We gave you Tchaikovsky’s Voice Captured on an Edison Cylinder (1899) and James Joyce Reading from Finnegans Wake. And now, thanks to Robert, we let you listen in on interviews with two other great composers — Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Béla Bartók (1881–1945) recorded in 1944.
Google Puts Supreme Court Opinions Online
A quick fyi: Starting today, you can find online legal opinions from the Supreme Court, as well as federal and state courts, thanks to Google Scholar. When you visit Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and then begin your query. If you type “separate but equal,” Scholar with present you with famous Supreme Court Cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. You get the gist. You can read more about this online legal database over at Google’s blog.
UPDATE/NOTE FROM READER: “This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org. Oyez is easy to use, has lots of additional content, including summaries and audio of oral arguments, and is ad-free and Creative Commons licensed for its original content. Plus, you can search by court term, Justice, and the name of the legal counsel.” An alternative source to look at…
The Crowdsourced Musical Collaboration
This musical bit is easier watched than described. Click through, start the 20 videos playing in any order/timing that you want, and see what you get. You can read the FAQ for the InB b 2.0 project here.
Thanks V for the tip!
Nabokov’s Last
Vladimir Nabokov wanted his last unfinished novel destroyed (learn more about it here). But, 32 years after his death, the book is being published. You can buy The Original of Laura starting Tuesday. Meanwhile, you can also read through a few excerpts thanks to the Times Online.
Tchaikovsky’s Voice Captured on an Edison Cylinder (1890)
Take a quick trip back in time, to 1890. Here you can listen to Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, etc.) and other eminent musicians having some fun, recording their voices on a then new-fangled technology, the phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. To get a transcript of what the friends had to say, you can read the transcript after the jump. Thanks Maggie for this tip. (via BoingBoing)
Can Cultural Evolution Stave Off Global Collapse?
The pattern always repeats itself. Civilizations rise and fall. Then new ones take their place. But, something else may be about to happen. There might be an impending collapse of our entire global civilization. Not one major civilization, but the entire global civilization, gone. Or, so that’s how Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich sees it. Ehrlich, who has been called “one of the most influential ecologists of our age,” sees one thing staving off disaster. A big shift in culture first and foremost. A cultural evolution. Watch above.
A New TV Guide for Internet Television
Today, Clicker.com comes out of beta and promises to become the complete guide to Internet Television. Currently, the site “contains more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks, tens of thousands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists.” The content (all apparently legal) is generally supplied by other content providers, and then aggregated by Clicker. Although the content is often quite pop, you can find some university content (Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc.) in the mix, much of it supplied by Academic Earth. Other quality content appears in the Art & Artists section here and the Documentary section here.
Thanks Denise for the tip.
via USA Today
Stephen Hawking/Carl Sagan Mashup Released as Single
For the past couple of months, A Glorious Dawn, a mashup melding Stephen Hawking’s voice with scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, has been making its way around the blogosphere. Now, on the eve of what would have been Sagan’s 75th birthday (he died in 1996), A Glorious Dawn has been officially released as a single by Third Man Records, the label created by White Stripes singer Jack White. We have posted the video above. You can also download the song in mp3 and other formats here, or buy it as a special 7 inch single (pre-order here).
via Huffington Post and Telegraph.co.uk
Support Us
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
About Us
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
Advertise With Us
