap­pi­ness (more on that here). Once you watch the ini­tial video, you can pose ques­tions to Prof Zim­bar­do in the com­ment thread beneath the clip. (You can do this through Tues­day after­noon). In the com­ing days, Prof. Zim­bar­do will respond to your ques­tions in a fol­low-up video.

To par­tic­i­pate, you will need to join Face­book and become a “fan” of Stan­ford’s Face­book page, And you’ll per­haps want to read over the ground rules for the Open Office Hours. Last­ly, if you’re not a Fan of Open Cul­ture’s Face­book Page, it’s time to get on board.

Obama Does Stand Up Comedy

From last night’s White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. (Also get Wan­da Sykes’ standup appear­ance here. Rather fun­ny.)

These clips come from CSPAN’s YouTube Chan­nel, which is includ­ed in our Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tion

Jack Kerouac Meets William F. Buckley (1968)

Rewind the video­tape to 1968. Jack Ker­ouac, author of On the Road, appears (seem­ing­ly drunk) on William F. Buck­ley’s “Fir­ing Line.” As you’ll see, this meet­ing of the Beat and the father of mod­ern Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism is not exact­ly filled with sub­stance. But the clip has some his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty. You can find more Ker­ouac video and audio on the Dig­i­tal Beat web site.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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